‘Are you?’ said Joe mildly. ‘I’ve been discussing Mrs Worthington’s horses. They’re of interest to Harry. It was Miss McCleary who let them out.’
‘I didn’t let them out. They escaped.’
It hardly mattered to Sergeant Fletcher. ‘Well now you’re snooping. You’ve broken the law. Twice. You’re leaving under escort.’
‘Come off it, Harry. I can vouch for her.’ Joe Fletcher had no more grounds for trusting her than she had to trust him, but there you are, they’d sized each other up amid a midnight stampede of skinny horses and each had reached conclusions about the other that had no basis in hard evidence. ‘Tea?’ he said. ‘I bet you need a cuppa.’
‘No tea,’ said Pearl but the offer calmed her. She turned to Harry Fletcher with less rancour. ‘I wouldn’t be trespassing if I wasn’t desperate. I’m sure you’d help a fellow soldier in trouble and my … friend is in great trouble.’ Whether or not Harry Fletcher would have given her the time of day without the presence of his brother was doubtful. But Joe Fletcher urged them all to sit, so she sat and she told her story without elaboration or untoward emotion, dwelling on the noble nature of Daniel’s mission and the danger he was in owing to the ignoble nature of the man who had stolen whatever it was he’d stolen. ‘We know so little,’ she concluded. ‘I think he’s bitten off more than he can chew.’
‘You’d be surprised at exactly how much a soldier can chew,’ Joe said thoughtfully.
His brother nodded. ‘He sounds like an honourable man. Looking after the family of his dead mate. I don’t know why you’re interfering.’
‘Because his sister is dying. She’s sixteen, she’s running out of strength and she hasn’t seen him since he went to war.’
Harry Fletcher studied her in silence. Then he stood up. ‘What’s his name? I’ll know if he’s out there.’
‘Daniel Flannagan.’
‘Never heard of him.’ He turned to his brother. ‘You’re right. The horses are Walers. Headed for the Middle East. Definitely never paid for, or not to anyone who cared to mention it.’
‘Ex Army,’ Joe Fletcher explained to Pearl. ‘Who reported them stolen?’ he asked his brother.
‘No one. Same person who never reported the missing alcohol, tobacco or sugar.’
‘Ah,’ said Joe.
‘But I’m getting closer,’ said Harry. ‘I know where the chain begins and where it breaks and now he’s getting greedy it’ll be easy enough to trace it to the bitter end.’
If Pearl wanted badly to ask closer to whom or what, if it was on the tip of her tongue to enquire after a crooked scheme that somehow had provided horses to Louisa’s blackmailers, she checked herself. Instead she said, ‘Maybe he isn’t calling himself Daniel Flannagan anymore. He’s five feet nine, brown hair, broad shoulders, a bit fat, good talker …’ But the Fletchers had lost interest.
‘Keep it under your hat, Joe. You too, Miss McCleary,’ said Harry Fletcher. ‘Not a word to anyone about what you’ve just heard. Joe says you’re trustworthy and I’m taking his word for it. I’ll ask around about your friend but my advice is to let him get on with whatever he’s doing. A man’s choices are his own to live with. Say your prayers for the sister.’
Martin Duffy sulked all the way home because Pearl wouldn’t tell him what she’d discovered. It led him to believe it was nothing, which wasn’t far from the truth. She knew no more about Daniel’s whereabouts now than she had when they’d parted company an hour earlier. On the other hand, if she’d understood the Fletcher brothers correctly, the horses were part of a much bigger, much more complicated picture that anyone had ever imagined and Martin Duffy might, under usual circumstances, have felt entitled to be informed. But she’d been accused of snooping and she’d been sworn to secrecy so entitlement didn’t count. She had her own problems, one of which was him.
‘Don’t toy with the affections of Maggie,’ she said, startling him from his silence. ‘She’s very young and very innocent.’
‘Why on earth would I? I think far too highly of her,’ was his offended reply, followed by, ‘You obviously don’t think very highly of me.’
‘Why should I think highly of you when you have such a low opinion of me.’
Had Pearl seen the hurt in her part-time husband’s eyes and heard the miserable intake of breath, she might have been kinder, but maybe not. She was in no mood for kindness or even talking. Happily, the heavy cloud of resentment that hung over the cart all the way back to Prospect spared the need for any further conversation whatsoever.
Chapter Thirty-seven
It was a sorry state of affairs. The part-time husband and the woman who’d invented him were poles apart. Neither had the foggiest idea about which wife the other considered to be in most danger, nor from whom, let alone what was to be done about it. Such a failure of minds to meet is a shocker in a full-time marriage with just two spouses, but a disaster in a part-time one with five.
Martin and Pearl could have been more frank with each other on that trip home. Pearl might have explained the difficulty of her position regarding the information she’d received from the Fletchers and Martin might have alerted her to his independent activities about the town and their implications for all of them. But neither did.
This meant Pearl had no idea Martin had volunteered his services at the Mayberrys’ party. It meant Martin had no idea that Sergeant Fletcher was getting closer to the unknown criminal stealing cigarettes, alcohol and luxury items as well as horses from the Army, or that Pearl’s money was on the criminal’s name being Archie Stokes. Yet again, they parted company at Lambert’s with positively nothing to say to each other.
He was off and away with scarcely a wave of his hand the minute he’d helped her from the cart, so she walked home alone and let herself into the Nightingale house shortly after lunch to be greeted by Adelaide, whose mood was surprisingly benign. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she remarked before Pearl had time to remove her hat, gloves and shawl, ‘we should all go to the Peace Party as a family. What do you think? You can bring Freddie home as soon he starts to grizzle.’
‘Why not?’ Pearl agreed wearily. ‘How has he been this morning?’ She was tired, she was preoccupied, she was filthy. She was the housekeeper.
‘Cranky,’ said Adelaide. ‘He wouldn’t eat his lunch. Marcus will come to the party with us. He’s been a much happier man today. And we’ll take Mrs Worthington because she can’t go on her own. You look very dusty. What a strange hat. Why don’t you have a wash before you start dinner?’ From which good-natured chatting Pearl was able to deduce that something pleasant must have happened. And it had.
Marcus, out of the blue, had behaved like a normal person. The stranger had vanished. The friendly, sensible husband had returned, not gone forever after all, just hiding. With no Miss McCleary in the house, he’d asked her for a cup of tea at ten clock, just as she was about to feed the baby, then he’d sat down to drink it with her. She had ignored the clock ticking past her fractious son’s schedule. She had smiled at her husband to show she too could let bygones be bygones. She had told him all about the horses escaping just as fresh ones were being delivered, how Miss McCleary had challenged the people delivering them but they’d taken off and how Fletcher from Somerset Station had rounded them all up and put them back in the paddock. ‘Poor Louisa,’ she’d said. ‘Last thing she wanted.’ She’d told the story with amusing asides and clever imitations and Marcus had laughed.
‘Odd business,’ he’d remarked. ‘But something I wanted to say to you, Adelaide. Stokes has come up with an excellent plan to stop you worrying about the books. An audit.’
She’d very nearly vomited. He must have overheard her speaking to Martin Duffy and now he was leading her into a trap that would end in a domestic horror that could only be imagined. ‘What’s an audit?’ she’d asked and he’d smiled affectionately.
‘What a duffer you are!’ He’d patted her hand. ‘The shop is far too much for you. I should never have lumb
ered you with it. An audit will put your mind at rest.’
‘But what is it exactly? An audit.’ She had a pretty shrewd idea, of course she did, but the question was genuine. Martin Duffy had had no time to explain it to her, what with his excursion to the railway with Miss McCleary today and his devotion to Maggie yesterday.
‘It’s a thorough examination of a company’s books by a special accountant who goes through the figures with a fine-tooth comb. Stokes says Larry Murdoch might come out of retirement and do it for us as a favour.’ She’d said it sounded like a wonderful idea. He’d said, ‘Good,’ and it had put the household on such an excellent footing that despite Freddie’s whinging and carrying on, there had been no shouting or slamming of doors and Adelaide had been able to think about gentler things.
She’d thought about the silly Peace Party, first with amusement, then with delight. Everyone had come to terms with Mrs Mayberry’s cavalier treatment of the Ball Committee so she could have the party in her own garden because, they remembered, her Address to The Nation had inspired them all and wasn’t she the Mayor’s wife, so didn’t she have some authority? Anyway, a party was a party. A Peace Celebration was a Celebration of Peace, so who cared where the celebrating was done? That was the feeling abroad and Adelaide went along with it.
She’d taken herself and Freddie across the road to ask Louisa what she was wearing and Louisa had said she had no idea. She’d thought about not going but Jimmy was to be given an honourable mention, she’d been informed in writing by the committee.
‘My black lace with the silk underskirts probably,’ she’d said. ‘I should wear mourning even if it is a party.’
‘Do you think so? What did Jimmy like you in? That might be more fitting.’ Adelaide had meant it well but it hadn’t been received well.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Adelaide,’ Louisa had snapped, and given her tone, Adelaide had decided Freddie had had enough and removed him from the scene. She’d spotted Maggie hurrying home through the Arch and had waited to ask her what she planned to wear but Maggie had informed her nothing special since she’d be on catering along with the boys, who’d be washing up.
‘Shame,’ Adelaide had said. ‘Was Mr Duffy able to build your shed yesterday?’
‘Chook house,’ Maggie had corrected her. ‘Yes, he was and now I have to run. Promised I’d make him some potato scones.’
It had jarred but not as much as it might have yesterday. Louisa was no cook. Adelaide had thought she might bake him a cake herself just to show him she could. Trawling through recipes had kept her happy all day and now, finally, Miss McCleary was home so she had someone congenial to talk to and take care of the baby.
‘I hear Mr Fletcher was in top form when he rounded up the horses,’ she said, putting aside her cookbooks. ‘He’s such a strange creature. We never see him even though he’s just down the lane, because he works from dawn to dusk. My father would have loved him. What did you make of him?’
Pearl was peeling potatoes. ‘We hardly spoke,’ she said carefully. ‘I didn’t see him very clearly. He’s a good horseman.’
‘He’s not bad looking, is he? Just grumpy and sullen.’
‘He was friendly enough,’ said Pearl. ‘Given the time of night.’
‘Well he’ll be at the party. Mrs Mayberry’s full of who’s coming. She thinks Larry Murdoch and Mr Fletcher are the bees knees when they’re two of the dullest men in creation. We can have fun though. Martin is bound to be fun.’
Chapter Thirty-eight
Martin was looking for fun that very minute, desperate for congenial company, but he was failing to find it. Mrs Quirk said, ‘Norah’s at the Post Office.’ He hesitated no more than a minute before deciding that now was as good a time as any for him to trap Mr Stokes into confirming he was the crook Mrs Nightingale, Adelaide, and the ledgers said he was.
He didn’t enter Nightingales through the main doors. He rounded the corner and wandered into the delivery bay where Mr Stokes was watching a small man heave the last of half a dozen sacks, each nearly as large as himself, onto a trolley. ‘Mr Stokes. The very man,’ he called amiably.
‘The very man for what?’ snarled the grocer. ‘I sell nothing from the back door so don’t even ask. Everyone in town knows I’m not a back-door man.’
‘And I know that. I’ve never come across a more respectable establishment.’
‘Finest in the state,’ Archie Stokes muttered. ‘Let me see that.’ He lumbered towards the small man staggering under the weight on his back. He poked the load, creating a hole in it. ‘It’s damaged. Tell your boss it’s damaged and I won’t be paying for it.’
The small man dropped the sack. ‘He won’t like it,’ he said. ‘He’ll say it left him in perfect condition.’
‘You can tell the QM it wasn’t perfect when it got to me and I don’t like damaged goods. Don’t like them and don’t like the man who tries to palm them off onto me. Tell him that, Cocky Watson.’ He towered over the small man.
‘I’ll take it back.’ Cocky Watson couldn’t have looked or sounded less cocky as he heaved the sack back onto his shoulder. He turned awkwardly but Mr Stokes gave him a shove, which sent him reeling so the sack fell to the ground and split further open, not a long way open, just open enough to spill a small trickle of sugar.
‘I’m not asking you to take it back, Mr Watson. I’m telling you I’m not paying for it. See that split? Just give me the invoice and I’ll make the necessary adjustment.’ With that he deftly lifted the sack so the split was uppermost and no longer spilling and marched with it into the storeroom.
‘Shoddy,’ Martin Duffy said, following him.
‘You’re telling me,’ agreed the grocer. ‘Now what is it you want?’ He dumped the sack, dusted himself off and smiled cagily. ‘I bet I can guess.’
‘Go on,’ said Martin Duffy.
‘Ham,’ said the grocer.
‘Not ham,’ said Martin Duffy. ‘Though yours is a fine ham.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Something a little stronger than milk to drink and possibly something to smoke.’
Archie Stokes headed back into the shop. ‘Scarce, Mr Duffy. Very scarce.’
‘It’s why I came to you. My landlady says you’re a man who can find his way round scarcity.’
‘I’ve got my contacts,’ agreed Mr Stokes, arranging the sack among other similar sacks. ‘I’ve been lucky, and anyone will tell you, clever. I can sometimes help out a friend.’
The amateur sleuth coughed and, in doing so, overstepped a mark the grocer might have ignored. ‘I’m looking for a bit more than I actually need, if you follow. Can you help me out there?’
Archie Stokes turned slowly. ‘Now you’re asking a lot.’ He crossed the room, heavy footed, eyes like a pig’s, clever, watchful. He placed his face so close to Martin Duffy’s that Martin Duffy could smell the pig on him. ‘I’ll need to think about how friendly we are exactly. Give me a day or two,’ he said. ‘You might as well leave the way you came in.’
Martin Duffy watched the large retreating back for the briefest of seconds and as he turned to leave he heard the storeroom door slam as the grocer returned to the shop. The delivery bay was now empty of everything except the trolley loaded with the five sacks that were to be paid for. Not a soul in sight. The wretched driver with whom he’d hoped to have a discreet word had disappeared and so had his wagon.
He also missed the Mayor because the Mayor, also intent on a few words with Mr Stokes, changed his mind about looking for him in the delivery bay and chose instead to look for him in the shop. It was a decision he regretted at once. Sometimes the Mayor enjoyed the shop and the deference of other shoppers. Other times, he resented them. Today he wanted to say what he had to say to the grocer and go.
Martin Duffy passed the shop entrance on his way to visit Maggie O’Connell, who never whined or complained, just as the Mayor called to Mrs Lambert, ‘Mr Stokes about?’ and Mr Stokes appeared from the storeroom, a little redder in the face
than usual and a little less inclined to smooth the Mayor’s feathers.
‘Mr Stokes, a minute if you don’t mind,’ called the Mayor. He proceeded directly to the office expecting the grocer to follow him, which the grocer did without grace and only after deciding he might as well.
‘And what can I do for you?’ he said when the door was closed and they were seated. His smile was of a man who had no wish to do anything for anyone.
The Mayor fished about in his waistcoat pocket and removed a bit of paper, which he handed over. ‘Yours, if I’m not mistaken.’
The grocer took the scrawled note of agreement between him and Mrs Worthington, recognised it at once but stared at it without comment. It was a turn up for the books, so he had no immediate response. ‘What is it?’ he finally asked blankly.
‘It has your signature to it,’ sighed the Mayor.
Mr Stokes held the paper closer to his face. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘This. Where did you come across this exactly?’
‘In a file clearly marked Bluett v O’Connell, which I had on my desk as per our last conversation but which went missing. Our maid found it in a garden bed when she was breaking into our house to retrieve her purse or some such, and when I went to examine the contents of the folder to make sure nothing was missing, there it was. Something’s up, Mr Stokes. I don’t like it.’
Mr Stokes put the agreement on the desk in front of him and appeared to read from it but was actually reading only from his brain as it delivered possibilities and likelihoods. ‘The folder was in your study. The maid found the folder, with her name on it, in the garden. There was no note in the folder when the folder was in your study. The note was intended for Mrs Worthington. The housekeeper’s cousin was to deliver the note to her. She has signed it, so it was to be returned to me. It wasn’t returned to me. It found its way into the folder. You didn’t put it there. It stands to reason that Mrs Worthington has been in possession of the folder. Or the housekeeper’s cousin has been in possession of it. Or the maid has been in possession of it, somehow come across the note and stolen it and placed it there and the folder never was in the garden bed. The maid is Maggie O’Connell, a known thief. The housekeeper’s cousin has taken me for a fool. The folder concerns the enterprise you and I were discussing in total confidence. There is a connection between Mrs Worthington, the maid and the housekeeper’s cousin as well as the enterprise. I don’t like it either.’
Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband Page 21