Jane Hetherington's Adventures In Detection

by Nina Jon

  II

  “I’m home,” he cried, stepping through his backdoor. He deposited his golf clubs in the utility room and appeared in the kitchen. There weren’t any pans bubbling on the hob. The oven was stone cold and he could not smell anything remotely like his dinner. He opened the oven door. It was empty. At that moment, his son, Miles, walked into the room.

  “Where is your mother?” he demanded, his arms folded, a look of fury growing on his face, “and, almost as importantly, where is my dinner?”

  Miles shrugged. “Dunno. I’m going out for pizza in town. See yer.”

  As his son walked out of the kitchen, his wife walked into it.

  “How was your day?” she asked him.

  “Clearly not as busy as yours,” he said, opening the empty oven.

  “Did you not eat at your club?”

  “I barely ate a morsel…” said Felix, who had eaten a lunch of venison pie with game chips, “…not wishing to ruin my appetite for the evening roast beef, I believed I was to enjoy with my family, ‘as the Rev is performing Evensong,’” he quoted.

  “I confess to having forgotten all about it. The beef is still in the freezer. I got tied up with things.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, you might as well know. The old ladies have asked me to spearhead their campaign to prevent the closure of their shop. They said I was the best person for the job.”

  “Please don’t tell me you said yes?”

  “I’ve always liked the old ladies.”

  “I like them, but the redevelopment is in Failsham’s interest, my dear.”

  “But not necessarily in theirs. Anyway I said I would,” Mirabella said crisply.

  “What?”

  “You may have to look after yourself for a bit. The campaign may take up a lot of my time.”

  “What does, look after myself for a bit, mean?”

  “Well for a start it means, you’ll need to get your own dinner from now on.”

  “Get my own dinner?” Since the moment of his birth, Felix Dawson-Jones had not once prepared a single morsel of food for himself. One of the reasons he’d fallen in love with Mirabella was because she was such a good cook.

  “I’ll have a great deal to do. Penny and I have already made a start,” she said of their granddaughter, who, along with Penny’s mother, Susannah, lived with Felix and Mirabella.

  “We’ve prepared some posters,” Mirabella continued. “Here let me show them to you. You can tell me what you think.” She called out to Penny to bring her one of the posters, and the child quickly ran into the room holding one. “If I show them to you now, you won’t crash the car when you see them everywhere,” Mirabella said, unrolling the poster to reveal a photograph of the wool shop, above the words:

  ‘Save Our Wool shop

  Our lovely old wool shop is threatened with demolition. Would you rather have a traditional old business run from a traditional old building, or a modern industrial unit in your market square?

  Please write to lobby the local council or post any comments on our social networking site: failshamwoolshop@myksau.com.’

  “The old ladies have their own social networking site?” Felix said.

  “They will soon,” his wife said. “Penny and I are going to put these posters up tomorrow, aren’t we Penny?” The girl nodded eagerly. “We’ll plaster the wool shop windows with them, naturally. We’ll see how many shopkeepers and others we can persuade to display them. I may also prepare fliers in a similar form to put through people’s letterboxes,” she mused. “I promised I’d pen a handwritten letter to the council, asking them to remember they are dealing with three very elderly ladies, and to please give every consideration possible to the redevelopment proceeding without the need to demolish the wool shop.”

  “How can we proceed without demolishing the shop?” her husband demanded. “It’s in the middle of the site!”

  Mirabella ignored him.

  “I may host a fund-raising evening. If the ladies refuse to move, I may need to take them food.”

  “Whilst your own husband starves?”

  “I don’t think either of us is in danger of imminent starvation just yet,” she replied, patting his large stomach. “I’ll probably be asked to give interviews to give the other side of the story.”

  Felix spun around in a complete circle and said furiously, “There isn’t another side! Not one that’s rational. The decision was one taken by the whole council unanimously. It has overwhelming public support. Starving me into submission won’t help, and for your information, I am perfectly capable of looking after myself. I can always make myself a salad.”

  “Salad? You?”

  She and Penny could only laugh.

  “Yes – salad. As you have already pointed out, I could do with losing some weight.” He patted his stomach. “You fight for the old ladies cause, if you wish. I will fight for the town, and may the best man win,” he said, wagging his finger at her. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to chop wood.”

  Once in the back garden, he removed his jacket and laid it down on the garden bench. He chose a block of wood and rested it on top of the chopping block. He raised the axe above his head and brought it down on the log. It broke neatly in half. He picked up the two pieces and hurled them back on to the woodpile. The second log didn’t break so easily, and it took him a few attempts, with the log stuck firmly on to the blade, to split it down the middle.

  However much this wood-chopping helped him vent his frustration at a world which seemed to be turning against him, his rumbling stomach reminded him of his predicament – Felix Dawson-Jones hated salad, but not as much as he hated old-fashioned wool shops owned by stubborn spinsters.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Case of the Philandering Husband

  Jane couldn’t believe it was Sunday already. She didn’t know where the week had gone. Her fridge was almost empty and she was running out of clean clothes to wear, yet there she was, walking into Orla Wilson’s Sunday school class, about to start on a new case.

  The class had already begun by the time Jane arrived. About twenty children, ranging in age from four to ten, sat on the ground facing a stage at the far end of the hall, where a woman (whom Jane took to be Orla Wilson) stood. The children became quite excited upon finding that they had been joined by a newcomer and began to whisper amongst themselves, turning around to stare at Jane. One little girl smiled sweetly at her and she smiled back. Up on stage, Orla clapped her hands.

  “Face the front, children,” she barked.

  The children fell silent and turned around to face Orla, who was dressed in a 1980’s style Laura Ashley floral print dress, buttoned-up to her neck with long sleeves. Despite it only being February she wore open-toed leather sandals. A hair band held her fringe away from her face. She glanced once at Jane, before turning her attention back to the children.

  “Now children, on the count of three, I want you to look through the toy box and find the animals the Bible tells us were in Noah’s Ark. I want them in rows, ready to board the Ark, two by two.”

  The children stirred expectantly, but remained in their places, as Orla counted out, “One, two… wait for the count of three, boy,” she ordered one lad, who was shyly shuffling forward on his bottom. The other children laughed. “Three,” Orla shouted. The children instantly jumped to their feet and swarmed over and up onto the stage. Some used the small row of wooden steps at the far edge of the stage to reach it, while others hoisted themselves straight up onto it from the floor. Once there, they all ran over to a large wooden box in the middle of the stage and surrounded it. The children opened it, and noisily pulled out various wooden animals, which soon lay scattered on the floor. Orla left the children rummaging through the box, and climbed down the stairs slowly and deliberately. Jane walked forward to meet her and they shook hands.

  “Jane Hetherington,” Jane said.

  “Orla Wilson,” Orla replied.

  Orla was in her ea
rly to mid twenties. Her long, straight brown hair needed washing, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up.

  They moved to sit at the back of the hall. On the stage, the children were still busy removing small painted animals from the toy box with shouts of: “Got one.” “I’ve got a giraffe.” “Were there any elephants in the Ark?” “If there are elephants now, stupid, there must have been elephants in the Ark.”

  “I’m so glad you received my letter, Mrs Hetherington,” Orla said. “You never know with the post these days and I cannot abide e-mail. I do not like it one bit. I believe it to be ungodly. We do not have a computer at home.”

  What an odd woman, Jane thought, clinging on to a world that was over before she was born. Without the internet, Jane would be lost. She wouldn’t even have a business.

  “How can I help you, Mrs Wilson?”

  “I would like you to follow my husband, Peter,” Orla said.

  Ah? So that’s it, Jane thought. It’s going to be a case of the philandering husband.

  “Please go on,” Jane said.

  “My husband is twenty-seven years my senior. He was a committed bachelor before he met me. Nobody in our church could believe it when we announced our engagement. He’d convinced everyone that he would never marry. But, as I said at the time, he just needed to find the right woman, that’s all.” She laughed at this. “We’ve been married three years and have a two-year-old son and I’ve just discovered I’m expecting again.”

  “Congratulations,” Jane said, uncertain whether congratulations were actually called for in the circumstances. The conversation was interrupted by a small boy running up to them, holding a plastic dinosaur in his hand. A slightly older boy followed the second. Both were breathless.

  “I told him, there weren’t any dinosaurs on the Ark because they were too big and heavy and the Ark would have sunk if they’d got on board, so Noah told them to go away and that’s why there aren’t any dinosaurs left,” the eldest boy said, almost without inhaling. “But he won’t believe me.”

  “Are there any dinosaurs on earth, Beade Junior?”

  The boy with the plastic dinosaur in his hand ruefully shook his head.

  “No, there aren’t. Your brother is correct in what he says. Now put that dinosaur back in the toy box and choose another animal. One that was on the Ark.”

  Jane stared at Orla, amazed at what she had just heard her tell the boys.

  “Can I pick a fly?” the boy asked. “I saw a dead one in the bottom of the toy box.”

  “Only if you can find a lady fly for it,” Orla said, without a hint of irony.

  The two boys ran back to the stage.

  “Ever since we first married, my husband has spent some weeks at home and some weeks away,” Orla explained. “He’s a travelling salesman. I accept the absences, as I accept that some weeks he earns more money than others. We’ve never had a great deal of money, but recently there has been less than normal, even though he’s been working away from home for longer periods. I don’t really know how much he earns or where he works. If I need to call him, I call him on his mobile phone and he calls me back when it suits him. I don’t really like mobile phones either, but Peter insists we had one because of his absences. I accept without question that it is my role to look after the home and his, the finances. I believe that’s how things should be between a husband and wife, Mrs Hetherington. Things would be better in this world if everyone lived the way we do. I really do believe that.”

  Jane listened to this with some bemusement. Orla was clearly born out of her time, although Jane was uncertain what time Orla should have been born into. Jane couldn’t help thinking that even the 1880s might have been too progressive for Orla. It was as though the woman had taken a vow to avoid the modern world.

  “Why exactly do you require my services, Mrs Wilson?”

  Orla fidgeted with the hem of her dress, crinkling it up in her hand, only to let it go again, smooth it out, before closing her fist around it and crinkling it up again. “Peter brought home so little money last month that I had to ask my parents to help out. Every month he seems to bring home less and less. When I asked him why he was working harder, but we had less money, he shrugged and turned his pockets out, and said, ‘I give you all I have. At that moment I don’t have much to give you, but that will change, I promise.’ God forgive me, but I’m growing suspicious that all he tells me is the truth, Mrs Hetherington,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “I’m not sure how I can articulate my suspicions without it sounding as though I am a bad person, which you can tell I am not.”

  Jane felt enormously sorry for Orla. This was clearly a difficult conversation for her. What a terrible position she was in. Her true-felt religious convictions must have made it all the harder for her.

  “You don’t need to spell it out, Mrs Wilson,” Jane said, attempting to sound reassuring. “I understand how difficult this is for you. You suspect your husband is having an affair, and that is the real reason he is away from home so often, and why there is so little money. You want me to trail him discreetly and find out if this is true?”

  Almost immediately, Jane knew she’d said the wrong thing. Orla put her hand over her mouth and stood up. She was red in the face. She looked as though she wanted to explode in anger, but the presence of the children stopped her. She sat down again.

  “Adultery is a sin, Mrs Hetherington,” she said, still far from composed. “My husband is a man of God. My husband would not commit a mortal sin.”

  “I’m most terribly sorry if I’ve offended you in the least,” Jane said. “I apologise if I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion, but I’m a private detective and following spouses suspected of adultery is the bread and butter of my profession.”

  “Yes, you must come across a lot of ungodly people in your profession,” Orla said, giving Jane a rather disdainful look. “What I suspect my husband of isn’t adultery. I don’t suspect him of anything more than of trying to shield me. I believe he may have lost his job and has not been able to tell me this. He is such a good man; he wouldn’t hurt me or our child for anything in the world. He just wants to protect us from the evil in the world more than anything else, and that includes worry.”

  “I see. You think he’s pretending he still has his job, while he looks for another one.”

  Orla nodded vigorously.

  “I sincerely do,” she said. “The poor man must be worried sick, particularly as I am expecting again. ‘You mustn’t worry Orla,’ he’ll be thinking. ‘You mustn’t upset her by telling her you’ve lost your job. You will get another job soon enough,’ he’ll be saying to himself. But jobs aren’t that easy to come by at his age. If I ask him directly, I know he will only try and protect me, by not telling me the truth. Please follow him for me. When I am able to prove to him that I know the truth, and that I am strong enough to deal with it, only then will we be able to talk our problems through.”

  “I’ll do everything I can to establish the truth,” Jane said.

  She parted from Orla with another apology on her behalf, a photograph of Peter Wilson, his car registration number and a niggling feeling that she was going to live to regret taking this case on – a feeling which grew stronger and stronger as she walked to her car. Whilst Orla’s explanation of her husband’s absences, and their money problems, were a possibility, there were other explanations, far less honourable and frankly more likely. Jane didn’t really care to be the person who might have to tell Orla something which might cast her husband in a less than gallant light, if that turned out to be the case. However she’d promised to help Orla, and therefore she would.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Peter Wilson

  Jane parked on the opposite side of the street from the terraced house which was the family home of Orla and Peter Wilson, and watched the couple in the doorway of their house, the front door slightly ajar behind them. Orla glanced briefly in Jane’s direction. Satisfied that Jane was in position, she looked back at her husband,
just about to leave for one of his business trips, right on cue.

  Peter Wilson was quite tall and slim and apart from the greying edges of his hair, it wasn’t immediately obvious that he was considerably older than his wife. He held their toddler in his arms. Jane watched Peter pass the toddler back to his mother and kiss his wife and child goodbye. From the family’s rusty red Ford Escort he waved his family goodbye and moved off. Orla glanced in Jane’s direction again. Jane nodded and drove after him, while Orla carried her child back indoors and shut the front door behind her.

  Jane ensured there was always a car between her car and Peter Wilson’s Escort. Following him through residential streets was quite easy due to the speed limit. Eventually Peter turned onto the dual carriageway. Jane, who had earlier studied a map of the area, suspected he would do this. She knew the town’s dualled ring-road led straight to the motorway and this, she assumed, was where they were now headed.

  The two cars travelled in a convoy, moved steadily along the dual carriageway, until Peter suddenly pulled across the road and into the right-hand lane where he accelerated. Jane followed him. They were now going alarmingly fast, capped only by the density of traffic, which Jane suspected was forcing Peter to drive a lot slower than he wished to. This was confirmed when a car in front of him stubbornly refused to exceed eighty miles an hour, causing Peter to flash his lights at the driver and honk his horn.

  At junction eight, without warning, Peter pulled back across two rows of traffic and exited the dual carriageway. Jane followed him. The speed at which he’d pulled across the traffic had left her so little time to act that had he not been some way ahead of her, she would have missed the turning completely. They were now on the motorway – she ten cars behind – watching him roar along the outer lane, getting further and further away from her, despite her being only minutes behind him. This man must be doing one hundred miles an hour, Jane thought. She would not allow herself to drive at this speed and it wasn’t long before she’d lost sight of his car. Damn! Damn! Damn! she said out loud.