The Cuckoo's Child

by Marjorie Eccles

  For a moment, out there in the hall, when Jessie had told him who was waiting to see him, Gideon had debated whether to go into the library immediately or not. He was hungry, dinner was in the offing and the prospect of talking to the police was not one he welcomed, after the last humiliating hour he’d just spent.

  He’d walked down into Wainthorpe to catch Emmie Broomhead as she came out of morning service at St Mary’s, the Anglican church where her father was a churchwarden. Propping himself up on the wall opposite the church, he waited, holding on to his patience while the last hymn was sung, the organ voluntary was played, and the congregation had filed out and shaken hands with the vicar. Broomhead had come out at last, followed by Emmie, on the arm of Stanley Priestley, the smarmy fellow who was articled to her father.

  ‘Morning, Mr Broomhead, morning Emmie. Stan.’

  Broomhead nodded shortly and Emmie gave him a cool smile. Stanley smirked. When Richard Broomhead then made as if to pass on and Emmie, without much hesitation, followed suit, it needed nothing more to tell Gideon that the Beaumonts – himself in particular – were no longer on the Broomhead social register. The solicitor had evidently taken serious offence at Gideon’s incautious remarks when the will had been read, and the aspersions against his professional character (though they were damned well true! It was hardly a secret in Wainthorpe that Dick Broomhead could sometimes be less than discreet after dining with his cronies down at the Liberal Club – it was certainly why Grandpa had that new will drawn up by someone else.) That Broomhead was the sort to hold on to a grudge was no surprise either, but Gideon had thought better of high-spirited Emmie, being so easily swayed by her father’s opinions, taking her cue from him and worse, buttering up to soapy Stanley, whom she’d hitherto professed to despise.

  He had been well and truly snubbed. Well, to the devil with that! thought Gideon, hurt and affronted.

  He’d come down here this morning meaning to thank Emmie for the pretty little note of sympathy she’d sent him when she’d heard that his grandfather had died, surprising him as well as touching him, for he was not unaware that Emmie liked to receive rather than to give, and wasn’t renowned for her scholarship, either. She’d clearly made an effort, her handwriting had been childishly painstaking, and there had only been two spelling mistakes. He knew she had thought him a good catch. Now, after his thoughtless, though unintended, insult to her father, she’d been encouraged to have second thoughts. At any rate it was evident she wanted to punish him.

  Then let her! There were other fish in the sea. Gideon didn’t bother to prolong the agony, said a curt goodbye and stormed off up the hill back to Farr Clough at a punishing pace. And on the way there he recovered his temper surprisingly quickly.

  His attachment to Emmie had been another thing of which his grandpa had not entirely approved. He’d pooh-poohed it as puppy love, and told Gideon he could do better for himself than a spoilt little ninny like Emmie Broomhead; he could more profitably seek to ally himself with one of the richer families in the Neller valley. Gideon now found himself admitting that Ainsley had probably been right, in that as in many other things. He was sore, his pride was hurt, he felt bitterly humiliated, but he didn’t think his heart was broken.

  When he reached the top of the lane he paused and looked back at the mill and the spread of the buildings below, idle today, not running.

  For as long as he could remember, Cross Ings Mill had been part of his life. He had known from a child every dark, greasy corner – where the cockroaches scuttled of a morning when you put on a light, and where the wool-dust blew and clung tenaciously to every greasy pipe and window frame; where the dirty fleeces were sorted at the top of the building by men wearing blue and white checked ‘brats’, which covered them from head to toe in an endeavour to keep them protected from the deadly woolsorters’ disease, anthrax. From the noisy engine house where the boiler that powered the mill’s machinery was stoked with coal, to the grease-works where the lanolin was extracted from the waste water after the sheep’s wool had been scoured. From the stinking wash-house, through the noisy carding and combing, and the spinning, to the weaving sheds where the shuttles flew across the power looms and the deafening noise was like a thousand devils.

  Never mind Emmie, this was more important. Ainsley had been a young man once, as young as he was, and he had become master of Cross Ings. And yes, by Heaven, so would he.

  Thirteen

  ‘You’ve come to tell us we can go ahead with the funeral,’ he said directly to Womersley when he entered the library, after Womersley had introduced himself and his sergeant. He could otherwise see no reason for the police to be here.

  ‘Before we come to that, will you ask the rest of your family to join us, sir? They’ll want to hear what I have to say.’

  For a moment it looked as though he were about to demand further explanation, this youthful heir to the Beaumont tradition. He was young, very young to be burdened with what recent events had thrust upon him, but Womersley recalled that both the doctor and Whiteley Hirst had spoken well of him; there was intelligence and a firm set to his jaw that spoke of his ability to cope when he had overcome the initial shock his grandfather’s death had brought, thought Womersley, himself a good judge of young men’s potential. Gideon left the room and came back, accompanied by his mother.

  An imposing woman, Amelia Beaumont, plainly dressed in severe but well-cut mourning, a jet brooch at her neck. Womersley tried, not very successfully, to reconcile what he saw with the picture Widdop had painted of the light-minded young woman Theo Beaumont had married. Flightiness was not a quality he would have associated with this guarded, unsmiling and outwardly utterly respectable woman. He rose from where he was sitting and moved to offer the tabby-covered chair when she entered, but she obviously preferred to subject herself to the torment of the unyielding horsehair, and he stepped back, rebuffed.

  She was followed into the room by her daughter, a tall, slender young woman, also in black, accompanied by a fierce-looking and somewhat malodorous cross-breed Airedale, who fortunately sat obediently when commanded and put his square nose on her feet. Gideon stood with his hand on the back of her chair. There was no point in beating about the bush, no way in which he could lessen the impact of what they were about to hear. Womersley gave it to them straight, translating the medical language of the report of their grandfather’s death, in so far as he understood it, into plain English, and indicating what this might mean.

  An appalled silence fell when he had finished.

  During the last melancholy few days they had all been trying their best to accept the unacceptable manner of the head of the family’s death as an unfortunate accident. Some sort of freak accident perhaps, but an accident nonetheless. The idea of Ainsley committing suicide had obviously never been considered as a serious possibility by any of them. But now, there was this staggering revelation, which they were prepared to believe even less. Una sat with her eyes fastened on him, her very silence a refutation.

  Gideon, too, was speechless. He had gone very white. For all his outward self-confidence, the lad needs to grow a thicker skin, Womersley thought.

  Before they came in, he had asked for water to be brought. Rawlinson, ever alert, saw this was the moment to pour out a tumblerful. Mrs Beaumont shook her head, so he handed it to Una. She took it from him automatically and he watched her, a little smitten, as she held it without drinking, as though she didn’t know what to do with it. With her fragile looks and smooth, honey-blonde hair she might have been beautiful, had she not been spoiled by her disdainful manner; her eyes were fine and clear, but when she looked at you so directly, Rawlinson saw condemnation in them. Don’t shoot the messenger, he wanted to say. He thought she might well be capable of it.

  Mrs Beaumont had received the news with nothing more than a deep indrawn breath, yet Womersley’s professional antennae told him that it had shaken her badly. Her lips were pressed together in a tight line and he saw in those dark, opaque eyes
a hint of passion, the stirrings of anger. Her brows were drawn together, as if with the beginnings of a headache.

  ‘I can’t take this in,’ Gideon burst out at last. ‘First we are expected to believe it wasn’t an accident, but suicide, and now you’re trying to make out Grandfather was . . . deliberately killed.’ He patently couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘murder’. ‘What are you trying to do?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Womersley understood the lad’s bewilderment. He explained again, patiently, what the autopsy was certain to reveal, with its unavoidable conclusion that Ainsley Beaumont had met his death by the hand of another.

  Gideon was not given to real anger as a rule, yet he felt the heat rushing into his face, a pulse beating in his head, finding in himself a belligerence he had not known he possessed. He had an irresistible urge to smash his fist into the face of the mild mannered inspector who was telling them this thing. ‘I can only say I hope you find who it was before I come across him,’ he said violently. ‘If I do, I swear I’ll kill him!’

  ‘You’re upset, sir.’

  Gideon realized he had been shouting. He said, only slightly less calmly, ‘And what did you expect?’

  Womersley did not respond. There was a fierceness that ran like a thread through them all – through Ainsley, if everything they had heard about him was true – through Gideon, and even Una. Especially perhaps, the dangerously silent Mrs Beaumont. Even the drooling dog had a malevolent look in its hot eyes. There was nothing he could do to lessen the painfulness of the situation. He said shortly, ‘Well, to practicalities. The first thing we need to do is go through your grandfather’s papers.’

  ‘Why?’ Una asked sharply, brittle as a piece of glass.

  ‘It’s necessary in a case of this sort, Miss Beaumont,’ the sergeant explained.

  ‘I would rather call it an intrusion,’ she returned, giving him an icy glance. The beauty he had been conscious of was less admirable when she became so sarcastic and haughty. ‘Anything you need to know, we can tell you, without the need to riffle through his personal affairs.’

  She drew a deep breath, as if prepared to carry on, but Gideon, making a huge effort, had pulled himself together, and he gave her a warning glance, aware that he himself had said too much, wary of how she might provoke them. The police didn’t know what they were up against. Even when they were young children, he himself had been bested by Una when she was in this humour, when she stood up for her ‘rights’. But Womersley gave her no chance to continue.

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, Miss Beaumont. Questions don’t always reveal everything. Things that may seem unimportant to you may strike us very differently. I’d like you to appreciate,’ he went on, ‘that what brought this about is, at present, as much a mystery to us as it is to you. We need to look at every aspect of your grandfather’s life, his circumstances, his family, the people he knew – and not only any enemies, but also his friends, that we can talk to – and hope that will lead us to find out who was responsible. I simply need you all to cooperate, answer any questions we may put to you truthfully, talk to us about anything you, or we, think might help.’

  It was a long and oddly formal speech for Womersley, and surprised Rawlinson even more than the others, but they heard him out, though Una’s face remained tight with resentment.

  ‘So you see,’ Womersley continued, ‘that’s why I need to look over his papers, his will. For a man in Mr Beaumont’s position, especially, his will is important.’

  ‘If you must,’ said Gideon flatly, looking determinedly away from his sister. ‘Whatever papers there are, you’ll find in my grandfather’s study.’

  ‘Show me where that is, if you’d be so kind.’ Womersley stood up. ‘We shall need to talk to you all more fully, and to the servants, but meanwhile we’ll leave you to get on with your dinner while the sergeant and I are busy. I don’t want to disrupt things any more than we have to.’

  Una Beaumont looked as if the thought of eating made her feel physically ill. ‘I shan’t be taking dinner. You’ll find me in my workroom if you want me, Inspector. I have a deadline to meet.’ She stood up.

  ‘Deadline? Are you a writer, Miss Beaumont?’

  ‘I write pamphlets, leaflets, Sergeant. I publish a quarterly magazine. Unity,’ she added, as though they must know it. Neither of them did. Oh Lord, thought Womersley tiredly. He might have known. Unity had never come to his notice, but he had no doubt it was the same sort of publication as many others which had. Una Beaumont, then, was one of these attention-seeking women who were demanding the vote and equality for everybody, those pesky women he suspected Rawlinson secretly admired, though he’d more sense than to make his views publicly known.

  ‘I may go, now?’ she asked with a cold little smile. ‘I am very busy, but I have no desire to be obstructive, and I’ll answer any questions if it means you get the coward who took such advantage of my grandfather.’

  ‘Murderers of this sort don’t think of themselves as cowards,’ Womersley told her dryly. ‘Only how to get away with it without being found out. But thank you, I’d appreciate your cooperation.’

  Rawlinson sprang up and opened the door for her as she marched out, her head held high, followed by the dog which gave him a savage glance as he passed. He was thankful it was nothing more.

  Mrs Beaumont watched her go, then stood up herself. She had been silent throughout, following the conversation but keeping her feelings to herself behind those unfathomable eyes, and now she said merely, ‘Ask, if there’s anything you need.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Beaumont.’

  Gideon held the door open for his mother and then showed the policemen into the study. Although the master was no longer here, the routine of the house had gone on and a fire had still been lit, warming and lighting the comfortable room. ‘You’ll find all you need to see in the desk. There’s not all that much. He didn’t believe in paperwork.’ He opened a drawer. ‘Here’s a copy of the will, it’s quite short.’ He stood stock still for a moment, in command of himself now. ‘He made it only last week, and of course it supersedes the old one he’d made. But Mr Richard Broomhead, our family solicitor, confirms that it is fully in order.’

  Womersley accepted the long envelope, intrigued by the ambiguity, as Gideon extracted an expanding, concertina-type wallet from another drawer and put it on the desk, saying, ‘You’ll see what I mean after you’ve read the will – and this. This is self-explanatory.’

  It was soon very evident that Gideon had spoken the truth: the master of Cross Ings had not complicated his affairs with paperwork, not even with a diary – he evidently kept his appointments in his head, believing he would not forget them – nor were there any personal letters or anything of that sort. In the top drawer was the detritus which accumulates in any desk drawer: pencil stubs, a worn down rubber eraser, a tiny tin box of new pen nibs, several old keys of various sizes: door keys, clock keys and so on. Half a dozen little round cardboard pillboxes, some with a herbalist’s label, some with that of Widdop’s surgery, all of them empty except one, half-full of small pink pills.

  In other drawers Womersley found bank statements and a passbook, and after a quick glance passed this over to Rawlinson. ‘Take a look at that.’ He pointed to the withdrawal of five hundred pounds in cash, two days previously.

  Rawlinson whistled. ‘That’s a heck of a lot of money. What did he want that much for? Was that why the killer left him with all his other valuables? He simply got what he was expecting – money to keep him quiet, like?’

  ‘Blackmailers don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,’ Womersley grunted, going on to sift through the rest. Deeds for ‘a small plot of land on Syke Beck Lane and the building thereon, for the purposes of trading as a newsagent and tobacconist’. A large envelope containing proposals for building a row of two-up-and-two-down houses, also off Syke Beck Lane; letters thanking Ainsley Beaumont for heading a subscription list towards the building of the local fever hospi
tal; an acknowledgment for a privately donated sum towards the construction of a proposed new reservoir; and a record of yearly payments into a Goodwill scheme to provide assistance for Wainthorpe’s widows and orphans.

  This, then, was that other face of Ainsley Beaumont, the private man Widdop had obliquely referred to, a man of good intent. Perhaps that cash he had withdrawn had been used for a similar philanthropic purpose, Womersley reflected, finally turning his attention to the will.

  The bulk of his personal estate and the Cross Ings business was to be shared between his grandchildren and a generous annuity had been left to their mother. A tidy sum was bequeathed to Whiteley Hirst. Gifted to Sarah Illingworth – the woman he had once intended marrying, according to Widdop – was the house she now lived in down at Cross Ings, and to her son, Tom Illingworth, the return of an already paid debt. He speculated about that, even as his eyes were travelling to the surprise which came at the end of all this. To Laura Harcourt, of London . . . His lips pursed into a low whistle.

  ‘And I wonder who she is,’ he said aloud, ‘Laura Harcourt, of London?’ There was no indication in the will, just her name and the city.

  ‘Someone he – er – met, on his visits to the capital?’ suggested Rawlinson with a grin.

  ‘Happen so.’ Beaumont had lost his wife early in his marriage and had never married again. A discreet and convenient arrangement would have been understandable in the circumstances: a woman in the capital, one he could visit when he chose. Playing safe, away from home, gossip and possible repercussions. All the same, it took your breath away – fifteen thousand pounds, regardless of the extent of the millowner’s wealth, for that sort of connection!