The Cuckoo's Child

by Marjorie Eccles

  Jessie remarked in an affectionate aside, ‘Take no notice of her, she enjoys being an old misery.’

  This was so evidently true that Womersley felt he could legitimately abandon questioning the old woman unless it became absolutely necessary. With some relief, he turned his attention to the other servants, although he realized her dreich lamentations probably hid a genuine sorrow. She had, they were told, worked for Ainsley Beaumont for more than twenty years and known him for longer.

  It soon became apparent that it was Mrs Beaumont, with the help of the capable Jessie, who ran the house between them. The little fourteen-year-old maid Prissy was willing, but as yet inexperienced, and the gormless but good-natured lad, Zach, sixteen and strong as an ox, didn’t appear to have a lot up top. John Willie Sugden, the handyman, was almost as old as Mrs Macready. On the morning in question, they had all been up and about before breakfast, busy around the house, the young maid cleaning out the fireplaces, the boy chopping firewood and filling coal scuttles, Mrs Macready frying eggs and bacon. None of them had left the house that morning, including John Willie Sugden, who had been busy seeing to the pony.

  ‘Did the master use the pony and trap that day, then?’ Womersley asked him, recalling that Whiteley Hirst had said Mr Beaumont usually walked down to the mill.

  ‘No, but the owd ‘oss needs seeing to, choose how. He were allus considerate, Mr Ainsley. I’m under t’doctor for me rheumatics, and mostly he walked down to t’mill and back, ‘less he wanted to go somewhere else, like, same as he did t’night afore. Wanted me to retire, he did. Retire! What should I be doing wi’ retirement?’

  Womersley asked, ‘So where did he go that night?’

  ‘I dropped him at t’Liberal Club. But he told me to pick him up at t’mill, later on. Funny, I thowt, but it were none o’ my business.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘Just on eleven.’

  ‘Late, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It were nowt to me. Jinny doesn’t get enough exercise any road. Mrs Beaumont prefers to walk and Mr Gideon has his car. I sometimes drive Miss Una, when she’s off delivering them books she writes and that’s about it. I were glad of summat to do.’

  ‘That Jessie,’ Rawlinson said as they left the kitchen in search of Amelia Beaumont and her son and daughter. ‘Little Prissy told me she helps Una Beaumont with that magazine.’

  ‘Oh Lord, another of them! Votes for women and down with men! Makes you wonder what they’d do with us if they did get the blessed vote.’

  Rawlinson drew in his breath but wisely refrained from comment.

  Jessie did not live in, she had told them, but went home each night. The last time she had spoken to the master was early on the day he had met his death. She had arrived for work at Farr Clough just as Ainsley had been about to leave, much later than he usually did. Mrs Beaumont was with him, on her way to the shops. They exchanged a few words, remarked on the freshness of the morning, he had enquired after her father, who suffered from a lung disease caught from working in the wool dust, and now kept the newsagent’s down Syke Beck Lane, when he was fit enough to open the place up.

  This, Womersley surmised, was the shop for which Ainsley Beaumont had held the deeds. So Jessie Thwaite had far less reason than most to wish her master ill. Not that he was inclined to look on her, any more than the rest of the servants, as one who might have killed her master.

  ‘They don’t know anything, this lot. We’d better talk to Mrs Beaumont, and her daughter, though I suspect they won’t know anything, either.’ Or if they did, they wouldn’t say.

  ‘Why do you have to do that, Mother?’ Una demanded, irritated at seeing her mother stabbing tacking stitches into a sheet she was turning sides to middle. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Better the day, better the deed.’

  ‘I don’t mean because it’s Sunday! Why do you have to do it at all?’

  ‘They’re good linen and there’s still a lot of life left in them.’

  Una, who had too often slept on sheets with an uncomfortable seam down the middle to agree with this, turned away impatiently, while Amelia’s needle went on plucking through the sheets quicker than ever. Why did she insist on these unnecessary economies, on driving herself to fill every minute of her time from dawn to dusk with running this house? Grandpa had never expected it of her, but Una supposed he had known Amelia better than to suggest he should employ a housekeeper.

  On her desk were the shopping lists she had been jotting down for the coming week: treacle, flour, sugar and a host of other things from the Co-op, the greengrocer, the butcher. All of which her mother would doubtless walk down into Wainthorpe to order, wearing a good coat, respectably gloved and hatted, to choose everything personally in order to make sure they understood Mrs Beaumont of Farr Clough would accept nothing but the best, and leaving all but the lighter things to be sent up, or fetched by John Willie or the boy. Una watched the flashing needle, trying to quell her exasperation. Sewing like that, when the familiar pucker between her brows indicated the onset of another of those headaches of hers, which worried Una now more than ever, after hearing about Grandpa . . . but his headaches had been of a different order altogether.

  She sighed as she noticed, poking from under the billowing sheet her mother was sewing, a forbidden chocolate wrapper, most of her sympathy in danger of evaporating. A craving for sweet things was Amelia Beaumont’s only discernible weakness; she hated anyone to know how difficult she found it to obey Dr Widdop’s advice not to eat chocolate. Una was searching for something to say about it which would not upset the applecart when there was a knock on the door.

  ‘I can see you’re busy,’ Womersley said, entering the small, over-furnished parlour where Mrs Beaumont was stitching at billowing yards of linen, her daughter sitting on a low stool near her. ‘So we’ll try not to keep you long. It’s only a matter of knowing where you both were on the morning Mr Beaumont died.’

  ‘That’s soon told,’ Amelia Beaumont replied immediately. ‘Though I don’t know what help you think it’ll be. Una was here at home and I went down to Wainthorpe, and that’s it.’

  ‘What time would that be when you left?’

  ‘Early, a few minutes after eight. I like to get my shopping done in good time.’

  ‘You walked down with Mr Beaumont, I understand. Didn’t he usually leave much earlier than that?’

  ‘He generally did, but not that day.’ Since her tight-lipped silence earlier, she had evidently decided to be more forthcoming. ‘He didn’t look so well and I asked him if anything was wrong, but he said it was only a bit of a headache and it would pass. I’m sorry to say I thought he’d had too much to drink the night before, though that wasn’t like him – he had too much respect for himself for that sort of carry on.’

  ‘Where had he been the night before, that made you think that?’

  ‘At the Liberal Club, I expect. That’s where he usually went if he was out of an evening.’

  ‘And the following morning, where did you leave him?’

  ‘We parted halfway down Syke Beck Lane, where that little path leads to the mill, past the dam. Walter Thwaite was just opening up and Ainsley went to have a word with him. I left them talking, while I went on down the road to the shops.’

  ‘So you didn’t use the short cut yourself, then, past the dam?’

  ‘I’ve said, not this time. It was muddy and I had my good shoes on.’

  Una put in scornfully, ‘I take it all this is because you’re wanting to know if either of us had anything to do with killing Grandpa?’ She had relinquished the low stool in favour of a stance with her elbow propped against the mantelpiece that gave her more advantage. ‘I suggest you’d do better to concentrate on finding someone who had reason to kill him. You’re surely not suspecting my mother? Isn’t it more likely to be someone who was looking for money?’

  ‘That’s a possibility we haven’t overlooked.’ Amelia Beaumont, Womersley reflected, would certainly be
quite capable of tipping someone of Ainsley’s weight over the wall of the dam, had she been so inclined, and not for the first time he thought she would make a formidable enemy, but he said mildly, ‘We’re trying to establish a pattern of his movements, that’s all, Miss Beaumont. And you? Did you see him before he left?’

  ‘No. But that wasn’t unusual. He always breakfasted early.’

  ‘But not that day.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I went straight into the kitchen when I came down and took a cup of tea into my workroom. It’s all I ever have at breakfast. Then I went out, for most of the morning.’

  ‘Where were you?’ Rawlinson asked.

  ‘A meeting with friends. No doubt you’ll want their names.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Beaumont. It’ll do later. Did you see your brother at any time?’

  ‘No. I expect he grabbed some breakfast earlier and rushed off, at the last minute as usual.’

  ‘Is it right,’ Amelia Beaumont asked suddenly, taking off her spectacles and narrowing her eyes, ‘that Ainsley had a tumour in his brain?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s what the doctors have said.’ She nodded. ‘How did you get on with your father-in-law?’ he asked.

  ‘With Ainsley? Well enough.’ She resumed stitching the sheet draped across her lap. Not a woman to wear her heart on her sleeve. Whatever sorrow she felt at the loss of her father-in-law, she was keeping it to herself.

  Womersley stood up. ‘Thank you for your time.’ He was not sorry to leave these two difficult and antagonistic women. They made him feel as though his collar was too tight. ‘But before we go, I’d like to see Mr Beaumont’s bedroom.’

  ‘His bedroom?’ Una’s tone asked what could they possibly want there, but she said nothing more and led them up the stairs. ‘There’s Grandpa’s bedroom. You may go in.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Beaumont.’

  That was all it was, an impersonal bedroom that might have belonged to any man. On the bedside table another small cardboard pillbox of those little pills the doctor said he ate like sweets. A pair of tortoiseshell-backed hairbrushes sat on a tallboy, over which a small wood-framed mirror hung; in the wardrobe were two or three pairs of well polished boots, a few good suits, pockets containing nothing, except for a crumpled piece of paper Rawlinson found in the breast pocket of a waistcoat. ‘An IOU. Made out by Nathan Widdop, though it’s only for one pound, seven and six.’

  ‘That’s more than a week’s wages, for most, lad.’

  ‘So it is. But the doctor pays his debts, it seems – if that’s what the line scored through it means. Probably kept for this.’

  He showed the back of the IOU. In Ainsley’s own handwriting was written the name of a doctor, with a telephone number and a London address. Was it possible he had kept this because he might not, after all, have been as averse to seeking a second opinion as the good doctor might have thought? Womersley put the scrap of paper in his pocketbook, making a mental note to have another word with Widdop.

  There did not appear to be anything else of significance in the bedroom. Downstairs again they found Gideon in the study, staring out of the window. He turned and waved them to take a seat, but he remained standing.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Beaumont.’

  He hesitated, then threw himself into a chair, legs stuck out, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Miss Harcourt – Miss Laura Harcourt – is she staying with you?’ Womersley asked.

  ‘Yes, she has been working here, on the library, but she’s gone up to London. She’s intending to be back, from the note she left, but I couldn’t say when. I see you have read the will.’

  ‘Who is Miss Harcourt?’

  ‘If you’ve seen the letters in that folder I gave you, you’ll know as much as we all do. None of us had ever so much as heard her name until she arrived here to work for Grandpa.’

  ‘Then you must have speculated on the reason for such a generous bequest.’

  Gideon reddened, stuck his hands into his pockets and gave Womersley a level glance. He said roughly, ‘Well, it looks pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Though I must say, she herself professed to know even less about why she was left that money. If that’s true, then I suppose that’s what she has gone to London to find out; to see the solicitor who drafted that will – she hasn’t seen those letters. I only discovered them after she’d gone.’

  ‘I dare say we can wait until she returns. Meanwhile . . . what time did you arrive at the mill the day your grandfather died?’

  ‘I’m not always there when the workpeople clock on, like Grandpa was, though he thought I ought to be. But I’m usually down there not much after, and as a matter of fact, I was there by half past six that day. Anybody will tell you.’

  ‘But your grandfather didn’t go down at his usual time. He was late that day and walked down into Wainthorpe with your mother on her way to the shops.’

  ‘With my mother? I didn’t know that, though I did wonder where he was. I hadn’t seen him at home and I thought he’d already left. I wanted to speak to him before I went to Leeds to keep a business appointment. It was unusual for him to be late, to say the least, you could set the clock by him. Oh Lord, why did he have to be late that particular day?’

  ‘He told your mother he wasn’t feeling well.’

  Gideon stuck his hands further into his pockets. ‘He never told us he was ill, you know. He carried on with his life as if there was nothing wrong.’

  ‘A brave man.’

  ‘Or too pig-headed to seek advice!’ There was a pause. ‘God, I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just . . .’

  ‘I know, Mr Beaumont. Your mother thought he had been at the Liberal Club the night before, and that was certainly where your man Sugden took him, but he picked him up at the mill. Odd time to be there, late at night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not for Grandpa! He used to pop in any old time, if he bethought himself. I expect he’d been playing cards at the club. That’s what he did in his spare time, cards were a bit of a passion with him.’

  ‘He drew a considerable amount of money from his personal bank account recently, five hundred pounds to be exact. To pay a gambling debt, do you think?’

  ‘Grandpa? Not him, he was no gambler – only token amounts, anyway. He was a bit strait-laced about it – he didn’t regard a few bob as gambling, he just thought it made people more serious about how they played . . . five hundred pounds?’

  ‘Who did he play with? Any regular partners?’

  ‘Whiteley Hirst more often than not, Dr Widdop, and another old friend from Wainthorpe. Sometimes my mother played whist with them. They’d all played together for years, even though Grandpa used to complain that Nathan Widdop was tight-fisted and occasionally “forgot” his debts, never had any cash on him . . . you know. He used to make him write out an IOU, however small the amount,’ he added with the trace of a grin. ‘I say, are you sure about the money he drew out?’

  ‘You can check with the bank, sir.’

  ‘Then I suppose he did. But why on earth—?’

  ‘We’d be interested to know that ourselves, sir. Meanwhile, it would be helpful if you could recall what your grandfather did in the days immediately prior to his death?’

  ‘I don’t know that he did anything out of the ordinary. Apart from going up to London to change his will,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Presumably you didn’t know about the new will he’d made?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Well, it was in his desk drawer—’

  ‘Look here, I was not in the habit of going through my grandfather’s desk.’ He had flushed darkly. ‘Nor would anyone else in this house do such a thing.’

  Womersley held up a pacifying hand. He thought it very likely true.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re insinuating by all this but you’ve talked to Whiteley Hirst and you must know by now that my grandpa and I had our differences. But we understood one another. I loved him, in spite of what you might t
hink, I—’ He stopped, uselessly. ‘Well, talk of the devil. Here is Miss Harcourt now,’ he said, turning to look out of the window as the sound of a car engine was heard. ‘With Tom Illingworth.’

  It had not occurred to Laura until she and Tom left the train at Huddersfield to wonder how they were to get to Wainthorpe. The tram once more, she would have assumed, had she thought about it.

  ‘Wait here, if you please,’ he said as they emerged on to the Corinthian columned forecourt. ‘I won’t be long.’

  He disappeared for about ten minutes and just as she was beginning to wonder where he was and feeling abandoned, a motorcar drew up noisily beside her with Tom in the driver’s seat. She stared at this rather battered looking marvel, with two front seats, a bench seat behind, and open sides. He jumped out to help her in, pleased at her look of astonishment as he settled her in the front passenger seat, perched high above the road.

  ‘Whose car is this?’

  ‘Mine, for the moment. I have it on approval for a few days, from a man Gideon knows. Cross your fingers that it keeps going, though it hasn’t stopped so far. I shall probably keep it. Do you have a scarf with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then take this and tie it round your hat. Otherwise you’re very likely to lose it.’

  He had thought of everything. A scarf which she suspected belonged to his mother, a travelling rug, a foot muff, even a dust-coat, in which she found herself covered from chin to toe once she had buttoned it up. He cranked the starting handle and after only a few doubtful coughs the engine caught and he leaped in beside her, fiddled with some levers and they were off. A few bumps at first, but gradually the car began to run better and Laura was soon enjoying the exhilarating speed at which they were travelling – twenty miles an hour, he said, and she could believe it. In fact the experience was quite pleasurable, if you closed your nose to the smell of burning oil, and the noise; if you sat tight on the buttoned leather seats, which were in fact comfortable and well-sprung – and just as well they were, since the ride was by no means entirely smooth.