The Cuckoo's Child

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘No, but . . .’ Rawlinson wasn’t sure, in fact. Except for intuition and what the doctor, Pike, had implied – that there was no lack of people who had quarrelled with the victim. But there again, as Whiteley Hirst had suggested, daily spats seemed to be meat and drink to all of them, of no more consequence than a flea bite, and unlikely to have provoked murder. Though there was that torn inside pocket to consider – which might account for that missing five hundred pounds.

  Rawlinson added, ‘There’s other possibilities – like somebody he knew with a grudge simply taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity that presents itself? Coming face to face with him unexpectedly on the path, a row blown up, tempers lost? The old man growing tired of it and walking away, the nearest handy weapon picked up by the killer?’

  Womersley walked to the window, where he stood with his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. ‘All right,’ he said without turning round, ‘but assuming it was planned, who stands to gain by his death?’

  Obviously, his heirs. Beneficiaries to a will were naturally prime suspects. All those falling within this category seemed to be genuinely grieving for the old man, but how far did that amount to play-acting? How certain was it that none of them knew what had been in the will? Were any of them in need of money? Money which would have come to them soon anyway – though apparently no one except his doctors had known he had such a short time to live.

  ‘His heirs, yes. Which includes,’ Womersley said, turning round, ‘not only young Gideon, who stands to gain most, and his sister, but Laura Harcourt as well, don’t forget. And Illingworth, come to that, and it doesn’t take much to see those two are pretty thick. We’d best check she was in the library all the time she said she was – and check on Una Beaumont and that meeting of hers – and what time Illingworth actually did arrive back in Wainthorpe that morning. He was quick to give us the impression he didn’t want that money Ainsley Beaumont left him, but we’ll take that with a pinch of salt. If not for himself, he might be looking out for his mother. That house she lives in on the side of the mill, the one they want to pull down to build offices – now she’s the owner, holding out for a good price could be very profitable.’

  ‘What about Amelia Beaumont? She could have been lying when she said she had parted from Ainsley at the junction of the path. And she looks strong enough, in all conscience,’ Rawlinson said, echoing Womersley’s own previous thought. ‘I wouldn’t like to meet her in a ginnel on a dark night!’

  Womersley passed his hand across his face. These were all long shots. But even long shots had to be followed up. Such as Whiteley Hirst, who had been left a generous bequest – though was that motive enough? People had been killed for much less. It would depend on whether he had known anything about it, and also on how desperate for money he was.

  Rawlinson said slowly, ‘We’ve been asking who stands to gain by this death . . . but put it another way – who stands to lose if he’d continued to live? Anybody who might fear to lose their good name, income, their freedom, even.’

  Womersley stared. ‘Aye,’ he said heavily. Searching for someone this might apply to would spread the net wider, far beyond his family. Ainsley Beaumont had been in the wool trade all his life. He had a web of connections all over the Neller valley. There were well known rivalries among these hard-headed, well-to-do woolmen, and who could tell what enmities might have arisen? Not all the businessmen in the valley were scrupulous. They knew means of evading taxes, the law. He saw the enquiry stretching before him, the net needing to be spread ever wider. He did not like to think what his superintendent was likely to say to it.

  ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘this might well be my last case – last murder case, at any rate. I wouldn’t like it to turn into a policeman’s nightmare.’ Both of them knew this was possible, that this might end up as a seemingly motiveless crime committed by a person or persons unknown. And in that case, someone who was unlikely to be brought to justice. ‘But I’m damned if I’m going to let it. That sticks in my craw, damned if it doesn’t.’

  ‘Shall we go and see the twins now?’ Tom asked, as he and Laura left the study.

  She shook her head. ‘They’ve had one nasty shock – they don’t need another, on top of it. Later, when they’ve adjusted.’

  ‘Then, if and when you need me, let me know,’ he said, oddly formal.

  Laura slipped a coat around her shoulders and went outside with him, standing beside the car while he bent to the starting handle. The engine didn’t fire immediately and suddenly he let the handle go and turned towards her. She could not help but feel he was regretting having said what he had before they had gone into the house and she shrank a little inside herself. The wind slapped her skirts around her ankles and whipped the hair loose around her face. Early dusk was falling, the sky was a cold empty green with only a slip of a new moon showing. Beneath it, the dark boggy moors beyond the edges of the garden stretched to infinity. Behind them, the loom of the house reared up, solid and dark. His face had a shuttered look and once more, it came to her how little she knew of him, really.

  Abruptly, he said, ‘This is a terrible thing that’s happened. You’re right, it alters everything.’

  For a heartbeat, there was nothing but the sound of the wind and the restless stirring of the rooks as they settled on their nests in the ruined wing. Then he bent and placed a kiss lightly on her cheek, started the car and in a few minutes was gone.

  Cursing himself for his blundering stupidity, Tom drove the car at reckless speed down Moortop Road into Wainthorpe, and then more circumspectly through the town and in through the entrance to Cross Ings.

  He sat in the car to compose himself before going in to face his mother – if he did not, she would know something was wrong, as mothers always did, or his mother at least – but his mind wouldn’t be composed. It turned over and over what he had just allowed to happen. Had he learnt nothing from past events? Considering himself a mature individual who would not repeat past mistakes, and then acting like some callow youth? Those events in his past which he bitterly regretted but could never be erased? Frightening her before he could explain.

  He had had such good intentions, God help him.

  He stepped out of the car and went into the house, where his mother had the lamps lit and his tea was waiting. One look at his face, and she didn’t after all ask him what the matter was.

  Sixteen

  Laura stood in the garden listening until the last sound of the motorcar’s engine had faded, her coat pulled tight around her shoulders. The wind was sharp, but she didn’t feel cold. Despite the unsatisfactory last few words with Tom, a feeling persisted that was warm and real, but at the same time elusive, and not to be damaged or lost by trying to capture it. Amongst all this sadness, was it wrong to feel the way she did?

  She jumped as a figure suddenly appeared round the corner, the lanky Sergeant Rawlinson, a lit cigarette in his hand. He was equally surprised. ‘Miss Harcourt! I heard the motorcar go and didn’t realize anyone was still around. Did I give you a scare? I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, no. I was just . . . taking a breath of air. I thought you’d left.’

  ‘Mr Womersley’s gone, but I stayed behind for a few minutes, to have a smoke – and to poke around a bit.’

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to enjoy your cigarette and your poking.’

  ‘No, please, give me a moment, if you can spare it. I’d like a word or two with you.’

  Laura nodded, looked around and perched herself on a roughly fashioned stone seat, a large slab of rock set on two other rocks, placed in front of the square pool. Curious as to what the sergeant might want, she waited.

  He put his cigarette out and sat at the other end of the seat. Abruptly, he said, ‘It must have been shocking to find out about your parents as you have done.’

  ‘Sad, rather than shocking,’ she replied quietly. ‘But – forgive me if I wonder what bearing that has on your enquiries? Why are you asking?’

  He sat with
his arms folded across his chest, holding himself tightly in. ‘Maybe it’s not my place to talk about it. On the other hand, maybe I understand better than most. See . . .’ He stopped and then rushed on, ‘I never knew my parents, either. It would give me a nasty turn to have them thrust on me now.’

  ‘That’s not how I feel. I was looked after and loved by Mrs Illingworth before being handed over to my aunt and uncle. I’ve been fortunate there, too, but I’m glad I know now about my real parents.’

  ‘I was abandoned,’ he said tersely. ‘In a church porch. Found by the vicar. He’d no idea what to do with a baby so he went to the only person he could think of for advice. She was the village schoolmistress, Matilda Dacres, never been married, never wanted a child of her own, but she was a good Christian woman and agreed to keep me until they could find out what to do with me. I was still with her when she died, when I was eighteen.’

  ‘She must have loved you, then.’

  He shrugged. ‘She did her best, I suppose. She saw that I was well fed and clothed and made sure I was educated properly.’ He paused. ‘Yes. She never said so, but I reckon she did, in her own way.’ He slipped a hand inside his jacket pocket, took out his wallet and extracted a photo. ‘That’s her, Tilly. She insisted I call her that, her childhood name.’

  Miss Dacres had been a woman with a determined chin, a firm mouth and a high-boned collar, but Laura thought she had kind eyes. ‘She looks nice.’

  ‘She could be a tartar! But I missed her like billy-o when she died.’ He put the photo carefully away.

  ‘Did you never want to find who your real mother was?’

  ‘No!’ he said roughly. ‘She didn’t want me when I was a baby, why should she want me when I was grown up? In any case, everybody knew who my parents were – a pair of travellers, good-for-nowts who’d been hanging around the place for several months. Sleeping rough, or at one of the common lodging houses if they could find fourpence for a bed. My mother and the man she was with disappeared after leaving me, and there wouldn’t have been much chance of ever finding them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, indeed I am.’ Laura was, and for the mother, too. She had learnt a good deal in the last year at the Settlement about the heartache of women who abandoned their babies. ‘But why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Dunno, really. Mr Womersley would probably kick me to kingdom come if he knew.’ He stirred restlessly. ‘I was thinking about that fire, see.’ He nodded towards the black bulk of the ruined wing. ‘And then I saw you and – well, don’t rightly know why I said what I did. I apologize if I’ve upset you.’

  ‘Oh, please, you haven’t.’ He was a bony, edgy young man, impetuous and unwise in some things for all she knew, but this blurted out confession to her of his own circumstances had established some odd kind of rapport between them. The wariness about him she had felt in the study vanished. ‘It was kind of you.’

  ‘Kind? I don’t know about that. It’s just that we’re up against a bit of a block in this investigation and I can’t help feeling that something in Mr Beaumont’s past, this fire here, maybe, might have a bearing on it. I might be wrong,’ he finished lamely.

  Oh yes, the fire.

  Was it a coincidence that Ben Kindersley’s manuscript, and the conflagration in which her father had perished, were both from the same time, twenty years ago, just before she had been born? There was so much she didn’t yet know about these newly found parents of hers. She needed time, to come to grips with how she thought and felt about it all, to read that file of letters between Ainsley and William Carfax. She did not see how any of it could have any bearing on the death of her grandfather, or whether it would help to tell the police about that manuscript, but in one respect she felt bound to agree with the sergeant.

  ‘You’re right, there’s some mystery surrounding the fire. Nobody talks of it, nobody mentions it. Nobody ever mentions my father, Theo.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. People have short memories.’ Or don’t remember what they want to forget, he might have added. ‘Would it be too much to ask that if you should learn anything, you might let me know?’ he asked, as they parted.

  She promised she would, and when he had left, she vowed to herself that she would search again through the few remaining shelves in the library she had not yet worked upon, in case there was something more that Ben Kindersley had left, something that might give an ending to that infuriatingly incomplete story, though it seemed unlikely that there would be anything more. She would, however, remove and keep the ribbon-tied roll from where she had returned it to its original place. She felt she had a right to do that. It was her mother’s story, part of her own story, what had brought her here.

  Seventeen

  Jack Rawlinson had legged it down Syke Beck Lane into Wainthorpe after leaving Laura Harcourt. It was an odd impulse that took him down there, but there was no one waiting for him at home in his lodgings, and he was hungry. He might just find something to eat, even on a Sunday evening. A pint of Tetley’s wouldn’t come amiss, either. A chat with the locals, maybe with a chance of picking up something useful.

  It was tea time and the streets were relatively empty, a good time to have a wander around first and see what this one-horse town had to offer. Too much to hope there’d be any girls about – nice girls like Laura Harcourt, anyway.

  He wondered how she really felt about what had come to light about her birth. Brought up as a young lady – and then to find you were the illegitimate daughter of a nursery maid. She seemed to be open enough about what little she knew, but he still felt he had told her more than she had told him. It was odd about Theo, her father. The fact that he’d fathered an illegitimate child, however shameful, hardly accounted for his name never being spoken. Dammit, the man was a hero. He had given his life to save his babies from a terrible death. How could a tragedy like that provide a motive for his father’s murder twenty years later? Maybe it hadn’t. Womersley was probably right: he had too much imagination.

  He passed the police station with its blue lamp, the imposing edifice of the Liberal Club and two or three chapels, lights on ready for evening service. Already having the geography of this part of the town in his mind, he cut off a corner by taking the path through the municipal park on the hillside to that part of the town as yet unfamiliar to him.

  This, then, was what they called ‘Bottom End’, where the streets and alleys were uncobbled and most of the houses were old and stone-slated, crammed into dirt yards and squares approached by steps down from the road. The town’s pervading smell of raw wool was overlaid by something worse – there was a tannery somewhere nearby. It was noisier, too. Despite the Sabbath, and the hour, children played outside underneath the gas lamps, boys shinning up the posts and some, for devilment, chasing the screaming girls from their skipping. Outside an open door, two beefy women were having a fierce and noisy argument.

  Eventually, he found an ancient looking pub called the Tyas Arms. Hunger getting the better of him, he pushed open the door. It didn’t look up to much, but he was thirsty and he could see pies on the counter.

  The landlord was surly but at least served a fair pint, and the pork pie was excellent, the crust crisp with no thick layer of uncooked pastry inside, the meat juicy and peppery. No one took much notice of him after the first few suspicious glances. The place wasn’t exactly humming with trade. A few younger men created a bit of noise round the dartboard, but the older element, men in flat caps and collarless shirts, smoked and paid attention to their beer, conversed in monosyllables or kept themselves to themselves. He should have known better than to hope to glean a few juicy bits of gossip. A pound to a dried pea they would have guessed what he, a stranger in Wainthorpe, was doing here. Nobody was going to open up to the police. It wasn’t that sort of place. He sat for a while, drank up and left. He might as well have gone straight home.

  Having decided the way back through the park was the quickest route to his tram stop, he was approaching the steps that led up to its
little iron gate when suddenly both his arms were grabbed from behind and he was thrown to the ground. He saw nothing before his face hit the flags, but he smelled beer and strong cigarette smoke, the taint of wool grease on working clothes; he was conscious of ripe body odour and the rank smell of poverty. Then he tasted blood and spat out a tooth. By which time his assailant had gone, along with his wallet.

  He was trying to scramble to his feet, and feeling distinctly woozy, when his arm was taken again; this time it was a woman, a fat, middle-aged woman in a crossover pinny. ‘Eh, lad, are you all right?’

  ‘You see who it was?’ Rawlinson mumbled, as distinctly as he could with his mouth still full of blood.

  ‘Nay, he were off afore I could make out what were happening. I were just pulling t’draw-ons upstairs when I heard. You’d best see t’doctor, lad.’

  Rawlinson put his hand to his cheekbone which he could actually feel swelling up beneath his hand. The tooth (not a front one, thank the Lord!) had not come out whole but broken off, leaving a jagged edge. It hurt his tongue. ‘I’ll be all right, thanks, missis.’

  ‘That you won’t. I’m off to fetch Dr Widdop. I reckon I know where he’ll be.’

  She nipped back into the house and came back, her head wrapped in a shawl. ‘You stop here and don’t move. Shan’t be but a minute.’

  He was still too dizzy to do anything else but remain where he was, slumped on the pavement with his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and minutes later opened them to hear Dr Widdop saying, ‘Now then, now then, let’s have a look at you. Good God, it’s Sergeant Rawlinson, isn’t it? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Doctor. Hope I haven’t brought you away from something important.’

  He thought he heard the woman laugh, but it was only a cough, and Widdop said, ‘No, not at all. Can we get this young feller inside, Mrs Brocklehurst?’ He looked slightly flustered and the buttons of his waistcoat were done up awry.