‘It’s all right. I can bear to see her in her wedding dress.’
‘No it’s not all right. Let her wait. I’ll tell you all you need to know, and then perhaps you’ll see why you’d be wasting your time looking for Joshua Braithwaite. There are a few simple facts.’
I waited. In my experience, simple facts can be baffling and mysterious, leading to more layers of ‘simple facts’ and complexities and intrigue that make Sherlock Holmes stories seem utterly straightforward.
She arranged herself carefully on the sofa, smoothing her dress. I slipped a couple of photographs from the album then took the opposite chair, and waited.
‘My husband attempted suicide. Why? I’ve given this a lot of thought – I’ve had plenty of time to do so. Possibly it was because he drove my lovely son into the army. My boy was killed one week after his posting. Joshua knew I would never forgive him.’
‘You must both have been distraught.’
‘I was distraught. He was full of self-pity. With Edmund gone, there was no one to take over the mill.’
‘Are you sure he attempted suicide? Could Mr Braithwaite have found himself in the beck as a result of a blackout, a stroke, something of that sort?’
‘His health was perfect.’
‘But men in perfect health do suffer heart attacks or …’
‘In the weeks leading up to that night, he had been moody, morose, not his usual aggressive self.’
‘Aggressive?’
‘He attacked life as though it were his enemy. He had to beat everyone, be top dog. Of course he kept that hidden, under a bluff, brash exterior. But he sized everyone up – business rivals, associates, workers. He manipulated the world to his advantage. I didn’t complain. It led to a satisfactory life for me and my children. But as I said, I’ll keep to the simple facts. Tabitha doesn’t like inconvenient information. She wants to be happy. She was always a child with unreasonable expectations.’
‘Did he give any indication that he meant to take his own life? From the way you describe him, he does not sound like a man who would fall into despair.’
‘Someone had beaten him. His own son died a heroic death, turning his back on everything that Joshua stood for. He had been bested. He saw the contempt in my eyes and he couldn’t bear it.’
‘Was there a note?’
‘Yes. There was a note.’
‘Do you have it?’
The newspaper account had not mentioned a note. Nor had Mr Duffield.
Evelyn shrugged. ‘I can’t remember what became of it. He was found and arrested. The note was held, by the police I think.’
‘What were the circumstances of his disappearance?’
‘Constable Mitchell committed him to the local hospital. He walked out the following day.’
‘What measures were taken to find him?’
‘The police searched. His workforce took part.’
‘When?’
‘The next day.’
She looked at the door, as if planning an escape to the wedding dress fitting. I needed to know more.
‘It would have been hard for him to face people, after what happened.’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘He never cared in the least what other people thought. He was too selfish. Besides, he would have gone on denying that he attempted suicide.’
‘In spite of the note? Was it ambiguous then?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘On Friday evening – the day before he was found in the beck. We passed on the landing. He insisted I come to his room, that he had something important to say.’
‘And what was that?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I told him he might well have something to say, but I didn’t want to hear it. Now of course I wish I had listened, if only out of curiosity.’
‘What do you think it may have been?’
She paused. ‘I’d rather not speculate.’
‘Did he leave his affairs in order?’
‘Oh yes. He did that all right.’
Either the newspaper account was wrong, or Mrs Braithwaite was lying.
‘So you didn’t see him after he was found?’
‘No. Why should I have tried to see him? So that he could gloat – pretend that his grief at Edmund’s loss was greater than mine?’
She still seemed angry with Joshua. If he came through the door at that moment, I could imagine cocktail glasses whizzing through the air, aimed at his head.
‘Is there any relation or friend he would have gone to?’
‘The police did pursue that line of enquiry. If you’re asking me was there another woman, almost certainly. One that he would have gone to? I doubt he cared for anyone that much. He cared about the business. He cared about things – his cars, his house. He was selfish and materialistic. He scoffed at higher things, at anything he didn’t understand.’
‘And yet he was prepared to die and leave all that behind?’
‘In his self-pity, yes. Don’t waste your time, Kate. I know he’s dead.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘If he were alive, he would have found himself some brilliant barrister to contest the charge of suicide and he would have come back to claim what’s his.’
‘Do you object to my taking on the case, for Tabitha’s sake?’
‘You’ll be wasting your time. Don’t do it.’
‘Do you withhold permission?’
She looked as if that was exactly what she wanted to do. I remembered what my father had said – that it would be necessary to show all attempts had been made to find the missing person.
She stared at the material of her chess board dress, closed her eyes for a moment as if dazzled, and then stared at me.
‘Tabitha seems determined to torment herself, and me.’ After a long time, she said, ‘You won’t find him. It will only prolong her pain, feed her anxieties. I’m sick of telling her to look to the future.’
‘Tabitha desperately wants to try, and I’d like to help her.’
She sighed. ‘The police house is on the High Street. Tell Constable Mitchell you have my reluctant permission. If you do by some remote chance find Joshua’s bones on the moors or his remains at the bottom of a tarn, you might be good enough to tell me first. I should naturally want a Christian burial for him, but would hate to have a funeral delay Tabitha’s wedding. At her age, this is probably her last chance to leave the ranks of surplus women.’
I wanted to keep her in the room with me a while longer, having the feeling she may never be so frank again. ‘Do you really and truly feel in your heart that he’s dead?’
I didn’t believe I had asked that question. There was a sudden glint of compassion in her eyes. I felt my cheeks turn pink but kept my eyes locked on hers, willing her to say more than her ‘simple facts’.
‘I don’t feel anything in my heart, as you put it. Not for him.’ She hesitated. ‘I did my duty. I gave him a son and he squandered that son. My Edmund didn’t enlist out of patriotic duty. Oh, that was the clothing on his reason. He enlisted to get away from his overbearing, ambitious, narrow-minded father. The week before Edmund enlisted, he got drunk, with his young friends in the village. Joshua horse-whipped him. If Edmund had waited just a short while longer, the Battle of the Somme would have taken place without him and he may have come through. I begged him to wait, but he wouldn’t.
‘Look for Joshua Braithwaite, if you must, Kate. But I warn you, he was very good at wasting other people’s time. Only Joshua could go on doing that from beyond the grave.’
After that, I chose not to see Tabitha in her wedding finery, but retreated to my room. I took out my notebook and while the recent conversations with the two women closest to Joshua Braithwaite were fresh in my mind, wrote out what each had said. A little voice in my head muttered about the dangers of opening a can of worms.
You can rush at a matter too quickly. It can be valuable to let a question o
r two simmer while doing something else. A useful something else would be to inspect my temporary dark room.
Becky had clearly been told to look after me. She was about eighteen years of age, with red hair, a wide mouth and a gap between her front teeth, like the Wife of Bath. She led the way towards the chosen spot, along the back hall that took us into the servants’ quarters.
‘I’ve told Robert no end of times over leaving that boot blacking box there.’ She bobbed down and moved the offending box to the other side of the hall, giving it a fierce shove with her foot for good measure. I wondered whether the annoyance was for Robert rather than the box. Not for the first time, I felt that ridiculous emotion that I suspect might be envy, which is mad. I wouldn’t change my life for hers, nor for anyone’s. But girls her age will have men to marry. Robert won’t be swept off never to return. What did her generation feel, looking at us, the surplus women? Probably she saw me as a different species altogether.
By the scullery door, she stopped, uncertain I would really and truly want to tuck myself away in a poky corner.
‘Here we are, madam. I specially cleared it out for you.’ She flung open the door. ‘I’ve done what you said – that there slab’s where you can put your photographic stuff and that.’ She pulled down the blind, then went into the passage, closing the door, leaving me to see whether the room was sufficiently dark.
In the cool, silent scullery I placed the palms of my hands on the uneven stone slab. It is strange how you need to wait to find out whether what first appears to be a dark room truly is so. Once my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I noticed that the merest sliver of light found its way through the side of the blind. Above me, a woman plodded wearily on the stairs – one of those worn-out servants in rich households whose weariness is only too clear if you choose to watch or listen.
As if to assure me that she was still there, following her directions to ensure I had all I needed, Becky called, ‘Is it dark enough, madam?’
I opened the door. ‘It’ll be perfect. Thank you. I’ll hang this towel next to the window blind, and that will do the trick.’
‘It’s like the black hole of Calcutta, madam.’
It was far better than many spots I’d found myself in. Once, Gerald stood guard outside the lavatory on the L&Y train so that I could develop a print of Clitheroe Castle.
I began to take the dishes from my bag. Becky returned quickly. She had cut out a piece of cardboard. Bold letters proclaimed: PRIVATE. KEEP OUT.
‘Thank you very much, Becky. What a good idea.’
She smiled and blushed at her own initiative. ‘You don’t want some nosy parker opening the door on you and letting the light in to spoil all your hard work do you?’
She pinned the sign to the door with a drawing pin. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she bit her bottom lip and said all in a rush, ‘You won’t be taking photographs of any of the staff I don’t suppose?’
I had to pull out my hanky to stop a sneeze. She had swept the floor and the dust would need to settle before I could develop photographs.
‘You’d make a very good subject, Becky.’
She blushed and her eyes lit up. ‘My mam’d be that pleased to have a photo of me.’
The evening was still light. We stepped out into the back courtyard where washing hung on the line. In the distance, a horse neighed in the stable. Beyond the fence, a couple of lambs bleated for a sheep that was trying to escape her responsibilities.
Becky pushed a few stray strands of hair behind her ears. She wore a black dress, white cap and white apron – the colours of modern photography. To me, black and white symbolised past and present, hope and loss. Yet I couldn’t say which colour represented what. The two of them together touched me in some way, saying capture this moment, there might be no other.
Doorways are a favourite of mine, a person framed in their doorway – with that sense of belonging to a place and time. The interior remains just out of view, forever a mystery.
‘Becky, I’ll take a photograph of you as if you’ve just come out of the door.’
She was not a girl for staying still. I wanted to capture that sense of restless movement. I had left the Reflex upstairs but the VPK would do. It takes a tiny picture but is sharp enough to enlarge.
‘Unpeg that tablecloth from the line. Make as if you’re just about to shake it.’
She stood in the doorway, clutching the cloth to her, biting her lip.
‘Look this way! Let the cloth loose.’
I clicked the shutter. ‘I don’t suppose you remember Mr Braithwaite. You were probably too young.’
She began to fold the cloth with deft movements. ‘I wasn’t working here, that’s true, but I do remember him. He sometimes read the lesson at the Chapel Sunday School, and gave out the prizes.’
‘Did you ever win a prize yourself?’
‘Oh no, thank goodness. I would have been too shy to go up for it.’
‘You’re not shy with me.’
‘You wouldn’t make a person feel all confused and out of place. To my childish way of looking at it, Mr Braithwaite seemed very stern. I’m sure if he had given me a prize book, I would have dropped it. I deliberately missed two Sundays, so as not to have full attendance.’
She reached for a clothes basket.
‘When you heard what happened to Mr Braithwaite, were you old enough to understand what was going on?’
‘Oh aye. My brother, he was one of the boy scouts that found him.’
I closed the camera and slipped it into my pocket. ‘Indeed? That must have given him a jolt.’
She put the tablecloth in the basket. ‘He was with two other lads, bigger than himself. They stayed and helped Mr Braithwaite out of the water. Our Nathan, being the youngest, he was sent to run for the scoutmaster.’
‘Did Nathan help in the search, when Mr Braithwaite went missing from the hospital?’
‘Oh no. Mam kept him well away. She didn’t want him finding a dead body and having nightmares the rest of his life.’
We stood by the door in the evening sunlight, reluctant to go back into the dark house.
‘Was your mam surprised when Mr Braithwaite was never found?’
‘She didn’t know what to think. There’s lots of places round here a body could go missing. Caves, deep tarns, old mine shafts.’
A few light drops of April rain began to fall.
‘So you believe he’s dead?’
‘It’s what they say. Lizzie Luck, she told Mam – in confidence like – that we wouldn’t see Mr Braithwaite again. Right or wrong, Mam took it to mean he’d passed over.’
‘Who’s Lizzie Luck?’
‘Lizzie can tell the future, and give messages from the other side.’
‘She lives in the village?’
‘Just beyond. Look over, you see’t mill?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just down from that there’s the humpback bridge across beck. She’s in the little old cottage.’
‘I might just let her tell my fortune, for a bit of fun.’
‘She works in’t mill, so don’t go yet.’
‘What time should I go?’
‘You’ll hear mill hooter go for finishing time. Give her half an hour to have a bite of tea.’
4
Crêpe-de-Chine
Lizzie Luck’s tiny cottage, its side wall bowed with age, looked as if it dated from the seventeenth century, making it older than the other village houses. Crossing the humpback bridge, I noticed a woman in the garden.
She had gone inside by the time I opened a low, rickety gate and stepped onto a crazy-paving path. Neat trenches lay ready for onions or potatoes. In this cool, shady spot a few brave snowdrops still survived by the fence along with purple and yellow crocuses. By the door, a sawn-off upturned barrel provided a pair of garden seats. From its perch on the scoured windowsill, a black cat glowered at me, its marmalade eyes catching the glow of the evening sun. When the door opened, the cat
bounded down and strolled inside.
It was hard to judge the age of the woman who answered my knock. I guessed somewhere in her forties. She wore a long black skirt, grey-blue blouse and grey cardigan. Through the open door, I saw that a floral pinafore had been discarded on the chair-back – perhaps not fitting the dress requirements for a teller of fortunes.
I introduced myself, told her I was staying with the Braithwaites, and asked was she Lizzie Luck, and if so would she be willing to tell my fortune.
The smile set her eyes twinkling. ‘It’s not me calls meself luck. That’s other folks’ name for me. I’m Lizzie Kellett.’ She waved me inside, with a quick glance across to the humpback bridge, to check whether we were observed.
I stepped into a cold room with a flagged floor. A black leaded range gave home to a struggling fire. An enamel bowl stood on a low cupboard by the window. Next to the bowl lay a bunch of cuttings from the garden and a sharp knife. A square deal table, a small rocker and a larger bentwood chair, a couple of buffets and a dresser completed the room’s furnishings.
She assessed me as I peeled off my gloves and took a seat by the table. ‘Will you take some refreshment?’
‘No thank you. Becky at the Braithwaites thought you’d be at the mill until half past six, Mrs Kellett. I’m glad to find you home.’
‘Loom’s down,’ she said glumly. ‘There’ll be no more weavin’ today.’ She took the buffet beside me. ‘Please speak to my face, so I can see your lips. I’m half-deaf from the weaving.’
In a businesslike fashion, she gave me the price of reading my palm, and the somewhat higher price of a tarot reading.
She brought a dark-red chenille cloth from the dresser, disturbing the dust in the air as she spread it across the table with a flourish. A faint odour of cedar came from a carved box as she opened it, and took out a pack of cards.
She placed her hands flat on the table and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I don’t need to look at cards to know thah’s lost someone. There is a parting of the ways.’
Dying In The Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery Page 6