Dying In The Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

by Frances Brody

  There is also a mourning brooch and wedding ring, I thought. I swear these people can smell a widow a mile off. Oh here’s a sad soul, good for a guinea or two. Psychic robbery.

  As if sensing my disbelief, she said, ‘It’s not just the outward signs. I see loss in the form of an aura.’

  And you hear it in the tinkling of coins, I wanted to add.

  She examined my palm. As we both leaned forward, I caught the whiff of cheese and onions on her breath.

  My life would be long, she told me. I had been well-placed, and lived a leisured life, though it had not always seemed as if I would. She saw some disruption in my earlier life. My childhood road had two forks, and mine was the fortunate path.

  Goose bumps shivered along my spine. These people, I swear they pick up on something – though who knows what. I didn’t even remember my adoption. But that was her art, I guessed. In spite of my rationality, I was filling in the gaps she left.

  The cards revealed that I would be going on a journey. I encouraged her, confirming that this was so, and soon. If I did not catch the train to King’s Cross next week, seats reserved by dear Mother, the prediction for my long life might prove mistaken.

  What she said next jarred with her previous pronouncements.

  ‘Sometimes to be still is the best course.’ She looked at me, waiting for a response.

  Perhaps she had some inkling of my mission to find Joshua Braithwaite and was warning me not to waste my time.

  Undaunted by my failure to respond, she began to lay out cards, with encouraging remarks about my future.

  ‘At Miss Braithwaite’s wedding, catch the bouquet,’ she instructed. ‘There’ll be a stranger, an older man, who’ll change the course of the future for thee. Only don’t judge off first appearances.’

  ‘I’ll be sure not to.’

  I found it difficult to believe that I would find true love outside the church in Bingley, in spite of Tabitha’s assurance that the C. of E. delivers a high class wedding.

  I tentatively voiced my reason for being there, feeling sure that a proper detective would not have gone through this charade. ‘The one person Miss Braithwaite hopes will turn up at her wedding – besides the groom – is her father.’

  She did not respond to the bait but instead said, ‘Have you seen Miss Braithwaite’s wedding gown?’

  ‘Not yet. She had a fitting today.’

  ‘It’s crêpe-de-chine. Mr Stoddard had a special loom set up. He asked me to weave it. It’s as fine a piece as you’ll see in England if I do say so meself.’

  She went to a drawer and took out a sample piece of shimmering ivory. ‘Feel that.’

  The silky fabric slid across my fingers. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘That’s the end piece. I asked if I could cut it off for a keepsake.’

  ‘You must be very proud to be the one weaver chosen to do this.’

  She smiled, pride in her work transforming her into a glowing subject for a photograph.

  What kind of detective will suddenly forget all about the questions she needs to ask and see the potential for an album entry?

  Weaver, broad face, tight mouth, eyes deep set under arched brows, sloping shoulders, sinewy hands, perched on the upturned barrel by her door, woven fabric in her hands. Still just sufficient light outside, and with a bit of luck and careful timing I might have my winning picture for the photographic competition.

  I forced myself back into detective mode.

  ‘Are you able to say whether a man exists in this world or the next, Mrs Kellett? Will Tabitha get her wish to see her father? She’s sure he’s still alive.’

  With that mixture of guile, mockery and outspokenness familiar in Yorkshire, she said, ‘If you’d said sooner, I could have asked the cards.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to do that – not after all this time. A woman of your sensitivities must have a view on the matter.’

  There was a slight stiffening of her shoulders. ‘He will be there in spirit. Miss Braithwaite is by way of being what we call a sensitive herself. Perhaps the feeling she has comes from the spirit world. Her brother Edmund came through to her, you know, in this very room.’

  She seemed as proud of her ability to summon spirits as of her weaving.

  ‘The bairns used to play out there, Tabitha and Edmund, paddling and fishing by the bridge. Edmund’s spirit found its way home. He come into this very kitchen.’

  If I were Edmund’s spirit I would have preferred my own room at the villa. But then, I’m a mere know-nothing mortal.

  ‘Did Mr Braithwaite ever find his way here, in body or spirit?’

  She watched my face more carefully than lip-reading warranted. Her own lips stayed tight shut for a moment as she gave me a questioning look.

  ‘Tabitha would love to find him,’ I said again. ‘If anything comes back to you about where he may have ended up, or what may have happened, we might set her mind at rest.’ I produced my card and handed it to her. ‘In case you have any thoughts. I’d like to help my friend if I can.’

  She opened the table drawer. ‘I’ll keep it safe. If I come up with a communication from the spirit world, I’ll send word.’

  She replaced her tarot cards in the cedar wood box.

  ‘May I ask you something else?’

  ‘Go on, though I’m not forced to answer.’

  ‘Was Mr Braithwaite something of a ladies’ man?’

  She looked at me quizzically.

  ‘I’m only guessing,’ I said. A sober man found cut and bruised in the beck. A jealous husband might be an explanation.

  ‘Mr Joshua Braithwaite,’ she said, giving the name more syllables than it deserved. ‘When he was younger – and don’t say this to Miss Braithwaite – he’d chase after anything in a skirt, in spite of being a bigwig in chapel.’

  ‘Did Mrs Braithwaite know?’

  ‘She’d be a fool not to. A woman always knows.’

  ‘He must have had enemies.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ She got up and placed a log on the fire, turning her back to me so I had to wait to ask my next question.

  ‘Have you been in touch with him?’

  She looked at me sharply. ‘How could I be?’

  ‘You said just now that if you come up with a communication from the spirit world, you’ll send me a message. So you must believe he’s dead.’

  ‘Let’s just say I know what I know. He’s dead. I haven’t told Miss Braithwaite. I didn’t have the heart, not after her being so upset over her brother.’

  She picked up the money I had paid her and slid it into a Rington’s tea caddy on the mantelpiece.

  Beside the tea jar was a postal order stub for ten shillings. I wondered who she sent money to. She quickly slipped the stub in the caddy.

  Being a fully-fledged investigator was turning out to be a little unnerving. She was wary of me, although I tried to be sympathetic and encouraging. What did she have to hide?

  The cat had heard the log go on the fire. It came to sit on the rag hearth rug. The larger bentwood chair was covered in a piece of army blanket with patchy stains in green, blue and black.

  ‘Does your husband work in the mill?’

  ‘Aye. He’ll be in presently.’

  My signal to go. ‘Thank you for the fortune. May I take your photograph holding your woven piece?’

  She looked at me in horror. ‘Why ever would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because I’m trying to become as good at taking photographs as you are at weaving. I’ll let you have a copy to stand on the dresser.’

  She agreed, reluctantly, more for the sake of her crêpede-chine than for herself, I thought.

  While she damped and combed her hair, I paced out the distance from the barrel seat and I set up my camera and tripod on the path. In the pale evening light, I reckoned I would need an exposure of two seconds.

  She sat stiffly at first, until I chatted to her about the garden. ‘Do you use much horse manure?’


  ‘Aye. Among other stuff,’ she added mysteriously, stroking her woven piece as if it were a cat.

  I clicked the shutter on a woman who would keep her own counsel as close as the weave in her cloth.

  I thanked her for posing, then folded down my tripod.

  ‘What does your husband do in the mill?’

  ‘He’s in the dyehouse.’

  The beck ran noisily across the stones yards away. I tried to make my words sound casual, like an afterthought. ‘Where was Mr Braithwaite found, by the boy scouts?’

  ‘Over there – by’t waterfall.’

  ‘You’re so close by. Did you see or hear anything that day?’

  ‘My hearing was better then, but I heard nowt. I knew the boy scouts was out and about. I kept my door shut.’

  ‘Did your husband hear anything?’

  ‘It were Saturday night. He were off having a pint and a game of dominoes.’

  I thanked her for her time, and cut up the bank, towards the humpback bridge. Not an auspicious start to my enquiries. That old Yorkshire saying seemed appropriate. See all, hear all, say nowt. Eat all, sup all, pay nowt.

  Tabitha had told me that the Bridgestead police house accommodated the village constable, his wife, the younger portion of their family, a border collie cross dog and an elderly canary. This hub of law and order for the village and surrounding areas occupied a position close to the post office. It announced itself by the cast iron black and white Yorkshire Constabulary house plate. I rang the bell.

  Constable Mitchell was a big man, well into middle age, with intelligent eyes and a quickness and grace that belied his size.

  He pulled out a buffet for me. ‘If you’ll give me just a moment, you’ll have my full attention. Only I promised the wife I’d finish this. It’s her father’s eightieth birthday tomorrow and I’ve the ship to put in yet.’

  An antique whisky bottle about eighteen inches long lay on a piece of linoleum in the centre of the big oak desk. Notebooks, report books, inkstand and pencil holder had been pushed aside to make way for the delicate work of creating a ship in a bottle.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to know how a ship goes in a bottle.’ I perched on the tall buffet and watched.

  When you are watching someone work expertly, time stands still. I forgot why I had come. There was an ‘ocean’ in the bottle already, with an indentation where the ship would lie.

  ‘How do you get the sails in? That’s what puzzles me.’

  ‘You have a tiny hinge on the masts. Look.’ With his little finger, he indicated the place.

  He lowered a sail. At its base, a scrap of silk formed a hinge. ‘I’ll attach a thread. That allows me to bring the mast back on its hinge, into a vertical position. Once it’s in the bottle, I release the thread, and cut it.’

  Like every other mystery in the world, I thought, once it’s been explained, it’s so obvious.

  Constable Mitchell probed the ‘ocean’ gently with a small tool. ‘You have to make sure it’s thoroughly dry.’ He sniffed at the bottle.

  Satisfied, he dipped a brush in glue. He stroked glue onto the base of the tiny hull and bowsprit, not more than six inches in length. With a tweezer-like tool and a steady hand, he inserted the base of the ship onto its indentation.

  He replaced the lid on the glue and put his tools away.

  ‘Don’t stop for me.’ I wanted to see what he would do next.

  ‘It has to dry. Putting a ship in a bottle takes patience. Now what can I do for you, madam? I’m sure you didn’t come to Bridgestead to learn how to put a ship in a bottle.’

  Why did I have the feeling he knew exactly what brought me to Bridgestead? The telephone on the wall seemed to me to smirk. I suspected my father had already put in a call. What Constable Mitchell said next confirmed my suspicions.

  Gently setting his precious bottle at the back of the desk, he turned to me. ‘That’s my tea-time break over. It wouldn’t do for me to appear a slacker in your presence, Mrs Shackleton. Who knows what levels that might be reported back to?’

  ‘I guessed as much.’ I forced a smile. ‘You have no need to worry on that account, Mr Mitchell. My father thinks highly of you.’

  ‘I was surprised he even remembered me.’

  ‘Are there any objections to my looking into Mr Braithwaite’s disappearance?’

  He shook his head. ‘When a person remains missing, the case is still open, but after all this time nothing new has come to light.’

  He passed me a scrapbook, opened at cuttings relating to the Braithwaite case. Some of them I had read in the newspaper offices, but not the ones from the local paper. The editor of the weekly Bingley Bugle maintained a cautious tone. In the first article the name of the Bridgestead man ‘found in the beck’ was withheld. It was not until two weeks later that a photograph of Joshua Braithwaite appeared, giving an account of his disappearance.

  Constable Mitchell waited until I had finished reading the cuttings.

  ‘It was one of the worst days of my life, having to arrest Joshua Braithwaite for attempted suicide. And the man was in no fit state.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’ll do better than that. I can give you my report from the time.’ He opened a desk drawer and lifted out several notebooks, looking at the covers for dates. ‘It didn’t help that he was found in a spot where a suicide had happened three years earlier.’

  The image made me shudder. ‘How awful. By the waterfall?’ This was what Mrs Kellett had said, although Tabitha had pointed out the shallow area near the stepping stones.

  ‘Yes, by the waterfall. If Braithwaite hadn’t been pulled out when he was, he would have drowned, like the weaver and her children.’

  ‘That’s terrible. Poor woman.’

  He found the notebook he was looking for and returned the others to the drawer. ‘It was a sad case. A poor soul at the end of her tether. It was said she wouldn’t give up her children to be farmed out from the workhouse.’

  I would never look at the idyllic spot again without imagining the despair of that woman. It took an effort to make myself concentrate on Joshua Braithwaite.

  ‘I can imagine that a woman might seek to end her life in that way, if she is truly despairing. Perhaps it’s my prejudice, but it seems to me a more female method of dying. Would Mr Braithwaite have chosen that way out?’

  ‘Men are just as likely to drown themselves. Mills are all built by the water. Canals and becks have made a last resting place for many a poor labourer.’

  He found the Page in his notebook. ‘My writing’s not very legible. I’ll read it to you.’

  ‘Thank you. Do you mind if I jot down one or two points?’

  ‘Feel free.’

  I took out my own notebook and listened. Policemen have a flat, unemotional way of talking when reading from their notes. Mr Mitchell was no exception.

  ‘Here goes. “Saturday 20 August 1916, six pm. Summoned to an incident reported as suicide attempt at beck, beyond old bridge. Mr J Braithwaite on the bank, soaked to skin, in recovery position, supervised by Mr Wardle, scoutmaster, who claimed Mr Braithwaite was found drowning, but reluctant to allow self to be dragged from beck. Mr B not coherent. Cut lip, bruising, lost a shoe. Makeshift stretcher … Mr B fetched to police house. Wardle urging charge of attempted suicide. W says concerned about impressionable lads witnessing event. Sent for Dr Grainger from Milton House. Dr G pronounced no immediate danger. Watch kept in night by self and wife.” That’s the first entry.’

  ‘So he stayed here the night? One of the papers mentioned he was at the village doctor’s house.’

  ‘We’d had no doctor in the village since 1915. Dr Grainger’s the army medic, at Milton House.’

  He turned a Page in his notebook. ‘Now we come to the following day. “After satisfactory night, Mr B somewhat recovered. Denied attempted suicide but no explanation as to how he got into beck. Said he remembered running and tripping – that was his explanation for cuts and bruises. A
teetotaller, Mr B insisted had not touched a drop of drink. Mr B transferred to the temporary Milton House Hospital, pending further investigations.’

  He closed the notebook.

  ‘Couldn’t he have been taken home, Mr Mitchell?’

  ‘Good question.’ He put the notebook on the desk.

  Even after all these years, I could see that the memory of that night still rankled. ‘It’s a pity Wardle found him and went round shouting suicide. If it had been up to me, he could have been home and in his bed within the hour, no more said.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have overruled Wardle? You represent the law here.’

  ‘I was in a difficult position. Wardle had a troop of boy scouts ready to swear to the fact that they’d found a potential suicide. And Wardle’s brother’s a magistrate in Keighley.’

  ‘What did Mrs Braithwaite have to say?’

  Constable Mitchell seemed reluctant to continue. ‘You’re staying with them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps you should ask Mrs Braithwaite yourself.’

  ‘It’s Miss Braithwaite who’s keen to find her father.’

  He seemed to be weighing up how frank he should be.

  Eventually he said, ‘I telephoned Mrs Braithwaite, asking her to come. She said no. If anyone could have ridden roughshod over Wardle, she could. She could have pooh-poohed the whole business. As it was, reporters from Bradford and Leeds were here within the hour. They came on motorbikes.’

  ‘Did you believe the story of how Mr Braithwaite came by the cuts and bruises?’

  ‘His Humpty Dumpty tumble? It’s possible. But I did wonder … this is a little delicate …’

  ‘Mr Mitchell, I was in the WAPC at the start of the war. There was nothing delicate about my work there, or later when I drove an ambulance in France.’

  ‘Yes but this is a little close to home.’

  ‘I have heard he was something of a ladies’ man.’

  ‘Then I can say it. I wondered whether some irate husband had just cause to give him a walloping.’

  The story began to sound like a Thomas Hardy tragedy. The fall of a local notable whose fault was not in his stars but in himself.

  Constable Mitchell sighed and continued. ‘I don’t need the notebook to tell you what happened next. My wife sat with him for a short while, to give me time to cycle up to the Braithwaites’, since Mrs Braithwaite wouldn’t come into the village. There was no note in his study, no indication of anything at all out of the ordinary. And she hadn’t changed her mind about not wanting him home.’