At the gate he looked round.
‘Which way did you come?’
‘The short cut across the fields.’
‘On foot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we’ll go back that way.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘Oh I think there is.’
He tried to take my arm. I shook him off.
He fell into step with me as we turned to the path. His breath made small clouds in the cold air.
Where the path narrowed, I led, he walked behind me.
The moon cast an eerie glow over the landscape, the dark shape of hedges and trees pinning us fast into time, time that seemed to stop. A white cloud floated across the moon.
The silence was unbearable, but neither of us would break it.
As we neared the house, I turned towards the back door.
‘Servants’ entrance?’ he said mockingly. ‘You must at least give me a demonstration of your lock-picking skills.’
‘No need. I left the back door unlocked.’
‘Then the front?’
‘There’s a bolt on the inside of the front door.’
I couldn’t remember whether there was or not.
At the back door, he blocked my way.
‘I’ll wish you goodnight, Mrs Shackleton, or rather good morning.’
‘Goodnight.’
‘What? No apology for trespassing?’
‘I was following my enquiries. I’m sorry for the way I did it but you left me no choice.’
‘I’m disappointed. I thought you were intelligent, objective, principled. Really you’re just silly, a silly girl.’
‘A silly girl?’ I heard my voice rise. Mistake. He was trying to bait me, and succeeded. ‘Silly to want to find the truth for Tabitha? Silly because I’m logical, and follow my instincts?’
‘Being logical is rather a male prerogative. And instincts are for animals, Mrs Shackleton. Instincts can get you into a lot of trouble. For instance, if I’d followed my instinct in the mill back there, I’d have knocked you flat for what you did. And if I followed my instincts now, you’d have a lot to raise your voice about. But I’ve made a fool of myself this week already. I’m not about to do it a second time.’
He stepped aside.
I pushed open the door.
‘Go on!’ he called. ‘Let me see you safely inside.’
I had left my flashlight in the mill. When I closed the kitchen door behind me, and turned the key in the lock, it was utterly dark. The tears poured down my cheeks, tears of humiliation, tears of rage.
How dare he call me a silly girl, as if I hadn’t a hope of success, as if there would be nothing else for me to do with my life than blunder about making a fool of myself.
Worse than that, I felt hurt and disappointed. I groped my way towards the back stairs, touching the wall as there was no banister. Something else struck me in the darkness with an unwelcome force. Stoddard and I had liked each other when we first met. He was kind, and intrigued by me, and I was impressed by him. Now, everything was shattered, and for what? I had found out that Joshua Braithwaite lost interest in his business. So what was new about that? I could have guessed as much. I flung myself onto the bed and stared through the drawn-back curtains at the moon.
Braithwaite had mentally moved away from involvement in the business, though he still attended the meetings. And he had certainly not lost his interest in making money. So what else was he thinking about during that period when he sent Kellett ‘on the road’ selling the illicit dyes? Kellett may have known, but he was dead. Mrs Kellett – might she hold a clue?
I thought back to how angry Evelyn was with her husband. What was it she had said, that she was sure there had been other women, but none that he cared enough about?
Perhaps that’s where she was wrong, and Braithwaite had fallen in love. I preferred that idea to imagining him at the bottom of a mineshaft.
*
After just two and a half hours’ sleep, I met with Sykes to consider our next move. We were both somewhat subdued as we sat in the Jowett on a side street in Bingley. This had been our agreed rendezvous point, in case anything went wrong at the mill, but it proved a bad choice. Children on their way to school made a whooping beeline for the car. Women suddenly found a reason to come into the street, a rug to beat, a dog to call.
Sykes was berating himself for not staying outside the mill, on look-out.
‘What would you have done if you’d stayed outside?’ Reluctantly, I set off driving to find a less exposed spot, slowing down beyond the railway station to avoid an argument with a muck cart. ‘Those mill walls are too thick for warning whistles or owl hoots to penetrate. We were just unlucky that Stoddard turned up at four o’clock in the morning.’
‘The man either has a guilty conscience or insomnia. But you carried it off like a trouper.’
‘Trouper? I felt an almighty fool.’
‘At least he escorted you home.’ Sykes smiled. ‘I think he’s secretly taken a shine to you and your derring-do.’
I groaned. ‘And was it worth it? All we did was confirm what we already know – that Braithwaite was detaching himself, from his business, from the family. But why? And for whom or what?’
The road wound us out of town. I pulled up by a stretch of land that could not decide between calling itself a meadow or a hill. A squirrel scampered up the tree beside us and leaped to a neighbouring branch.
‘There was one other item in the accounts,’ Sykes said. ‘A payment of twenty-five guineas to Arthur Wilson for his drawings and sample of a loom picker.’
‘Yes. That was mentioned in the minutes, too.’
‘Didn’t you say Wilson’s wife brought up the loom picker as a reason why Wilson might be a killer?’
‘She was far gone in her cups at the time.’
‘From what I gathered at the Wool Exchange, Wilson might have had good cause to hold a grudge, thinking himself under-rewarded. And he was the assistant scoutmaster. That gives us two scoutmasters who might have had a reason for getting Braithwaite out of cold water into hot.’
‘But Wilson works for Braithwaites. Would he risk his job, and Braithwaite’s goodwill, by crying suicide?’
‘He’d say “Wasn’t me, guv. Was the other fellow”.’
From overhead branches came the steady drip drip of rain onto the top of the car.
‘Will you see what you can glean from Wilson? He doesn’t like women.’
‘I could try. Where does he drink?’
‘He doesn’t.’
Sykes made that little clucking sound out of the corner of his mouth, indicating extreme difficulty. ‘It’s never easy talking to teetotallers. You can’t just drop in at the local.’
‘He’s a stalwart of the chapel. Perhaps it’s time for your conversion.’
‘Dunno about that. Is he likely to play the good Samaritan if I topple off my bike in front of him?’
I smiled at the image. Sykes would do it too, in the line of duty. ‘If you come a cropper on your bike, he might put it down to the demon drink. All right. I’ll have another go, perhaps I’ll pay a social call on the Wilsons and see whether I can’t draw him out. You might have another word with the dyeworkers, since you’ve chummed up with them.’
I didn’t know how I would fit in my interviews in the short time available before I had to leave the Braithwaites, go home, and pack a trunk – ready to travel to London with my mother for Aunt Berta’s party. Investigation or not, my life wouldn’t be worth living if I absented myself from that most important of annual engagements.
*
Dr Alex Fraser was a short man with a kindly lived-in face. His wavy dark hair was parted in the centre and reached almost to the collar of his white coat. We discovered that he and Gerald once met at a medical conference, and he was sorry to hear that Gerald had not survived the war. However, this did not make him inclined to accede to my request for information.
The coroner had ordered
a post mortem on Kellett. Dr Fraser, as the local pathologist, had completed that post mortem.
He tapped his pencil on the desk and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Shackleton. I pass on my findings to the coroner. What he does then is up to him.’
There was blunt Scottish stubbornness in his manner, a reluctance to break the rules. If I did not tread carefully, he would suddenly find an immediate pressing engagement and I would be out on my ear. I tried for fellow-feeling and sympathy.
‘I’m acting for the widow. It was to me she confided her fears about poisoning after she described her husband’s last moments. Having been married to a doctor, I know you have to follow procedures, but she hasn’t slept since his death. If I could have some information …’
He shook his head. ‘The widow can attend the inquest.’
‘That won’t be before Easter. In her state of health, I fear for her if I can’t put her mind at rest.’
There was a slight relaxing around his eyes. ‘You’re not related to the Kelletts are you?’
That’s what I should have claimed, but I did not look or sound like the daughter of a dyeworker.
Keep pushing.
I summoned my most tragic look. ‘I have a letter of authorisation from Mrs Kellett, saying that I am acting on her behalf.’
‘May I see it?’
‘Of course.’ I looked in my bag. I put my hands in my pockets, and tutted. ‘It’s in the car.’
He waited.
Damn him.
‘I’ll get it.’
I walked along the corridor and turned towards the way out, knowing I had no writing paper with me. A door opened and a nurse emerged. The room beyond her exhaled the whiff of stale tobacco and stewed tea. I went in. A young nurse sat turning the pages of a magazine.
Mustering my best hospital manner, I asked her for a pen and paper. ‘I need to write a note for matron.’
The nurse obligingly found me pen and paper. In for a penny. Mrs Kellett, in her clear round hand, asked that Mrs Kate Shackleton be allowed to view the body, and to know the cause of death, was it poison?
I shivered as Dr Fraser and I entered the mortuary, passing tables where bodies lay covered with white sheets.
He shot me a quizzical look. ‘You understand this is in confidence, and for the widow’s information only?’
‘Of course.’
‘So was it you raised the alert over the stomach contents?’
‘Mrs Kellett had suspicions. Mr Kellett was good at his job. She couldn’t credit that lapse of attention. She also smelled something unfamiliar on his breath. His last breath, poor man.’
‘And the widow told you, and you told the police.’
‘Yes.’
We reached the farthest table. Fraser hesitated, his hand on the sheet.
‘Dr Fraser, I was in the VAD for four years.’
‘Yes. I guessed you were. Funny how one can always tell.’
He lifted the sheet as far as Kellett’s stomach. A long scar marked where the scalpel had cut. Large, untidy stitches put him together again.
I looked at the body that had been Paul Kellett. His dark hair was matted, his eyes mercifully closed. It did not seem like him at all, this sculpted shape, the colour of dark moss. In my photograph, he had held pride of place among the dyeworkers, important and full of life.
‘Was he taking anything for toothache do you know?’ Fraser asked.
The question seemed ludicrous. This poor husk of a man was so far beyond a mere toothache.
‘I don’t know. Why do you ask?’
‘With a body in this state, I may not have done an analysis of stomach contents, except to try and establish the time of death, digested food and so on.’
He drew the sheet to Kellett’s chin, paused for a moment then covered his head, almost as if it would prevent the dead man hearing his pronouncement. ‘He’d eaten a cheese and pickle sandwich and a pork pie, drunk beer – difficult to say how much. I also found a quantity of morphia, and of Gelseminum sempervirens.’
There was a neat darn in the sheet at the level of Kellett’s chin. I had the absurd feeling that I ought to make some gesture, touch his arm, or say something. Sorry you never got to Bradford-on-Sea.
We walked back across the tiled floor. I waited until the mortuary doors swung closed behind us before asking, ‘What is Gelseminum sempervirens? Why might he have taken that, and morphia?’
‘Come back to my office and I’ll explain.’
We returned to the windowless room. He pulled out a chair for me. ‘Haven’t written my report for the coroner yet, so when you speak to the widow, tell her that the smell on his breath may have been … Tell her that her suspicions will be taken note of. I expect she’ll know what he was taking. Why I asked you if he’d had toothache – some people take gel sem as a pain relief for neuralgia or toothache.’
‘What is it?’
‘Tincture of Gelseminum sempervirens – it’s the dried root and rhizome of yellow jasmine. The effects resemble those of nicotine, but with a stronger depression of the nervous system. Usually a patient would take the dose incrementally. I would prescribe forty minims. I’d say there was about two hundred minims in Mr Kellett’s gut. He’s not a giant of a man. People’s tolerance to drugs is variable, but combining gel sem with morphia wasn’t the smartest thing he ever did.’
‘And what would be the effects – of the gel sem?’
‘Giddiness, difficult eye accommodation, headaches, diarrhoea, and possibly severe depression. Now if you combine that with morphia …’ He shook his head. ‘He’d probably dropped off to sleep. The miracle is he came to at all.’
I took the photograph of him and his fellow dyeworkers from my brief case. ‘There he is – just days ago. Full of life. Why would he have taken morphia?’
He picked up the photograph and looked at it closely. ‘My guess is that he had a good deal of pain from the amputation.’
‘Poor Kellett.’
‘Foolish Kellett, if he overdosed himself.’
‘Is that likely?’
He slid the photograph back to me. ‘Some people can bear pain more easily than others. It can be intermittent too. That injury to his left arm, and his claw of a hand, there’s no knowing how much gyp that gave him. It could be that he dosed himself on morphia, when it gave him trouble. A lot of old soldiers do. Now if on top of that he had jaw ache and someone said “try this”, and gave him a twist of gel sem, he might well have taken it. But that will be for the coroner and an inquest to decide. Mine’s the easy part of analysis and report. The drugs aren’t the cause of death. That was the scalding from the exploding dye in the tank, the shock of cold water afterwards and heart failure. It’s a blessed relief for him he died. There wouldn’t have been much anyone could have done for him in that state.’
My mouth felt dry. For a moment we were silent.
‘Regarding the morphia, Dr Fraser. Do you believe he may have been an addict?’
‘It’s possible. I can’t see it from his eyes in the photograph, but it’s possible.’
‘Would that be an expensive habit?’
He nodded. ‘Could be.’
‘So Mrs Kellett could be right. Someone may have laced his food or drink, knowing what effect it would have, and hoping the death would be passed off as a tragic accident.’
‘That’s not for me to say. I only report my findings. It’s possible it was self-administered. Though if the wifey’s right, she might have to answer awkward questions as to who made him the cheese and pickle sandwich and who drew the beer for him.’
I put the photograph back in my bag.
He gave me a curious glance. ‘How do you come to know Mrs Kellett?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’ve time for a short break, if you’d like to tell it.’
I took a seat in the canteen while Dr Fraser went up to the counter.
He came back with a tray. ‘This was the only cake they had I’m afraid.’
&nbs
p; ‘It’s fine. I like seedcake. Tell me, would a person know if he had been slipped a drug?’
‘Taste. Though that could be disguised in food. Of course if he lies there unable to move and at the mercy of whoever administered it, he might begin to guess.’
‘The symptoms you mentioned, headache, not focusing and so on, they could easily be mistaken for something else?’
Fraser nodded. ‘Inebriation, concussion … What do you have in mind?’
He broke off a piece of seedcake and popped it in his mouth.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’re not just a friend of the family are you?’
‘Not only that, no.’
‘What?’
‘I’m a private investigator.’
That was the first time I had said the words aloud. It felt good. But for how long would it feel good if I couldn’t come up with more answers than questions?
16
Beating-up
Shedding, picking, beating-up. – three primary motions in weaving.
Saturday. Time for me to depart. I had to go home, pack my finery and be ready to travel with my mother to London. Sykes had tried to reassure me, saying I would see matters with a fresh eye on my return. I was not convinced.
Long before the Braithwaite household stirred, I drew the Indian shawl around my shoulders and sat in the window seat looking out over the fells. The more I found out, the less I knew about what might have happened to Joshua Braithwaite. The pieces of the jigsaw just did not fit. What was I missing?
Yesterday evening, I had intended to speak to Lizzie Kellett, but she had more visitors offering their condolences. This morning might be the best time to see her, before any more neighbours called to pay their respects. I would run the risk of waking her, but would take that chance.
Soon enough police officers from HQ would be calling on her with questions about the morphia and Gelseminum sempervirens. I preferred to get there first, before they frightened her out of her wits.
Lizzie’s curtains were still drawn, but that didn’t signify she slept. She would keep her curtains closed until after her husband’s burial. I tapped on the door.
Dying In The Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery Page 19