‘Well yes, I do remember now as it happens. Hector’s father had a painful shoulder, couldn’t raise his arm, and that reminded me that Dad once had that too.’
‘Immediately before he went missing?’
‘Oh no, just one year when we were on holiday at Grange and he was trying to finish a painting. But the shoulder made me remember. You see Hector’s mother had neuralgia last week …’
I sighed, prepared to listen to a health report on Hector’s entire family before Tabitha would get to the point and answer my question.
‘And …?’ I urged.
‘Well, Dad had neuralgia as well. I remember thinking it might make my birthday dinner even worse than it would have been – what with not having Edmund there – if Dad’s neuralgia played up. Do you think that might have had something to do with his going missing?’
‘Not directly, no. Was he taking anything for it?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Do you remember what?’
‘No, but I could enquire. Mother might remember, or the housekeeper might. You see, we’ve had no doctor in the village for ages. I suppose he might have gone to Bingley or Keighley and seen someone there, a doctor or a chemist. Perhaps there’ll be something in the bathroom cabinet still.’
‘See what you can find out for me. But there’s one other thing I’d like you to check, and to do this first please. Where did your father keep his art materials?’
There was a long pause. I could hear her brain ticking. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘What I want to know, Tabitha, his paints, brushes, his easel, did he take them anywhere before he left for good, perhaps a week or so before? If you can find out for me, that might be one more clue.’
When I spoke to Tabitha, I felt like a girls’ adventure storyteller. But it worked.
‘I say! That’s something we didn’t think of. He didn’t take any of his suits, only what he stood up in, but that would …’
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Tabitha. Just find out as soon as you can. Ring me back. I hope I’ll still be here and not whisked away on the shopping trip.’
‘Oh I do wish I could come with you.’
‘Soon as you can, eh?’ I gave her the number.
I heard Mother and Aunt Berta before I saw them. They sailed into the lobby in a swish of chiffon and linen, Mother in lilac and Aunt Berta in blue, each with a tiny veiled hat and the grand manner that increases by several octaves when they are together.
‘It is so modern to be in a club that’s for women,’ Aunt Berta pronounced. ‘Who would have thought it when we were Kate’s age?’
‘It’s all very convenient for girls who need this sort of thing,’ Mother said doubtfully. ‘Girls who don’t have a home and family behind them.’
I could see that they were ready to surge into Bond Street, Regent Street and Oxford Street, but attempted to delay them in the hope of hearing from Tabitha.
Fortunately my aunt and mother agreed that a pot of Darjeeling and a slice of Madeira cake would fortify us for the shopping ordeal that lay ahead. We made ourselves comfortable on the chintz chairs in the drawing room.
‘The pace out there is so hectic,’ Aunt Berta said. ‘There’s far too much rushing about.’
‘Goodness me.’ My mother glanced disapprovingly at my notebook. ‘You’ve been at it again, haven’t you? What a strain you put on yourself, my dear.’
For my mother, a strain consisted of arranging far too many anemones or interfering in housekeeping of which she understood nothing.
‘I don’t find it a strain. It interests me.’ That sounded lame, even to me.
Fortunately, the tea arrived.
No sooner had I poured than the porter came to the drawing room to tell me I had a call.
I excused myself and took the call. ‘Tabby?’
‘Yes it’s me. What a connection we have, almost as if you’re in the next room.’
‘Yes. All the better to hear what you have to tell me.’
‘Well, I didn’t know where Dad kept his painting stuff. Mother’s out riding, so I asked our housekeeper. Well, she did know. Dad used the summerhouse, out beyond the veg plot. Mrs Kay and I trotted along there. She’s the soul of discretion, and very reliable.’
‘And?’
‘This is the good part. There is nothing. Not a paintbrush, not a palette, not an easel – except for a broken one that he wouldn’t have wanted. Oh, and some empty paint pots and a couple of brushes with their bristles chewed away.’
‘Do you think his art materials may have been thrown out, or given to someone?’
‘This is where it’s encouraging. Mrs Kay has both keys. No one has been in there for an age. My mother never goes into the summerhouse – though she says now and again that she keeps meaning to have the place bottomed out.’
‘Right. Well, that’s interesting. Thanks, Tabby.’
‘Do you think it’s significant, Kate?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You must or you wouldn’t be asking. If Dad took his art materials, then he intended going off to paint – like that what’s-his-name Gauguin. He was the one who escaped to the South Sea Islands and left everyone behind wasn’t he?’
‘Kate!’ The voice boomed from the drawing room. ‘Your tea is getting cold, my dear.’
‘And, Tabby, did you find out, was your father taking any medicines?’
‘Oh, I forgot, hold on …’
‘No, it’s all right. Just let me know when you can. We’ll talk again soon.’
When Mother, Aunt Berta and I stepped outside into the April afternoon, fortified with tea and heading for the stores, I felt pleased and optimistic. It was spring, after all, and two people were in love: Tabitha Braithwaite with Hector and Gregory Grainger with Josephine.
In spite of everything, the world would keep on turning.
21
Perching
Perching: When a cloth comes off the loom, it is thoroughly examined for faults. Defects which can be repaired in the next stage of manufacture are marked with chalk. Faults which cannot be mended are marked with a piece of string in the selvedge.
It was Good Friday. There would be no return home before Tuesday because we were engaged to stay with Aunt Berta and Uncle Albert over the Easter weekend, with Dad due today. He’d be pleased to know that Sykes was a great help.
After breakfast, I escaped to Uncle Albert’s library to open the two letters that had come - Sykes’ first. It made me smile to read his admission that he was wrong about Stoddard or, as Sykes cryptically referred to him, “the gentleman in question” – murdering Lizzie Kellett.
Dear Mrs Shackleton
You were right and I was wrong about the gentleman in question. Size nine boots he may have, but his are bespoke. The pattern of sole left on the bank by the cottage is that of a workman’s boot – bought in the nearby town and repaired by a local shoe mender who has provided the police with a list of names of individuals who wear that boot which is popular.
As to the cricket bat, fingerprints were taken. These do not resemble those on the bobbin you provided – again clearing the gentleman in question.
Sykes’ disappointment was evident. He had taken a strong dislike to Stoddard. I suspected this was because he felt bad about letting me into the mill and standing by while Stoddard discovered me there. It was a matter of pride. If he could have found Stoddard guilty of more than outwitting us, he would have been a happy man.
Sykes’ letter continued.
Mrs Sugden sent word for me to come and see the cleaned oil painting. (The restorer had done his work and left when I arrived.) We were correct in surmising that the smudges constituted an act of concealment, even vandalism. The grey smear on the bridge being removed, there appears a petite, dark-haired woman aged about twenty-five, painted as something of a beauty in a flowered summer frock. At the foot of the waterfall, an infant floats in a Moses basket. Mr Winterton, the restorer, gave Mrs Sugden to understand that the woman a
nd infant had been added to the scene at a later date. They were subsequently painted over inexpertly, not by the artist, but well enough for an unobservant person not to notice anything odd at first glance.
Is this Braithwaite’s “other family”? I shall pursue this line of enquiry.
Yours respectfully
J R Sykes
Good question, Mr Sykes. No surprise that Evelyn wanted the painting out of her sight or that she could not bring herself to destroy a work that showed her own children at play. I may have to rethink my plan of giving the painting to Tabitha after her marriage. She may not appreciate her father’s attachment to a woman as young, or younger, than herself and the existence of an unknown sibling set to inherit Edmund’s bucket and spade.
The second letter came from Mr Duffield at the newspaper library, forwarded by Mrs Sugden.
Dear Mrs Shackleton
When you last made enquiries of me, you asked me to tell you if I could recall any further information regarding the matter you were investigating. The reporter I mentioned to you, the late Harold Buckley – and reporters these days do not come up to his calibre by a long chalk – would sometimes give me a carbon copy of stories of his that were spiked. ‘For posterity, old chap. For posterity,’ he would say. I searched through my system because bells rang after you left. However, I cannot find what I know I once had. It evades me. It kept me awake two nights running, wondering whether some blighter tampered with my files. The gist of it was something like this. Harold talked to two or three of the boy scouts. They all had chapter and verse over what to say regarding finding Mr J.B., which made Harold suspicious. People, old or young, do not come up with the same story over a set of events. You only need to think about what is coming out over the Great War now to know that, and it is also true of road traffic accidents.
One of the scouts said something that made old Harold prick up his ears, but blow me down if I can remember what it was. The boy’s comments made him think that behind Braithwaite’s disappearance was the old, old story of a man Running Away, as we always say in the papers, with a woman. Does that help?
So the reporter had picked up on the idea that Braithwaite was off with another woman. At last, perhaps we were on the right track. Find the dark-haired beauty painted by Joshua Braithwaite, and we may find the man himself. Mr Duffield’s letter continued.
However, I did come across another matter from that time, one of Harold’s pieces that I enclose, only because I know the poor old chap would smile in his grave to think someone still read his copy. At the time, due to wartime censorship, only officially sanctioned information found its way onto our pages.
The Cleckheaton and Spenborough Guardian printed a piece in 1919, and I am only sorry we did not do it here, in honour of Harold. He wrote this piece with great caution, not mentioning that picric acid, utilised in the manufacture of dye stuffs, was being used to make explosives.
Of course Harold knew his piece would be spiked – but that was a point of honour with him: write the truth and shame the devil. Someday the truth would out.
Yours sincerely
E Duffield
I unfolded the newspaper article written by Mr Duffield’s favourite reporter. This would have been composed just after Braithwaite disappeared, the day of the explosion, the day I met Tabitha at St Mary’s Hospital and gave her a lift to the station so that she could find the widow of the shell-shocked man whose death we witnessed.
The black of the carbon copy smudged my fingers as I lay the flimsy Page of quarto on the table and smoothed out the creases.
LOW MOOR DISASTER
On Monday, 21 August, a series of violent and continuing explosions occurred at the Low Moor works, a subsidiary of the Bradford Dyers’ Association. An initial tremendous blast rocked places as far away as Leeds, York and Huddersfield. Those people at a distance from the scene thought that Zeppelin bombs had been dropped.
Initial reports say that none of the women and girls employed in the factory was killed. Workers and residents from nearby properties fled to the safety of the woods and countryside. School teachers escorted their charges to safety.
Attempts to fight the ensuing violent conflagration were valiantly undertaken by the Low Moor Works Brigade. It is feared that these men, and members of the workforce who bravely attempted to halt or contain the continuing explosions, may have lost their lives. First to arrive on the scene were firemen from Odsal, soon to be reinforced by men from Central station. The force of the blasts was so great that within a short time, these heroic men were blown off their engine which was destroyed. The firemen who escaped death have been taken to the Infirmary. At present we have no death toll.
Scattered debris from the explosions damaged property within a radius of two miles. The shell of a gasometer was ruptured. Escaping gas ignited within seconds, converting the foul smell into an immense pillar of flame and thence into a plume of vile, choking black smoke whose heat quickly transformed the area to an unbearable furnace.
To see the people camped on the land four miles from their own homes is a piteous sight. Some do not know whether they have homes to return to. Others congregate at the Infirmary. With great dignity, they await news of the injured. On this fateful day, the war being fought on foreign shores by our brave men and boys has come home to challenge the courage of those they left behind.
Coincidence. It could be nothing more than coincidence that so much happened on that one day. So much happens every day, only we do not know about it. There could be no connection between Braithwaite and the explosion at Low Moor, unless it was that he may have supplied the picric acid that went into the explosives.
The first explosion was just after 2.30 p.m. Joshua Braithwaite was seen by Gregory Grainger running across the fells at four o’clock. For there to be a connection with his disappearance, he would have had to deliberately run ten or more miles to seek out death in a living hell.
Yet why, when he had an arrangement with Paul Kellett to bring his motorbike to him, did he set off running?
I hurried upstairs, changed into divided skirt and jacket, and borrowed a cross-bar bicycle that had belonged to my cousin. Cross bars are such an encumbrance and entirely unnecessary. They make manoeuvring round tradesmen’s vans and taxi cabs terribly tricky. The London air was foul. I regretted not having a scarf to cover my mouth. Only when I came closer to Harley Street did it occur to me that Gregory Grainger may already have taken himself off to the country for the long weekend.
I rang the bell for Professor Podmore’s rooms. A porter showed me into a waiting room but I felt too agitated to take a seat.
Five minutes later, Gregory appeared, a look of concern on his face. ‘Is something wrong, Kate?’
‘No, nothing’s wrong. Just a question, following on from yesterday.’
‘Won’t you come upstairs?’
I declined, not wishing to make polite conversation with Professor Podmore or have the treat of a guided tour round the consulting rooms.
‘Gregory, how soon on that day, 21 August, did people in Bridgestead and at Milton House hear about the explosion at Low Moor?’
He frowned. ‘Let me think. The staff knew before I did. News travelled like wild fire.’
‘So Mr Braithwaite would have heard?’
He looked thoughtful. ‘It’s possible. I can’t really say.’
‘How did people find out?’
He raised an eyebrow and looked out of the window at my bicycle propped by the railings.
‘Seeing your bike brings it back. I believe the news reached the mill first. It was someone who’d delivered yarn, not on a bike of course. There was also this gangly boy scout used to turn up, offering to do good deeds for the officers – fetch tobacco, newspapers, that kind of thing. He could have brought the news, or one of the butcher’s or baker’s lads.’
‘Thanks, Gregory. Sorry to have called you from your work.’
‘Hang on a minute, Kate. Don’t rush off.’
It
was late the following Tuesday evening when Sykes and I met to share information. He came to the house and we sat by the fire, Mrs Kellett’s cat on the hearth rug between us. If Sookie could have spoken, things might have been much easier. Not only did the cat not speak, she pretended not to listen as we tossed information and ideas to and fro.
We tried out explanations as to why Braithwaite had set off running. It could be that he saw an opportunity and took it. There may have been some arrangement with Kellett to meet with the motorbike at an agreed spot. But it made no sense that Braithwaite would have risked sparking off a search for himself without being able to get well away from the area.
Sometimes I wish I’d studied phrenology. Never too late. I could locate that part of my brain that thinks and tip-tap with my fingertips to spring it into action.
The nagging connection with Low Moor would not go away. ‘Do you think it was something to do with the Low Moor explosion?’
Sykes sat back in his chair, one leg draped over the other, his pendulum foot swinging. ‘Go on,’ he said, as if I had some well-developed theory rather than a tickle of a half-thought.
We were both feeling grumpy at hitting brick walls. Here we were with eighteen days to go to Tabitha’s wedding, and still no sign of the elusive Joshua Braithwaite.
I tried to turn what niggled me into something like a coherent idea. ‘Well … what have we got so far? We know Braithwaite supplied picric acid to Low Moor Chemical Works, being the good and patriotic war-profiteer. I don’t know how these things work, whether there was a volatile batch, or dampness … or, I don’t know … I’m not a chemist. Could there have been some reason for him to feel culpable?’
For a moment we sat in silence. Sykes had something in his notebook. I could tell by the way his fingers itched to open it and move on.
‘Let’s bear that in mind,’ Sykes said. ‘I’m no chemist either so we’re plodding in the dark.’
Dying In The Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery Page 27