The hooves on the cobbles hammered out her shock and disbelief, the sound thumping through my body. Tabitha flung out her arm. Something whizzed through the air. I turned to see the brandy flask hit the beck, clattering onto the stepping stones. I wanted to retrieve it but was shaking too hard.
How is it that the minute you do or say something, you know you’ve got it wrong? All that treading carefully and piecing together of scraps of information and then I had to blurt out the bad news when she’s not even sitting down to hear. You better sit down. That’s what people always say before the stake goes through your heart. Not I. March up and down on this bridge. Struggle down the bank and up again. Let the snow settle on your eyelashes. Now here’s the bullet.
The least I could do was to alert her Uncle Neville, as she asked. Clambering down the bank to retrieve my flask I slipped, falling on my backside before getting my feet wet in the beck.
Mill workers were already heading home, joshing each other, lighting cigarettes. A few children had come from the village to meet parents.
Walking against the tide, I reached the mill gates. On one side of the yard, some clearing up of the dyehouse had begun, with bricks stacked on one side, stones on another and metal in a pile that could have been no use except as scrap.
On the other side of the yard, the door to the outhouse used as a garage stood slightly ajar. I caught sight of a motorbike and a neglected, detached sidecar. That was where I had hidden away my cameras on the day Tabitha and I wandered across the moor and I caught my first sight of Milton House. Something had struck me as odd at the time, and now I remembered.
I opened the door wider and went into the garage. As well as the motorbike, it held a pre-war Austin and a couple of push-bikes. As I approached the sidecar, the feeling that a tiny piece of the jigsaw would be found here made my fingers itch. I opened the top of the sidecar. You would expect it to be lined with that chequered material, one of those mock tartans that designers believe look jolly.
The lining had been stripped away. It was neatly done, as if someone had taken a sharp knife to it. Only at the very inner part of the sidecar where a person’s feet would stretch had a scrap of material been missed. It was the texture as much as the faded pattern that told me this was as near as damn it to the scrap of material that had attached to Braithwaite’s watch chain and been carefully preserved by Hector among his boy scout chattels.
Braithwaite’s plan had been that Kellett would meet him with the motorbike and he would flee the hospital before his appearance at the magistrates’ court. If Braithwaite had escaped on the bike, it would not be here now. Kellett would not have given himself away by bringing the bike back.
If only I’d had five minutes with Kellett, to ask the poor man the right questions, then everything may have been solved. Of course that’s presuming he would have answered me.
Leaving the garage behind, I walked to the mill house door, raised the knocker and let it fall.
Slow footsteps trudged along the tiled hall. An old woman in a long black dress and white apron gazed up at me through misty cataracts.
‘Is Mr Stoddard at home?’
‘He’s still in’t mill, madam.’
I hesitated, just a moment too long. She opened the door wider. ‘Step inside won’t you?’
Perhaps I could use the house telephone and just tell him what I had to say – that Evelyn and Tabitha needed him.
No. I should watch his face.
‘Will he be back shortly?’
‘Are you all right, madam? You look a little shaky. Will you have a glass of water?’
It amazes me that people whose vision should resemble life seen through a net curtain can be so observant.
‘I will have a glass of water. Thank you.’
‘Go in there. I’ll fetch it.’
The parlour she showed me into doubled as a dining room. An elaborate candelabra gas lamp hung from the ceiling. With the shutters partially closed, the room breathed gloom. Its walls were papered in a deep maroon. A huge oak sideboard held two oval glass cases. One trapped a glass-eyed green parrot and a preening cockatoo who ignored each other and gazed reproachfully at me. In the other case, a sad-eyed owl seemed not to notice the crouching vole by its claws.
I guessed that some previous mill manager had used these creatures to give natural history lessons to his children.
The piano lid was firmly shut, with no music in sight. Eight chairs sat around a large oval dining table, designed for a big family. I pictured Neville Stoddard eating there alone each evening.
Listening for the housekeeper’s return, I edged my way between the table and the sideboard.
On an impulse, I opened the sideboard drawers, then the cupboards, not knowing what I was looking for. There was nothing unusual: Sheffield cutlery, Derbyshire pottery, a cut-glass bowl.
The old woman came back, bringing a glass of water.
I took a drink.
‘It’s a lovely room,’ I lied, playing for time, wondering what I might discover here. ‘Do you keep anything I could take for a headache?’
She shook her head. ‘The master doesn’t get headaches.’
‘I see.’
‘There might be something in the mistress’ cabinet. None of us go in there though.’
What was it Tabitha had told me when I asked was her father taking any medication? Yes, now I remembered. ‘Ah yes, Miss Braithwaite told me that Aunt Catherine was the family treasure trove of medicines.’
The housekeeper opened her mouth to answer. The telephone began to ring. She shuffled into the hall.
If she would disappear into the kitchen, I might risk going up the stairs and looking at the medicine cabinet for myself.
No such luck. The housekeeper returned.
‘That was Mr Stoddard on the telephone. He asks you to go over to the office. I told him you have a headache. He says I’m to get something for you.’
‘Thank you.’
She hesitated. ‘Will an aspirin satisfy?’
‘Do you mind if I come up with you?’ For a person with a headache, I was beside her at the door too quickly, too eagerly. ‘Then I can look myself.’
She hesitated.
‘I’m sure Mr Stoddard won’t mind,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen round a mill house.’
A massive portrait, far too big for the house, hung in the stairwell. A whiskered patriarch stared disapprovingly as we climbed the stairs, the housekeeper leading the way.
There were three bedrooms. The door to one was slightly ajar. On the opposite side of the landing, the housekeeper led the way into a light airy room, with faded pink wallpaper, white nets and brocade curtains. I looked for something that resembled a medicine chest but saw only a washstand.
‘It’s all in here, madam.’ She opened the cupboard door, peered closely, then stood aside while I looked.
I wanted her to leave. She did not leave. The washstand cupboard was packed with medicines in plain, blue and brown bottles. I sniffed at one that had no label – a kind of liniment; the second, some sweet-smelling tincture; and the third, unmistakeably, morphia. There were liver powders, Epsoms salts, and a packet labelled gel sem. Gelseminum sempervirens – the substance found in Kellett’s gut along with morphia.
‘Medicines fascinate me,’ I said, by way of explanation. ‘Don’t they you?’
‘No, madam. The aspirins is there, in that little bottle.’
‘Ah yes, thank you.’
I opened the bottle and swallowed an aspirin, hoping that it was indeed an aspirin.
Why had I never suspected Stoddard, not even for a moment? Who, on that Saturday when Braithwaite tried to go to Agnes, would have stopped him? His cousin Neville Stoddard. If Braithwaite had set off on his bike with the sidecar, the one person he would have had to explain to was Stoddard. The mill’s in your hands now, Neville.
Evelyn had refused to listen to her husband. What was it she had said? On the landing, he had asked her to talk to him. He had some
thing to say. She refused to hear what he had to say. Stoddard would have listened. Fought with him even. Packed him into the sidecar and tried to take him home. Perhaps Braithwaite had escaped and gone running, running down the bank. Mrs Kellett could have seen him. Then Kellett promised to help. They both knew too much, Paul and Lizzie Kellett. Until I came, he could rely on their secrecy, buy their silence. But when I began to ask questions, he sensed danger and acted. Kellett’s death was meant to look like an accident. I shuddered to think that if Arthur Wilson hadn’t got to her first, Stoddard might have killed Lizzie.
But Wilson had simmered with resentment for far too long. The Kelletts prospered, first from the selling of the German dyewares in war time and then from Mrs Kellett’s too-heavy pay packet. It wasn’t fair. Wilson had received what he considered a paltry sum for his invention, and his name not even honoured when the picker was manufactured. He knew there was money to be had and he went to the Kelletts for his fair share of the booty. Mrs Kellett must have told him to sling his hook. He lost his temper and killed her.
But as far as Stoddard knew, I was ignorant of everything still – except of course I had just told Tabitha that the unknown male casualty at Low Moor was her father. And if Tabitha had told Evelyn already, then …
I held my head high, gripped my satchel too tightly, and strode towards the mill. Keep it simple, I told myself. Tabitha and Evelyn need him. When he hears that, Stoddard will go to them.
It reassured me to see that the caretaker, a skeletal man with a high boot resting on his sweeping brush, was waiting by the door for me, practically bouncing in his attempt to draw my attention.
‘Mrs Shackleton?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m to show you up. Mr Stoddard has a surprise for you, though I’m not supposed to say.’
‘What is it?’
He puffed out his cheeks, shook his head and tapped the side of his nose.
I relaxed a little. If Stoddard had a surprise for me, then he could not be expecting me to have become suspicious of him. Don’t let it show, I told myself. Stay calm.
‘This way, madam.’
I followed the old man up two flights of stairs, a third, and a fourth to the top floor.
‘It’s lightest up here.’
And it was lightest. As well as the great windows that extended to the ceiling, there was light from glass panels in the roof, and from the open goods door in the wall. The snow had stopped, leaving dots of moisture on the high windows.
Stoddard beamed at me. He switched on the electric lights.
I turned to thank the caretaker, but he was gone.
‘Here we are,’ Stoddard called. ‘An ideal opportunity. Told you I dabbled in photography myself at one time. What do you think to this?’
‘You’re taking photographs?’
‘Not I, my dear. This arrangement is for you. I hope my camera will suit.’
‘For me?’
‘Didn’t you say something last time you were here about the All British Photographic Competition, and that you didn’t imagine many entries would feature a mill? Well, I’m sure you’re right, and here’s your chance. “Mill at rest” you can call it. What do you make of the camera?’
It was was a Noiram reflex quarter plate. ‘Yes, I have used one of these.’
‘Good. Then you’ll be familiar with it.’
‘Yes. But, Mr Stoddard, I’m here for another reason. I’m not sure that either of us will want to be taking photographs when you hear what I have to say.’
‘You see we’ve a carton of yarn packages ready to hoist up. I told the men to leave it. Watch this – it’ll make a good picture – from an unusual angle, too.’
‘Mr Stoddard …’
His attention was on winching up the box from the ground. The chain clanked. The carton swayed for a moment. He nodded to me to capture the image. It would be simplest to do as he expected. I looked through the lens and caught the swaying great square parcel of yarns. He held it still, steadying the winch.
‘So that was an extra image you didn’t expect,’ Stoddard announced. ‘Now for the looms.’ He turned round the camera plate. ‘Oops! Shouldn’t have done that. You’ll need to enter it into the competition as all your own work and now you’ve had an assistant.’
Though the looms were silent, they still held the yarns and cloth that would be continued by the weavers in the morning. It gave them an odd look, still and peaceful. In spite of everything, I yearned to take that photograph. I moved the camera further up the room so as to see a line of looms. Doing so also put off the moment when I had to tell him why I had come. He was watching me take the photograph and had produced another camera, a fixed focus Brownie.
‘Your Brownie won’t give you a good indoor picture,’ I said.
‘Perhaps not. All the same, I would like a photograph of you. Stand by the door opening, where we brought the yarn through. Then you’ll have the light of the open door behind you.’
‘Very well.’
I walked slowly back up the room. ‘Mr Stoddard, I appreciate that you’ve taken this trouble for me, but I’ve really come to say that Evelyn and Tabitha would like you to go over there as soon as you can.’
There. I’d said it. Let’s hope we could now stop this and I could go home for the weekend and leave the family to come to terms with the news of Joshua Braithwaite’s death.
He looked at me blankly.
‘Tabitha specially asked for you,’ I said. ‘I was talking to her by the bridge.’
‘And did she ask you to search my garage and my house?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw you go into the garage.’
‘I was just looking at your car.’
‘And Mrs Laycock tells me you went upstairs, into Catherine’s room.’
‘I thought there might be something for a headache.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why were you searching?’
‘I wasn’t searching. I’m curious.’
‘Yes. I’d noticed.’
‘Perhaps we should go to your office. We could talk there.’
Once we got out of here and onto the stairs, we would see the caretaker. I’d be able to leave without any further to-ing and fro-ing. He was beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.
‘Yes,’ he said, as if answering a question. ‘I’d like a photograph of you – framed just there in the doorway.’
He took my arm, so gently I thought for a moment he wanted to kiss me. He held me by the shoulders and looked down at me.
‘We liked each other I think.’
‘Yes.’
‘When you came here, trying to help Tabitha, you impressed me. A beautiful woman, intelligent, honourable – out to seek the truth. But you went too far. All the same, I’d like your photograph. Will you stand in that doorway please?’
He encircled me with one arm so that I couldn’t move. I thought it best to stay calm, keep talking, bide my time.
‘I know it might not come out terribly well, not like yours. But there’s always time to take a photograph, if that’s your passion. That’s what it’s all about these days. Follow your passion. Never mind honour, duty, hard work, marriage vows. I know why you’re here. It was you went to see that woman, brought her to the funeral with Joshua’s bastard, breaking Evelyn’s heart all over again.’
‘Her heart was never broken. She threw herself at Dr Grainger the moment she saw him.’
His grip on me loosened. ‘That’s a monstrous lie. Evelyn is incapable of any deception or foulness.’
I backed away from him. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? You fought Joshua Braithwaite when he tried to leave that Saturday.’
‘I tried to knock some sense into him.’
‘And did trying to knock sense into him come easier after you’d doped him, like you did Kellett?’
‘No one will ever connect me to Kellett’s death. It’s absurd. Wilson will be hung for the sheep and the lam
b.’
I was walking slowly, talking to him, walking backwards towards the door, ready to turn and run.
‘You pushed him in your sidecar after you’d beaten him up. You tried to take him home but he got out and ran for the beck. That’s why he was confused, not making sense when he was found. Because he was drugged and overpowered, but he still managed to get away from you.’
He started to laugh. ‘I wouldn’t have doped Joshua. Didn’t need to. The fool doped himself because of his toothache. He wouldn’t fight back, wouldn’t fight me. Just ran. Like a coward. Running away from his responsibilities.’
‘Or running towards them, towards Agnes and the child.’
I turned to run for the door. A sudden furious crash and bang of machinery startled me. He had flicked the looms into life. For a moment, I didn’t know where the noise came from. He was behind me, dragging me back towards the loading door in the wall, with its four-floor drop to the ground below.
In the noise I could barely hear what he said. This time he held me securely. I screamed, but no sound could be heard above the din of the machinery. Then his hand was over my mouth and with his other hand he quickly switched off the looms, but without my being able to break free.
I dug in my heels but he had me in an iron grasp, like a clamp around my arms and chest. I tried kicking and caught his shin. His grip tightened.
‘Your sympathies are in the wrong place, Mrs Shackleton. Kellett was the worst kind of blackmailer. Got his wife to do it for him. It’s cost me a guinea a week for years.’
I bit his hand.
He twisted my arm. ‘I hate hurting a woman, especially a good-looking one, but you’re going to die as you step back to get a perfect photograph of mill machinery. I will be so distraught, and your fingerprint will be on the camera trigger.’
I tried to fix myself to the ground, and to kick out, but one movement outdid the other. He was too strong. We edged back towards the loading door. ‘Trace all this evil back to Braithwaite. He corrupted. He called himself a teetotaller, but he supped with the devil.’
Dying In The Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery Page 32