A Snapshot of Murder

by Frances Brody

  ‘Get me home, Kate. I’ll go to pieces if I have to be talking to people. And get that envelope with the membership forms back from Tobias. He’d take it to the pub and set fire to it. He recognised Edward.’

  I went up to the table and picked up the committee papers. ‘I’ll carry these back, Tobias. I’m walking home with Carine.’

  Tobias was deaf to me. The colonel was lecturing him about committee procedures. For once, he was silent.

  The caretaker is always quick to start putting away the chairs in a noisy manner that drowns out conversation.

  As Carine and I left, Tobias was following.

  A few stalwarts always go across to the Oak after the meetings. Perhaps it was the fresh air that brought Tobias back to something like his usual self, or perhaps he thought that the appearance of his old comrade was a mirage.

  Tobias slapped Derek on the back rather too heartily. ‘I don’t suppose you’re coming for a pint, young fellow?’

  If Derek had been a cat his fur would have bristled and his tail pointed at the moon. ‘You suppose correctly, old chap.’ He stressed the word ‘old’.

  ‘That’s the ticket.’ Tobias adopted his jovial tone. ‘You see the ladies home! It’s the closest you’ll come to them.’

  On the walk back to the studio, Derek seemed unaware of any strain or tension. He chatted about how well the evening had gone. My presentation had buttered them up to be partial to an outing, he thought. And he very much liked that new member who spoke up for him.

  Carine fiddled for her keys. Derek shifted his hold on the magic lantern.

  Finally, Carine found her keys and unlocked the door.

  Derek carried in the magic lantern and suggestion box. She thanked him. ‘I expect you’ll want to be getting home, to your gran and your cocoa.’ She turned to me. ‘Kate, you’ll bide awhile?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go through!’

  As I stepped through the beaded curtain to the back room, I heard Derek say, ‘Where do you want the magic lantern?’

  ‘Just leave it on the counter for now. I’ll see to it.’

  Derek hesitated. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Usual time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Carine …’

  ‘Goodnight, Derek.’

  I turned round, intending to say goodnight to him. Through the curtain, I saw the two of them outlined against the glow of the street lamp. He had thrown his arms around her and she was not resisting. It was so very brief, that in a blink I could almost think I had imagined the scene. She disentangled herself, and pushed him away with a shake of her head.

  He called goodnight. From behind the curtain, I replied.

  He has just turned eighteen. She is thirty-two. He is motherless. She is childless. Perhaps there is something of that in it, I told myself, but was not convinced.

  Moments later, we were once again at her kitchen table. ‘I’d have known Edward’s voice anywhere.’ She reached for the society’s papers. ‘Let me see where he lives.’

  She took the envelope with the members’ names, but it was empty. ‘If Tobias has …’

  I sifted through the papers. ‘It’s here.’

  ‘Let me see the writing.’

  I passed her the form. The writing was cramped but painstakingly neat.

  ‘He’s left-handed. I recognise his writing.’ She stared at the form. ‘It’s a care-of address, the newsagent’s on Grove Road.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I have been so stupid.’

  ‘No you haven’t.’

  ‘He isn’t dead.’

  ‘You could be right, but people have doubles.’

  ‘I know that’s supposed to be true and of course he’s not the same, but I’d recognise his voice anywhere.’

  ‘Do you still want me to check with his regiment? It all seems so odd.’

  ‘Yes you must.’ She looked again at Edward Chester’s application form. ‘The newsagent’s might not just be a convenience address for his letters. Perhaps he has a room above the shop. I could wait there. He may have gone for a drink.’

  ‘You mustn’t start searching for him at this time of night, or chasing after him. Let him find you.’

  ‘I should have gone to him before he left. I should have spoken. He was close enough to have recognised me. I turned my head slightly. And did you see Toby’s reaction? He tried to hide it. They were like brothers.’ She made a fist of her hand and rubbed it back and forth across her mouth as if sealing and unsealing her lips. ‘I’m going mad. And to complicate matters, that chump Derek has fallen for me, and I let him. He comes here on a Saturday to help. I’ve become the highlight of his week.’

  ‘He’ll get over it.’

  ‘He’s just a boy. I don’t know what I was thinking of, except I wasn’t thinking. If I’d known that Edward would come back …’

  ‘Where does Tobias fit in all this?’

  ‘Good question.’ She pointed to one of the many photographs on the kitchen wall. It was Tobias, and Carine’s father, taken in the back yard. ‘Tobias must have known Edward wasn’t dead. They connived. Dad wanted me to have someone who would stay by me in the studio. He could have done no better for himself than encourage a man who would be his drinking buddy.’

  Having in mind what Harriet had gleaned from young Derek, I came right out with my question. ‘Is Tobias mistreating you?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s too conscious of who provides the bread and butter to do that. He does nothing worse than spend the profits and come up with grand schemes when he is in his cups.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess. Do you ever think that some of us, by accident or design, miss by inches the life we ought to have had?’

  ‘Probably almost everybody!’

  We laughed. She pointed out another photograph on the wall. This one was of a woman and a little girl. The woman looked just like Carine, and the little girl was Carine.

  ‘I think my father must have driven my mother mad. I finally understand why she had to leave. Tobias and my father are very alike. If it wasn’t for my dad’s insistence and non-stop promoting of Tobias’s merits, I would never have married him.’

  I looked at the photograph again.

  ‘You both look so happy.’

  ‘Perhaps history will repeat itself. I’ll run off with Edward. We’ll live wild in some wonderful place.’

  ‘What happened to your mother?’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘I’m not sure. People whispered that she had run off with someone. I listened in one night when a neighbour was talking to Dad. Dad said that her fancy man didn’t want to be saddled with a child.’

  ‘That’s terrible, Carine.’

  ‘I never gave up hoping that I would see her again.’

  ‘Does your father ever speak of her?’

  ‘For a time, he did. He used to say that she was the beating heart of our family, and of our business.’

  ‘Just as you are now.’

  ‘Except that we’re not a family. And I’m kidding myself. I’ll never leave this place. Because, you know, she may come back. Now that Edward has risen from the dead, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Mammy at the door tomorrow.’

  Yet the way she spoke told me that she believed her mother was dead.

  She gave a sad smile. ‘But if Edward …’

  She did not finish her thought. At that moment, there was a thump, thump on the ceiling from the floor above.

  We stood.

  Carine said, ‘I had better see what Father wants.’

  ‘Goodnight then. Tomorrow, I’ll put in a call to East Lancs Regiment.’

  She was opening the door to the stairs as I crossed the studio. At the same time, the clapper sounded and the outside door opened. Tobias and I almost collided.

  ‘Kate! You must let me walk you home.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘Oh, but there is. The pubs a
re chucking out.’

  ‘It’s a fine night and no distance.’

  ‘There’ll be drunken rowdies.’

  As I let myself out, I heard him he walk across to the studio counter and open the cash drawer.

  I had walked several yards, and walked quickly, before Tobias caught up with me.

  ‘I know, I know. You don’t want an escort, but I’m walking in your direction.’

  ‘Why are you walking in my direction?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I know you have a reputation for looking into things, Kate, but where I’m going is my business.’

  ‘Then let me guess. Hyde Park Road.’

  That stopped him in his tracks. ‘How do you know?’

  I kept walking as I called back to him. ‘Because that’s the address Edward Chester gave on his membership application and I saw your reaction.’

  He hurried to catch up. ‘Carine’s been talking to you.’

  ‘And you should be talking to Carine.’

  ‘I’m going to Hyde Park Road, but nothing to do with him. I play a game of cards with a few pals.’

  He was wrong about drunken rowdies. Headingley Lane was quiet. A few students hopped off the late tram. Someone revved a motorbike. A lone workman whistled as he strode towards the town.

  Once more, Tobias fell into step beside me. ‘Teddy Chester always had his head in the clouds. He was never a man to stand too much reality. Carine’s father took to me right from the off. He told me straight, he said to me, “Carine has one part blood to two parts developing fluid in her veins, but no head for business.” The old man entrusts me with keeping the business going for the next generation.’

  I refrained from saying that after ten years the ‘next generation’ was a long time putting in an appearance.

  ‘My father-in-law is determined Carine should stay put in the place she loves and not find herself out of her depth through failing to grasp the money side of things.’

  ‘And you’re very good at grasping the money.’ I would not normally be so direct as to pick an argument with a friend’s husband. The image of Carine, wearily going to see what her father wanted, while her husband had his hand in the cash drawer, infuriated me.

  ‘A business is a business and needs a business brain. When Carine’s grandmother started the game, hardly anyone had a camera. Now, it’s snap, snap, snap all over the show. We have to keep up. I’m in high demand for weddings. You need to be convivial for weddings.’

  I crossed the road. He followed. ‘See, I did have a bit of experience with a camera before I met Carine. I took a few half decent shots myself at one time. Of course, the top brass soon put a stop to that. After some fellows took pictures of a Christmas game of football between us and the enemy, we had to hand over our cameras. A camera became verboten, a court martial offence.’

  He was doing that very familiar thing of reminding me. We made such a sacrifice, for you.

  ‘And did Edward Chester take photographs?’

  ‘Scribbled. He did nothing but scribble.’

  ‘So the man who turned up tonight is not some ghastly doppelganger? Your reports of his death were exaggerated?’

  ‘It’s him all right and when I find him he’ll wish he had stayed dead.’

  ‘Go home. You’re drunk.’

  ‘I’ve never been more sober. And since we’re on the subject, what do you think to young Derek Blondell?’

  This was not an easy question to answer, given that the first words that came to mind were ‘He is in love with your wife, and I wonder if they have done anything about it.’ Carine had once said of Derek that he was a hardworking, ambitious young man. I repeated her words, not wanting to make trouble for Carine.

  ‘Ambitious is right. We didn’t fight a war so that young whippersnappers like him could sponge off their elders and betters. Nobody ever organised outings for me. Except the powers that be and that wasn’t a jaunt I would have chosen.’

  We had reached my street corner. ‘Go home, Tobias. It’s late. You’re drunk. You’ll end up brawling in the road.’

  Whether he heeded my words I did not know. I walked up the street and turned at the gate. He was still standing on the corner, watching me safely in, playing the gallant gentleman. There was a message on the hall stand.

  ‘Your mother wants you there early on Sunday, before dinnertime.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Scourge of Gout

  Carine listened for a moment behind the door that led to the bedrooms. She heard Toby offer to walk Kate home. She also heard him go to the cash drawer, which she should have emptied.

  Slowly, Carine climbed the stairs.

  Tobias had offered to walk Kate home because he would then call on one of his cronies, for a game of cards and a few drinks. Or perhaps he would go in search of Edward. Wherever he went, he would not be home before midnight.

  Carine could not put her dissatisfactions into words. It was as if a heavy mantle lay on her shoulders. On top of that she felt the weight of something like a basket, the kind that hawkers carry. She dragged her feet up the fifteen steps, the heaviness of her mood turning her shoes into hobnail boots. She would no more let people know how she felt than she would sit naked in the studio window.

  Everyone said how charming she was, how cheerful, how kind.

  The back bedroom had been hers as a child. Magnanimously, her father swapped – a year after she and Toby married.

  He must have guessed by then that they both wanted a bolster’s space between them.

  The back bedroom walls were distempered with a yellow wash. The little cast-iron fireplace barely glowed as the fire was almost past mending. She heard ashes fall through the gate to the metal plate beneath. The smell told her that he had used the commode.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  Her father’s name was Percy. His bed was by the window, so that he could look at the sky. There was not much else to see, except the houses beyond.

  ‘You were a long time at your meeting.’

  ‘There was a lot to discuss.’

  ‘I’m mithered with these corns. That nurse doesn’t get at them like you do.’

  Percy had been born gouty, due to an excess of uric acid in his blood, the doctor had explained. Spa baths had helped him when he was able to indulge in such things. He did not escape the classic condition of troubles in his joints, and degrees of ill health over the years. Now, he was mostly bedbound, though he sometimes had good days when he was able to come downstairs.

  ‘The nurse only did your corns today, Father.’

  ‘You used to call me Daddy.’

  ‘I was a child.’

  ‘Beyond that you called me Daddy. You’ve changed.’

  She handed him the glass of water from the bedside table. ‘You need to drink.’

  ‘I want to get up.’

  ‘Then get up.’

  ‘Who were you talking to?’

  ‘Kate Shackleton.’

  ‘Why are you being like this?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Distant.’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘You’re too young to be tired. I need you to pare my corns.’

  ‘You could wait for the nurse.’

  ‘I want you to do it. What’s a daughter for if she can’t help her old dad? You’ve life enough in you for that lad that comes on a Saturday afternoon. I know what goes on when Toby is out photographing weddings.’

  ‘I’ll fetch a basin. You can put your feet in to soften the corns.’

  ‘And sterilise the razor.’

  ‘I always do. Can you manage to get to the chair?’

  ‘Aye, since you claim I’m too heavy for you to help me.’

  She left the room, to fill the basin with warm water.

  As she walked down stairs, he called. ‘It’s both feet you’ll have to do.’

  While her father sat with his feet in the warm water, Carine went to the cupboard where she kept her scrapbooks a
nd newspaper cuttings. She had taken Edward’s advice and read newspapers. Some of the stories were very interesting. She had carried on buying a newspaper each day, not always the same one. Sometimes she would go in the library and read a paper there. The staff would save them for her. She liked to read about murders.

  ‘You want to throw that lot out,’ her father said. ‘You hoard too much rubbish.’

  She straightened the papers. ‘I’ve an interest. I like to know what is going on in the world.’

  ‘This is my bedroom. You’ve no right to keep your stuff in another person’s room.’

  She was looking for some of the poems she had copied out of library books. These poems sometimes gave her ideas for the greeting card verses. What she came across was some loose cuttings she had forgotten. They were about an interesting case from a few years ago, 1922.

  A woman and her lover had been hanged on the same day. The lover had stabbed the woman’s husband. Although Edith Thompson had taken no part in killing her husband, and knew nothing of Freddie’s intentions, she was condemned. She was condemned because she had written him love letters that were presented in court.

  It was all very well a poet saying a person should read novels, a person should write poetry. Words could be dangerous. Her words were never dangerous. She loved to create little verses for her flower greetings cards. She knew how to touch hearts.

  ‘This water’s gone cold,’ her father said, taking his feet from the bowl.

  She dried his feet with the thin towel. If I were Mary Magdalene I would dry his feet with my hair. The thought made her smile. Perhaps everything would have been different if she had married the poet, the love of her life. She sometimes thought of him as The Poet. It was less painful than saying his name.

  ‘Which corn do you want me to see to?’

  ‘Bottom of my right foot, and the left little toe.’

  She sat on the stool in front of him, safety razor in her hand. ‘Let me have your foot then.’

  She scraped. He winced when she scraped the big corn a little too hard. She did not tell him that she drew blood.

  ‘Go careful!’

  Something had always been there at the back of her mind. It never took shape. She never let it. Now that Edward had come back, she knew that somehow she had been duped, first by her father, preventing her marriage, and then by him and Tobias together, because they were two of a kind.