A Snapshot of Murder

by Frances Brody

  And when she thought of herself, she thought of her mother whose image she was. That was what older people told her. She saw it herself, from photographs, and from her own mirror.

  An intriguing thought came to her. I replaced Mammy. I took on her work when I was still a child. Did Dad treat Mammy as badly as he has treated me?

  Of course when Carine worked and worked, he always said, ‘Remember this studio will be yours one day. It has your name on it.’

  Another thought came, which turned itself inside out. Toby and Dad had said that Edward died.

  That was a lie. Dad said Mammy went away. Was that a lie?

  ‘Do you remember, Dad, what you used to say to me?’

  ‘I’ve said all manner of things.’

  ‘You used to say, “Three things happened in 1901. The old queen died, the new king was crowned and your mammy left us.” Why did you say such a strange thing?’

  He winced. ‘Be careful with that razor!’

  ‘I’m nearly done.’

  ‘You were always asking questions.’

  ‘Why those facts about 1901?’

  ‘If you have facts, you stop asking questions.’

  ‘You wanted me to stop asking questions?’

  ‘You never stopped. “When was she coming back? When was she coming back?”’

  Carine felt that sudden pang that was always there, that pang of not knowing.

  ‘Is that why you added something else, another fact?’

  ‘What fact?’

  ‘You said that the treadmill was abolished, in 1901. It wasn’t. I saw it in Old Moore’s Almanac. It was 1902.’

  ‘What kind of conversation is this?’

  ‘Did you think you and Mammy were on a treadmill?’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’

  But suddenly, her Mammy was in the room, this room. Carine could feel her presence, bending over to kiss her goodnight. Perhaps she had been the one on the treadmill.

  ‘Where did Mammy go?’

  ‘She ran off.’

  ‘She would have come back for me.’

  ‘She was too busy having a good time. Now let me back in bed.’

  She pulled back the bedcovers, and helped him from the chair to his bed.

  ‘My foot’s sore.’

  ‘It’s bound to be. I’ll fetch you something to soothe it.’

  She picked up the basin and then put it down again. ‘Edward is back.’

  ‘Edward who?’

  ‘My Edward. Edward Chester. You stopped me marrying him.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, so locking me in the cellar on the day of my wedding was something every father would do?’

  All those years ago, she had eventually made herself swallow his story about accidentally locking her in. He had repeated it so many times, somehow making her take the blame.

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone down the cellar that day. I didn’t know you were there.’

  ‘Did you go straight to the register office to tell Edward that I had changed my mind? And then you came back and told me that he had joined his regiment.’

  ‘We’ve been over this. I went for a bottle of whisky. When I came back you were gone. I thought you would go down to the register office with Betty.’

  ‘You’d had a drink.’

  ‘That wasn’t a crime. It’s not every day a man gives his daughter away.’ He took a sip of water. ‘Your poet was relieved. It gave him something to be tragic about, and he was joining his regiment the next day. You married a better man, a man I could get on with and who’ll stay with you, and stay here and no nonsense about poetry.’

  She built up the fire. He approved of that. He liked to be warm. Soon he would begin to sweat. The fire would be too hot. Hot as hell.

  ‘Then you said that Edward was dead.’

  ‘Toby came with that tale. He was in a position to know.’

  ‘Will you ever tell me the truth?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Mammy, and about why you and Toby lied about Edward.’

  ‘You have the right husband for the business and for you. Now will you see to my sore foot?’

  The water in the basin had grown cold. She took it and the towel downstairs.

  It was a simple matter to mix a little something to soothe the cut on the sole of his foot and on his toe. She squeezed the ointment. She stirred in a little of this and that.

  She spoke to the photograph of the woman and the little girl on the bench on Woodhouse Moor. ‘Are you watching, Mammy? This is what you’d call disgusting.’ She stirred the mixture. ‘I’m doing this for both of us. Once I thought it was my fault you didn’t come back. But I see him now, mopping the stain. It has never gone away. I remember a nightmare when I heard you scream, or perhaps the scream was mine.’

  Back upstairs, she applied the potion so very gently.

  ‘That’s soothing,’ he said with a sigh.

  She bandaged his feet. Goodness me, she thought, Mary Magdalene must have been a saint.

  The next morning, Carine was up early. She washed her father’s feet and sponged him down. The fire had gone out, but even so he had a temperature. ‘I’m burning up.’

  ‘Sweating is a good thing for someone with gout.’

  ‘How is he today, Mrs Murchison?’ Tilly, the daily help, had a jolly and efficient manner.

  ‘He’s sleeping.’

  Tilly cleared the bedroom fire grate and took up a shovelful of burning coals.

  When the nurse came, Carine went upstairs with her.

  ‘Father had a bad night. He is rather hot, and sweating.’

  The nurse took the patient’s temperature. ‘I’ll sponge him down.’

  The patient stirred and opened his eyes. ‘It’s you, nurse. I thought …’

  ‘Yes it’s I, Mr Whitaker. You’re a little on the warm side today, but we’ll get that temperature down.’

  The patient closed his eyes.

  ‘Will you look at his corns, nurse?’ Carine whispered. ‘He has had a go at them himself, again.’

  The nurse looked and tutted. ‘Try not to let him do this. Hide the razor.’

  ‘He finds it.’

  ‘At least he’s clean. I’ll bandage his feet, just to be on the safe side.’

  It was Tobias who went for the doctor. He went in person because he was not far off, and this was too important for a telephone conversation.

  The doctor came straight back with him.

  He examined the sweating, delirious patient and gave instructions to sit by him, let him drink water, make him comfortable, wipe his brow.

  To Carine’s plaintive whisper that surely it was a good thing for a gouty man to sweat, the doctor explained gently that this was different. He had noted a slight shaving cut on Mr Whitaker’s cheek. When he removed the bandages, he saw a cut where the patient or his nurse had trimmed a troublesome corn. The doctor explained that an infection had entered Mr Whitaker’s bloodstream through one of these cuts. It was only a matter of time.

  Tobias wanted to talk, he wanted to know everything and he wanted to tell everything. He wanted the doctor to know how the old gentleman was well cared for. Both he and his wife doted on her father. Percy wanted for nothing. They were up and down all day. All he had to do was tap his walking stick on the floor and there one of them was, like the genie from the lamp.

  The doctor understood. He knew that Mr Whitaker would get himself out of bed, shuffle about in his bare feet, pick his nose and rub his cheek, take out his dentures and drop them down anywhere that suited him. There were plenty of opportunities for infection, no matter how careful the nursing.

  Carine listened as the doctor whispered to Tobias as they stood on the landing. ‘Women die this way, after childbirth. Nasty little bacteria find their way in. Infection spreads like …’ He struggled to find a simile that would not sound too harsh. Being a gardener, he found one. ‘The infection spreads like bindweed. I can give Mr Whitaker something t
hat will muffle his senses and ease his way, but there is nothing to be done to save him.’

  In the early hours of the next morning, Tobias once more went for the doctor. The doctor was present at the death.

  Carine sat by her father’s bed while Toby and the doctor went downstairs, to have a drink, and for the doctor to write the death certificate.

  She spoke to her father. ‘You once asked me if I remembered anything about the time Mammy went away. I said no. I said no because I daren’t say yes. I didn’t know how to say yes. I couldn’t have put something into words. And you expected me to say no. You willed me to say that. But there was something, and I’ve dreamed it since and will dream it again. So I’m glad you’re gone. You can do me no more harm.’

  But the damage was done, and harm will spread like bindweed.

  After that day, certain people noticed a change in Carine. Some put it down to bereavement, or the shock of a returned fiancé.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Quiet Sunday

  By Sunday morning, I had heard from my contact in the East Lancashire Regiment about Lieutenant Edward Chester. As a result of wounds, he underwent operations and spells of rehabilitation on and off for over four years. If his friends were told of his death in action, then their informant was wrong.

  I decided to call on Carine before going on to my parents in Wakefield, for Sunday dinner.

  It was a quiet morning. I stopped the car outside the studio. Knowing how much time Carine spends in there, I looked through the window. There was no one there.

  I went round to the back and through the yard.

  She answered my knock almost straight away. The sight of her, drained of colour, her lips white, dark shadows under her eyes, gave me goose bumps. For the first time, she looked her age, and more.

  ‘Carine, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, come in Kate.’

  There was a strange atmosphere in the kitchen, as if no one lived here, a sense of absence. She looked as if she hadn’t slept. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She pointed to a piece of white card on the table, and a paint box and brushes. On the bottom right corner of the card, she had painted three lilies. In the centre of the card, she had pencilled faint lines and the words CLOSED DUE TO BEREAVEMENT, which she had begun to fill in with black. She had blacked in the first three words.

  ‘Carine, what’s happened? Who has died?’

  ‘Dad died.’ She nodded, as if agreeing with herself, and then she grimaced. ‘It was time for him to go.’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry. When did he die?’

  ‘In the early hours. Come up and see him.’

  Naturally, I was obliged to pay my respects. I followed Carine up the stairs.

  She showed me into the small bedroom. The curtains were closed. They moved slightly, in the draught from the open window. The fireplace had been cleaned, and a vase of tulips set in the grate. Mr Whitaker lay on his bed, very nicely set out, wearing a white nightshirt. A starched linen sheet trapped him to the bed, though his arms had been placed outside the sheet. A square of linen with knotted corners covered his head, the sort a man might wear on holiday to keep the sun off his bald patch. A white bandage had been tied around his head and under his chin.

  We stood for a few moments in silence. I did not know him well and so would not kiss his forehead, as people sometimes did. I managed to say that he looked peaceful. In truth, he simply looked grey.

  When we left the room, I asked, ‘Did someone come?’ Meaning, to lay him out.

  ‘The nurse came. She brought the tulips from her husband’s allotment. While she laid him out, I ran up his shroud from a sheet, on mother’s sewing machine.’

  ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘Not really.’

  We went downstairs. ‘Where is Tobias?’

  ‘At the pub.’

  ‘Shall I stay with you?’

  ‘You have somewhere to go, I can tell.’

  ‘Sunday dinner with my parents. I can put them off, or you can come if you want to get out. I suppose Tobias will be back soon.’

  ‘I suppose so. But you didn’t come because someone had told you about Dad?’

  ‘I came because of news about Edward Chester, from my contact in the East Lancashire Regiment.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  We sat down at the table. She picked up her paint brush, dipped the tip in an egg cup of water, dabbed it on the black paint and began to fill in the word Bereavement.

  I told her what I had learned, and added, ‘Perhaps Tobias made a mistake, and he thought that Edward had been killed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It does seem unlikely.’

  ‘Tobias saw a place where he might get his feet under the table. I was the fool, not to enquire myself, not to try and find out more.’

  ‘Do you think that Edward was unwilling to come back to you because of the seriousness of his injuries?’

  ‘I can’t think about that now.’ She worked quickly, completing the word, Bereavement. ‘Are you in a desperate rush?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want you to give me a lift. Will you wait while I wash my face and change my dress?’

  ‘Yes of course. Where will you go?’

  She reached for a scrap of paper and wrote a note. ‘Gone out with Kate – put sign on door for tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m not telling him but I need fresh air, peace and quiet. I’ll catch a train to Ben Rhydding and walk on Ilkley Moor.’

  With some misgivings, I dropped Carine at the railway station. She insisted that she would be all right.

  Mother waved to me from the window seat. She had a book in her hand. By the time I opened the door she – usually the most languorous of souls who would not have moved from the spot or put down her novel – was by the front door.

  She was wearing a Liberty print silk dress, smudges of spring colours, with the bodice in a contrasting design to the skirt and sleeves. ‘Your Aunt Berta sent it,’ she said when I admired her dress. ‘Turns me into the peacock I used to be.’

  The creamy turban may have been less a flag of fashion than a sign that her hair would not do as she intended. She was without stockings, wore sandals, and made me feel suddenly frumpy in the olive linen dress and jacket that she would dismiss as wartime khaki uniform.

  Normally, I would have told her that a friend’s father had just died, but she seemed in such an odd mood that I thought it better to say nothing about that.

  She waved me in. ‘Look around you.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘This house. Look at everything. Start in the drawing room.’

  No one else in the street calls this room a drawing room. For the old-fashioned, it is a parlour, for the moderns it is the front room.

  ‘Look at it as if you have never seen it before …’

  ‘Mother, how can I when I’ve seen it ten thousand times?’

  ‘… and then the rest of the house.’

  I looked about. Surely I would have noticed if she had changed something.

  Dutifully, I did a visual inventory. The drawing room has English oak floorboards, highly polished enough for a person to break a leg if they step the wrong way onto one of the Indian rugs. The wallpaper is William Morris Acanthus. Cream linen throws cover the sofa and chairs. On one side of the fireplace is a rosewood writing desk, and on the other side a glass-fronted bookcase. Gracing the mantelshelf are silver-framed photographs of my parents’ wedding and of me with my twin brothers when I was about nine years old and they were two. On the wall opposite the fireplace hangs an oil painting of Wakefield Cathedral by a local artist. Once there had been a large piano that my mother brought with her when she married. That disappeared before I began lessons. A smaller piano appeared in the dining room.

  I turned to her. She had grown up with the expectation of marrying into the aristocracy and living in a stately home. Yet she followed her heart and married a policeman.

  ‘This is far more comfortable and le
ss draughty than some of the piles you might have ended up rattling about in. And no one else would have moved into a police house and made it so very beautiful.’

  She gave a satisfied snort, a substitute for tears. ‘And with my own money.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Neither did your father. He has no idea of quality or costs.’ She patted my arm. ‘You have understood.’

  We walked through the hall into the kitchen and out into the back garden that sloped up towards the apple tree. There was the swing, rusting at the hinges.

  Mother gave it a push. ‘So many arguments about that swing – whose turn it was to be pushed, and who pushed too hard.’

  There was the spot where our failed police bloodhound was buried. We had named him Constable as his consolation for being dismissed from the force. Mother had said calling him Constable was a mistake. She claimed that being a bloodhound of little brain, he would forget his connection with law and order and imagine his destiny was to paint pictures. We saw how Constable’s paws twitched when he slept, a sign that he dreamed of holding a brush. We would say, ‘Look, he is painting in his sleep.’ We discussed his specialism: gentle landscapes.

  My young twin brothers, Simon and Matthew, loved drawing with crayons which they wore down to the stubs. They would sit with Constable, asking the dog’s opinion of their pictures, invariably reported as favourable.

  We walked back up the garden and sat on the bench under the window. I waited. She would come to it, whatever it was.

  A blackbird lighted on the apple tree. Next door’s cat, sitting on the wall, watched the bird. That cat so much wanted the gift of flight.

  Mother took a deep breath. ‘I curse that war. You and Gerald should have been here today with children. You would have had three. I dreamed of them, a girl and two boys.’

  I thought perhaps she was dreaming of us, me and the twins. ‘How old were they in your dream, these children?’

  ‘Young, all young.’ She took my hand. ‘Are you going to find someone else?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it. Not to marry anyway.’

  ‘Your friend from Scotland Yard called.’