A Woman Unknown (12 page)

‘What’s the matter, Caroline?’ He came closer.

She half fell into his arms. ‘Oh Rupert, Rupert.’

He closed his eyes as he held her. It was time for me to go. The two of them were in a world of their own. Suddenly he opened his eyes, looked at me in surprise and across Miss Windham’s right shoulder said, ‘What has happened?’

‘I brought Miss Windham some bad news.’

She broke away from his embrace and said in a choked voice, ‘Everett is dead.’

‘No! No.’

As I walked away, he called, ‘Wait!’ Keeping an arm around Miss Windham, he came across to me. ‘Come inside. Please.’

I did not want to be cross-questioned, but he placed a friendly arm around me also, leaving me with the alternative of an undignified wriggle out of his grasp or acceptance of his invitation. The three of us walked together to the ramshackle house.

A boss-eyed housekeeper glared as we emerged into the shabby hallway from a dilapidated porch. Rupert Cromer left dusty white footprints on the tiles. He opened a door into a dimly lit parlour. The first thing that caught my eye was the bust that stood on a plinth in the corner of the room, lit by a shaft of sunlight. It was Caroline Windham.

I remembered it from his exhibition. It was the piece that had caused a stir, and allowed the connection of Caroline to the abstract nude. It was executed with great delicacy and subtlety. I looked from it to her, and back.

‘That’s beautiful, and such a good likeness.’

Cromer bowed and then kissed Caroline’s cheek. ‘Great things are possible with such a regal sitter.’ He said quietly, ‘Everett commissioned the bust’

She sank into a chair. ‘You can’t let anyone else take it, Rupert.’

‘I won’t.’

He glanced at the piece with admiration, which could have been for his own handiwork, or for his sitter.

Caroline said, ‘I’m staying the night, Rupert. Is that all right?’

‘I’ll have a bed made up.’

‘I don’t want to be at Somersgill tomorrow when they hear about Everett’s death, I couldn’t bear their pity.’

He knelt before her, put his arms around his waist and his head in her lap. ‘You’ve lost the love of your life. I’ve lost the best friend a man could have.’

I paid attention to a sketch pad pinned to an easel. It was covered in tiny drawings that may have been ideas for larger pieces of work. One was the sculptor himself, an odd little self-portrait of man and motorbike. Another was drawings from different angles of a Venus figure.

The strange thing about this figure was that it had Deirdre Fitzpatrick’s face. Or was I, like Sykes and Fitzpatrick, becoming obsessed with the woman?

I was about to turn away and slip from the room unnoticed, when Cromer came over to me. ‘I’m so sorry. It was kind of you to come.’

‘Not at all, but I’ll go now. Goodbye, Mr Cromer. Goodbye, Miss Windham. I’m very sorry.’

A moment later, I was walking back to my car.

My visit had not gone as intended. Had the same person who fired the shot that grazed Caroline Windham’s arm strangled Everett Runcie? It was possible. The perpetrator may have preferred a gun, but that would not be a very good method in a hotel, where there would be no excuse of accident if a bullet was matched.

There would be a list of shooters who were here on the estate on Monday 13
^th
August. Where? And how would I get my hands on it?

Newly commissioned Special Constable Sykes felt a mounting excitement as he waited in the alley at the side of the Metropole, admiring the Clyno motorbike, checking its tyres. Hardly anyone walked up the alley on Sunday, when the hat shop and tobacconist that adjoined the hotel were closed. It was the perfect spot to wait for the signal to tail his quarry. Dapper Hartigan, Leeds Irish lad turned New Yorker, was probably still pomading his hair.

When he was in the force, Sykes had always wanted to go undercover. Once upon a time, he fancied himself as a lamplighter, or a knife grinder, pushing a cart, knocking on doors, looking through windows. The motorbike knocked those ideas into a cocked hat.

The chief inspector had asked Mrs Shackleton’s permission to swear in Sykes as a special constable. He knew the area, could ride a motorbike, would be able to follow Hartigan and report on his movements.

Sykes did not know why the man was being followed. He was a person of interest before the murder. There was no obvious motive for Hartigan to have murdered
Runcie, but there was opportunity and proximity. He could be the killer.

Just when the motorbike tyres would stand no more checking, a constable came out of the hotel’s back door and gave him the nod. Sykes climbed on the motorbike and fired the engine into life. He edged towards King Street, holding back as he glanced to his right. Hartigan’s hired Rolls-Royce stood at the kerb, motor running. Nattily dressed in dark suit, felt hat and bow tie, Hartigan tipped the commissionaire who opened the car door for him. They were off. Sykes kept a discreet distance. He risked dodging up a side street once the car entered Briggate. He zigged and zagged, to come out further along the road and not make himself obvious. The street was less busy on a Sunday, with strolling pedestrians and the traffic more sparse than on weekdays.

It was a twisting journey, with several wrong turns, and a stop while the driver leaned out and asked directions. When they crossed Richmond Road, Sykes did a little detour, and fell back. He rode along a parallel street, just in time to see the Rolls cross Church Road. The car came to a halt by a Roman Catholic church. Sykes waited by the school building, which offered cover. He watched through the railings, keeping his distance. Since boyhood, he had disliked being too near a Catholic church. It was something bred in him that he could never shake, as if dreaded idolatry and superstition would ooze from the forbidding edifice and overpower him.

Hartigan did not go into the church. He went to the presbytery and knocked on the door. The priest must have been waiting. He emerged in his long black cassock,
funny little hat on his head, and wearing a narrow scarf around his neck. The clergyman carried a small bag. It would not in the least surprise Sykes to find that they were in cahoots over some deadly deed.

Hartigan held the car door open for the priest, and then climbed in beside him.

Sykes followed, beginning to worry that he would be spotted. The driver showed fewer hesitations now. They picked up speed.

The journey led out of the city, into the leafy suburbs where trees grew in large gardens and on the broad pavements. They passed Roundhay Park, and then turned left. Sykes kept the length of the street between them.

The Rolls entered the grounds of a nursing home. Sykes glanced at the sign: Ashville Nursing Home. He cycled past and parked his bike in the ginnel that bordered the nursing home grounds. There was a side gate that creaked as he opened it.

The gardens blazed with colour. If the nursing staff’s capabilities matched that of the gardeners, the patients would be fortunate indeed.

Who are you visiting, Mr Hartigan? Sykes asked silently.

Sykes watched from the shrubbery as Hartigan and the priest went inside. The driver lumbered out of the car, stretched, and lit a cigarette. He began to plod about the grounds. For a moment, Sykes wondered had he been spotted. The man found his way to a bench in the shade of an ash tree. The fellow might look a little on the dopey side, but he knew how to choose a vantage point that gave him a view of the path and the house while keeping an eye on his precious motor.

Like a man with legitimate business, Sykes strode to the front door that was open to the sunshine. A table in the tiled entry hall held a huge vase of roses. Beyond the wide oak staircase was a goods lift, large enough to carry wheelchairs. He looked up. At the top of the stairs, the two visitors were with a uniformed man who Sykes guessed had left the entry desk to escort them. They disappeared into a corridor.

Sykes quickly nipped behind the tall counter. A visitors’ book lay open, its neat column headings conveniently recording, date, time, name of visitor and person visited. Mr Hartigan and Father Daley were visiting Mrs Hartigan.

The man was visiting his mother. Sykes felt a twinge of disappointment. But he had done his job. He checked his watch, so as to be able to report how long the visitors stayed.

Sykes left by the side gate, back into the ginnel, out of sight. After about forty minutes, he heard the purr of the Rolls-Royce engine. He mounted his bike and followed.

The car returned the way it had come, back towards the park.

By the tram stop nearest the park, Sykes stopped, to avoid running down a child who had jumped off the tram ahead of his parents and dashed into the road. People were teeming off the tram, children hurrying towards the gates, a woman carrying a picnic basket. I should come here with Rosie and the kids on the next free Sunday, Sykes decided. And then he saw them.

Cyril Fitzpatrick stepped off the tram. He held out his hand and helped his wife alight. When they stepped onto the pavement, Fitzpatrick did not let go of Deirdre’s
hand. She was looking up at him, smiling and talking. He smiled back.

Typical, Sykes thought. After all Fitzpatrick’s moans and complaints, he and his wife had turned completely lovey-dovey. It was only five days ago that Fitzpatrick wanted a twenty-four watch kept on her. Mrs Shackleton was right. Leave them to sort out their own troubles. Deirdre Fitzpatrick was looking at her husband with something like adoration, as if he were the most handsome of film stars. He looked back at her with a doting gaze.

Damn! Sykes had let himself be diverted. The motor carrying Hartigan and the priest was well out of view.

It was with relief that Sykes caught up with the Rolls and watched it enter King Street. He did not wait to see whether Hartigan’s burly driver left it in the road or in the charge of a porter to be taken to the hotel’s garage. Sykes drove past the hotel and into the deserted alley where he secured the motorbike.

Moments later he was in the suite on the third floor that the Scotland Yard men had taken over. The bed and wardrobe had been moved out to make way for trestle tables. Sykes reported to the sergeant who kept the log book. The man was a dead ringer for the dentist Sykes visited last year. His wavy hair was the colour of a ginger nut, his skin ruddy and his eyes a washed-out blue. It was the none-too-clean hands and nicotine-stained fingers that most reminded Sykes of the dentist. He could feel the taste of the fat fingers in his mouth even now. Sergeant Wilson at least had the benefit of knowing his stuff, unlike the dentist whose only certificates, framed
and placed prominently on the walls, were for tidiest allotment of 1920, and special mentions for marrows and carrots.

Sergeant Wilson greeted Sykes and pushed the log book across to him. Sykes sat down, took out his pen, and in his meticulous hand wrote a brief account of Hartigan’s doings, up to seeing him return to the hotel.

Wilson was in charge of both the Hartigan and murder log books. The entry ahead of Sykes’s read, Car and chauffeur booked for six p.m.

Sykes tapped the entry. ‘Am I stood down till then?’

Wilson nodded. ‘As long as you’re back in good time, in case our man gets ahead of himself.’

‘Good. I’m off home for my dinner.’

Sykes looked forward to his Yorkshire pudding and roast lamb. He took the steps like a lad let out of school.

In the hotel lobby, he glanced at a shapely pair of legs, a woman with a newspaper hiding her face.

She lowered the newspaper.

He stared. ‘Mrs Shackleton, what are you doing here?’

Wrong thing to say. She glared at him. ‘Sit down a minute. There’s something I want you to do.’

Sykes thought about his dinner. He was too loyal to wish he had used the other door.

Mrs Shackleton handed him an envelope. ‘See this gets to the chief inspector. It’s a cutting about an incident at the Fotheringham shoot. I’ve put a note in. He’ll want to investigate a connection to Runcie’s death.’

Why didn’t she give it to him herself, he wanted to ask. But his not to reason why. He took the envelope. ‘Right you are, boss.’ He stood up.

‘Not so fast, Mr Sykes. Marcus is bound to get hold of
a list of who was at the shoot on 13th August. When he does, I’d like a copy, and I don’t believe he will be inclined to give it to me personally. He’ll think I’m sticking my nose in and interfering with his investigation.’