Blood on the Bones (24 page)

‘A third sister? No,’ Rafferty admitted, ‘we didn't know.’

‘Well, there was. Still is, come to that. If you want to know more about the family, you can always speak to Rosalind. Rosalind Wilson, Rosalind Jones as was. She's still alive. I even have her address.‘

Slowly, Rafferty lowered his tea cup to its saucer.

Like
her late sister, Rosalind Wilson was as adamant in the spoken word as Sophia Ansell had been in the written, that Annemarie had not given birth to an illegitimate child and was certainly not Peter Bodham's natural mother. Only she was more verbose in her denials.

Less laid-back in her entertaining that Mrs Smithson, Mrs Wilson had chosen to entertain them in her lounge rather than her kitchen. Her house was semi-detached, but of the older, more roomy sort than the cubby-holes that modern builders erected. Unlike the friendly and gossipy older woman, she didn't offer to make them tea.

Perhaps, Rafferty thought, after he had explained the reason for their visit, her natural affront that he should imply the stigma of illegitimacy applied to a member of her family, was sufficient to remove the basic social graces. Or perhaps she just didn't like entertaining policemen in her home. The way Rosalind Wilson sat, stiff-backed in her armchair, wearing an outraged expression, seemed to confirm this possibility.

‘I assure you, inspector, my sister, Annemarie, did not give birth to an illegitimate baby as a young woman. The very idea.’

Clearly, Mrs Wilson was of the mind-set that such things might happen to other women's sisters, but they certainly did not happen to hers.

Perhaps she thought she had been a bit too vehement in her rejection of the idea, because now she softened and provided a more reasoned argument. ‘Don't you think I would have known if she had? How could I not? We lived in the same house. Shared the same bedroom even. I admit we weren't close – she was always closer to our elder sister, Sophia – but we were sisters. Why anyone would want to tell you such wicked lies when Annemarie's been dead for thirty years, I can't imagine. But when I find out who they are, they'll get the stiff end of my tongue.’

Rafferty studied Rosalind Wilson, from her neatly French-pleated subtly red-tinted hair to the stylish, tailored trousers and well-cut linen top. He got the impression that, after his phone call arranging their visit, she had dressed so smartly to make them understand that she was a respectable woman from a respectable family. He also got another impression: that the stiff end of her tongue would be very stiff indeed.

He admitted to himself that she seemed unshakeable in her conviction, even genuinely sincere in what she was saying. But during their conversation she had not only revealed herself to be an extremely garrulous woman, who would use ten words where three would suffice, she had also admitted that, at fifty nine, she was the youngest of the three Jones sisters. Seven years younger than Annemarie the middle sibling, she had admitted she and Annemarie hadn't been close, so it was quite possible that she would have been kept in ignorance of Annemarie's teenage shame.

Many young girls at the time, pregnant with illegitimate babies, had been packed off to distant aunts, cousins or whatever to await the birth, long before any pregnancy would be visible. Some, as Llewellyn had said, had even ended up in the old county asylums, it being a prevalent belief back then that young women who became pregnant out of wedlock were mentally below par, not to say degenerate and needed locking up.

So it was possible that, to this day, the youngest sister, with her unfortunate tendency to let her tongue run away with her, had been kept completely in the dark. The neighbours, too, would likely have been told some falsehood to account for the months of Annemarie's absence.

But what of the older sister, the late Mrs Ansell? Again, Rafferty found himself regretting this sister's recent death. Rosalind Wilson had told them that both her late sisters had been close. Had Sophia Ansell known about, or at least suspected, Annemarie's plight? Surely Annemarie would have confided in someone? Who better than the older, wiser sister to whom she was so close?

It seemed possible, maybe even probable, was Rafferty's conclusion, even though Sophia Ansell's letter to Peter Bodham had denied that Annemarie might be his natural mother. In Rafferty's experience, moral attitudes learned early tended to remain with a person throughout their life. That was why all religions liked to imbue children with their ideology and the younger the better. Hadn't he spent most of his life weighed down with Catholic guilt and with a hard taskmaster for a conscience?

‘Your sister decided she had a religious vocation while still in her teens, I understand?’ Rafferty remarked to Mrs Wilson.

Mrs Wilson gave a quick nod and looked set to comment at length, but Rafferty held up his hand to stay her tongue.

‘So, she would, I presume, have gone on Catholic retreats of some months’ duration during this time?’

‘As you rightly point out, inspector, my late sister, Annemarie, had a religious vocation, though she didn't actually enter the religious life as a postulant until she was almost twenty-one.’ She paused and gazed indignantly at him as if what he had implied had just sunk in.

‘Just a minute, inspector. You can't seriously be implying that Annemarie would have used her faith as a cloak to bring a pregnancy to term and to give birth secretly at the address you say is on this Peter Bodham's birth certificate?’

Put baldly like that it did seem unlikely, Rafferty admitted to himself. And given that, if Sister Clare had given birth prior to entering a convent as a postulant proper, the birth and her death were all so long ago and any birth so wrapped in secrecy and denial that getting to the truth so far down the line seemed unlikely. Particularly as the sole remaining member of her immediate family clearly knew nothing at all of any value to them and would probably have continued in her denials even if she had known.

For a moment, he considered asking her to agree to provide a DNA sample so they could compare it with that of the dead man. But she looked so closed up and determined to rebut any suggestion of immorality in her family that he knew she would be certain to refuse. Maybe later, she would agree, if curiosity overcame her outrage.

Their visit had been a disappointing one and Rafferty felt a bit deflated. But then it occurred to him that there might be a way to get at the truth.

When
they got back to the station, Rafferty asked Llewellyn to find out if the late Mrs Ansell had left a will.

‘A will?’ Llewellyn questioned.

'Yes, Little Sir Echo, a will. If I'm right and that the missing letter that Peter Bodham received was from Mrs Ansell – a Mrs Ansell, moreover, who knew she was dying – she might have had a crisis of conscience in that in denying that Annemarie was his natural mother she was also denying him knowledge of his own parentage.

‘We already know that Sophia Ansell died at home, with her family gathered round her for comfort. I wonder whether it didn't strike her as cruel that she had denied the solitary Bodham any hope of the same source of comfort from which she drew strength. Maybe she finally accepted that everyone was entitled to know where they came from.’

‘You think she might have also left him something in her will?’

‘That's the general idea. If she did, it would prove beyond any reasonable doubt that our Annemarie was also the late Peter Bodham's Annemarie. Why would Mrs Ansell leave him anything if he was the total stranger she had previously told him he was?’

Llewellyn nodded. Rafferty could see that his sergeant's logical mind approved of his theory. ‘I'll get on to it right away.’

The door had barely closed on Llewellyn, than Mary Carmody knocked and entered.

‘So did you manage to find anything on Bodham's landlord or the precise nature of their relationship?’ Rafferty asked.

‘Nothing doing on the lover angle,’ his DS reported. ‘I asked discreetly all round the neighbourhood. Not a whisper of any relationship beyond friendship. From what I discovered, I think it was just a case that Mr Mitchelson lost his own wife and adult son eighteen months ago. He's a long way from being over their loss and I gather that Peter Bodham resembled his dead son a fair bit.’

Rafferty rubbed tired eyes. ‘OK, Mary. Thanks. It was never a likely angle, especially given where Bodham's body ended up, but it had to be checked out. At least your efforts mean another possibility has been squared away. Take a canteen break, have something to eat. Then come back here. I want to have another little chat with Father Kelly.’

Mary looked quizzically at him and asked, ‘You wouldn't prefer to wait till Sergeant Llewellyn's available?’

Rafferty smiled. ‘Mary, believe me when I say that this interview isn't one suited to DS Llewellyn. He had a sheltered upbringing and I think he might be shocked by some of the questions I'm going to have t0 ask our man of the cloth.’

‘Ah. Like that, is it?’

‘Exactly like that,’ Rafferty confirmed. ‘I suspect it's just a woman scorned who has started to spread this rumour about our good Father, because I hadn't heard a whisper to suggest the possibility before today, when some public-spirited female rang the Incident Room with the news. Anonymous, of course. Aren't they always? Anyway, off you go and I'll see you in an hour.’

‘A
sodomite? Me? How dare you, young Rafferty!’ Father Kelly glanced at Mary Carmody as if inviting her to share his outrage. ‘And to make such a suggestion in front of a young woman, too. I have never lusted after young men in my life.’

‘That's what I thought. But when the possibility was mentioned–’

‘Who mentioned such a possibility?’

Father Kelly was righteously indignant. Of course, he had a well-deserved reputation as a Lothario to be upheld. At least in his own eyes.

‘You know I can't tell you that, Father. Not that I know who the person was, anyway, as it was an anonymous caller. But it had to be checked, especially in view of the fact that Peter Bodham, the man in the grave, was never seen with a girlfriend.’

Father Kelly was so outraged that, perhaps for the first time in his life, his normally ready tongue was stilled.

Rafferty took advantage of this golden silence gift from the gods to question the good Father about another anonymous suggestion that had been doing the rounds. He could only assume these rumours had been put about out of spite by one or other of the priest's discarded harem determined on spreading gossip of the most wounding kind. ‘Maybe you could help us with another possibility? I've seen you watching that pretty novice, Cecile. It was just spiritual guidance you wanted to give her?’

Father Kelly drew himself up, not without a certain dignity. ‘Yes,’ he said. 'It was and is just spiritual guidance. Shame on you, Rafferty, for thinking anything else. The dear ladies at the convent have put themselves out of bounds of every man's lust. Naturally, I respect that.' He spared Mary Carmody another quick glance. ‘Have I, too, not embraced virtue, in all its forms?’

Rafferty managed to keep a straight face, although his expression warned the priest – don't push it. But while the priest's reputation as a smooth talking ladies' man who had got past more knickers than Durex meant it was easy for Rafferty to dismiss the possibility that the priest had embraced homosexuality in his twilight years, the same easy dismissal couldn't apply to any sexual relationship he might have tried to kindle with the young novice. Not that the priest's morals were any concern of his, of course. His own and that of the rest of his family were enough of a burden.

He would have wondered how the priest had got away with such un-priest-like behaviour for so long, if it wasn't for all that he had read in the media in recent years, about the other scandals concerning Catholic priests and their un-priest-like doings. He could only suppose that the Catholic hierarchy were just relieved that their man in Elmhurst wasn't yet another paedophile and confined his attentions to over-the-age-of-consent women.

After Rafferty had made a few more failed attempts to soothe the priest's ruffled pride, he and Mary Carmody made their escape before Father Kelly should so forget himself and launch a physical assault to add to his other, plentiful sins. If the priest forced him to arrest him, Rafferty guessed that the golden silence wouldn't long endure and that he would be the one to pay the price of Father Kelly's newly-regained loquaciousness.

Back
at the police station, Rafferty gazed unenthusiastically at the day's remaining post still piled in his in tray. Desultorily, he reached for it.

He hoped that if Llewellyn managed to confirm that Sophia Ansell had remembered Peter Bodham in her will, it would be a firm indication that Sister Clare must indeed be Bodham's natural mother. He hoped that such a confirmation would move them forward.

But now he wondered whether this was true. What difference would it make to their inquiry when such a central figure had been in her grave for three decades?

Now that he had time to think it through, Rafferty was inclined to feel his latest suspicion would make no difference at all. How could it?

‘'Jesus,’ Rafferty muttered as he fought his way through the sellotape confining the topmost item of post and stared at the thickness of the file. ‘Three quarters of an inch of waffle on why criminals commit crime,’ he muttered disbelievingly. 'I could tell 'em in six words, with one of them saved to describe the idiot who wrote this report. Criminals commit crime because they're too stupid, work-shy, immoral, lazy and unpunctual to get a legal income. And the idiot who wrote this trash is too blinkered to look beyond poverty as a reason for crime.

‘Bumf.’ Impatiently, he threw the fat file in his pending tray.

‘More bumf.’ A second weighty missive joined the first in a ‘pend’ likely to last for all eternity if Rafferty had anything to do with it. Unless, that was, Llewellyn chose to ruin his eyesight on it and give him the gist.

After so precipitously disposing of the first two items in his in-tray, Rafferty stared at the third letter. It had been concealed by the fat bumfery. He immediately recognised the envelope addressed to ‘Inspector ‘N’ Rafferty'. It was another letter from the blackmailer, his second that day. He'd hoped that morning – since there hadn't been one for some time – that the blackmailer had tired of his taunts. But now, here he was receiving double bubble.