Broken Music (9 page)

With held breath, they all watched as he dived and emerged safely once more, then climbed to poise himself for yet another dive. Nella closed her eyes and lay back, unable to watch anymore. The sunny afternoon had become sultry and full of tensions, with Marianne somehow at the centre. She realised, with a shock, what had actually been going on for weeks. Marianne and Grev, a perfect pair, their heads bent together over the piano. But also Marianne with Rupert, playing tennis, laughing together. And come to that, Marianne with Steven, discussing a book his mother had given her, which she had found difficult to understand. Mrs Rafferty was at last growing impatient with her. Marianne was neither offended nor deterred. But neither did she make any progress into authorship. She went on endlessly scribbling in her notebooks, with nothing ever coming to fruition, so perhaps Mrs Rafferty was right to be impatient.

Did Marianne, wondered Nella, opening her eyes and staring at her sister, see these young men who surrounded her merely as romantic characters, grist to her mill…or was she, perhaps, just flirting a little? More than a little – pitting them one against the other? Marianne?

Rupert dived again, another perfect dive, followed by another climb. It was evident he intended to go on until he dropped from exhaustion – or killed himself. Even William was looking alarmed. He met Grev's eyes and they began to pack up the picnic things. Nella helped them. They shouted to Rupert to tell him they were leaving and after another defiant dive, deprived of an audience, he followed.

Afterwards, Nella only saw the Gypsy again in the distance. There was no doubt it was pleasanter, knowing he wasn't hovering in the background.

 

The same tribe of Gypsies, with their brightly painted caravans, their exotic womenfolk, colourful clothing and gold earrings – worn by the men, as well as their women – had been an intermittent part of the village life for as long as Nella could remember, their comings and goings, like the seasons, in accordance with some mysterious pattern known only to them. They were objects of curiosity, tolerated as long as they didn't set up camp too near the village, if not trusted an inch by anyone: even the unworldly Father Dorkings had locked up the silver and emptied the poor box daily when they were around. While feeling sorry for the filthy, hungry-looking children with beseeching black eyes, whom their Gypsy mothers taught to hold out begging hands, the village women were careful not to leave their doors open behind them when they went indoors for a few coppers to buy clothes pegs and sprigs of lucky white heather. Snared rabbits and a poached pheasant or two were a hazard of life when they were about – and nothing more, after all, than certain villagers were known to be guilty of – and they were useful, though unreliable, at pea-picking and potato-harvesting. But tolerance grew thin when clothing disappeared from washing lines, even in broad daylight, and vegetables were pulled from the gardens, cows milked during the night. That was a sign for the Gypsies to disappear again.

As they had, at the first sign of trouble, the day after the tragedy. Silently packed up and disappeared in their horse-drawn caravans with their scruffy, wild dogs running behind, leaving no trace of themselves except the ashes of their fires. No one had ever expected them to have the face to come back.

Although a detective sergeant, as he was at the time of Marianne Wentworth's drowning, Herbert Reardon hadn't been let into all the finer details of the investigation. The salient facts had remained indelibly in his memory, but now he needed to find out more. Enquiries told him where he might find the inspector who had been in charge of the case: now retired and living in the Quarry Bank district on the other side of Stourbridge.

This was familiar country, the area where he'd been born, and he knew where to leave his motorcycle, in a little-used alley at the end of the steep street where Henry Paskin lived with his sister. He gave a delighted, tow-headed urchin a silver thrupenny bit to keep an eye on it. He felt a distinct pang of nostalgia for his own childhood – though truth to tell, he'd been glad enough to leave it behind – as he stepped around a group of pinafored little girls playing hopscotch on the pavement and watched a ragged-trousered lad trying to shin a lamp post, where no doubt he would remove the gas mantles out of mischief, if he managed to get to the top. Reardon grinned and ignored him; it was no business of his to stop the little varmint, now.

Henry Paskin's sister was standing on a pair of wooden steps that were placed on the pavement outside one of the brick-built terrace houses that lined the street, vigorously polishing glittering windows that showed starched white lace curtains inside. The doorstep had been ferociously whitened, and the brass doorknob and letter box polished so you could have parted your hair in the reflection.

A thin, sharp-featured woman with a red nose that indicated she might have digestive problems and a short temper, Emily Paskin wore a crossover pinny to protect her clothes, and a sacking apron to protect her pinny. What hair was not covered by a dust cap bristled at the front with metal curling pins. He stood, waiting until she should acknowledge him, not anxious to disturb her in her work, knowing how women like her could be when they were interrupted from ‘getting on', having had his ears boxed many a time by the aunt who'd taken care of him after his mother died, just for that.

‘Well?' she demanded presently, knowing he was there, but not stopping her attack on the windows, except for a sideways look, swiftly averted, that was becoming very familiar to him.

‘Miss Paskin? I'm looking for your brother, Henry,' he returned, after this less than welcoming salutation.

‘'E's out.'

‘When will he be back?'

‘Gawd knows.'

‘No idea when, Miss Paskin?'

‘What d'you want with him?'

‘I'll tell him that when I see him. Is there anywhere where I might find him?' he asked, resisting the impulse to tell her more plainly that it was none of her business. She was beginning to annoy him considerably.

‘Up the cut, fishing, where else? Spends half his life there, he does, anent the Delph Locks. And don't you go 'ticing him down the Glassmakers,' she called after him as he thanked her as politely as he could and made his escape.

 

The filthy canal, a pram wheel protruding through other rubbish onto its oily surface, looked an unappetising place in which to seek your dinner. He'd thought his senses blunted by what he'd had to eat out there in the trenches, but he wouldn't fancy any fish that came out of that lot, Reardon thought, as he parked his motorcycle and slithered down the bank at the side of the bridge on to the well-trodden towpath.

Henry Paskin was sitting on the canalside on an upturned wooden box, his pipe in his mouth, bundled up in an old coat, with a floppy flat cap pulled well down over his eyes and his rod propped beside him. He might have been asleep but for the occasional puff of smoke from the pipe that protruded from under the cap brim. Reardon stopped beside him. ‘How do, Henry.' He wouldn't have dared call him Henry in the old days, but the war, and the fact that neither was now in the police, were great levellers.

Henry lifted his cap brim, and stared. ‘It's Herbert Reardon,' Reardon said.

‘Young Bert.' After a second, a great paw was extended. ‘God Almighty, what they done to yer, old cock?'

‘Same as was done to a lot more,' said Reardon, and sat down beside him, amongst the dried stalks and stems of last year's weeds, and the trampled and dusty grass.

‘Bloody war. Oh ar. That bloody war.'

No more would be said on the subject, but that suited Reardon. The direct approach, typical of Paskin, who had been too old himself to fight, made him feel much better. It was the sympathy, or the embarrassment, that got you down. He'd always liked working for Henry, who was slow and broad-spoken, who liked people to see him as a plain, Black Country bloke, and laid the accent on thick – when he remembered. He lifted his elbow a sight too often, but he was the best policeman Reardon had known. ‘How d'you find me then?' he asked.

‘Your sister told me you might be here – with a bit of reluctance. Seemed to think we'd end up in the boozer.'

Henry grinned. ‘Her ain't so bad, our Em. Don't mean half of what her says.' He paused and pocketed his pipe. ‘Looked after me like a mother, since Ada went, and her knows I haven't touched a drop since then, believe it or not. What yer after, then, Bert?'

Reardon watched his mittened hands dive into his fishing basket and rummage about amongst the lines and hooks and maggot tins, presently emerging with a bottle of cold tea, which he handed to Reardon, and a hefty packet of doorstep sandwiches wrapped in newspaper, which he proceeded to divide. ‘Have one of our Em's sarnies. Plenty for both on us.'

‘Thanks.' Reardon's hands were already numb. A cold, sneaky wind crept along the canal and a dankness floated up from the water. He took a swig out of the bottle and passed it back, wishing he had his own Thermos. ‘God, it's perishing out here. How do you stick it?'

‘I'm used to it,' Henry shrugged. ‘Well?'

‘Remember that last case we had, before the war, that young woman in Broughton Underhill?'

‘Ar, I do.'

Reardon put him in the picture and Henry chewed and listened and then became serious. ‘Whose damfool idea is it to rake all that up?'

Reardon avoided a direct answer. ‘I don't know about raking it up – was it ever rightly settled?'

Henry raised his eyebrows but didn't press his question. Silently, he wrapped the remains of his sandwich in the newspaper, extracted his pipe and a rubber pouch from his pocket, knocked out the still-smouldering dottle and with deliberation repacked the pipe and lit it. Clouds of rich tobacco smoke wafted across the scummy surface of the canal.

‘It weren't up to me, Bert, that. I were pulled off the job by old Tightarse Gifford,' he said at last, referring to their revered superintendent at that time. ‘You know as how he was always one for a quiet life. Retired now and writing his memoirs, last I heard,' he added with a sardonic laugh. ‘Mind you, for once, I thought he had it right. We was all of a mucker at the station what with the war starting and orders coming from here, there and the next place, didn't know where we was at – and there were nothing to say it weren't an accident, so what were the use of hanging on?'

Reardon finished Em's sandwich: full-bodied, tasty cheese, plenty of it, and sharp pickle, when he'd anticipated a filling as thin and begrudging as Em herself. She was rising in his estimation. ‘Trouble is, there's not many believe the accident theory, Henry.'

‘So they'd rather believe it was suicide, then?' Henry shook his head. ‘Come on, cock, that won't wash. Suicide's a stigma nobody wants.' He paused, eased his belt with his thumbs. He had grown a paunch, despite allegedly being off the beer. ‘Specially when it involves a young wench like that. 'Tain't right, young 'uns going afore the old folk.' Reardon remembered it wasn't only his wife, Ada, that Henry had lost, but also a son at Gallipoli, and that was probably why Ada had died too, of a broken heart, it was said. ‘Mind you, I'm not sure I believed she'd fallen in, all accidental like, meself.'

‘So you do think it was suicide?'

‘I didn't say that. Although you've seen – we've all seen – youngsters doing away with theirselves for no reason anybody in their right mind can see. Feelings run high when you'm that age. Every little trouble seems a big 'un.'

‘True enough. Except that nobody seems to think Marianne Wentworth had any troubles.'

‘That's what they all say.'

‘She left no note.'

‘They don't allus, do they?'

In the distance a narrowboat piled high with coal was negotiating the last of the series of locks, emerging with its gaudy paint bright in the sun. The slow-plodding carthorse that would resume pulling it was already patiently waiting to be hitched up again, cropping what grass there was near the towpath, with the bargee's wife standing by its side, knitting, apparently as impervious to the cold as Henry was.

‘So…if she didn't kill herself, and if it wasn't an accident, there's only the other thing left.'

‘'Owd on! There were no indications of foul play, remember.'

‘Maybe we missed something.'

‘Look at it this road,' Henry said after a minute. ‘Facts: last seen, previous evening, going to bed late after a party. Found, morning after, eight o' clock, by the gamekeeper's dog, floating under the jetty, her frock caught on the rotten posts. Questions: Why did she go out on her own that time o' night? Why did she venture out on to that jetty when everybody knew it was a death trap? Why did she go down to the lake at all? Answer to that one: To meet somebody.'

‘Do you know that she did?'

‘We never knew she didn't.'

Reardon digested this confirmation of what his own mind had told him all along. ‘So you're agreeing with me, Henry?'

‘I didn't say that, neither. What I am saying is, you'm on a hiding to nothing trying to shift it otherwise.'

‘Who was questioned?'

‘Everybody she knew – or them as was left. Them young blokes – that young Foley from the Big House, and the Austrian bloke, them as she'd been running around with all summer – they was already off, same day.'

‘I remember. A bit funny, wasn't it, that?'

‘Not when you think how everybody was rushing to join up. One on 'em yourself, if I remember right.'

That was true enough. Reardon had queued, like hundreds more, outside the recruiting station, fired up with patriotism, the spirit of adventure and, in his own case, the feeling that he was lucky to have got as far as he had in the police, and wasn't destined to get much further, except by filling dead men's shoes, so he might as well try something else.

‘Of course,' Henry added thoughtfully, ‘there was them gyppos an' all. Her sister thought one their lads had his eye on Marianne. But they'd made theirselves scarce even before word got round that she'd been found, and we never caught up with 'em, though it ain't hardly likely a wench as well brought up as her would've gone out in the dark to meet one of that lot, anyroad.'

‘They're back in Broughton Underhill, her sister told me.'

‘Just goes to show then. I've no love for the likes of them, skiving lot of toerags they are, but they wouldn't show their faces again if they'd owt to be afeard on.' He said suddenly, ‘I did hear as how you weren't back in the force, yet.'

‘I've only been home a week or two. I'm not sure whether I want to go back at all.'

‘Bollocks, of course you want to go back! You were all set to be a bostin' copper. You know a recommendation for your promotion came through just after you'd gone?'

‘What?' Reardon stared. He'd always been extremely ambitious, and had he known that was in the offing, might he not have been so keen to rush off?

‘Thought not. Well, it did, and I know for a fact they had their eyes on you, them upstairs. Don't go chucking away all you'd gained for nowt. But take my advice and pack this little lot in – if it gets round you're doing this off yer own bat, that's you finished.'

Reardon knew Henry was right: without authority to back him up and allow him to ask questions, this was highly likely to be the case. He watched as the barge, now fully through the lock, stopped about fifty yards away. It looked as though it was being moored. Dinnertime, it smelt like. ‘I believe the constable in the village is still the same one who was there then?'

Henry sighed. ‘You allus was pig-headed. Well, if you won't listen to me, go careful. Village constable did you say?' He laughed. ‘Ted Bracey. He'll be there till he's pensioned off. You can ask him what he remembers but I doubt you'll get much out of him. 'Tain't in his interests.'

Reardon scrambled to his feet and held his hand out. ‘It's been good seeing you, Henry.'

Henry nodded. ‘You an' all.' As Reardon turned away, he added, ‘You can try asking that gamekeeper. The one as found her – name of Naylor, if I remember right.' He held out a mittened hand. The fingers stuck out like sausages. ‘And good luck, cock, with everything.'