Henrietta Who?

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Henrietta Who?

A C. D. Sloan Mystery

Catherine Aird

DEDICATION:

FOR ALL MY ELEVEN O'CLOCK FRIENDS, WITH LOVE.

ONE

Harry Ford was a postman. He was a postman of a vintage that is fast disappearing—that is to say he still did his delivery round on a bicycle. The little red vans had reached the large village of Down Martin but his own round of the smaller ones like Larking and Belling St. Peter was just as quick on two wheels as on four.

And he, for one, wasn't sorry. Gave you time to think, did a bicycle, even if it was a bit chilly at six o'clock of a dank morning in March. He was well muffled up against the cold, though, and he didn't mind the half dark. Besides, there were compensations. Another few weeks and he'd be abroad in that glorious early morning light that did something for the soul.

He braked gently as he coasted round the corner into Larking. He knew exactly where to brake on this road. In fact, there wasn't much of the village he didn't know after delivering its mail all these years.

An outsider would have said Larking was typical of a thousand other English villages. And, as it happened, this was true, though the people of Larking wouldn't have liked it. It had all the appurtenances of a normal village and the usual complement of important—and self-important—people: two different groups.

Spiritual leadership was provided by the Reverend Edward Bouverie Meyton (his father had been an admirer of Pusey). He lived at the rectory on the green by the church (one Diocesan leaflet, three appeals, a Missionary newsletter, the quarterly report of the Additional Curates' Society and an interesting letter from the Calleshire Historical Association).

Secular leadership came from James Augustus Heber Hibbs, Esquire, at The Hall (an assortment of bills, two closely typed pages of good advice from his stockbroker, a wine list, a picture postcard from his cousin Maude, and a letter from Scotland about a grouse moor).

Harry Ford, postman, was not deceived. He knew as well as anyone else that real power—as opposed to leadership—was vested behind the counter at the post office cum general store in the vast person of Mrs. Ricks (one seed catalogue: Mrs. Ricks rarely committed herself to paper).

Larking shared a branch of the Women's Institute with the neighboring hamlet of Belling St. Peter (Mrs. Hibbs was president) and a doctor with a cluster of small communities round about.

And everyone thought they knew everything about everyone else.

In which they were very mistaken.

Harry Ford looked at the post office clock, dimly visible through the uncurtained window—though only from habit. He had done the round so often that he didn't need a clock to know that—saving Christmas and a General Election—he would finish his Larking delivery at a quarter to eight in the fartherest farmhouse, where—letters or not—he would fetch up in the kitchen with a cup of scalding tea.

Only it didn't work out that way this morning.

For ever afterwards he was thankful that he had been on his bicycle and not in a little red van. If he had been in a van, as he frequently reiterated in the days that followed, he couldn't possibly have avoided the huddled figure that was lying in the road.

“Right on the corner at the far end of the village,” he said breathlessly into the telephone after he had taken one quick look and pedaled furiously back to the telephone kiosk outside the post office. “Lying in the road. Do come quickly,” he implored the ambulance. “If anything else comes round that bend they won't be able to avoid her either.”

That word “either” was full of profound significance.

“Where exactly?” demanded the man at the ambulance station. Larking was deep in rural Calleshire and the whole of that part of the county was an intricate network of minor roads. And it wasn't really light yet.

“Through Larking village proper,” said Ford, “and out on the other road to Belling St. Peter.”

“The other road?” countered the man on the telephone, who had been caught out by bad directions before.

“Not the main road to Belling. The back road. Come to Larking post office and then fork left and she's about a quarter of a mile down the road on the bad bend.”

“Right you are. You get back to her then.” The duty man on the Berebury Ambulance Station switchboard flipped a lever which connected him with the crew room. “Emergency just come in, Fred. Back of beyond, I'm afraid. Woman lying in the road.”

“Dead?”

“Caller didn't say she was alive,” he said reasonably, “and he didn't mention injuries. Just that she was lying in the road.”

“Dead then,” said the experienced Fred.

“Or drunk,” said the man in charge who had been at the game even longer.

She wasn't drunk.

Harry Ford, going back to have a second, more considered look, decided that beyond any doubt at all she was dead. He had been almost sure the first time by the inadequate gleam of his bicycle lamp but now with the sky growing lighter every minute he was absolutely certain.

Her Majesty's Mails being his prime concern, he propped his bicycle safely in the deep hedge, that same deep hedge that made this a blind corner, then he came back and stood squarely in the middle of the road. He would be seen by anyone coming now. Not, he decided, that there was ever likely to be much traffic on this road—still less so early in the morning.

This line of thought proved productive.

Not only, now he came to think of it, would there be almost no vehicles using this road first thing in the morning but it was equally unlikely that anyone would be walking along it either.

Still less a woman.

A man, perhaps, walking up to one of the farms to do the milking, but not a woman.

He considered in his mind the houses beyond. There were about six of them before you could say you were really out of Larking and then there was a two mile stretch with just three big farms, then Belling St. Peter.

Harry Ford advanced a little.

He might know her himself come to that—he knew most Larking people.

But he hadn't taken more than a step when he heard something coming. It was too soon for the ambulance; besides the direction was wrong. He cocked his head, listening. It wasn't a car either, he decided, getting out into the middle of the road ready to wave anything on wheels to a standstill. Quite suddenly the oncoming noise resolved itself into a tractor which pulled up to a quick halt as the driver saw him.

“Accident?” shouted the man at the wheel above the engine noise.

“'Fraid so,” shouted back Ford.

The tractor engine spluttered and died and there was a sudden silence.

“She's dead,” said Ford.

The young man got down from his high seat. It was one of the sons of the farmer from farther down the road, by the name of Bill Thorpe.

“I found her,” said Ford.

Not that it looked as if she'd been hit by a bicycle.

“She's from one of the cottages, isn't she?” said Thorpe, peering down. “You know, Harry, I think I know who she is.”

Ford, who to tell the truth, hadn't been all that keen on having a really close look on his own, was emboldened by the presence of the young man and bent down towards the cold white face. “Why, it's Mrs. Jenkins.”

“That's right,” said Thorpe.

“Boundary Cottage,” responded the postman automatically. (The odd letter, no circulars, very few bills.)

Thorpe looked round. “Hit and run,” he said bitterly. “Not even a ruddy skid mark.”

“It's a nasty corner,” offered Ford.

Thorpe was still looking at the road. “You can see where he hit the verge a bit afterwards and straightened up again.”

Ford didn't know much about cars. “Too fast?”

“Too careless.”

“You'd have thought anyone would have seen her,” agreed Ford.

“Walking on the wrong side, though.”

“Depends whether she was coming or going,” said Ford, who was the slower thinker of the two.

“I should have said she was walking home myself,” pronounced Thorpe carefully. “Last night.”

“Last night?” Ford looked shocked.

“If that mark on the grass is his front tire after he hit her when she was walking along the left hand side of the road towards her home.”

“But last night,” insisted Ford. “You mean she's been here all night?”

Thorpe scratched an intelligent forehead. “I don't know, Harry, but she isn't likely to have been walking home this morning in the dark, is she?”

Harry Ford shook his head. “A very quiet lady, I'd have said.”

“And,” continued Thorpe, pursuing his theory, “if she'd been going anywhere very early she'd have been walking the other way. No, I'd say myself she was going home last night.”

“Off the last bus, perhaps,” suggested the postman.

“Perhaps.”

“Her daughter's not at home then,” said Ford firmly. “Otherwise she'd have been out looking for her.”

“No, she's away still. Back at the end of term.” He looked down at the still figure in the road and said, “Sooner now.”

“I rang the ambulance,” said Ford, for want of something to say.

Thorpe moved with sudden resolution. “Well, then, I'll go and ring the police. Don't you let them move her until they come.”

“Right.”

Thorpe paused, one foot on the tractor. “Poor Henrietta. No father and now no mother either.”

Police Constable Hepple came over from Down Martin on his motorcycle and measured the road and drew chalk lines round the body and finally allowed the ambulance men to take it away. He, too, knew Mrs. Jenkins by sight.

“Widow, isn't she, Harry?” he said to the postman.