Henrietta Who? (2 page)

“That's right. Just the one girl.”

He got out his notebook. “Does she know about this?”

“She's away,” volunteered young Thorpe. “At college.”

“Do you know her exact address?”

But young Thorpe went a bit pink and said rather distantly that he did not. So P.C. Hepple made another note and then measured the tire mark on the grass verge.

“I'd say a 590 × 14 myself,” offered Thorpe, who was keen on cars. “That's a big tire on a big car.” Now that the body had gone he could talk about that more freely too. “Those were big car injuries she had.”

P. C. Hepple, who had reached much the same conclusions himself, nodded.

“'Tisn't what you'd call a busy road,” went on Thorpe.

“Busy!” snorted Harry Ford. “I shouldn't think it gets more than a dozen cars a day.”

“Even the milk lorries all go the other way,” said Thorpe, “because it's a better road.”

“Did you have any visitors at the farm last night?” Hepple asked Thorpe.

“Not a soul.”

“Perhaps it was someone who'd taken the wrong turning at the post office.” That was the postman.

“Wrong turning or not,” said Hepple severely, “there was no call to be knocking Mrs. Jenkins down.”

“And,” said Thorpe pertinently, “having knocked her down to have driven on.”

It seemed to Henrietta Jenkins that she would never again be quite the same person as she had been before she stepped into the cold, bare police mortuary.

A sad message, telephoned through a series of offices, had snatched her from the Greatorex Library where she had been working. A succession of kind hands had steered her into the hastily summoned taxi and put her onto the Berebury train. She had been barely aware of them. She vaguely remembered getting out at Berebury more from force of habit than anything else. A police car had met her—she remembered that—and brought her to the police station.

Voices had indicated that there was no need for her to identify the body just now. Perhaps there were some other relatives?

No, Henrietta had told them. There was no one else. She was an only child and her father had been killed in the war.

Perhaps, then, there was someone close in Larking who would …

Henrietta had shaken her head.

Tomorrow then?

She had shaken her head again. Now.

Something like this was only possible if you didn't think about it. She heard herself say—very politely—“Now or never.”

She had followed a policeman down a long corridor. She didn't think she had ever seen a policeman without a helmet on—absurd the tricks one's mind played at a time like this.

He drew back a white sheet. Briefly. And looked not at the still face lying there but at Henrietta's own live one.

She nodded speechlessly.

He laid the sheet back gently and led the way back to the world of the living. Henrietta was shivering now but not from cold. The policeman—she noticed for the first time that he was a sergeant—brought her a cup of tea. It was steaming hot and almost burnt her mouth but Henrietta drank it thirstily, gladly giving the hot liquid all her attention.

Even the sensation of pain, though, could not drive away the memory of the mortuary.

“It's the smell that upsets people,” said the police sergeant kindly. “All that antiseptic.”

“It is a bit dank,” admitted Henrietta shakily. The detached, educated half of her mind noted how primitive it was of her to be so grateful for human company; but nothing would have taken her back into that other room again. Only if the body had been that of a stranger could she have borne that.

The sergeant busied himself about some papers on his desk while she drank. Presently she said,

“Sergeant, what happened?”

“The Larking postman found her lying in the road, miss. She'd been run over by a car on that last bad bend as you leave Larking village.”

“I know the place. Why?”

“Why was she knocked down? That we don't rightly know, miss. You see, the car didn't stop.”

Henrietta stifled a rising wave of nausea.

“We'll pick him up, sooner or later, you'll see,” said the sergeant. “Someone will have seen his number.”

Henrietta said dully. “The number doesn't really matter to my mother or me now.”

“No, miss.” It seemed for a moment as if he was going to explain that it mattered to the police but instead he said carefully, “Constable Hepple found her handbag—afterwards—and there was a letter from you inside it.”

“I always wrote on Sundays.”

“Yes, miss. People do that are away. Sunday's the day for that sort of thing.”

“I wish I'd had time to say something before.”

The sergeant offered what comfort he could. “There's not a lot really needs saying, miss, not when it comes to the point. Families have said everything long ago, or else it's something that doesn't need saying.” He paused. “What about tonight, miss?”

“I shall be all right.”

“We'll run you home to Larking, of course, but …”

“It's something I've got to get used to, isn't it?” she said. “Being alone from now on.”

TWO

Police Constable Hepple of Down Martin was a conscientious man. First of all he measured the tire mark in the grass and drew a plan. Then he borrowed an old sack from Bill Thorpe's tractor and covered the imprint against damage. After that he began a systematic search of the area.

He was rewarded with the discovery of Mrs. Jenkins's handbag, knocked out of her hand and flung into the long grass by the roadside. He took charge of this and continued his search but found nothing else. The letter inside from Henrietta having given her address he telephoned this and his report to his headquarters at Berebury, leaving to them the business of finding her and telling her the bad news.

He himself went back to the scene of the accident and took a plaster cast of the tire mark. He then proceeded—as he would have said himself—to Boundary Cottage. He checked that it was safely locked—it was—and then went on to visit the other five cottages. Three of these were in a short row and two others and Boundary Cottage were detached, standing in their own not inconsiderable gardens.

There was no reply from Mulberry Cottage which was Boundary Cottage's nearest neighbor—some people called Carter lived there—but all the occupants of the others and of the two other farms besides the Thorpes said the same thing. They had had no visitors the previous evening. They had heard and seen nothing.

Hepple went home and wrote out a second, slightly fuller report, and spent part of his afternoon in Larking village trying to establish who had been the last person to see Mrs. Jenkins alive.

It was because of his careful checking over of Boundary Cottage that he was so surprised to have a telephone call from Henrietta the next morning.

“Someone's been in the house,” she said flatly.

“Have they, miss? What makes you think that?”

“In the front room …”

“Yes?” He had his notebook ready.

“There's a bureau. You know the sort of thing—you can write at it but it's not exactly a desk …”

“I know.”

“It's been broken into. Someone's prised the flap part open—they've damaged the wood.”

“When did you discover this, miss?”

Henrietta looked at her watch. It was just after ten o'clock in the morning. “About ten minutes ago. I came straight out to ring you.”

“This damage, miss, you'd say it was someone trying to get inside without a key?”

“That's right.”

He hesitated. “It couldn't have been your mother, miss? I mean, if she had lost her own key and needed to get in there quickly for something …”

“She'd never have spoilt it like this,” retorted Henrietta quickly. “Besides she wasn't the sort of person who lost keys.”

“Yes.” Hepple knew what she meant. His own impression of Mrs. Jenkins was of a neat quiet lady. Law-abiding to a degree.

“Moreover,” went on Henrietta, “if she had had to do something like that I'm sure she'd have told me in her letter.”

P. C. Hepple came back to the question of time.

“When?” repeated Henrietta vaguely. “I don't know when.”

“Yesterday, miss. You came back yesterday.”

“That's right. They brought me home from Berebury in a police car afterwards …”

“About what time would that have been, miss?”

But time hadn't meant anything to Henrietta yesterday.

“It was dark. I don't know when exactly.”

“Was the bureau damaged then?” persisted Hepple.

“I don't know. I didn't go into the front room at all last night. I've just been in there now.”

“The cottage was all locked up just gone twelve o'clock yesterday morning,” said Hepple, “because I went along myself then to check. There were no signs of breaking and entering then, miss.”

“There aren't any now,” said Henrietta tersely. “Just the bureau. That's the only thing that's wrong.”

With which, when he got there, P. C. Hepple was forced to agree.

“Windows and doors all all right,” he said. “Unless they had a key, no one came in after I checked up yesterday morning.”

They went back to the front room and considered the bureau again. Henrietta pointed to a deep score in the old wood.

“My mother never did that. She'd have sent for a locksmith first.”

“Yes.” Now he could see the bureau, that was patently true. No one who owned a nice walnut piece like this would ever spoil it in that way just to get inside. “What did she keep in there, miss, do you know?”

“All her papers,” said Henrietta promptly. “Receipts, wireless license—that sort of thing …”

“Money?”

“No, never. She didn't believe in keeping it in the house—especially a rather isolated one like this.”

“Jewelry?”

Henrietta shook her head. “She didn't go in for that either—she never wore anything that you could call jewelry. My father's medals, though. They were in there.”

Henrietta's gaze travelled from the bureau to the mantelpiece and a silver framed photograph of an Army sergeant—and back to the bureau. “They're in a little drawer at the side. I'll show you them if you like.”

“No,” said Hepple quickly. “Don't touch it, miss.”

She dropped her hands to her sides.

“Fingerprints,” said Hepple. “It may not be worthwhile but you can't be sure until you've tried.”

“I hadn't thought of that …” Her voice trailed away.

“Now, miss, about last night.” Constable Hepple was nothing if not persistent.

“They brought me home in a police car sometime in the early evening I think it was. I didn't hear—about Mother until nearly lunch time and it took me a while to get back to Berebury. Then I was there for quite a bit.”

“Yes, miss.”

“They didn't want to leave me here alone the first night but I promised I'd go across to Mrs. Carter if I wanted anything.”

“But,” agreed Hepple gently, “the Carters are away. I called there this morning.”

“That's right. Only I didn't know that until I banged on her door and didn't get an answer. So I came back here.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure you didn't come into this room?”

“Not until this morning.”

“You heard nothing in the night?”

“I didn't hear anyone levering the bureau open if that's what you mean. And I'm sure I would have done.”

They both regarded the splintered lock.

“Yes,” said Hepple, “you would.”

“Besides which,” said Henrietta, heavy-eyed, “I can't say that I slept much last night anyway.”

“No, miss,” the policeman was sympathetic, “I don't suppose you did.”

“And this couldn't have been done quietly.”

“So,” said Hepple practically, “that means that this was done before you got back yesterday evening, which was Wednesday, and after your mother left home for the last time—which was presumably some time on Tuesday.”

“That's right,” agreed Henrietta. “If she'd had to do it, she'd have told me in a letter—and if she'd found it done I'm sure she would have told the police.”

“Can't understand it at all, sir.” Police Constable Hepple rang his headquarters at Berebury Police Station as soon as he left Boundary Cottage. He was put onto the Criminal Investigation Department. “Mind you, we don't know what's gone from the bureau—if anything. The young lady isn't familiar with its contents. Her mother always kept it locked.”

“Did she indeed?” said Detective-Inspector Sloan.

“And there's no sign of forced entry anywhere.”

“Except the bureau.”

“That's right, sir.” Hepple paused significantly. “I shouldn't have said myself it was the sort of place worth a burglary.”

“Really?” Sloan always listened to opinions of this sort.

“It's just one of Mr. Hibbs's old cottages. Mind you, they keep it very nice. Always have done.”

“Who do?”

“Mrs. Jenkins and Henrietta—that's the daughter. Of course, coming on top of the accident like this I thought I'd better report it special.”

“Quite right, Constable.”

“Seems a funny thing to happen.”

“It is,” said Sloan briefly. “How far have they got with the accident?”

“Usual procedure with a fatal, sir. Traffic Division have asked all their cars to keep a lookout for a damaged vehicle, and all garages to report anything coming in for accident repair. I've got a decent cast of a nearside front tire …”

“Size?”

“590 x 14.”

“Big,” said Sloan, just as Bill Thorpe had done.