Henrietta Who? (6 page)

“Do we know that, sir, for sure?”

“We don't know anything for sure,” Sloan reminded him with some acerbity, “except that Dr. Dabbe swears that this Grace Edith Jenkins never had any children.” He paused. “We know a thing or two that are odd, of course.”

“The bureau?”

“The bureau. Someone broke into that for a reason.”

“They found what they were looking for.”

“Yes, I think they did. Something else that's odd, Crosby …”

Crosby thought for a moment. “Odd that they didn't have to break into the house. Just the bureau.”

“Very odd, that.”

“Yes, sir.” Crosby waved his free hand. “Dr. Dabbe is coming on the line from the hospital now, sir.”

Sloan took the receiver.

“This road traffic accident you sent me, Sloan, one Grace Edith Jenkins …”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“I confirm the time of death. Between six and nine o'clock on Tuesday evening. Nearer nine than six.”

“Thank you.” Sloan started to write.

“She was aged about fifty-five,” continued the pathologist.

“Forty-five, I think it was, Doctor.” Sloan turned back the pages of the file. “Yes. Her daughter said she was forty-five. Forty-six next birthday.”

“And I,” said Dr. Dabbe mildly, “said she was about fifty-five.”

Sloan made his first significant note.

“She had also had her hair dyed fairly recently.”

“Oh?” said Sloan.

“From—er—blonde to brunette.”

“Had she indeed?” The pathologist never missed anything.

“I should say she had been hit from behind by a car which was traveling pretty fast. The main injury was a ruptured aorta and she would have died very quickly from it.”

“Outright?”

“In my opinion, yes.”

That, at least, was something to be thankful for.

“I should say the car wheel went right over her, also rupturing the spleen. There are plenty of surface abrasions.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“Both antemortem and post-mortem.”

“Post-mortem?”

“There was also a post-mortem fracture of the right femur,” said the pathologist.

Sloan said, “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I fear,” said Dr. Dabbe, “that these injuries are consistent with her having been run over by a heavy vehicle twice.”

“Two successive cars?” asked Sloan hopefully.

The pathologist sounded cautious. “I'd have to see the plan of how she was lying but I'd have said she was definitely hit from behind the first time.”

“That's what the constable in attendance thought.”

“And from the opposite direction the second time.”

“Nasty.”

“Yes.”

Sloan replaced the receiver and looked out of the window. “A car, Crosby, and quickly. I want to get back to Larking before the light goes. And get on to Hepple and tell him to meet us at the scene of the accident.”

Henrietta was still at the rectory when the rector returned.

He was undismayed when his wife told him that Henrietta was not Grace Jenkins's daughter.

“That explains something that always puzzled me,” he said.

Henrietta looked up quickly. “What was that?”

“Why she came to Larking in the first place. As far as I could discover she had no links here at all. None whatsoever.” Mr. Meyton was a spare, gray-haired scholarly man, a keen student of military history and the direct opposite of his tubby, cheerful wife. “If I remember correctly you both arrived out of the blue so to speak. And no one could call Boundary Cottage the ideal situation for an unprotected woman and child in war time.”

Henrietta blinked. “I hadn't thought of that.”

“If she was deliberately looking for somewhere lonely …”

“Nowhere better,” agreed Henrietta. “I just thought she liked the country.”

“It occurred to me at the time she had set out to cut herself off,” said Mr. Meyton. “Some people do. A great mistake, of course, and I always advise against it.”

“Now we know why,” said Henrietta.

“Perhaps.”

“She wanted everyone to think I was hers.”

“She probably didn't want you to know you weren't,” said Mr. Meyton mildly. “Which is something quite different.”

“But why on earth not?” demanded Henrietta. “Lots of children are adopted these days.”

“True.” The rector hesitated. “There are other possibilities, of course.”

“I'm just beginning to work them out,” dryly.

“She might have had you by a previous marriage.”

“No. It wasn't that.”

“Or even—er—outside marriage.”

“Nor that,” said Henrietta tonelessly. “The police said so. She wasn't anybody's mother—ever.”

“I see. There will be reasons, you know.”

She sighed. “I could have understood any of those things but this just doesn't make sense.”

“It is an unusual situation.” Mr. Meyton gave the impression of choosing his words with care.

“Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter,” said Henrietta defiantly, “whatever anyone says.”

“Quite so.”

“And I swear no one could have been kinder.”

“No.” He said tentatively, “Perhaps—had you thought—most likely of all, I suppose—that you were a child of your father's by a previous marriage.”

Mrs. Meyton who had been sitting by, worried and concerned, put in anxiously, “That would explain everything, dear, wouldn't it?”

“I had wondered about that,” said Henrietta.

The rector stirred his tea. “It is a distinct possibility.”

Henrietta stared into the fire. “That would make me her stepdaughter.”

“Yes.” He coughed. “It might also account for the strange fact that following his death she didn't tell you.”

“She didn't,” said Henrietta vigorously, “behave like a stepmother.”

“That's a fiction, you know,” retorted the rector. “You've been reading too many books.”

Henrietta managed a tremulous smile, and said again, “Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter. I know she loved me.”

“Of course she did,” insisted Mrs. Meyton.

“Perhaps that's the wrong word,” said Henrietta slowly. “It was more than that. I always felt—” She looked from one of them to the other struggling to find a word that would convey intangible meaning, “—well, cherished, if you know what I mean.”

“Of course, I do,” said Mrs. Meyton briskly. “And you were. Always.”

“It wasn't only that. She made great sacrifices so that I could go away to university. We had to be very careful, you know, with money.” She pushed her hair back from her face and said, “She wouldn't have done that for just anybody, would she?”

What could have been a small smile twitched at the corners of the rector's lips but he said gravely enough, “I think we can accept that, whoever you are, you aren't—er—just anybody.”

“But am I even Henrietta?”

“Henrietta?”

“Henrietta Eleanor Leslie. Those are my Christian names.”

“Well?”

“I thought I was my mother's daughter until this morning.”

“You're looking for proof that—”

“That at least I'm Henrietta.”

“If you had been baptized here—”

“I wasn't then?”

The rector shook his head. “No. Your mother—”

“She wasn't my mother.”

“I'm sorry.” He bowed his head. “I was forgetting. It isn't easy to remember.”

“No.” Very ironically.

“Mrs. Jenkins told me you were already baptized.”

He did remember then. Aloud Henrietta said, “That's why the bureau was broken into then. I can see that now.”

“You think there must have been something there?”

“I do.”

The rector frowned. “It does rather look as if steps have been taken to conceal certain—er—facts.”

Henrietta tightened her lips. “It's not going to be easy, is it?”

“What isn't?”

“Finding out who I am.”

Sloan and Crosby saw Constable Hepple soon after they had forked left at the post office. He had brought a plan with him.

“You can't see the chalk lines any more, sir,” he said, “but deceased was lying roughly here.”

“I see.”

“Walking home and hit from behind, I'd say,” went on Hepple. “People never will walk towards oncoming traffic like they should.”

“No.”

“His front wheel caught that bit of grass verge afterwards, deflected a bit by the impact, I'd say.”

Sloan nodded.

“I've got a good cast of that,” said Hepple.

Sloan stood in the middle of the bend and looked in both directions. It was a bad bend but with due care and attention there was no need to kill a pedestrian on it.

Hepple was still theorizing. “I reckon he didn't see her at all, sir. There's not a suspicion of a skid mark on the road. Daresay he didn't realize what he'd done till afterwards and then he panicked.”

That was the neat and tidy explanation. And, but for Dr. Dabbe it would probably have been the one that went down on the record. Pathology was like that.

“Where exactly did you say she was lying?” asked Inspector Sloan.

Constable Hepple stood squarely on the spot where he had seen the body.

“That,” pronounced Sloan somberly, “fits in very well with the first set of injuries.”

“The first, sir?” Hepple looked shocked. “You mean—”

“Run over twice,” said Sloan succinctly.

“Once each way,” amplified Crosby for good measure.

“But—” Hepple pointed to the patch of road where he was standing. “But, sir, someone coming the other way—from Belling St. Peter—would have had to come onto quite the wrong side of his road to hit her.”

“Yes.”

“But—” said Hepple again.

“I am beginning to think someone did come onto quite the wrong side of his road to hit her,” said Sloan, still somber. “The pathologist reports that a second car went over her after she was dead.”

“After she was dead?”

“Broke her femur.”

“A second car?” echoed Hepple wonderingly. “Two cars ran over Mrs. Jenkins on this road?”

“Yes.”

“And neither of them stopped?” That was the enormity to P. C. Hepple. A new crime in an irresponsible society, that's what that was, something they'd have been ashamed to put on the Newgate Calendar.

“Two cars,” said Sloan ominously, “or the first one on its way back.”

Constable Hepple looked really worried. “I don't like the sound of this at all, sir.”

“No.” Sloan looked at the village constable. “I don't think I do either.” He examined the road again. “Now, tell me this—just supposing that it was the same car that hit her both times …”

“Yes, sir?” Clearly Hepple didn't like considering anything of the sort.

“Where would he have been able to turn?”

This was where really detailed local knowledge came into its own.

“If he'd wanted to stay on the metalled road, sir, he'd have had to go quite a way. There's no road junction before Belling and this road is too narrow for a really big car to turn in. But if he'd settled for a gateway or the like …”

“Yes?”

“Then Shire Oak Farm is the first one you'd come to beyond the houses. The Thorpes's. After that there's Peterson's and then Smith's.”

Inspector Sloan sent Crosby off to search for tire prints. “It's probably too late, but it's worth a look.” Then he asked Constable Hepple to tell him what he knew about the late Mrs. Grace Jenkins of Boundary Cottage.

“Known her for a long time, sir, and always very pleasant when we met.” Thinking this might be misconstrued he added hastily, “Never in the course of duty, mind you, sir. I never had occasion to speak to her in the course of duty. A quiet lady. Kept herself to herself, if you know what I mean.”

Sloan knew and wasn't pleased with the knowledge. Not the easiest sort of person to find out about.

“Tuesday,” he said. “Did you find out anything about what she'd been doing on Tuesday?”

“She was away from Larking all day,” replied Hepple promptly, “that's all I know. She went off on the early bus—the one that gets people into Berebury in time for work. And she came back on the last one. Two Larking people got off at the same time. Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Callows.”

“Do we—does anyone—know how she spent the day?”

“Not yet, sir. They—Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Callows—had been shopping but if Mrs. Jenkins had, I don't know what she'd done with her basket because it wasn't here when I searched yesterday morning.”

“I see.”

“Must have been all of eight o'clock when she was killed,” went on Hepple. “Allowing for the walk from the post office.”

Sloan stroked his chin. “Eight o'clock fits in with what the pathologist says.”

“Sir.” The conscientious Hepple was still worried about something.

“Yes?”

“This second accident—was it straight after the first?”

“I don't know. Nobody knows.”

“Oh, I see, sir, thank you.”

“We only know,” said Sloan, “that she was killed outright by the first one, and that after it another car ran over her.”

Hepple had scarcely finished shaking his head over this before Crosby was back.

“Didn't have to go very far, sir.”

“How far?”

“He—whoever he was—turned in the first farm gateway.”

“Shire Oak Farm,” said Hepple. “The Thorpes's.”

“He was fairly big,” went on Constable Crosby. “He had to have two goes at it to get round.”

“Yes.” That was what Sloan would have expected.