Murder in the Afternoon (21 page)

‘Thanks, Harriet.’

‘I’m glad you brought Grandma.’

‘So am I. Goodnight then.’

‘Goodnight.’

She was still standing in the road when I started the motor. ‘Go inside. You’ll catch cold.’

‘Do you believe me? Do you believe what I said about seeing Dad, because Sergeant Sharp thinks I’m a little liar.’

‘Yes, Harriet. I believe you.’

‘Has someone killed Dad? And Miss Trimble?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And do you think …’

‘What?’

‘If I’d taken Dad’s dinner to him sooner, would everything have been all right? Is it my fault, Auntie Kate?’

It was the first time she had taken up my invitation to call me auntie.

‘None of this is your fault, Harriet. You ask your grandma. She’ll tell you the same.’

It was after eight o’clock when I arrived home to a house in darkness. I switched on the light in the hall. The second post lay on the hall table. I walked through to the kitchen, where a mean little fire gave off a sulky glow.

When I tapped on the door to her part of the house, Mrs Sugden did not answer. Back in the kitchen, I built up the fire, turned on the gas ring and filled a kettle.

On the kitchen table were two notes. Note one read,

6 o’clock. Sookie fed and stroked. Looked in three times at two hourly intervals. Kittens satisfactory. Eliz. Merton.

Elizabeth Merton lives across the street. The professor’s sister, she acts as his housekeeper.

Note two lay sealed in a manila envelope, with my name on the front, in Mrs Sugden’s neat round hand. I took out the small ruled sheet of writing paper.

You are right. It is all hands to the deck in such a case. Taking tram to terminus. Meeting at Spiritualist Church in Great Applewick this evening.

PS – Your appointment with Mr Wright of Yorkshire Mutual Insurance tomorrow 9.30am.

PPS – Have taken overnight bag, just in case.

I’d said no such thing about all hands to the deck. Mrs Sugden had got bored with her knitting, run out of library books, and fancied a little nosey sleuthing.

The doorbell rang. I hurried to answer, expecting a weary Mrs Sugden, exhausted by fleeting spirits and the return tram journey, lacking the energy to delve into her bag for the key.

‘Hello. You look how I feel.’

It was Sykes. He took a parcel from the saddlebag of a bicycle which he then wheeled into the hall. ‘I brought us a fish and chip supper.’

Never had I been so glad to see him. ‘Come through to the kitchen. Did you know Mrs Sugden has gone off sleuthing?’

‘Aye. She called round to tell Rosie. She said that she knew of a spiritualist church out there, and if she paid a visit, it might yield dividends.’

‘What kind of dividends?’

‘She reckons that the people who visit the spiritualist church to commune with the departed know everything there is to know about the not yet departed.’

I mashed tea.

Sykes opened the newspaper parcel. In an instant, the kitchen smelled like a fried-fish shop.

I put the teapot and cups on the table and turned to open the cutlery drawer.

‘Forget knives and forks. Don’t make washing up.’ Sykes divided the fish and chips. ‘Do you have pickled onions?’

I opened the cupboard door. ‘Pickled onions on the top shelf. You’ll have to reach them.’

I found a pickle fork, giving it a thorough rinse under the tap; Mrs Sugden goes overboard on the silver polish.

As we tucked into our supper, I broke the news to Sykes that Dad had warned me off investigating on behalf of Mary Jane. ‘I’m just glad he didn’t have men there today, falling over you and me and Mrs Sugden.’

‘You went across?’

‘I took Mrs Whitaker to Mary Jane’s.’

‘Mrs Whitaker?’ Sykes speared an onion.

‘Mary Jane’s mother.’ And mine, of course.

‘Ah.’ The onion fell back into the jar. Sykes had difficulty recapturing it. He wore his
What am I supposed to say next
look.

I sighed, and explained. ‘I screwed my courage into my knuckles and rapped on Mrs Whitaker’s door.’

White Swan Yard, Wakefield, second house on the right.

‘Was this the first time you’ve seen your … Mrs Whitaker?’

‘Yes, and to hand it to her, she was off to Mary Jane like a shot. A friend in need and all that. It’s likely Mary Jane and the children will get more from her visit than from anything I can do.’

What I avoided saying was how I felt about Mrs Whitaker. Sykes would not expect some heartfelt outpouring and I still felt too uncertain of my feelings to know what to think, much less what to say.

‘Was Mary Jane pleased to see her mother?’

‘Not enchanted, no.’

Sykes offered me a pickled onion, which I accepted. He forked out two more for himself.

I could tell by the concentration with which he munched his extra scraps of crunchy fried batter that he had more to tell. He made a tightly screwed up firelighter of his portion of greasy newspaper. ‘I saw Mary Jane today, first in her doorway, waving the kids off to school after their dinner. And then she came out in a smart grey coat and a hat with a flower on and took the train to Horsforth Station.’

‘Horsforth? I wonder if that’s where the oracle sister Barbara May has fetched up? She’s the one that keeps tabs on the whole family.’

‘Not unless Barbara May wears a mohair suit, sports a cashmere coat, drives a Wolseley and goes by the alias of Colonel Ledger. They disappeared into a private room at the Station Hotel.’

A chip stuck in my throat. ‘I suppose it had to be her, if you followed her from the house?’

He went to the sink, turned on the tap and washed his hands, keeping his back to me. ‘You have a similar way of walking. Don’t take this wrong.’

‘Go on. I won’t throw pickled onions at you.’

‘How to describe it? Gliding, upright, as if you’ve got a cooking pot on your head.’

‘Thanks.’ So what I imagined was my fine deportment, encouraged by Aunt Berta, also belonged to Mary Jane. I would have to ask her sometime whether she was ever made to walk with a dictionary on her head. ‘How do you know the man she met was Colonel Ledger?’

‘The waiter’s a friendly chap, especially if he’s given a pair of stockings.’

Little wonder Mary Jane had been cagey with me. Perhaps she had been having an affair with the colonel all these years. The Station Hotel. Colonel Ledger must be
worth a fortune, and Mary Jane made do with the Station Hotel.

‘Did the waiter say whether these are regular gettogethers for the pair of them?’

‘I didn’t push it. But I’m sure I could find out.’

I wiped the kitchen table, giving myself time to think. ‘Put another cob on the fire would you?’ I wanted to show him Ethan Armstrong’s papers, and the pieces of the sundial, but I needed time to take in his information about Mary Jane. ‘I’m going to check on Sookie and her kittens.’

I needed to be out of the room, to think. My mind raced in a dozen different directions as I pictured Mary Jane and Ledger.

I walked upstairs slowly, carrying scraps of fish for Sookie. She and the kittens were sleeping. On the floor by the drawer was an old newspaper, with an empty dish, and an almost empty saucer. I took them into the bathroom, rinsed them under the tap. When I went back into my bedroom, Sookie was awake and looking at me.

It is always useful to have something new and very definite to worry about. What if she, or one of the kittens, clambered over the back of the drawer into the void? Someone, the obliging Elizabeth Merton say, might come into the room and, unthinkingly, shut the drawer, squashing bodies.

There was nothing I could do about that at the moment, except pull the drawer all the way out. Good idea. Sookie didn’t think so. She scowled. Her roof was gone. Some cats just don’t allow themselves to be grateful.

‘Are you all right?’ Sykes called up the stairs as the drawer thumped the floor.

‘Yes.’ I didn’t need him to fuss.

Sykes stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Rosie does that, gets it into her head to rearrange the furniture all of a sudden. Keeps us on our toes.’

Sykes had made a fresh pot of tea.

In the centre of the kitchen table, I placed the cloth that Harriet had handed to me. Unfolded, it revealed four shards of blue slate, each carved with a delicate flower.

‘What’s this?’ Sykes asked. ‘Are you collecting bits of slate now?’

‘When Ethan was making the sundial, he came across a flaw in the slate. He carved a flower to cover that flaw, and then intended to do three more. I asked Raymond, the other mason, to search in the broken pieces of slate, to see whether Ethan had finished the work.’

Sykes picked up each flower in turn. ‘It looks as if he did finish it.’

‘Yes. So he is unlikely to have destroyed his own work in frustration. The colonel suggested there could have been a fault in the slate, some hidden crack that foiled Ethan’s best efforts, and that the sundial split at the very last moment. But from looking at these pieces, I’d say he finished it and would have been satisfied.’

Sykes pondered. He was leaving it to me to comment on Mary Jane and the colonel, but he said, ‘After today, should we regard what the colonel says as gospel?’

‘Probably not.’ I rewrapped the pieces of slate in the cloth.

‘Of course, this meeting between them this afternoon might have been quite innocent.’

Sykes never thinks anything anyone ever does is innocent. He was trying to make me react. I said, ‘If it was innocent, why didn’t Mary Jane see him openly?’

Sykes shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps she didn’t
want to run the risk of going to the house and seeing the colonel’s wife.’

I went into the dining room and brought back the papers from Ethan Armstrong’s trunk that Mary Jane had pressed me to take.

‘Dad won’t be too pleased that I have these. His line of enquiry is that Ethan was up to no good, politically. Special Branch have him on a list.’

Sykes let out a whistle. ‘Shouldn’t you turn these papers in to them? If it’s political, it’s specialist stuff, Mrs Shackleton.’

‘We’re specialist people, Mr Sykes. We have to be able to understand all sorts of matters to make our way through this undergrowth.’

‘But we’re off the case, aren’t we?’

‘I suppose so. But that doesn’t stop us being curious, does it?’

‘No,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And if the constabulary and special branch are looking through one particular lens, it wouldn’t hurt us to glance down the wrong end of the telescope.’

‘At the colonel, and my sister?’

He nodded, then added, ‘If only to eliminate them.’

‘Or not.’

‘Or not.’

We divided Ethan Armstrong’s papers between us and read carefully.

After an hour, Sykes said, ‘They don’t want much, these trade unionists. Only to build a new Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.’

‘I don’t think it’s quite as unselfish as that. They want a forty-four hour week, better pay and conditions. There’s nothing here that would help women and children.’

‘Paying a man well helps his family.’

‘Not necessarily, Mr Sykes.’

I looked at the names of the union members, and wondered which one might have been a traitor to his comrades. The familiar name was Raymond Turnbull, Ethan’s old apprentice, and son of the quarry foreman. I told Sykes of Raymond’s comments – that Ethan said they had an informer in their midst. ‘Whoever it was reported back which men were willing to go on strike.’

‘There’s always one,’ Sykes said. ‘Some people get a thrill out of passing on information. Makes them feel important.’ He was picking up the newspapers, glancing at the dates. ‘This is odd. Our man Armstrong has all these
Daily Heralds
, and then there’s last week’s
Wakefield Express
, and look, it has that same ad on the front page, the one you told me about.’

He passed the newspaper to me.

A well provided and pleasant lady seeks well provided amiable gentleman with a view to joining lives and fortunes.

Box No. 61

The telephone rang. I jumped. ‘That might be Mrs Sugden. If she wants a lift back from some godforsaken place, I hope you’ll feel up to going because I don’t.’

‘As long as it’s not on that damn bike,’ Sykes said. ‘I swore I’d never climb on it again, but it was that or cold fish and chips.’

I picked up the receiver.

‘Katie?’

‘Oh, hello, Dad.’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m all right thank you.’

‘You didn’t come to see your mother.’