Murder on a Summer's Day (13 page)

Reaching Embsay, I parked the motor by the church and walked in what I hoped was an inconspicuous fashion along the main street, looking about until I spotted the coal merchant’s house.

A small plump woman in patterned pinafore, her hair almost covered by a turban, answered the door on my first knock.

‘Mrs Deakin?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Mrs Shackleton. I’m sorry to disturb you on a Sunday morning but I wonder if I might speak with your husband.’

She hesitated, before answering me in hushed tones. ‘Well, you know, he’s still sleeping.’

‘I could walk about and come back in half an hour or so.’

‘If it’s coal, I can take your details.’

‘No. I do need to speak to him. It won’t take long.’

‘He’s not in any trouble is he? If it’s about that delivery to the farrier’s house, he’s adamant he left the eight bags.’

‘It’s just a question I have, concerning the Indian prince, and a sighting Mr Deakin made on the road.’

‘He was mistaken. He’s said he was mistaken. It was just something that came up over a pint in the Elm Tree.’

‘All the same, I do need to speak to him.’

‘You better come inside.’

The door opened straight onto a tidy room, cheerfully furnished with, as might be expected in a coal merchant’s house, a goodly fire burning. The room felt almost unbearably warm.

‘Sit yourself down. I’ll see if he’s stirring.’

Mrs Deakin climbed the stairs to the room above. Sound travelled well in the small cottage, but she spoke so softly I could not make out her words.

Mr Deakin’s answer came clearly enough. ‘Can’t a man have his bit of peace and quiet, woman? Who is she?’

More murmuring.

‘What does a posh woman want with me?’

Murmur, murmur.

‘Tell her she can wait.’

Mrs Deakin reappeared. ‘He says he won’t be long. Will you have a cup of tea? I’m just about to make a pot.’

‘Thank you.’

From upstairs came a cacophony of coughing, wheezing and spitting, followed by loud pissing in a pot.

Shortly after that, Mr Deakin appeared, dressed in trousers as black as his coal and a worn khaki shirt, braces dangling. He was a stout man, bearing a belly designed to hold a great deal of beer. ‘How do.’

‘How do you do, Mr Deakin. I’m Mrs Shackleton, looking into the recent events at Bolton Abbey, on behalf of his lordship.’

‘What’s to look into?’

‘I want to try and account for the hours when the prince went missing, so that the coroner will have a full picture.’

Mrs Deakin poured tea into two dainty china cups and a cream pint pot decorated with a cottage scene. She pushed a teacup and saucer towards me with a small smile. ‘There you are, madam.’

‘Thank you.’

Deakin clutched his pint pot with both hands.

‘It was something you said, Mr Deakin, regarding seeing an Indian on the road on Friday.’

He took a mouthful of tea, pulled a face, turned and spat it into the fire. ‘No sugar in this, woman.’

She took the mug back from him, and began to spoon in sugar.

‘That were summat and nowt. It turns out gipsies had come to camp, somewhere over by Skipton Moor. Well some of ’em are brown as nuts, and that’s who it was. A gipsy.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’ve that much on I couldn’t say.’

‘But it was Friday afternoon.’

‘Or Thursday. It could’ve been Thursday. He were on a bike.’

Mrs Deakin stirred several grains of sugar into her own tea. She looked surprised. I wondered if the bike was a recent addition to the story.

‘It were Friday, love. I know because you came in and told me, and I’d been baking for the church fair.’

He took a big sup of tea. ‘Well then Thursday, Friday, I don’t know.’

‘I’ve never seen a gipsy ride a bike.’

‘Are you calling me a liar, missis?’

‘Of course not. So this gipsy, he had cycled across from Skipton Moor. Is that a way off from here, Mr Deakin?’

‘They get about don’t they?’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Dark-skinned.’

‘Tall, short, well-built, slim?’

‘It’s hard to tell when a person’s on a bike. On the slight side.’

‘Old, young?’

‘You can’t tell can you? Gipsies don’t age like we do. I only caught a glimpse of him.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary, I don’t remember.’

‘Which way was he going?’

‘Why, towards Halton East.’

Flames shot up the fireback as coal crackled and split. I had kept my coat on and began to feel a little faint.

‘They come round, you know,’ Mrs Deakin chipped in. ‘Do you want any odd jobs? Will you buy a piece of lucky heather? That kind of thing.’

Deakin snorted. ‘Aye, and you’re soft enough to say yes.’

The conversation was going nowhere. I could sit here until the middle of next week and be no wiser.

‘Well thank you, Mr Deakin. Sorry to have disturbed you so early. If you think of anything else, you can contact me at the hotel.’

I handed him my card. How much longer I would be at the hotel, I did not know. Once James arrived, I guessed my usefulness, such as it was, would be at an end.

Mrs Deakin walked me to the door.

I thanked her for the tea and took a few steps, waiting for her to close the door.

When she had done so, I walked back, and listened to hear any aftermath.

Sure enough, Mr Deakin berated her for waking him, and for not sending the busy-body packing. He reminded her that if they wanted a quiet life, the less said, the better.

As I returned to my motor, church bells began to chime.

A coal merchant might sleep late on a Sunday. A farmer would not. It was time to pay a visit to the Metcalfes’ farm. How much resentment did Lydia’s father and brothers harbour towards the maharajah for making Lydia his mistress? Enough to kill him?

Once more I drove to the farm gate and stopped the car. Climbing out without stepping into a deep puddle and a muddy track proved impossible. Squelching back into the driving seat, I headed for the farmhouse.

The woman who answered the door had the same high cheekbones as Lydia, the same summer-blue eyes, only her eyes lacked Lydia’s youthful sparkle.

I introduced myself. ‘I’m Kate Shackleton, the person who drove Lydia over here yesterday.’

‘Oh, it was you. She’s asking for her car.’ Mrs Metcalfe looked beyond me to the Jowett. ‘That’s not it.’

‘No. That’s my motor. The Rolls is back at the hotel.’

‘Come in if you like.’ Mrs Metcalfe held the door open. ‘She’s still in bed.’

I wiped my feet on the mat and offered to remove my shoes.

‘Don’t bother. Step on the matting, and sit yourself down.’ I stepped into a large square kitchen, filled with the aroma of slow-roasting lamb. ‘She’ll have heard you drive up, and she’ll hear us talking. I’m not calling her again.’ Mrs Metcalfe pulled out a chair for me at the kitchen table. ‘Are you a friend of hers?’

‘No. We only met yesterday. I was asked by the India Office to investigate the disappearance of Maharajah Narayan Halkwaer.’

She sat down opposite me, reaching for a large cabbage. ‘I’ll have to get on with this. I’ve men to feed. Sunday or no Sunday, they’ve work to do.’ She tore at the cabbage. ‘So that was his full moniker, Maharajah Narayan Halkwaer? It suited the poor man.’ Mrs Metcalfe tore a leaf from the cabbage, shredding it, dropping the strips into a basin of salted water.

‘What did you think of him, Mrs Metcalfe?’

‘I could see the attraction right enough. He was good-looking and a real gentleman. And he was that interested in our family. He even wanted to know the hour of Lydia’s birth.’

‘And were you able to tell him?’

‘I was indeed. It was twenty to ten in the evening – October twentieth.’

‘Why did he want to know?’

‘To have her horoscope cast.’ She paused in her cabbage shredding. ‘I had all on keeping a straight face.’

‘He must have cared for Lydia very much.’

‘He wanted her father’s permission to marry her. Well what was I supposed to say to that? It’s not our way is it, for a man to have two wives. He wanted to be sure of her you see. He struck me as the jealous type. Good thing his wife didn’t feel as jealous.’

Perhaps she did. Lydia had said that the maharani tried to have her poisoned. Of course, that could be Lydia’s sense of the dramatic coming into play.

‘Lydia’s dad didn’t put in an appearance, so the maharajah left a letter with me.’

This fitted with what Mr Metcalfe had told me when I saw him bringing in the cows.

I wanted to ask where Mr Metcalfe and his sons were on Friday, when Narayan was shot. One way would be to sit here chatting, pretending that I was waiting for Lydia to grace the room with her presence, or I could jump straight in. I chose to jump. ‘Mrs Metcalfe, there’ll be an inquest into the prince’s death. Because I was charged with finding him, I have decided to gather as much information as I can, to be passed to the coroner. You’ll know that he died of a gunshot wound?’

She stopped shredding cabbage. ‘Lydia told me. She says you reckon it was an accident.’

‘I said that, yes.’

‘But you don’t believe it?’

‘That will be up to the coroner to decide.’

‘Do you think Lydia killed him?’

‘No. Do you?’

‘She has a temper on her.’ She ripped off more cabbage leaves, shredding rapidly, her long fingers tearing at the leaves. Dead insects floated to the top of the water, above the cabbage. She fished them out and put them on a newspaper where a caterpillar wriggled. ‘Lydia wouldn’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. And she is cut up. It’s real enough.’

‘It never occurred to me for a moment that Lydia killed Narayan, Mrs Metcalfe. Shooting would not be her style.’

‘Whose style then?’

This woman did not believing in circling round a topic, so I met her on her own ground. ‘I believe your husband was upset that Lydia took up with an Indian.’

She crossed to the big stone sink, tipped the cabbage into a colander, and turned on the tap.

‘We’re past being upset at what Lydia does. But when she brought the man here, announcing to everyone for miles around that she’s no better than she ought to be, her father was none too pleased.’

For a Yorkshire woman to own up that her man was none too pleased was the equivalent of any other person admitting rage verging on insanity.

‘Was he displeased enough to go after him with a gun, Mrs Metcalfe?’

‘Oh and I’d tell you if he was?’

‘You’d tell me if he wasn’t.’

‘Then I’ll tell you.’ She chopped the hard stalks of the cabbage and dropped them in the colander with the leaves. ‘My man was here all day Friday, all day Saturday, and so were my sons. I’ll vouch for them, though that’d count for nowt, but so would Tom, our labourer, and so would the feed man who called, and so would the coal merchant, and a flock of lambs if they could speak.’

‘Someone who is out and about as much the feed man and the coal merchant must see what’s going on, and whether there are any strangers in the area. Did either of them mention anything to you?’

‘I’ve nothing to do with Deakin, except watching him tip the bags, and letting him know I count them. My husband deals with the feed man. You’d have to ask him.’

She went to the range and opened an oven door. I watched as she basted the meat. ‘Are you after stopping for your dinner? I can set another place.’

‘Why would you have me for dinner when I’ve all but accused your husband of murdering the Indian?’

She set the tray of meat on the hearth and spooned potatoes around it, basting them, too. ‘Because you’d be a fool if you didn’t think of that, and Lydia told me you are on the clever side. What do you think crossed my mind soon as I heard the man was dead? But my man and my lads didn’t do it. I can promise you that. I made my own enquiries.’ She put the meat and potatoes in the oven.

When she came back to the table, her face was pink from the heat of the fire.

I smiled. ‘I can see where Lydia’s independent streak comes from.’

‘Well if that’s so, it’s all she did take from me.’ She came back to the table, lifted a cover from a bowl of Yorkshire pudding mix and began to whisk it. ‘I’ve six kids and Lydia is the one that was born different, like some fairy child. She couldn’t be doing with this place. Hated it here. Would she help in’t house? No. Would she help on’t farm? No. And she hated school. Beat her, bribe her, nothing worked. In the end I sent her for one summer holiday to my sister Emily. Emily married one of the fellers from the circus that came to Skipton. He’d been a tightrope walker and lodged with our family. When they married, they settled down to keeping a public house in London, the Earl of Ellesmere in Bethnal Green. Lydia got it into her head when she was seven years old that she must go to London and visit her aunt. We packed her off with a label on her coat, for the summer, for peace and quiet. Our Emily only had lads. She wrote to me could she keep Lydia till Christmas. Come Christmas, Lydia had a part in a pantomime, so could she stay till Easter. Emily sung Lydia’s praises to high heaven. How good she was in her lessons, and singing and dancing, and French. They’d a concert room in the pub and she was on that stage from the minute she got there.’

‘And she never came back?’

‘No. That was it.’ She placed a teacloth over the bowl of Yorkshire pudding mix.

‘You must have missed her.’

‘I’ve three good sons, and two daughters who do fit in to the life here. Lydia never belonged to me. It’s a funny thing for a mother to say, but it’s true. I only had her for that short time, till she could walk and talk, and make her wishes known.’

‘Have you ever seen her perform?’

‘No, and not likely to. She was in a chorus at one of them London theatres. Next thing Emily knew, the whole lot of them tripped off to Paris. Well, Lydia wasn’t old enough. Our Emily went after her but she wouldn’t come back. There’s no stopping Lydia once she sets her mind to summat.’

‘I believe Paris is where she met the maharajah.’

She crossed to the sink to fetch the cabbage. ‘Well you know more than me then. Emily wrote to tell me Lydia had taken up with an Indian prince. You could have knocked me down with a lamb’s tail when the two of ’em turned up here last Tuesday, Lydia shaking her jewels at me.’ She tipped the cabbage into a pan.

‘And have you or your husband seen the prince’s friend recently, Mr Presthope who put them up on Tuesday night?’

‘No. We have no cause to go to Halton East, and a man like him wouldn’t have the time of day for us.’

I believed her. That meant Thurston Presthope still had the ten thousand pounds that he was meant to offer to Mr Metcalfe.

‘How did Mr Metcalfe and your sons take to seeing Lydia again?’

‘Still on that line are we? The lads were pleased enough to see her. Course her dad’s not speaking to her. He doesn’t like that Lydia took up with a darkie, no matter how high-placed the man is. The races shouldn’t mix, according to him. And of course he knew the man was married. He said he’d stick our Lydia in a harem and she’d never get out again, and that would be her comeuppance.’

‘Did your husband meet the prince?’

‘No. He kept out of the way.’ She began to scrape carrots. ‘Said he didn’t want to clap eyes on him or he wouldn’t be answerable for his actions.’ For the first time, she stopped what she was doing and rested her arms on the table, looking at me steadily. ‘That’s why my first thought was the same as yours. But I was wrong, and so are you.’

‘But he was murdered.’ The voice came from the door on the far side of the room. Lydia glided in, wearing a peach négligée and matching satin robe and slippers.

‘You didn’t stop up there long enough. There’s still onions to chop and gravy to make.’

Lydia came and sat at the table. ‘I was listening to you and just thought it was time to come down and add my tuppence worth.’ She looked at me. ‘It was murder. That’s why I let you bring me here. It might have been me next.’

‘I am not saying it was murder, Lydia. I am just trying to gather information.’

She examined her nails. ‘Narayan would not have accidentally shot himself. He has been handling guns, and horses, since he was a child.’

‘Accidents happen. It will be for the coroner to decide.’

She took a nail file from her pocket and began to move it carefully around her thumb nail. ‘That’s why the coroner doesn’t want me there. I’d speak up.’

‘Who said the coroner didn’t want you?’

‘Oh you don’t know everything then? Our good and true constable called. Full of himself because he is coroner’s officer for two deaths, when all he’s ever done is clip lads round the ear and tell farmers to keep their sheep under control. “You won’t be needed, Miss Metcalfe.” Translated into English, that means sling your fancy hook.’

‘You’re right. I didn’t know.’

‘They wouldn’t want me to take the stand, tell the truth and shame the devil.’

Mrs Metcalfe began to chop an onion with ferocious speed.

‘Tell me, Lydia, do you know whether there were any of Narayan’s fellow countrymen in the area, any other Indians?’

‘Not that I know about. Why do you ask?’

‘A story I heard. And I’m trying to explore every possibility, whether there was rivalry with another state.’

‘There is always rivalry between Indian princely states. The British government sees to that. One state has a seventeen gun salute and wants an eighteen gun salute like their neighbours; another has a nineteen gun salute and wants a twenty-one. It’s all nonsense. Doesn’t amount to a row of beans. I know who would have it in for him – the British government.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they can. He embarrasses them. He puts them all to shame. He is a better man than any of them, a better sportsman, cleverer, knows how to enjoy life – to live, not just exist. And I’ll tell you who would have worked with them, for a price, Thurston Presthope. That’s why he fleeced Narayan while he was still alive.’ She fumbled up her sleeve for a hanky. ‘I want my car back. I want to get away from here.’

‘When will you go?’

‘As soon as they give me my car back.’

I rose to leave.

‘Not stopping for your dinner then?’ Mrs Metcalfe asked.

‘Thank you, but I have to go. It was nice to meet you.’

‘And you. Not every day someone steps across the threshold and accuses my family of murder.’

Lydia walked me into the yard.

She stayed on the mat by the front step. ‘What did my mother mean by that?’

‘She wanted me to know that your father did not shoot Narayan.’

Lydia snorted. ‘She would say that.’

‘Do you think he did?’

‘He doesn’t have the nerve. Hitting a small girl who wouldn’t play the part of mother’s little helper was more his line. He would not have got within a foot of Narayan.’ She looked at my Jowett. ‘What a dinky motor.’

‘It suits me very well. Mile for mile I’d trust it more than your Rolls.’