Perseverance Street (6 page)

‘Will yer have one with me?’ he asked the constable, whose
nose had had as much as it could take of Hilda’s pungent aroma, to which Arnold seemed immune.

‘No, thanks. I’m on duty.’

He jotted a few notes down in his book and thanked them before walking across the street to find a more likely, and fragrant, source of information. Mrs Muscroft followed him to the door then went back into the house to discuss things with her husband.

‘Did you hear all that, Arnold?’

‘All what?’

‘All what that bobby were sayin’?’

Her husband, who was now halfway through his bottle of beer, and still listening to the wireless, shook his head.

‘God, yer bleedin’ useless, you are,’ she grumbled. ‘We’ve only got a bleedin’ murderer livin’ opposite us. Done her lad in, like as not.’

‘They reckon he committed suicide,’ said Arnold, ‘did yer hear that?’

‘Let’s face it,’ Mrs Muscroft said. ‘A bobby’s not jus’ gonna come right out with it and tell me she’s done her lad in.’

‘What?’

‘Aren’t yer bloody listenin’? That copper reckons the lad’s gone missing an’ she’s lyin’ about him goin’ to some uncle an’ auntie what dunt even bleedin’ exist. Yer dunt need ter be a genius ter know what gone on. Bloody hell! Poor little bugger. That’s what they’ve been doin’ over at her house – searchin’ fer his body.’

‘I think I might bob round ter t’ pub,’ said Arnold, finishing off his beer. ‘I reckon there’ll be a few in celebratin’. Bloody suicide, eh? Fancy that.’

He
got to his feet and took his coat off the peg behind the door, then reached into his waistcoat pocket for his teeth, which he jammed into his mouth.

‘Where d’yer think you’re goin’?’

‘Down ter t’ boozer. I’ve a bit o’ celebratin’ ter do.’

‘You come back drunk, Arnold Muscroft, an’ yer’ll find t’ bloody door locked and yer tea on t’ back o’ the bloody fire!’

Arnold grinned ‘Ee, yer a rough-tongued woman, Hilda Muscroft.’

He danced out of the door and marched down the street, swinging his arms and holding an imaginary rifle – a rifle which had been real when he’d learned to march back in 1914. He sang to the tune of Colonel Bogey:

His wife followed him to the door and stood there with folded arms watching and waiting for the police to bring out a small body from number 13. After an hour the police left empty-handed. Mrs Muscroft was disappointed but still hopeful that her interpretation of events was correct.

Lily was
sitting in a chair beside her hospital bed, breast-feeding Christopher. Her mind was by no means on the job. The mysterious loss of her son had left her almost mute with despair, barely able to believe her own version of events. Had she imagined the Oldroyds? Had she imagined the stay in Grassington? How could she when she saw the actual house they’d stayed in? She remembered the interior layout of the house; the bedroom she and Michael had slept in; the view from the bedroom window. She remembered all that as clear as day. She felt a desperate urge to go inside the house and check that she was right. Check she hadn’t imagined it all. Check she wasn’t going mad.
Check she wasn’t responsible for Michael’s disappearance
.

The police, who had been to see her every day in the four days she’d been there, seemed to be growing less and less sympathetic; their questioning harsher. Maybe this was because she didn’t answer them properly, causing them to get annoyed. Her brain was so clogged up with grief she couldn’t think straight.

One had just arrived and was waiting at the other side of the curtain which had been drawn to give her privacy. He was no doubt to here ask the same questions she’d failed to answer the day before, and the day before that. A nurse poked her head round the curtain just as Lily was finishing. She gave a smile and came in to take Christopher from her.

‘I’ll put
him down for a sleep while you talk to the policeman. I’ll leave the curtains closed.’

‘Thank you.’

The nurse was placing the baby in the cot at the other side of the bed as the policeman came through. He waited until she’d finished before speaking to Lily. He was DS Bannister, the one she’d seen a couple of times just after she’d had Christopher.

‘Hello, Lily. How are you today?’

She shrugged as if to say she’d never be all right until she got her boy back.

‘He’s a fine-looking boy is young Christopher.’

‘Yes he is.’

Her voice was faint but it was a response if nothing else. She seemed to be trying, for a change.

‘Are you OK to answer a few questions to help us find Michael? There are all sorts of things that don’t add up and I’m hoping you’ll be able to help.’

Lily thought for a while, then came out with her longest speech for four days. ‘My whole story doesn’t add up. I bet you find it hard to believe Mr and Mrs Oldroyd exist. I bet you think I never stayed in that house in Grassington with it being empty for years.’ She waited for a response but none was forthcoming. This exasperated her. She demanded an answer.

‘Well?’

‘What
we know, Mrs Robinson,’ said the detective, ‘is that the house has been empty since the owner died over four years ago. No one in the area has ever heard of a Mr and Mrs Oldroyd, including the nearest neighbour. None of your neighbours in Leeds saw this Oldroyd couple but they say you told them that you’d sent Michael off to stay with an aunt and uncle for the weekend. On top of which you lost your husband very recently, which must be hard to cope with.’

Lily stared at him, realising how totally unbelievable her story sounded. If only she could inject an element of proof into it. Enough to make them give her story a chance.

‘Have you been in the house?’ she asked him.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Has anyone from the police?’

‘Er, no. We haven’t had cause to.’

‘Really … well I’m going to give you cause to. I’d like you to write this down.’

John Bannister sat on the edge of her bed, took out his notebook and looked up at her expectantly. Her words came out in a rush.

‘You go through the front door and there’s a big hallway. To the right is a door to a … a sort of study, to the left is the main living room. Under the stairs is a small toilet with a washbasin. The door doesn’t shut properly so we didn’t use it.’ She furrowed her brow as she tried to picture the house’s interior. ‘Beyond the stairs are two doors, one to a very big kitchen, the other to a dining room. Am I going too fast for you?’

The policeman scribbled for a few seconds, then looked up and repeated her last words. ‘Beyond the stairs two doors to a big kitchen and dining room. Go on, this may well be helpful.’

She
slowed down and became more fluent. ‘Upstairs there are five bedrooms and two bathrooms, one attached to the main bedroom. I know that because Mrs Oldroyd showed me round the whole house. The other bathroom is the one we used. It’s got a shower as well as a really deep bath and a big brass bolt on the door. The bedroom we stayed in was the first room on the left along the landing. It’s got wooden beams across the ceiling and an old, cast-iron fireplace.’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘I couldn’t know all this just by looking through the windows, now, could I?’

He finished writing and looked up at her. ‘No, Lily, I don’t suppose you could – providing this checks out.’

‘Well, if it doesn’t you might as well take me away and lock me in a loony bin.’

‘I’ll check it out myself tomorrow.’

‘Thank you. Then I’d like you to come back to me and tell me I’m not going mad. You see, when reasonable people stop believing in you there comes a time when you’ve got to question your own sanity. I really need to know this house is as I described it. If it isn’t, I’ve got to assume I’ve imagined everything I’ve told you – although I doubt if anyone’s imagination has ever been as strong as that.’

It occurred to the detective sergeant that if this woman was sane enough to question her own sanity then surely she couldn’t be insane. He had several questions to ask her but decided to leave them for another time. He was as curious as she was to see if this part of her story
was true. If it was, the case would take on a whole new, very weird dimension.

DS Bannister
got out of the police car and introduced himself to PC Pring who was standing outside Lark House, still wearing his cycle clips. The constable looked exactly like he’d sounded on the phone.

‘Do you have the keys, Constable?’ Bannister asked him.

‘Well, I’d hardly come all this way without them,’ grunted Pring, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket. He wasn’t happy with a sergeant from Leeds taking over a case within his jurisdiction. But his bosses in Skipton didn’t have the manpower to get involved in time-consuming mysteries, so they were happy to let Leeds get on with it.

Pring handed the keys over to Bannister, saying, ‘I picked them up from Weetman and Penn’s estate agency in Grassington. Told them you’d drop them off on your way back to Leeds.’

‘Well done,’ said Bannister. ‘I like a man who can think on his feet.’

PC Pring didn’t pick up on the sergeant’s sarcasm and followed Bannister up the gravel drive to the house. He unlocked the front door and entered the hall, checking the layout with the notes he’d taken of Lily’s description. It had since occurred to both him and his inspector that Lily might have acquired her detailed knowledge of the house’s interior some other way. The hall was devoid of all furniture.

‘Constable, I wonder
if you could check all the doors and windows – in fact every possible entry and exit on the ground floor, to see if it might be possible for someone to come and get in here without a key.’

The constable, happy to have been given a job of some responsibility, took off his helmet and looked around for somewhere to put it, before placing it carefully on the floor. He then headed for the kitchen as DS Bannister checked the ground floor layout against his notes. Everything was as described by Lily, as were the upstairs rooms and the view from the bedroom window, below which PC Pring was standing, surveying the house from the back lawn. Bannister unfastened the sliding sash window, pushed it open and called down.

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing that I can see.’

Pring took out his notebook and read out loud enough for Bannister to hear. ‘Three doors soundly locked. Six sliding sash windows all locked from the inside. No windows broken, no obvious tampering to any door or window, no obvious recent repairs and no cellar. Anything up there?’

Bannister was mildly surprised that Pring seemed to have made such a thorough job but, there again, it was a job within the constable’s everyday sphere of competence, so perhaps he shouldn’t be.

‘Nothing,’ he
said, closing the window. He reminded himself to ask the estate agents if there had been any signs of a break-in recent months but he felt confident that Pring’s assessment was accurate.

As he descended the stairs it struck him that no one had asked about the furniture. Where had it gone? Was it in storage? Had it been in storage during the time Lily claimed to have spent time there? He asked the question of PC Pring, whose answer didn’t surprise him.

‘No idea. I should ask Weetman and Penn.’

‘Thank you, I will – and thanks for your help.’

The estate agents were situated in a stone building on the main road which wound through a village of similar buildings. The detective parked his unmarked police car, went inside and identified himself. There were times when he wished he was still in uniform and not obliged to offer identification, with him looking most unlike a police detective. Given the willpower he’d take up exercise and lose a few stones. He was five feet eight inches tall and had what he referred to as a ‘low centre of gravity’, a man difficult to knock down when it came to the rough stuff. His face had been battered during his days as an amateur rugby league player which had left him with a broken nose and a cauliflower ear but, that said, his face was quite genial, more the face of a club comic. And there were many times when not looking like a copper had decided advantages. Miles Penn stared down at the policeman’s identification, then up at the man the photo was supposed to match. ‘This is you, is it?’

‘It’s
definitely me.’

He put the keys on the counter. ‘Keys to Lark House as promised by PC Pring. Would you be Mr Weetman or Mr Penn?’

‘I’m Miles Penn.’

‘I wonder if I might ask you a couple of questions about the house?’

Bannister was hoping this man who had deliberately fussed over his identification might also be uncooperative about answering questions, whereupon Bannister would exert his police authority in no uncertain terms; the sergeant was an expert in exerting authority over civilians. Perhaps the determined expression on his face convinced Penn to become friendly.

‘Certainly. Perhaps you’d care to come through to my office.’

Bannister followed the man through and sat down. He took out his notebook to remind him of the questions he needed to ask.

‘Firstly, could you tell me the recent history of Lark House since the last owner died which, I believe, was about four years ago?’

Penn took a file out of a cabinet and sat down at his desk opposite the detective. He opened it and nodded. ‘Mrs Ethel Ramsden, the owner, died in January 1941. The house was placed for sale with us in October 1941 but withdrawn from sale in January 1942.’

‘What was the reason for this?’

‘I believe the new owner received his call-up papers and decided not to go ahead with the sale until after the war. He thought that prices might shoot up.’ Penn sat back in his chair, still holding the file and added, ‘Not sure if he’s right about that.’

‘Could
you give me details of the owner?’

‘I can give you what we have – and I can also tell you that he’s currently in the army, probably in France or Germany or somewhere. Went over on D-Day. His name’s George Ramsden – Ethel Ramsden’s son. He lives here in Grassington but he hasn’t been home for several months. The last time I saw him was back in …’ He paused to consult the file. ‘Back in March this year. He wanted us to arrange a contents sale for Lark House, which we did.’