The Cuckoo's Child (23 page)

‘Your grandfather?' There was a significant pause. Womersley and Rawlinson exchanged looks. ‘Is that so? Then your father was—'

‘My father was his son, Theo.'

‘I see.' He looked at her consideringly. ‘The letters Mr Beaumont exchanged with Mr Carfax did not tell us that.'

‘Letters? I don't know anything about any letters. And as a matter of interest, nor did I know he was my grandfather – until today. In fact, he was a stranger to me. I had never met him until I came to work here on the library. For some reason he chose to keep me in ignorance of who I was.' She might one day be able to think of Ainsley more kindly, but at the moment the hurt of all those neglected years was still too much on the surface.

‘Yet he left you a considerable amount of money. Which you also knew nothing about, of course.'

Colour flew to Laura's cheeks and Tom intervened indignantly. ‘Look here, I'm not sure I like the tone of what you are saying. If you are hinting that Mr Beaumont was killed because of the money he left to Miss Harcourt, I can vouch for it that she knew nothing about it until the will was read – any more than anyone else did, if it comes to that. She had no idea she was in any way related to him, until I told her the truth. And the reason I knew that was because my mother cared for Laura as a baby, after her mother died, until she was taken to live with her new guardians.'

‘All right, all right, Mr Illingworth. It's just that if we can get to know as much as we can about where everybody was at the time Mr Beaumont was killed, it helps to establish a pattern, don't you see? I'm sorry your mother died, as well as your father, Miss Harcourt. Would you oblige me with her name?'

‘I don't see that has anything to do with what you're here for,' Laura replied, flushing even more, her chin lifted, ‘but her name was Lucie Picard. She lived here and looked after the twins when they were babies. And as for what I was doing the day that Mr . . . the day my grandfather died, everyone here will vouch for it that I was working in the library . . . which is something, by the way, I shall not be continuing with. I intend leaving Farr Clough as soon as I can.'

‘I understand you might want to do that, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be convenient just yet. We shall need you to stay here for a bit. We might want a few words with you again.'

She couldn't for the life of her see why, but he didn't speak as if there was any alternative. Then she thought, well, Gideon had asked her to finish what she had started. Irksome as the job had come to seem, she might, in actual fact, gain a certain grim satisfaction in forcing herself to do it. And then again, there was a more pressing matter to her. Tom.

‘Would you like to see that correspondence?' the sergeant asked suddenly, looking at her more sympathetically than hitherto. Womersley clicked his tongue as if he didn't approve of the suggestion, but didn't demur when she replied that she certainly would, and the sergeant passed over a folder. She leafed through it, wondering how much more it was going to tell her than she had already learnt. ‘I . . . can't read all this now.' Not here, not under the eyes of strangers. ‘There's too much of it.'

‘Take it with you, read it when you have the opportunity,' Womersley said after a moment. ‘Now, Mr Illingworth, let's have a few details from you.'

Rawlinson took note of the fact that he was a railway engineer who had worked for several years in South Africa and was a veteran of the Boer War, which seemed to interest Womersley as much as did Ainsley Beaumont's provision for him in his will. But Tom, who never talked much about South Africa, cut short his inclination to chat.

‘That “provision” for me, as you call it, was money he lent me to put me through my training. I paid it back, though he tried to insist I keep it. He had obviously determined to have the last word by leaving it to me in his will, but I've already said I won't take it. The loan was a business arrangement which I honoured, and I didn't want any favours.'

Rawlinson raised his eyes to the ceiling as if such high minded sentiments were beyond him.

‘Mr Hirst,' said Womersley, ‘tells us that he wanted you to take up a position at the mill, but you refused that, too.'

‘Since my uncle has told you that, he has no doubt told you I was pretty angry with him over it.' His brows came together. ‘I felt he was trying to run my life as he tried to run everyone else's. But it doesn't mean to say I killed him. In spite of everything, I actually liked the old man a great deal. And . . . I was on my way home when you say he was killed.'

‘From where?'

‘London,' he replied shortly.

‘Thank you.' After a few more questions, Womersley said, ‘I don't think we need keep either of you any longer, for the moment.'

At the door, Tom said, ‘If somebody had such a grudge against Mr Beaumont that they needed to kill him, surely they would have found some better way than waiting until they could pick up a handy stone to hit him with? Wouldn't you be better looking for a down-and-out, a tramp, someone like that? God knows, there are enough of them around.'

‘Thank you, Mr Illingworth. It hasn't escaped our notice.'

‘And that's a statement of the obvious,' Womersley said testily. ‘If you plan to murder somebody, a rock isn't usually the first weapon of choice. On the other hand, if it's unplanned, and the rock just happens to be there . . . You've already checked with the model lodging house?'

‘First thing we always do, isn't it?' Rawlinson asked, touchy as usual on this particular subject.

Womersley considered him over the top of his spectacles. ‘Aye, and with good reason, lad,' he said more gently. The model lodging house was where tramps, itinerants, the homeless or the desperately poor, those of no fixed abode, could be given a bed in a dormitory for the night. Even families could find temporary lodging there. The houses were subject to supervision by the police, and as such were always the first places to be visited when searching for suspicious characters.

‘Well, it's been checked and there doesn't seem to be any likely candidate there. All accounted for. They've pulled in an old down-and-out they call Mucky Harry. He swears he had nothing to do with it but they're keeping him in the lock-up for now. Unless something else turns up, they'll have to let him go sooner or later, meanwhile he's happy enough with three meals a day and a bed.'

‘No strangers seen in or around the town?'

‘Sergeant Binns and his lot are still making enquiries. It won't do any good, though, will it?'

On the face of it, the very nature of the crime suggested a crude, random attack by some loiterer like this Mucky Harry character attacking Beaumont in the hope of what he could get. Maybe such a person had been interrupted, maybe somebody had come along and he'd panicked, got rid of the corpse into the water before there had been time to relieve him of his valuables? It would suit everyone if this turned out to be the case. Even Womersley, Rawlinson suspected. But he said, after a moment or two, ‘This wasn't done by some passing stranger.'

‘Oh, sure of that, are you?'

‘No, but . . .' Rawlinson wasn't sure, in fact. Except for intuition and what the doctor, Pike, had implied – that there was no lack of people who had quarrelled with the victim. But there again, as Whiteley Hirst had suggested, daily spats seemed to be meat and drink to all of them, of no more consequence than a flea bite, and unlikely to have provoked murder. Though there was that torn inside pocket to consider – which might account for that missing five hundred pounds.

Rawlinson added, ‘There's other possibilities – like somebody he knew with a grudge simply taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity that presents itself? Coming face to face with him unexpectedly on the path, a row blown up, tempers lost? The old man growing tired of it and walking away, the nearest handy weapon picked up by the killer?'

Womersley walked to the window, where he stood with his hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. ‘All right,' he said without turning round, ‘but assuming it was planned, who stands to gain by his death?'

Obviously, his heirs. Beneficiaries to a will were naturally prime suspects. All those falling within this category seemed to be genuinely grieving for the old man, but how far did that amount to play-acting? How certain was it that none of them knew what had been in the will? Were any of them in need of money? Money which would have come to them soon anyway – though apparently no one except his doctors had known he had such a short time to live.

‘His heirs, yes. Which includes,' Womersley said, turning round, ‘not only young Gideon, who stands to gain most, and his sister, but Laura Harcourt as well, don't forget. And Illingworth, come to that, and it doesn't take much to see those two are pretty thick. We'd best check she
was
in the library all the time she said she was – and check on Una Beaumont and that meeting of hers – and what time Illingworth actually did arrive back in Wainthorpe that morning. He was quick to give us the impression he didn't want that money Ainsley Beaumont left him, but we'll take that with a pinch of salt. If not for himself, he might be looking out for his mother. That house she lives in on the side of the mill, the one they want to pull down to build offices – now she's the owner, holding out for a good price could be very profitable.'

‘What about Amelia Beaumont? She could have been lying when she said she had parted from Ainsley at the junction of the path. And she looks strong enough, in all conscience,' Rawlinson said, echoing Womersley's own previous thought. ‘I wouldn't like to meet her in a ginnel on a dark night!'

Womersley passed his hand across his face. These were all long shots. But even long shots had to be followed up. Such as Whiteley Hirst, who had been left a generous bequest – though was that motive enough? People had been killed for much less. It would depend on whether he had known anything about it, and also on how desperate for money he was.

Rawlinson said slowly, ‘We've been asking who stands to gain by this death . . . but put it another way – who stands to
lose
if he'd continued to live? Anybody who might fear to lose their good name, income, their freedom, even.'

Womersley stared. ‘Aye,' he said heavily. Searching for someone this might apply to would spread the net wider, far beyond his family. Ainsley Beaumont had been in the wool trade all his life. He had a web of connections all over the Neller valley. There were well known rivalries among these hard-headed, well-to-do woolmen, and who could tell what enmities might have arisen? Not all the businessmen in the valley were scrupulous. They knew means of evading taxes, the law. He saw the enquiry stretching before him, the net needing to be spread ever wider. He did not like to think what his superintendent was likely to say to it.

‘Jack,' he said, ‘this might well be my last case – last murder case, at any rate. I wouldn't like it to turn into a policeman's nightmare.' Both of them knew this was possible, that this might end up as a seemingly motiveless crime committed by a person or persons unknown. And in that case, someone who was unlikely to be brought to justice. ‘But I'm damned if I'm going to let it. That sticks in my craw, damned if it doesn't.'

‘Shall we go and see the twins now?' Tom asked, as he and Laura left the study.

She shook her head. ‘They've had one nasty shock – they don't need another, on top of it. Later, when they've adjusted.'

‘Then, if and when you need me, let me know,' he said, oddly formal.

Laura slipped a coat around her shoulders and went outside with him, standing beside the car while he bent to the starting handle. The engine didn't fire immediately and suddenly he let the handle go and turned towards her. She could not help but feel he was regretting having said what he had before they had gone into the house and she shrank a little inside herself. The wind slapped her skirts around her ankles and whipped the hair loose around her face. Early dusk was falling, the sky was a cold empty green with only a slip of a new moon showing. Beneath it, the dark boggy moors beyond the edges of the garden stretched to infinity. Behind them, the loom of the house reared up, solid and dark. His face had a shuttered look and once more, it came to her how little she knew of him, really.

Abruptly, he said, ‘This is a terrible thing that's happened. You're right, it alters everything.'

For a heartbeat, there was nothing but the sound of the wind and the restless stirring of the rooks as they settled on their nests in the ruined wing. Then he bent and placed a kiss lightly on her cheek, started the car and in a few minutes was gone.

Cursing himself for his blundering stupidity, Tom drove the car at reckless speed down Moortop Road into Wainthorpe, and then more circumspectly through the town and in through the entrance to Cross Ings.

He sat in the car to compose himself before going in to face his mother – if he did not, she would know something was wrong, as mothers always did, or his mother at least – but his mind wouldn't be composed. It turned over and over what he had just allowed to happen. Had he learnt nothing from past events? Considering himself a mature individual who would not repeat past mistakes, and then acting like some callow youth? Those events in his past which he bitterly regretted but could never be erased? Frightening her before he could explain.

He had had such good intentions, God help him.

He stepped out of the car and went into the house, where his mother had the lamps lit and his tea was waiting. One look at his face, and she didn't after all ask him what the matter was.

Sixteen