The Cuckoo's Child (24 page)

Laura stood in the garden listening until the last sound of the motorcar's engine had faded, her coat pulled tight around her shoulders. The wind was sharp, but she didn't feel cold. Despite the unsatisfactory last few words with Tom, a feeling persisted that was warm and real, but at the same time elusive, and not to be damaged or lost by trying to capture it. Amongst all this sadness, was it wrong to feel the way she did?

She jumped as a figure suddenly appeared round the corner, the lanky Sergeant Rawlinson, a lit cigarette in his hand. He was equally surprised. ‘Miss Harcourt! I heard the motorcar go and didn't realize anyone was still around. Did I give you a scare? I'm sorry.'

‘No, no. I was just . . . taking a breath of air. I thought you'd left.'

‘Mr Womersley's gone, but I stayed behind for a few minutes, to have a smoke – and to poke around a bit.'

‘Well, I'll leave you to enjoy your cigarette and your poking.'

‘No, please, give me a moment, if you can spare it. I'd like a word or two with you.'

Laura nodded, looked around and perched herself on a roughly fashioned stone seat, a large slab of rock set on two other rocks, placed in front of the square pool. Curious as to what the sergeant might want, she waited.

He put his cigarette out and sat at the other end of the seat. Abruptly, he said, ‘It must have been shocking to find out about your parents as you have done.'

‘Sad, rather than shocking,' she replied quietly. ‘But – forgive me if I wonder what bearing that has on your enquiries? Why are you asking?'

He sat with his arms folded across his chest, holding himself tightly in. ‘Maybe it's not my place to talk about it. On the other hand, maybe I understand better than most. See . . .' He stopped and then rushed on, ‘I never knew my parents, either. It would give me a nasty turn to have them thrust on me now.'

‘That's not how I feel. I was looked after and loved by Mrs Illingworth before being handed over to my aunt and uncle. I've been fortunate there, too, but I'm glad I know now about my real parents.'

‘I was abandoned,' he said tersely. ‘In a church porch. Found by the vicar. He'd no idea what to do with a baby so he went to the only person he could think of for advice. She was the village schoolmistress, Matilda Dacres, never been married, never wanted a child of her own, but she was a good Christian woman and agreed to keep me until they could find out what to do with me. I was still with her when she died, when I was eighteen.'

‘She must have loved you, then.'

He shrugged. ‘She did her best, I suppose. She saw that I was well fed and clothed and made sure I was educated properly.' He paused. ‘Yes. She never said so, but I reckon she did, in her own way.' He slipped a hand inside his jacket pocket, took out his wallet and extracted a photo. ‘That's her, Tilly. She insisted I call her that, her childhood name.'

Miss Dacres had been a woman with a determined chin, a firm mouth and a high-boned collar, but Laura thought she had kind eyes. ‘She looks nice.'

‘She could be a tartar! But I missed her like billy-o when she died.' He put the photo carefully away.

‘Did you never want to find who your real mother was?'

‘No!' he said roughly. ‘She didn't want me when I was a baby, why should she want me when I was grown up? In any case, everybody knew who my parents were – a pair of travellers, good-for-nowts who'd been hanging around the place for several months. Sleeping rough, or at one of the common lodging houses if they could find fourpence for a bed. My mother and the man she was with disappeared after leaving me, and there wouldn't have been much chance of ever finding them.'

‘I'm sorry, indeed I am.' Laura was, and for the mother, too. She had learnt a good deal in the last year at the Settlement about the heartache of women who abandoned their babies. ‘But why are you telling me this?'

‘Dunno, really. Mr Womersley would probably kick me to kingdom come if he knew.' He stirred restlessly. ‘I was thinking about that fire, see.' He nodded towards the black bulk of the ruined wing. ‘And then I saw you and – well, don't rightly know why I said what I did. I apologize if I've upset you.'

‘Oh, please, you haven't.' He was a bony, edgy young man, impetuous and unwise in some things for all she knew, but this blurted out confession to her of his own circumstances had established some odd kind of rapport between them. The wariness about him she had felt in the study vanished. ‘It was kind of you.'

‘Kind? I don't know about that. It's just that we're up against a bit of a block in this investigation and I can't help feeling that something in Mr Beaumont's past, this fire here, maybe, might have a bearing on it. I might be wrong,' he finished lamely.

Oh yes, the fire.

Was it a coincidence that Ben Kindersley's manuscript, and the conflagration in which her father had perished, were both from the same time, twenty years ago, just before she had been born? There was so much she didn't yet know about these newly found parents of hers. She needed time, to come to grips with how she thought and felt about it all, to read that file of letters between Ainsley and William Carfax. She did not see how any of it could have any bearing on the death of her grandfather, or whether it would help to tell the police about that manuscript, but in one respect she felt bound to agree with the sergeant.

‘You're right, there's some mystery surrounding the fire. Nobody talks of it, nobody mentions it. Nobody ever mentions my father, Theo.'

‘It was a long time ago. People have short memories.' Or don't remember what they want to forget, he might have added. ‘Would it be too much to ask that if you should learn anything, you might let me know?' he asked, as they parted.

She promised she would, and when he had left, she vowed to herself that she would search again through the few remaining shelves in the library she had not yet worked upon, in case there was something more that Ben Kindersley had left, something that might give an ending to that infuriatingly incomplete story, though it seemed unlikely that there would be anything more. She would, however, remove and keep the ribbon-tied roll from where she had returned it to its original place. She felt she had a right to do that. It was her mother's story, part of her own story, what had brought her here.

Seventeen

Jack Rawlinson had legged it down Syke Beck Lane into Wainthorpe after leaving Laura Harcourt. It was an odd impulse that took him down there, but there was no one waiting for him at home in his lodgings, and he was hungry. He might just find something to eat, even on a Sunday evening. A pint of Tetley's wouldn't come amiss, either. A chat with the locals, maybe with a chance of picking up something useful.

It was tea time and the streets were relatively empty, a good time to have a wander around first and see what this one-horse town had to offer. Too much to hope there'd be any girls about – nice girls like Laura Harcourt, anyway.

He wondered how she really felt about what had come to light about her birth. Brought up as a young lady – and then to find you were the illegitimate daughter of a nursery maid. She seemed to be open enough about what little she knew, but he still felt he had told her more than she had told him. It was odd about Theo, her father. The fact that he'd fathered an illegitimate child, however shameful, hardly accounted for his name never being spoken. Dammit, the man was a hero. He had given his life to save his babies from a terrible death. How could a tragedy like that provide a motive for his father's murder twenty years later? Maybe it hadn't. Womersley was probably right: he had too much imagination.

He passed the police station with its blue lamp, the imposing edifice of the Liberal Club and two or three chapels, lights on ready for evening service. Already having the geography of this part of the town in his mind, he cut off a corner by taking the path through the municipal park on the hillside to that part of the town as yet unfamiliar to him.

This, then, was what they called ‘Bottom End', where the streets and alleys were uncobbled and most of the houses were old and stone-slated, crammed into dirt yards and squares approached by steps down from the road. The town's pervading smell of raw wool was overlaid by something worse – there was a tannery somewhere nearby. It was noisier, too. Despite the Sabbath, and the hour, children played outside underneath the gas lamps, boys shinning up the posts and some, for devilment, chasing the screaming girls from their skipping. Outside an open door, two beefy women were having a fierce and noisy argument.

Eventually, he found an ancient looking pub called the Tyas Arms. Hunger getting the better of him, he pushed open the door. It didn't look up to much, but he was thirsty and he could see pies on the counter.

The landlord was surly but at least served a fair pint, and the pork pie was excellent, the crust crisp with no thick layer of uncooked pastry inside, the meat juicy and peppery. No one took much notice of him after the first few suspicious glances. The place wasn't exactly humming with trade. A few younger men created a bit of noise round the dartboard, but the older element, men in flat caps and collarless shirts, smoked and paid attention to their beer, conversed in monosyllables or kept themselves to themselves. He should have known better than to hope to glean a few juicy bits of gossip. A pound to a dried pea they would have guessed what he, a stranger in Wainthorpe, was doing here. Nobody was going to open up to the police. It wasn't that sort of place. He sat for a while, drank up and left. He might as well have gone straight home.

Having decided the way back through the park was the quickest route to his tram stop, he was approaching the steps that led up to its little iron gate when suddenly both his arms were grabbed from behind and he was thrown to the ground. He saw nothing before his face hit the flags, but he smelled beer and strong cigarette smoke, the taint of wool grease on working clothes; he was conscious of ripe body odour and the rank smell of poverty. Then he tasted blood and spat out a tooth. By which time his assailant had gone, along with his wallet.

He was trying to scramble to his feet, and feeling distinctly woozy, when his arm was taken again; this time it was a woman, a fat, middle-aged woman in a crossover pinny. ‘Eh, lad, are you all right?'

‘You see who it was?' Rawlinson mumbled, as distinctly as he could with his mouth still full of blood.

‘Nay, he were off afore I could make out what were happening. I were just pulling t'draw-ons upstairs when I heard. You'd best see t'doctor, lad.'

Rawlinson put his hand to his cheekbone which he could actually feel swelling up beneath his hand. The tooth (not a front one, thank the Lord!) had not come out whole but broken off, leaving a jagged edge. It hurt his tongue. ‘I'll be all right, thanks, missis.'

‘That you won't. I'm off to fetch Dr Widdop. I reckon I know where he'll be.'

She nipped back into the house and came back, her head wrapped in a shawl. ‘You stop here and don't move. Shan't be but a minute.'

He was still too dizzy to do anything else but remain where he was, slumped on the pavement with his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and minutes later opened them to hear Dr Widdop saying, ‘Now then, now then, let's have a look at you. Good God, it's Sergeant Rawlinson, isn't it? What's happened?'

‘It's nothing, Doctor. Hope I haven't brought you away from something important.'

He thought he heard the woman laugh, but it was only a cough, and Widdop said, ‘No, not at all. Can we get this young feller inside, Mrs Brocklehurst?' He looked slightly flustered and the buttons of his waistcoat were done up awry.

‘You'll live,' he remarked after the injuries had been examined and he had cleaned up the blood with warm water supplied by the helpful Mrs Brocklehurst. There seemed to be an awful lot of it, most of it coming from the cut above his brow that the doctor was dabbing. ‘Nasty, but not enough to need stitches. Scalp wounds like that bleed a lot – and you've a thick skull, young man!' He administered iodine and a plaster, then examined Rawlinson's cheekbone. ‘No bones broken – but you're going to have one heck of a shiner, I'm afraid.'

After thanking the kindly woman they left together. Widdop was concerned. ‘May I offer you a bed for the night, Sergeant?' Rawlinson shook his head. ‘No? How are you going to get home, then? By tram?' He cast a professional eye over the injured man. ‘Very well, if you must. I think you'll be all right, but I'll walk with you to the stop. Sorry I can't give you a lift in my car. I usually walk when I come down this end of the town. The streets are too narrow to turn, and it's not worth the trouble finding somewhere to leave it. Got your fare?'

The thief had not rifled Rawlinson's trouser pockets and he found he had enough small change to get him home. ‘That was a nice woman,' he said as they walked along.

‘Oh, I daresay she was glad to do what she could. She's a widow, bit of a gossip but she's all right.'

Rawlinson still wondered how she had known where to get hold of Widdop. He'd had his doctor's bag with him, but it didn't look as though he had been brought from an important case. He grinned to himself, remembering Mrs Brocklehurst's laugh.

By now his head had cleared somewhat and he was beginning to feel more of a fool than anything else. The encounter hadn't done a lot of good to a suit he was proud of and his shirt gave the impression he'd had a suicidal encounter with his razor, but they were the least of his worries. When this got out it would do his reputation no good. He reached his lodgings without mishap and took the pills Widdop had given him, and his advice to go straight to bed, but he spent a restless night, tossing and turning and thinking about the theft of his wallet. The thief had been lucky – or more likely had his eye on Rawlinson while he'd paid for his pie and pint with a pound and pushed the ten-shilling note of the change into his wallet. He cursed the loss of that, ten bob was ten bob, and he was slowly trying to put a bit by so that one day he might move out of digs and have a little place of his own – but he was more concerned to have lost the other things: the precious photograph of Tilly, his diary – and how,
how
was he going to explain the loss of his warrant card, plus – oh God! – his police pocketbook, all of which he kept tucked inside his wallet?