The Cuckoo's Child (8 page)

She had always known that her escape from skivvying in that low-down old Tyas Arms, being nothing more than the publican's daughter, lay in getting herself married. When Theo had put a ring on her finger – only just in time, before the twins were born – Ainsley hadn't batted an eyelid – not in her presence, at any rate. What he'd said to his son was between him and Theo. For a moment she closed her eyes as the old, familiar pain ripped through her.

But she'd got what she wanted. Folk thought she gave herself airs, but this was only so she could hold her head up in the town – no longer that Chadwick lass from the Tyas Arms, but Mrs Theo Beaumont of Farr Clough, who numbered the wives of the local nobs among her acquaintances.

She dipped her pen in the ink again.
Wages for Mrs Macready, for Jessie, for the new maid, for John Willie and the boy, Zach. A load of best coal cobs, and another of nutty slack, delivered . . .

All the same, for all his generosity, Ainsley Beaumont wasn't always an easy man to live with. She had had to tread so careful a path it had by now become second nature. He could be wilful and overbearing, he was hard-headed, though not hard-hearted, and it wasn't wise to oppose him. Even though lately some of his actions had been downright daft – more than that, dangerous. He'd got hold of some queer ideas and no mistake, such as getting that stranger from London to sort out his old books, when Una could have been put to do it, and without having to be paid a penny for it, either.

Amelia shielded her eyes with her hand, her elbow on the table. Here it was, not yet seven in the morning, and she was tired. Not physically, but wearied of thinking, worrying, obsessed by fear. What would they say, Wainthorpe folk, if they
knew
? How they'd tattle behind their hands!

She had the beginnings of another headache, too. The headaches were usually a sign, a warning. Please God, not now. She couldn't afford the dark days, the week – weeks, sometimes – sucked out of her life, that the darkness demanded.

The news originated from Cross Ings Mill, gathered momentum and by teatime all of Wainthorpe was buzzing with it.

Accidents regularly happened in any mill, horrific accidents; it stood to reason, in places where there was so much dangerous machinery, and when people working there were not always as careful as they should be in keeping to the rules about unprotected hair and loose clothing which could easily get caught up in the flying and whirling belts and cogs. But this accident had happened outside, not inside, Cross Ings Mill.

Few people went by the dam, and took care not to get too near if they were forced to do so – no telling what there was in that filthy millpond soup. Not for nothing was it known as the slap-dab. Nobody, that is, apart from the little limbs of Satan who larked around there, running and balancing along the wall for a dare, or simply out of bravado; young lads who'd been told in no uncertain terms that they'd know all about it if their mams heard what they'd been up to. It wasn't unknown for one of them to fall in. Once, years ago, a little lad had drowned there. But a grown man?

Who was it? A drunk? A stranger? Surely nobody else would have been such a fool as to let that happen.

‘Epidural haematoma due to blunt impact to the head,' repeated Detective Inspector Charlie Womersley. ‘And what does that mean when it's at home?'

Three men – the doctor, Womersley and the local police sergeant, Binns – were standing on the path which ran alongside the Cross Ings dam.

‘It
could
mean he hit his head on the bottom of the dam when he fell in, but he didn't,' Dr Pike said.

Womersley wished he had been there yesterday after they fished Ainsley Beaumont out of the dam, but that hadn't been deemed necessary at the time. The law routinely required enquiry into the circumstances of any unexpected death, but when the dead man had been identified as a prominent townsman, a wealthy millowner who employed a good percentage of the town's workforce, and had a finger in many other of Wainthorpe's concerns, what had at first seemed like accidental drowning had suddenly warranted somewhat more than investigation by Sergeant Binns.

With Binns's inspector temporarily hors de combat on account of having fallen off his bicycle a week ago, the sergeant and a couple of constables represented all of Wainthorpe's constabulary staff. It wouldn't have done to let it be thought that the enquiry was not of paramount importance, and Womersley, an experienced detective inspector, had been brought in. He had no particular objections: it would merely be a routine enquiry, soon over, which suited him well enough; he was coasting towards retirement and didn't need any major investigations to upset the equilibrium of his last few months.

‘Good of you to give us more of your time, Doctor.'

When the body had been found, Dr Widdop, the police doctor, had been snatching a few hours' sleep after having attended a patient for most of the previous night, and his assistant, Matthew Pike, had come in his stead to make the official certification of death. It was the first time it had fallen to him to perform such a task. An incomer from somewhere down south, he was bursting with new ideas. He was also a very positive young man and had had no hesitation in making known to the police his private dissatisfaction with the idea that the death could have been accidental, or even suicide; a conclusion agreed by the pathologist who had carried out the preliminary examination of the body.

He said now, ‘The coroner's certain to ask for a post-mortem, Inspector, and I think it'll show he couldn't have fallen in – or jumped, either, if it comes to that. Neither did he drown. He was dead before he hit the water.'

Womersley grunted, uneasily digesting the implications of the statement. ‘You sure of that?' The question was rhetorical. Inexperienced as he was, the young doctor wouldn't, he knew, have sounded so emphatic if there had been any doubts, and in any case it was backed up by the pathologist's report.

‘He didn't drown,' Pike repeated. ‘No water in his lungs. It was that blow to his head that killed him – before he went in. Need I say more?'

‘Since he could hardly have thrown himself in, not if he was already dead, it means somebody else was there,' supplied Womersley, who never minded stating the obvious. ‘Another fight, I suppose, that went too far, as they do. He was knocked down, hit his head – and died. So we have a manslaughter on our hands.' Anything more, he didn't want to think about.

Pike, a stocky, carelessly dressed young chap with leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket and sharp eyes behind thick spectacles, shrugged. ‘Maybe.'

Womersley cocked an eyebrow.

Pike added, ‘Why bother to throw him in, if he was already dead? Unless they weren't sure he was, and wanted to finish him off, make absolutely certain.'

Womersley looked down at the gently steaming surface of the oily, filthy, stinking dam. He reckoned that even if the old man hadn't been dead before he went in, it wouldn't have been long before he was.

‘Or to hide the body, like?' the sergeant offered.

Fred Binns was a wiry fellow with sharp eyes. Suspicious deaths on their patch were rare and he was eager to make the most of this one in the absence of his inspector. All the same, it was just as well they'd decided to send in what he thought of as the big guns – however little Inspector Womersley, middle-aged, slow moving, seemed to fit the description.

‘Bodies have a habit of floating, sooner or later, Sergeant,' Womersley pointed out.

The doctor said, ‘He didn't sink at all. The air in his lungs would have kept him buoyant for a while, at least until he became waterlogged, but he was found before that had the chance to happen . . . he drifted over there, to what they call the goit, where his body got caught.'

The path they stood on was black, trodden earth, bounded on one side by the substantial wall that surrounded the dam. Along the base sprouted a fine colony of weeds: rough grass, ragwort, nettles, bracken, even a rogue clump of heather. The mill dam itself was an elongated shape, eight foot deep, with steep, straight sides and a bottom lined with stone setts. The goit was a conduit for the purpose of channelling the water from the dam into the mill. Not the clean, beautifully soft water that came down from the hills, essential for washing the wool; this was the polluted waste left behind after the clotted, greasy wool fleeces had been scoured, plus other detritus, waiting to be turned into steam to power the engine. An iron grating prevented the conduit from being blocked by rubbish, and that was where the body had lodged, along with a lot of scummy residue and a dead rat, left behind when the body had been taken away.

This was beginning to give Womersley heartburn. He sighed, reached into his pocket for the mint imperials. ‘Not just a fight, tempers lost, then?'

‘A fight, possibly, but . . . the autopsy will prove whether he hit his head as he fell, or if something hit
him.
There's a difference. If he fell, the damage to the brain will show at the opposite side to the wound, if not, it'll be on the same side. Medically known as
coup
and
contre-coup
injuries, if it's of any interest.'

‘If he was deliberately attacked, it wasn't for robbery.' Womersley brought to mind the details he had familiarized himself with. The dead man's handsome, silver-knobbed walking stick had been left lying on the path. ‘And he still had his gold watch chain and sovereign case – with sovereigns still in it, if I'm not mistaken, Sergeant Binns?'

‘Aye. His wallet was stuffed with notes as well.'

But it looked as though somebody had made the attempt. The inside breast pocket in the lining of his jacket, where he had kept his pocketbook, had been torn – a long rip from the corner – though oddly, the pocketbook had been left there, apparently intact. It must have been a recent tear – his clothes had been good, and though not new, had been well taken care of. A hole in one trouser pocket had been neatly patched. His boots had metal heel protectors hammered in, to save wear. His socks were hand-knitted, and someone had thriftily and carefully darned over the places in the heels where the wool had worn thin. It was the sort of thing Womersley's wife, Kate, did for him. For all his money, Ainsley Beaumont, like all sensible folks, obviously hadn't believed in discarding his clothes before they'd outlived their useful life.

Womersley looked down at the bloated corpse of the dead rat and suppressed another sigh. It was Saturday morning, the beginning of the weekend and a half day at the mill, which would shut down at twelve thirty. The town market was already in full swing, and later the trams would be packed with Huddersfield supporters bound for the rugby match at Fartown. Rawlinson, the detective sergeant Womersley had brought with him, would be disappointed at not being able to join them all. Womersley was beginning to see his own weekend slipping away. He'd promised Kate to put up the supports for when the kidney beans were ready to be planted out in their garden – Kate's garden, by rights – the overrun and neglected private garden that she'd taken over and made into a profitable little business, growing and selling flowers and market produce. A countrywoman born and bred, she'd made a success of her little venture. To Womersley, the peaceful walled garden and its ancient mulberry tree with a seat running round it had been a revelation. He had never before in his life put a spade into the ground or felt the warm earth crumbling beneath his fingers, or stopped to listen to a robin as it perched on his garden fork, and as he learned more from Kate, he sometimes wondered why he had ever become a policeman, and not a gardener. He had developed a passion for growing sweet peas, and a competitive streak which had enabled him to win several prizes for his blooms. Maybe it was the same competitive streak which had got him to the rank of inspector, in an organization not noted for its quick promotions – so maybe he was a policeman at heart, after all. Certainly, with his passion for justice, he never rested till he'd got to the bottom of things. Those who didn't know him, with his ponderous manner, thought him soft, which amused him, but those who did know him were glad they were not on the wrong side of the law.

He brought his attention back to what was going on. ‘Then if robbery wasn't the motive, we'd better start looking for somebody who had it in for him.'

‘Who shouldn't be hard to find, from what I've been hearing,' Pike said shortly, getting ready to leave. ‘Choleric sort of fellow, our Mr Beaumont. Just about everybody seems to have come up against him sooner or later.'

‘Nay, you'll go a long way,' Sergeant Binns protested, feeling bound in all fairness to correct this impression, ‘before you find anybody thought that bad of him. Ainsley Beaumont was a hard man, right enough, and a bit short-tempered, but he were fair, if you did right by him. And very respected by t'other wool men. Wait till you see his funeral. I'll be capped if it isn't one of t'biggest in the Neller valley for years.'

Womersley respected local knowledge from a shrewd bobby like Binns, but Pike, who seemed to have his own opinions about the victim, merely shrugged. Womersley said dryly, ‘Well, his funeral doesn't look like it's going to be tomorrow, or the next day, come to that. Somebody wanted him out of the road. So we'd best set about finding who. First, who was it found him?'

It had been little Kathleen O'Mara, a ten-year-old who had been taking her father's dinner to him at the mill, as she often did – peas and sausage in a basin wrapped and tied up in a red spotted handkerchief. When she saw the thing floating on the surface of the dam after she came through the snicket on Syke Beck Lane and on to the path above the mill, she'd dropped the basin and stood there crying her eyes out till her father came looking to see where his dinner had got to.