Before the Poison (41 page)

Heather came in shivering and warmed herself by the fire before shucking off her long winter coat. Her cheeks had a healthy glow, though I knew she wouldn’t thank me for saying so. She was sensitive about her complexion. She didn’t even like me admiring her freckles. So I said nothing. I went to the bar and got her a vodka and tonic while she studied the menu on the blackboard over the fireplace. In the end she went for the venison sausage, and I decided on lamb chops.

‘So how does it feel to be a member of the human race again?’ she asked.

‘I was seriously in danger of going crazy up there.’

‘A man reverting to his primitive roots. Yes. A frightening thing, indeed. But you’re all right now?’

‘Nothing a decent pint couldn’t cure.’

‘Have you found your evacuee yet?’

‘Billy? No. The library’s still closed. This bloody weather.’

‘I still don’t see what you think he’ll be able to tell you.’

‘I’ve been working on a theory.’

‘Another one?’

‘Say Grace did it. Say she killed her husband.’

‘Then I don’t see any point in going any farther. I thought your aim was to prove your precious Grace innocent? I thought you’d already decided that she
didn’t
do it.’

‘I had. It was. It is. But maybe even more so it’s to get at the
truth
.’

‘You don’t think that came out at the trial?’

‘Of course it didn’t. I think Louise put it best when she said the jurors all fantasised about Grace and hated themselves for it, so they found her guilty. But I can’t prove it. I can’t prove that Ernest Fox died of natural causes.’

‘Then what? The next best thing? Her motives were noble?’

‘In a way.’ I lowered my voice. I hardly needed to, as there was nobody else in the dining room and the television was on over the bar, but it wasn’t the kind of thought you voiced out loud. I paused, trying to weigh the words before I said them. ‘What if Ernest Fox had abused the evacuee?’ I said. ‘What if he was a paedophile?’

Heather looked aghast at me. ‘What?’

‘It doesn’t sound so strange, does it? This evacuee, Billy. He might have remembered years later. People do bury such secrets, you know, even from themselves. He found himself training in Catterick, close enough that he just had to tell Grace what he had remembered.’

‘And she believed him? Just like that?’

‘I’ve thought about that, too. If Grace believed him,’ I said, ‘it was because she already had an inkling, but she didn’t want to admit it to herself, that she’d been living with a pervert all those years. And they had a son. He was seven—’

‘You’re not saying Ernest Fox abused his own son, too?’

‘I’m saying it’s possible. Or that Grace had noticed the way he was starting to treat the boy, or look at him, and it worried her.’

Heather shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Chris,’ she said. ‘You’ve lost me on this one, I’m afraid. You’re grasping at straws. This is just wild imagination. There’s no evidence at all.’

‘Why would there be? But won’t you at least admit it’s possible, as a theory?’

Our food arrived and we started eating. Heather pushed back her hair. ‘Lots of things are possible,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean they happened. I mean, if you’re after way-out theories, you don’t even have to go that far.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe she killed him because he was abusing
her
. Have you thought of that? Or maybe he committed suicide?’

‘But communities covered up things like paedophiles back then. And nobody would suspect a doctor. Ernest Fox was a pillar of the community. They’d had separate bedrooms since Randolph was born.’

‘If you’re right, then why didn’t Grace just tell the police?’

‘Because they’d never believe her, for a start, because she couldn’t prove it, and even if she succeeded, the shame she’d bring on herself and her son would have been too much to bear.’

‘More than the shame of having a father murdered and a mother hanged for his murder? I’m sorry, Chris, but that comes pretty high on my list of shameful things to live with.’

‘I doubt she was acting entirely rationally. And she
didn’t expect to get caught
!’

‘Either she was irrational, or she was calculating. You can’t have it both ways.’

‘Of course you can. Some people are perfectly rational in their actions when they’re angry or upset.’

‘Even so, I think that if you’re coming to the conclusion that Grace Fox did it, anyway, then you should start trying to accept that the jury was right all along and give up on it. Its been obsessing you, taking over your life.’

‘Not really. I just want to know. There are one or two more things I can do before the whole thing dries up on me, and I’m going to do them, starting with finding Billy.’

Heather gave me a look she no doubt kept in reserve for hopeless cases, then she smiled. ‘Well, you’ve certainly got staying power, I’ll give you that. How about another drink?’

It was business as usual on the A1 two days later when I drove to Darlington, but some of the country and residential roads were still covered in snow and ice and tough to negotiate. It was a grey day with a pale, haloed disc of sunlight trying to burn through from the south, without much success. When I got to the city, there were few people on the streets, and the pavements were still covered in slush over patches of ice. I hadn’t visited Darlington often, and the parking confused me, so I headed for the large, open car park in the city centre. Even there, they hadn’t done a great job of clearing away the deluge, and it was tricky to back my way into a parking spot without slipping.

The library was an old red-brick building, reminiscent of the provincial schools of the late Victorian era, at the back of the Cornmill Centre. I had phoned ahead the day before and managed to book a microfilm reader. Normally, I was told, there would be a longer waiting period, but things were a little slow owing to the weather. I was glad I had something to thank the weather for.

Libraries these days are very different places from the ones of my childhood. I used to go nearly every day to the children’s library in Armley, where I grew up, mostly because I was in love with Yvonne, the librarian with the beehive hairdo. There was a special smell about the place, probably a mixture of paper, glue, polish, ink and Yvonne, that I found irresistible. She had a lovely, gentle way of stamping the books out. Today, though, it’s called a One Stop Centre, and more people go there to get advice about housing or benefits, pay their council tax or play games on the Internet than to borrow books. As libraries go, Darlington’s wasn’t bad. There was plenty of old wood, a pleasant, distinctive smell, and Jean, one of the librarians, was very helpful, though she didn’t have a beehive. She showed me to the readers and got me all set up with the
Northern Despatch
and
Northern Echo
microfilms.

I was lucky that I already knew Billy had arrived in Richmond in September 1939, and it took me no more than about ten minutes to find the little story tucked away in the
Northern Despatch
between a report on the Post Office coating the tops of its pillar boxes with yellowish gas-detecting paint, and warnings of stiffer penalties for blackout violations. Even better, there was a photograph, poor-quality black and white, but it was the same boy Grace had been photographed with in the garden of Kilnsgate, the same pinched, suspicious features and blond fringe.

And that was it. I have to confess, I was more than a little disappointed. Apart from the fact that his name was Billy Strang and that he came from Newcastle, the article gave me little more information to go on than I already had. It wasn’t much more than a propaganda piece, really. Still, I could add to that what Wilf had told me about the boy’s father managing a shoe shop in Newcastle High Street, and it might get me somewhere. Strang also sounded like a reasonably unusual name.

I browsed through a few more stories but found nothing else related to Billy. I wondered if the
Echo
or the
Despatch
had done a follow-up when he left, so I checked the newspapers around Christmas and early January 1940, but again I came up empty handed. It appeared that it was only his arrival as the first evacuee in the area that was deemed newsworthy. I had to hope that, little as it was, it would be enough for Louise to work her magic.

While I was there, I also had a quick scan through the microfiches for 1941 and 1942 for anything related to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth or the disappearance of Nat Bunting. Perhaps I scanned too quickly and missed something, but it seemed to me as if neither incident had made it even as far as the local newspaper. I thought again of trying to find the newspaper accounts of Grace’s trial, which would probably be in Leeds reference library, but I decided I didn’t really need them after reading Morley’s account. Besides, it wasn’t so much the trial I was interested in any more, it was Grace herself.

On my way back from Darlington, I decided to pay a call on my neighbours, the Brothertons. Wilf had said they might know something about Kilnsgate during the war, and they were hardly out of my way. I pulled up at the end of their short drive and made my way across the frozen mud of the farmyard to the house. Two collies stood barking at me, their tails wagging. It wasn’t a large farmhouse, but there were quite a few outbuildings, barns, byres and the like, along with a chicken coop. I could hear cows mooing and smell that farmyard smell.

A man of about forty or so opened the door the moment I started to knock. He had clearly heard the dogs announce me. He was wearing a thick crew-neck sweater and jeans and had a mop of dark curly hair and black eyebrows that met in the middle. He looked at me quizzically, and I introduced myself. He smiled, shook hands and invited me in.

I had no sooner got inside than another dog came bounding along and started rearing up at me. It looked like a mongrel of some kind. I stroked it, let it lick my hand, and it calmed down. I could see a few cats gliding around, too, and two small children stared up at me wide eyed from a floor covered in building bricks and various other toys. One of them looked about two; the other was perhaps four. A woman came in, drying her hands on a towel. ‘Excuse the mess,’ she said, ‘only we weren’t expecting company.’

I smiled. ‘I’m sorry to drop by unannounced, but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’ve been meaning to say hello for a while. Mrs Brotherton, I assume?’

‘Jill, please. And my husband’s Tony. Come on through to the lounge and sit down. Can I get you a cup of tea or something?’

‘That would great,’ I said. ‘Milk, please, no sugar.’ I followed her through to a tidy living room with its maroon three-piece suite, TV in the corner and a low glass coffee table. The dog followed me, then settled down on the carpet to lick itself. Tony Brotherton sat down and Jill disappeared to make tea.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t called earlier,’ I said. ‘I’m not used to the isolation up here. I can’t even
see
your house from mine.’

Tony Brotherton laughed. ‘You get used to it. And you must forgive us, too. The rumours that you have to winter out for ten years here before your neighbours will talk to you are not true at all. It’s been a busy time, Christmas and everything. Then there was the weather.’

‘Ah, yes. The weather.’

We talked about that for a while, until Jill returned with the tea in mugs on a tray, along with an assortment of biscuits. She was a strong-looking woman with short auburn hair and a weathered complexion, also wearing jeans and a sweater, and almost as tall as her husband. She looked capable enough of handling anything that came up on a farm.

I wanted to get to the point and return to Kilnsgate to phone Louise and set her on the trail of Billy Strang, but I knew it was important to make polite conversation for a while, and to answer Jill and Tony’s questions about my work and suchlike. I couldn’t really find a natural way to bring the conversation around to the war, so instead I asked about the history of the farm, who it had belonged to over the years.

‘It’s been in the family as far back as we can trace it,’ said Tony. ‘I know it seems old fashioned these days, but it seemed important not to break the continuity. There was a time when I felt like selling up and moving to the city, but Jilly here talked me out of it.’ He glanced towards the children playing in the other room. ‘It’ll be little Gary’s one day, too.’

‘What about his brother?’

‘It’s the elder son who inherits,’ said Tony.

I wanted to comment that this seemed a little unfair, especially if the elder didn’t want to be a farmer and the younger did, but I sensed that would only close doors, not open them.

Jill handed us each a mug of tea and came to sit on the chair arm beside Tony. She took his hand and smiled down at him.