Dying in the Wool (41 page)

Constable Mitchell and his wife had slipped in at the back of the church. As we came out, Mrs Mitchell and their small grandchildren split off and headed home.

‘It does the young uns good to learn to be solemn at funerals,’ Mitchell confided as we walked behind the coffins to the cemetery at the back of the chapel. He looked round quickly. ‘Come and see me this afternoon, eh?’

White misshapen clouds scudded at speed across the bright blue sky. The wind moaned through an oak tree.

Evelyn had avoided the chapel service and simply waited by the newly dug grave. Tabitha and Hector joined her.

The crowd of mourners thronged the cemetery. I stayed with Sykes, on the edge, observing.

People formed themselves into groups. The chief mourners, Mrs Kellett’s sister and brother and their families, stood close to the grave. I did not straight away notice the odd-woman-out. It was Evelyn’s gaze that drew my attention. Evelyn glanced across the grave, stared for a moment, and then averted her eyes, but not quickly enough to hide the look of pure hatred. Stoddard noticed the change in Evelyn, and he looked in the same direction.

I glanced to my right, then whispered to Sykes, ‘That’s her. Mrs Horrocks said she was dead.’

‘The woman in the painting?’

‘Yes.’

She wore a smart black coat, black shoes and a small hat with a flimsy veil that stopped short at her eyebrows. The child, a boy of about seven years old, was also dressed in black, a cut-down suit with a jacket that imitated a man’s, and dark trousers reaching just below his knees.

Mrs Kellett’s sister began to cry. Her husband put his
arm around her. He couldn’t find a handkerchief. The mystery woman in black handed her one.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’

The sister blew her nose. ‘Thank you. There’s some sandwiches and a pot of tea in the chapel hall.’

The woman seemed undecided. The boy looked at her hopefully.

Stoddard stepped towards them. He said, in a kindly voice, ‘You were a workmate of Lizzie’s once, I believe? In the weaving shed?’

‘No.’ She grasped the child’s hand. ‘She once or twice attended the same church as me.’

‘What church was that?’ Stoddard asked.

She seemed as though she would not answer then tossed her head back and said, ‘The Spiritualist church in Bradford.’

Stoddard all but snorted, but managed to keep his kindly tone. ‘It was good of you to come. Is this your child?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be going back for refreshments?’

She hesitated.

The mill workers were already leaving, and not in the direction of the chapel hall but back to work.

I came between Stoddard and the woman and child. ‘I’ll show this lady the way.’ I took her elbow and we walked to the gate.

‘I’m not off back for refreshments. I’ve a train to catch.’ She shook free of me.

I turned back. Evelyn was watching us. She spoke to Stoddard.

It gave me an unwelcome feeling of déjà vu to be back at the High Street café – the place where Tabitha and I had met to discuss her father’s disappearance. It was unnerving to sit opposite someone who was the image of Agnes
in the painting. She had only agreed to talk because she was early for the train back to Bradford.

‘Will it be all right if Mr Sykes takes Frederick to the park?’

She nodded warily, but a moment after changed her mind and leaped to her feet to run after them.

‘It’s all right, Miss Horrocks.’

She hurried onto the street, with me in pursuit. ‘You want the child.’

‘No. You have my word. Mr Sykes is taking the boy to the park, as I said. It will give us time to talk.’

‘What do you want to talk about? You got me here offering a lift but we’ve legs. If you’re trying to kidnap …’

‘No one wants to harm your nephew. Your mother must have told you we called to see her.’

‘So it was you, enquiring about the postal orders, and telling Mam about Mrs Kellett. Look, he may not be my child, but he’s ours. He’s Mam’s grandson and he’s going nowhere.’

‘You must be Beatrice, or Julia?’

She hurried on, calling back, ‘I’m Beatrice, and not gabbing to you while your accomplice makes off with our lad.’ Rushing across the road between a horse and cart and a delivery boy on his bicycle, she caused the cyclist to swerve. Eyes only for the child, she stepped into horse muck without noticing, quickening her pace until there was a moment’s distance between her and them.

When I caught her up, she had calmed down a little. ‘I came today to pay respects to the Kelletts. I brought the child so he could do the same. There were times before Julia married and I got a job when we hadn’t a crust. Mrs Kellett’s ten bob kept us from clemming.’

‘Earlier, when Mr Stoddard asked if you had worked in the weaving mill, I think he must have been mistaking you for your sister. You’re very much alike.’

She paused mid-stride and turned to me. ‘Did you know her?’

‘Not personally. But the photograph I left with your mother, the one from the painting done by Joshua Braithwaite. Agnes is standing on the old bridge across the beck …’

‘Her stranded on a bridge. That’s where he put her all right, with all his promises. And a Moses basket for the child! He might as well have put him in one and sent him floating down the river to be caught in reeds or to drown, for all the mind Joshua Braithwaite paid him.’

‘I believe he did care about her, and Frederick.’

‘Believe as you please. He dumped her and the child and went off.’

‘Why would he have done that? He left a family, a business, a home.’

‘Oh I heard about all that. If you ask me, our Agnes wasn’t the only woman in his life. He probably tossed a coin and went with the one he liked the best.’

We had reached the park gates. Sykes let go of the boy’s hand. Frederick bounded onto the grass like a horse hearing the starter’s pistol. Then he turned and waved to Beatrice. She waved back.

‘Will you tell me what happened to your sister?’ I asked Beatrice.

‘She died three months after Bigshot Braithwaite let her down. She’d found work in a chemist’s shop. Whilst she was at work, she collapsed. The chemist tried to revive her. She was rushed to St Luke’s, but it was too late.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Frederick had spotted the children’s play area with swings, roundabout and slides. He approached shyly. We were still in Easter week and other children played there. I remembered that feeling of being the stranger, on the edge of the group, wondering would you be accepted.

Sykes hung back, watching Frederick enter the playground.

‘Beatrice, when you say Braithwaite let Agnes down, how did that come about?’

‘He made promises to her. It was wrong. I knew no good would come of it. I told her that, but she wouldn’t have it. They loved each other, she said, and loved the child. He said he’d come to her, on the Saturday. The house was rented in Robin Hood’s Bay. He’d given her a key, and the address and everything. She waited, all packed and ready, and so excited. Of course he didn’t come, or send word. She waited, all day, and all the next day. When Monday came, she gave up hoping and went back to work.’

‘Were you there?’

‘Yes. I was the one told her not to be so soft in the head. He’d no intention of coming. I told her if she didn’t get back to work, she’d lose a good job.’

‘So were you looking after Frederick while she went to work?’

‘No. She left him with an old woman down the street. That’s why we asked Mam to come in the end, to be sure Fred was properly taken care of, and it’s a good thing we did, given that Agnes wasn’t much longer for this world.’

Now that she had slowed down, Beatrice noticed her shoe and wiped it on the grass verge to try and get rid of the horse muck, turning her foot sideways to wipe it on the grass.

I plucked some leaves. ‘If we go to the horse trough, you’ll be able to get your shoe clean.’

After she had cleaned her shoe, we both sat on the bench. ‘It was my fault. I was too hard on Agnes for being a fool. She listened to me, that he wasn’t coming. She went to work.’

‘Where did you work?’

‘At Wibsey Mills.’

I tried to keep my voice calm. If Marjorie Wilson was wrong, and Agnes had not worked at Low Moor on munitions,
there would have been no reason for Braithwaite to change his plans and to impulsively set off to find her.

‘Were you both employed at Wibsey Mills?’ I asked. ‘You and Agnes?’

She shut her eyes for a moment. ‘No. She was at the Low Moor Works, filling shells. On the one day she might have stayed at home, still hoping for a different life, I’d bullied her into going back to work. She got caught up in that damned explosion, ran miles to find Fred and the old woman. She was never the same again after that.’

‘You weren’t to know.’

‘Never the same Agnes after that day, all that running, the stench of it. She started to get headaches. I’d say take an aspirin. I thought nowt of it, only that she got the headaches because she’d been let down so bad.’

We watched Frederick, who had managed to grab a swing. He waved for Sykes to come and push him, going higher and higher.

Beatrice’s anger at Braithwaite and at herself had slid away. It’s strange how we get so angry on behalf of someone we love, much more angry than they might be on their own account. Evelyn was angry with Joshua because of his infidelity, but she was angrier still because she blamed him for Edmund’s death. Beatrice Horrocks, after all this time, was in a fury with Joshua Braithwaite because he had abandoned her sister. What would she do with all that anger if I told her what I thought to be the truth?

As if she knew something was coming, she went very still, folding her hands across her middle.

‘I believe Mr Braithwaite tried to come for your sister on Saturday, and someone stopped him.’

‘Whitewash!’

‘I believe he was on his way to her on that Monday, that he would have come to the house, and that he went to search for Agnes because of the explosion.’

I had her attention now.

‘And then what?’

‘I’m not sure. There was one unidentified body found after the Low Moor explosion. It may have been his.’

She turned to me, white-faced, her mouth open. I immediately regretted telling her, but it was too late to stop. ‘I can’t know for sure, but I suspect he may have been caught up in the explosions.’

‘The firemen wouldn’t have let him through.’

‘That’s what I thought at first. The firemen were all killed. It must have been mayhem. The explosions went on for hours, explosion after explosion.’

Sykes and the boy were on their way back.

‘The house in Robin Hood’s Bay that Agnes mentioned to you, do you by any chance remember the address? You see I believe Joshua Braithwaite may have taken some of his belongings there. I’d like to check with the owner. That would at least give us some confirmation about his intentions.’

‘I remember it all right. It was writ on an envelope, and on the mantelshelf for long enough.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Did you see me drop summat in’t grave?’

‘No.’

‘It was a key. Braithwaite give Agnes a great big iron key to that house, supposedly. I thought to chuck it in the mill stream. But I dropped it into the Kelletts’ grave so Mrs Kellett can pass it on to poor Agnes and let her haunt the damn place.’

The missing address book popped into my head. Had someone thought to track down Agnes, in Bradford, or in Robin Hood’s Bay? Could this child be as much at risk as Paul and Lizzie Kellett?

‘What about if you and the child take a holiday, a sort of late Easter holiday?’

‘I can’t do that. He’s back to school Monday. And I don’t suppose Braithwaite rented the Robin Hood’s Bay house for seven bloody years.’

‘Someone killed the Kelletts. A man’s been arrested for her murder …’

‘I heard that feller confessed to both killings.’

‘Frederick is Joshua Braithwaite’s only son. You might be safer, just until this is cleared up, to take him somewhere else.’

‘But the lad’s a bastard, poor kid. He won’t be coming into any property or whatever else from the Braithwaite fortune. And me mam’s expecting us back.’

Nothing I said would make her change her mind.

Frederick came back with two ice creams and handed one to Beatrice. She patted the bench for him to sit beside her.

Sykes handed me a cornet. He licked one himself and gave a boyish grin. ‘It’s Easter holidays. Everyone should come to the park and have an ice cream.’ He snapped the bottom off his cornet and scooped ice cream from the top. ‘Did you ever do this, Frederick? Make a baby cornet?’

Frederick copied him.

At the park gates, I shook hands with Beatrice and wished her and Frederick good luck. Sykes said he would walk them to the station, and catch up with me later at the Bridgestead police house.

I arrived at the police house at the same time as Mr Mitchell. He leaned his bike against the railing, took off his bicycle clips and hooked them onto the handlebars.