Dying in the Wool (42 page)

Once inside, in spite of having asked me to come and see him, he seemed in no hurry to speak. A brown foolscap-size envelope lay on the table.

‘I thought it’d be here. And being it’s you that initiated the proceedings, you might as well sit in while I peruse it.’ He drew a carbon copy of a typed report from the brown envelope. ‘It’s from the Bradford Coroner’s office – a report on the unidentified man found at the scene of the Low Moor explosion. This was sent to Keighley, but
they’ve biked it over to me, asking for my comments, being as how I knew Joshua Braithwaite.’

I waited while he read through the autopsy report on Mr X.

‘Mr Braithwaite was five foot six, about ten stone. The height would be about right.’

He ran a finger down the page. If I didn’t look, it may not be true. I closed my eyes.

After a long while, he said, ‘This chap was dressed in overalls, what was left of the scraps on his body. Nothing under them, but then it was August and the hottest day of the year.’

My heart began to beat fast. Mitchell’s finger paused partway down the page. He looked at me, and we shared the same thought. There is not a great deal of difference between hospital blues and overalls.

He was sparing me some of the grisly details. I would have to contrive to look at the report myself.

‘How extensive were the burns?’ I asked.

‘Eighty-five per cent, poor blighter. But you see, it couldn’t have been Mr Braithwaite. The explosion was around 2.30 p.m. and he was still in hospital at that time.’

‘Mr Mitchell, the explosions continued into the next day. The gasometer went up. It must have been like a circle of hell.’

He shook his head as he read the report, picking on tiny details that convinced him he was right.

‘There are points of similarity, true, but I don’t reckon as how it’s him.’

‘Why not?’

‘The man was Joshua Braithwaite’s age and height. He had five gold fillings in his teeth. Now not many chemical workers have a gold filling, but some do – so you can’t go on that. But I can assure you that Mr Braithwaite didn’t have a missing front tooth. The unidentified man had a missing front tooth.’

I remembered what Hector had said.
I gave him my scarf
to hold to his mouth. He was bleeding. His front tooth was loose.

I knew I’d been right, and yet to have it confirmed made me shudder. I didn’t want to be right. I told Constable Mitchell what Hector had said.

He clamped his lips shut, clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘It’s always in the detail. I missed that. Now I wonder what else I missed.’

He picked up the telephone.

‘You wouldn’t have made a note of a loose tooth,’ I said. ‘Even if you had, it could have stayed loose for days.’

Mr Mitchell asked the operator to connect him to a certain dentist in Keighley.

While his attention was on the telephone call, I drew the report across the desk and began to read. The force of the explosion that killed Joshua Braithwaite must have been tremendous. He suffered broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a fractured collar bone. His arm was broken in two places.

Mr Mitchell was speaking to someone at the dental practice. They held no records for Mr Braithwaite.

With mounting horror I read that Joshua Braithwaite had sustained bruises, a crushed elbow and a dislocated shoulder.

On the second call, to a Bingley dental practice, Mr Mitchell identified himself and asked the dentist whether Joshua Braithwaite had been a patient there. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘He’s checking.’

We waited.

‘Ah I see, yes. When was his last appointment?’

I could hear the hope for a miracle in his voice. He wanted the person on the other end to say that Mr Braithwaite popped in last week for an extraction.

‘And what fillings were those?’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and nodded to me to pick up a pencil. I wrote as he repeated the information he was given. ‘Right cuspidor or top eye tooth, gold filling; top right second
molar or grinder, gold filling; bottom right second and third grinders, gold fillings; bottom left second grinder, gold filling. Thank you. Just a moment, please.’ He pulled my note towards him and compared it against the information in the post mortem report. His mouth set in a grim line. ‘I’ll be coming to see you within the hour, sir, if you’ll make yourself available please.’

He returned to his high stool with a sigh and picked up my notes. ‘I’ll read these back to you, Mrs Shackleton, so that you can double-check against the report. It would be terrible to make a mistake over this.’

Sometimes, you think if you look at print long enough, it will change its mind and say something else. It did not. We verified that the dental work matched that of Mr Braithwaite’s.

Mr Mitchell stood up and paced the room. ‘What was the man thinking of, running away from his family, his business, his own place, his people?’

‘He was in love, and an artist. All those years, he’d been a round peg filling a very square hole.’

‘In love!’ The derisory edge to his voice spoke volumes.

I told him about Agnes Horrocks and Frederick, who must have been just a baby.

‘Whatever possessed the man? He could have done what others do and provided for her. No one benefited. Everyone suffered.’

‘Agnes lodged with Mrs Kellett while Kellett was away at war. That postal order stub I gave you – it seems that Mrs Kellett sent something each week to support the child.’

‘Why would
she
send money?’

‘I believe the money came out of the mill coffers – put in her wage packet each week. I expect that was a way of keeping the business of the child at arm’s length, protecting Evelyn.’

Mr Mitchell shook his head and sighed. ‘They don’t
come much better than Mr Stoddard. Anyone else would have washed his hands of the trollop.’

He pulled on his helmet. ‘I’m going to collect those dental records. Once I have them in front of me and I can see with my own eyes, I shall telephone my sergeant. I’ll be obliged if you say nothing to Mrs Braithwaite before that.’

‘Tabitha asked me to find him. She’s the one I must tell.’

‘His wife should know first. My sergeant will say how to proceed from here. In my opinion, we may want to ask Mr Stoddard to be present. He’s been their sheet anchor all these years. He should be there for them when we break the news.’

Perhaps he should be there, for Evelyn. But it was Tabitha who had asked me to find her father, and it was Tabitha I must tell first.

Through the window, I watched Constable Mitchell put on his bicycle clips. He mounted the bike and pushed off, pedalling back down the hill towards the main road. He had asked me not to tell Mrs Braithwaite, but had not mentioned Tabitha.

The telephone operator connected me to the Braithwaites. I spoke to Tabitha, and asked her to meet me on the bridge. I believe if Mr Mitchell had not called Agnes Horrocks a trollop I may have done as he had asked and waited in the police house.

Fastening the cloth on a framework to dry.

By afternoon, scudding white clouds chased any remaining streaks of blue from the sky. You could feel snow in the air.

I walked down the main street towards the humpback bridge. Once there, I stepped foot to foot trying to keep warm, hugging myself, watching the clouds of my breath. It was mad to ask Tabitha to meet me out here, yet somehow fitting to be close to the spot where Joshua Braithwaite had watched Tabitha and Edmund play and turned them into a work of art. I curled my toes and stamped my feet for warmth. Just here, Agnes Horrocks had preened in her summer dress, forever young, warm and full of life through Braithwaite’s oil paints.

The thump against my back winded me and sent me reeling. I had to grab the stones on the top of the bridge wall to steady myself. It was Charlie. He nuzzled me, sniffing in my coat pocket as though he expected me to travel with marrow bones. ‘Sorry, Charlie, it’s not your lucky day.’

From a way off came a call – Marjorie, hiding, reluctant to show her face. I got the feeling that if I went towards the woods she would come and speak to me.

‘Go on, Charlie. Back to your mistress.’ He walked backwards for a few steps, and then turned and bounded towards the clump of trees.

How would I tell Tabitha? The simplest way would be best.
Your father is dead …
As if she knew bad news awaited her, she took an age to appear. Then I caught sight of her, on horseback, riding towards the bridge. She waved. I waved back. I had expected her to be on foot, and that we would walk to the café and I would prepare her for bad news. Then we’d go to the police house.

No. That’s not true. I could not imagine how or where to tell her.

She dismounted.

We walked down the bank to be out of the cold. Her horse trod gingerly, staying close beside her.

She looked happy. I guessed she had some news connected with her wedding. Perhaps they had booked the honeymoon hotel in Paris at last, or Hector had learned to say
bon jour
.

She glanced at my satchel. ‘Are you out photographing again? You’ll die of cold for your art!’

‘No I’m not photographing, not just now.’

‘Only Uncle Neville was asking. He thought you wanted to take a picture of the mill, for some competition. You’d said about photographing the looms when they were still – like some great crouching animal you’d said.’

I felt like crouching myself, disappearing under the bridge or finding my way to some new world through the waterfall. Only the sound of burbling water broke the late afternoon stillness.

‘The photograph of the mill can wait.’ Perhaps it would wait forever.

‘Oh he insists. He said to say No hard feelings, whatever that means. Did you and he have words?’

So he had not mentioned my espionage incursion into the mill at the dead of night. ‘I was perhaps a little too curious for his taste.’

She laughed. ‘Told you. Told you what mill people are
like.’ There was a false ring to her laugh, as though being deliberately light-hearted would arm her against me.

Her horse whinnied in protest at the steepness of the bank. She had to turn and lead him back.

‘I’ve something to tell you, Tabitha, but perhaps this isn’t the best time.’

Something in my voice made her catch the inside of her cheek with her teeth. Looking at her suddenly took me back to a road in France, where we stopped our ambulance that was already full, and hardly room for another casualty. For a moment, the air between us hung still and heavy.

‘You’ve dragged me here, Kate. Better get on with it. Dad’s gone to Tahiti?’

Suddenly my mouth felt dry. The first snowflake fell, landing on Tabitha’s nose. I should not be telling her out here, but it was too late.

‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘What is it that’s so terrible that it needs to float away into the ether and not be confined by four walls?’

‘Tabitha, I’m sorry to tell you that your father is dead. He was identified by his height and his dental records. His body was found at Low Moor. Mr Mitchell wanted to wait until his sergeant could be here, but I thought you should know now.’

Why did I think so? Because it was my case. Because Tabitha employed me. I must tell her, not some sergeant from Keighley who’d managed to do nothing at the time and less since.

She froze on the spot, like in a child’s game of statues. Then suddenly she was shaking her head, clenching her fists. The horse stomped, its nostrils snorted small clouds of breath to her cheek as if in sympathy. She flung out her arm as if to strike me. ‘You fool, Kate.’

I reached for her. She struggled as I grabbed and held her. Snowflakes landed on her eyelashes. She pushed me
away and rubbed a fist on her eyelid. ‘It can’t be him. Why don’t you just say you’re sick of looking?’

I licked a snowflake from my lip, and tried to speak carefully. My words came out like some lawyer’s voice that had nothing to do with Kate Shackleton or Tabitha Braithwaite. ‘The previously unidentified man is the same height and build as your father. His dental records match. Constable Mitchell checked. No identification was made at the time, because there was no reason to suppose he would have been there. He was still at Milton House when the first explosion happened at Low Moor.’

‘So it couldn’t be him!’ She pulled free and hurried away from me, leading the horse to the bridge. When I caught up, her face contorted with rage. ‘I’m paying you to find him. You haven’t found him.’

Say it quickly, I told myself, before she gouges out my eyes.

‘I believe he went to Low Moor to find the young woman I told you about, Agnes Horrocks. She lived near there with her child, and she worked on munitions.’

She stood, glaring at me, her mouth open, shaking her head.

Too much to tell, I realised. It would have been better to have shown her the painting, explained the connection, let her take in one piece of information before the bombshell of his death. ‘I’ll come back to the house with you.’

She was trying to get her foot in the stirrup and could not. ‘It can’t be him. The Horrocks woman would have said something. All these years …’