Henrietta Who? (10 page)

“No, sir.” He turned back to Sloan. “Where to, now, sir?”

“The post office. To see a Mrs. Ricks. The admirable Hepple says she knows everything.”

But this was not quite true.

While confirming that the late Grace Jenkins always went into Berebury on Fridays, and seldom, if ever, on Tuesdays, Mrs. Ricks was unable to say why she had left on the early bus and come back on the late one. Sloan squeezed alongside a sack of corn while the tall Crosby ducked out of the way of a vicious-looking billhook which was suspended from the ceiling. It was above his head—but only just.

“I don't know,” she wheezed regretfully. It was an admission she rarely had to make. “She wouldn't have said. She wasn't a talker.”

“So I heard,” said Sloan.

“I saw her leave in the morning,” offered Mrs. Ricks. “In her best, she was.”

“Was she?” said Sloan, interested.

“And she was gone all day. At least I never saw her get off a bus before I closed.” Mrs. Ricks apparently monitored the bus stop outside the post office window as a matter of course.

“Nasty things, car accidents,” observed Sloan to nobody in particular.

“You needn't think, officer,” said Mrs. Ricks, divining his intentions with uncanny accuracy, “that you'll find anyone to say a word against Mrs. Jenkins, because you won't.”

“Madam, I assure you …”

“She didn't,” went on Mrs. Ricks with the insight born of years of small shopkeeping, “mix with people enough to upset them, if you see what I mean.”

Sloan saw what she meant.

“Difficult job, all the same,” he said diffidently, “bringing up a child without a father.”

Mrs. Ricks gave a crowing laugh. “She brought her up all right. She never did anything else all day but look after that child. And that house of hers.”

“Devoted?” suggested Sloan.

Mrs. Ricks gave a powerful nod. “It was always ‘Henrietta this' and ‘Henrietta that' with Mrs. Jenkins,” she said a trifle spitefully. “A rare old job it was to get her to take an interest in anything else.”

“I see.”

Mrs. Ricks gave a sigh and said sententiously, “Here today, gone tomorrow. We none of us know, do we, when we shall be called.”

Sloan got her back to the point with an effort. “Do you happen to know which is her pension day?”

“That I do not,” declared Mrs. Ricks. “But I can tell you one thing.”

“What's that?”

“That she never got it here.”

“Oh?”

“There's some that don't.” She looked round the crowded little store, saleable goods protruding from every square inch of wall and ceiling space, and lining most of the floor too. “They like where bigger.”

Sloan saw what she meant. The sales point of the billhook was practically making itself felt.

“Especially,” said Mrs. Ricks in her infinite wisdom, “if it isn't as much as they'd like you to think. Sergeant, wasn't he?”

Sloan nodded.

Mrs. Ricks sniffed. “Sometimes they were. Sometimes they weren't.”

Calleford Minster rose like an eminence grise above and behind the clustered shops at the end of Petergate. Mr. Arbican of Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind would be very happy to see Henrietta but her appointment with him was not until a quarter to three. Farmers as a race lunch early and Henrietta and Bill Thorpe had time to spare.

Henrietta turned towards the Minster. “It's lovely, isn't it?”

Bill Thorpe turned an eye on the towering stone. “It's more than lovely. Do you realize it could be useful to you?”

“To me?”

He nodded. “That chap in the photograph …”

“My father,” responded Henrietta a little distantly.

“He was—what did you say?—a sergeant in the East Calleshires?”

“That's right. What about it?”

“He was killed, wasn't he?”

She flushed. “So I understand.”

“Well, then …”

“Well then what?”

“Calleford's their town, isn't it?”

Henrietta sighed. “Whose town?”

“The East Calleshires,” explained Bill Thorpe patiently. “The Regiment. They've got their barracks here. Like the West Calleshires have theirs in Berebury.”

“What if they have?”

He pointed to the Minster. “If this is their home town then I think we might find their memorial in the Minster here, don't you?”

“I hadn't thought of that,” she said slowly. “He—my father—'ll be there, won't he?”

Bill Thorpe led the way towards the Minster gate. “We can soon see.”

The East Calleshires did have their memorial in the Minster. Henrietta followed Bill Thorpe into the Minster and down the nave. She lagged behind slightly as if she did not want to be there, glancing occasionally at the memorials to eighteenth-century noblemen and nineteenth-century soldiers.

An elderly verger led them to the East Calleshire memorial on the north wall of the north transept.

“It catches the afternoon light just here, you know,” he said. “Nice piece of marble, isn't it?”

“Very,” said Bill Thorpe politely.

“They couldn't get no more like it,” the man said. “Not when they came to try. Still, they weren't to know they were going to need a whole lot more less than twenty years later, were they?”

Bill Thorpe nodded in agreement. “Indeed not. That knowledge was spared them.”

“So that,” went on the man, “come 1945 they decided they would put those new names on these pillars that were there already. Quite a saving, really, though the money didn't matter, as it happened.” He sighed. “Funny how often it works out like that, isn't it?”

“Very,” said Bill Thorpe.

“The same crest did, too.” It was obvious that the man spent his days showing people around the Minster. His voice had a sort of hushed monotone suitable to the surroundings. “That's a nice bit of work, though they tell me it's tricky to dust. They don't think of that sort of thing when they design a monument.”

“I suppose not.”

The verger hitched his gown over his shoulders. “You two come to look somebody up?”

“Yes,” said Bill. “Yes, we have.”

“Thought so. People never ask unless they particularly want to see someone they was related to.” He looked them up and down and said tersely, “First lot or second?”

“Second.”

He sucked his breath in through gaps in his teeth. “It'll be easier to find them.”

“‘An epitaph on an army of mercenaries,'” said Bill Thorpe sadly as the old man wandered off.

Henrietta wasn't listening.

“Bill,” she tugged his sleeve urgently. “Look.”

“Where?”

She pointed. “There …”

“It goes,” agreed Bill Thorpe slowly, “from Inkpen, T.H. to Jennings, C.R.”

“There's no one called Jenkins there at all,” whispered Henrietta.

NINE

Bill Thorpe shifted his weight from one foot to the other and considered the matter.

“He should have been here, shouldn't he?”

“He was in the East Calleshires,” insisted Henrietta. “My mother always said he … I was told he was but there's the photograph too.”

“The man in the photograph was wearing their uniform.”

“Exactly,” said Henrietta.

“But that's all.”

“All?”

“All you know for sure,” said Thorpe flatly.

Henrietta turned a bewildered face back to the memorial. “Do you mean the man in the photograph wasn't killed?”

Bill ran his eye down the names. “He may have been killed and not called Jenkins.”

“Or,” retorted Henrietta astringently, “I suppose he may have been called Jenkins and not been killed.”

“That is the most probable explanation,” agreed Thorpe calmly.

“How—how am I going to find out?”

“Did you ever see your mother's pension book?”

“She didn't cash her pension at the post office,” she said quickly. “She took it to the bank. She told me that. Then she used to cash a check.”

“I see.”

There was a long pause and then Henrietta said, “So that, whether or not he was my father, he wasn't killed in the war, was he?”

“Not if he was in the East Calleshires and was also called Jenkins,” agreed Bill Thorpe, pointing to the memorial. “Of course there is another possibility.”

Henrietta sighed but said nothing.

“He might not have been killed on active service,” went on Thorpe.

“You mean he might have died a natural death?”

“People do, you know,” said Thorpe mildly. “Even in wartime.”

She was silent for a moment. Then, “Nothing seems to make sense any more.”

“Everything has an explanation.”

“This must sound very silly,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “but let me say what I know for certain. There is a photograph.”

“The photograph is a fact,” acknowledged Bill Thorpe.

“Which you have seen.”

“Then the photograph is doubly a fact,” he murmured ironically.

“There is a photograph of a man in the uniform of this regiment in the drawing room at home, and …”

“And that,” said Bill Thorpe, “is all you know for certain.”

She stared at him. “A man who I thought was my father.”

“Ah, that's different.”

“Who I thought was called Jenkins.”

“Who may or may not be called Jenkins.”

“And who I thought was killed in the war.”

Bill Thorpe pointed to the memorial again. “Don't you see that he might be called Jenkins or he might have been killed in the war—but not both. The facts are mutually exclusive—unless he changed regiments halfway through or something out of the ordinary like that.”

“Or died a natural death,” persisted the girl.

“Or a very unnatural one,” retorted Thorpe.

Henrietta waited.

“Well,” said Thorpe defensively, “if he'd been shot as a spy or a deserter or something like that.”

“I hadn't thought of that.”

“We're hardly likely to find his name here, are we?” Bill waved a hand which took in all the hallowed thirteenth-century stone about them.

“That means,” decided Henrietta logically, “that you don't think the man in the photograph is …” she hesitated, “or was my father.”

“There is something wrong with the medals.”

“There's something wrong with everything so far,” rejoined Henrietta. “We're collecting quite a bit of negative evidence.”

“Just as useful as the other sort,” declared Thorpe.

“I'm glad to hear it,” she said rather tartly. “At the moment the only thing we seem to be absolutely sure about is that there is a photograph of a sergeant in the East Calleshires which has been standing in Boundary Cottage ever since I can remember.”

“The photograph is a fact,” agreed Bill Thorpe with undiminished amiability.

“And so is the name of Jenkins not being on this memorial.”

“The evidence is before our very eyes, as the conjurors say.”

“And the police say Grace Jenkins wasn't my mother.”

Bill Thorpe looked down at her affectionately. “I reckon that makes you utterly orphan, don't you?”

She nodded.

“Quite a good thing, really,” said Thorpe easily.

Henrietta's head came up with a jerk. “Why?”

“I don't have to ask anyone's permission to marry you.”

She didn't respond. “I'm worse than just orphan. I don't even know who I am or who my parents were.”

“Does it matter?”

“Matter?” Henrietta opened her eyes very wide.

“Well, I can see it's important with—say—Shire Oak Majestic. A bull's got to have a good pedigree to be worth anything.”

“I fail to see any connection,” said Henrietta icily.

“I'm not in love with your ancestors.”

The verger ambled up behind them. “Found what you were looking for, sir, on that memorial?”

“What's that? Oh, yes, thank you, verger,” said Thorpe. “We found what we were looking for all right.”

“That's good, sir. Good afternoon to you both.”

Not unexpectedly, Mr. Felix Arbican or Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind, Solicitors, shared Henrietta's view rather than Bill Thorpe's on the importance of parentage. He heard her story out and then said, “Tricky.”

“Yes,” agreed Henrietta politely. She regarded that as a gross understatement.

“It raises several—er—legal points.”

“Not only legal ones,” said Henrietta.

“What's that? Oh, yes, quite so. The accident, for instance.” Arbican made a gesture of sympathy. “I'm sorry. There are so many cars on the road these days.” He brought his hands up to form a pyramid under his chin. “She was walking, you say.”

“She was.”

“Then there should be less question of liability.”

“There is no question of where the blame for the accident lies,” said Henrietta slowly. “Only the driver still has to be found.”

“He didn't stop?”

She shook her head.

“Nor report it to the police?”

“Not that I've heard.”

“That's a great pity. If he had done, there would have been little more to do—little more from a professional point of view, that is, than to settle the question of responsibility with the insurance company, and agree damages.”

Henrietta inclined her head in silence.

“And they usually settle out of court.”

Henrietta moistened her lips. “There is to be an inquest on Saturday morning.”

“Naturally.”

“Is Berebury too far for you to come?”

“You want me to represent you? If your—er—mother was a client of mine at one time—and it seems very much as if she must have been, then I will certainly do that.”