Henrietta Who? (7 page)

“The offside rear tire print's nearly gone—had some big stuff through that gate since then I should think.”

“Tractors,” supplied Hepple, “and the milk lorry.”

“But there's a good one of a nearside rear.”

Sloan pointed to the grass verge. “So we've got a nearside front tire print there.”

“A good clear one,” contributed Hepple professionally.

“And a same sized nearside rear tire print turning in the Thorpe entrance about—how far away would you say, Crosby?”

“About half a mile.”

Hepple didn't like the sound of that at all. “So you think he came back this way, sir?”

“I do.”

“He must have seen her the second time,” persisted Hepple. “The road isn't wide enough for him not to have seen her lying across it the second time even if he didn't the first.”

“I am beginning to think,” said Sloan grimly, “that he saw her quite well both times.”

“You mean, sir …”

“I mean, Hepple, that I think we're dealing with a case of murder by motorcar.”

SIX

The offices of Waind, Arbican & Waind were still in Ox Lane, Calleford.

Inspector Sloan telephoned from the kiosk outside Larking post office. There were, it seemed, now no Mr. Wainds left in the firm but Mr. Arbican was there, and would certainly see Inspector Sloan if he came to Calleford. Sloan looked at his watch and said they might make it by six o'clock. Cross country it must be all of forty miles from Larking to the county town.

They got there at ten minutes to the hour, running in on the road alongside the Minster as most of the population were making their way home. Crosby wove in and out of the crowded streets until he got to Ox Lane.

The solicitor's office was coming to the end of its working day too. In the outer office a very junior clerk was making up the post book and two other girls were covering over their typewriters. One of them received the two policemen and showed them into Mr. Arbican's room. The solicitor got to his feet as they entered. He was in his early fifties, going a little bald on top, and every inch the prosperous country solicitor. The room was pleasantly furnished, if a little on the formal side.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. Do sit down.” He waved them to two chairs, and said to the girl who had shown them in, “Don't go yet, Miss Chilvers, will you? I may need you.”

Miss Chilvers looked resigned and returned to the outer office.

Arbican looked expectantly across his desk. It had a red leather top and was in rather sharp contrast to the wooden one at which Sloan worked.

“It's like this, sir,” began Sloan. “We're in the process of making enquiries about a client of yours.”

Arbican raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Or it might be more correct,” went on Sloan fairly, “to say a former client.”

Arbican cleared his throat encouragingly but still did not speak.

“A Mrs. Jenkins,” said Sloan.

“Jenkins?” Arbican frowned. “Jenkins. It's a common enough name but I don't think I know of a client called Jenkins.”

“Jenkins from Larking,” said Sloan.

“Larking? That's a fair way from here, Inspector. I shouldn't imagine we would have many clients in that direction. You're sure there's no mistake?”

“We are working, sir, on the supposition that she came from East Calleshire before she went to Larking.”

“Ah, yes, I see. Quite possibly. Though I can't say offhand that the name alone means anything to me.” He raised his eyebrows again. “Should it?”

“We have a letter you wrote …”

Arbican's voice was very dry. “I write a great many letters.”

“To a Mr. James Heber Hibbs of The Hall, Larking.”

Arbican shook his head. “I'm very sorry, Inspector. Neither name conveys anything.”

“That could be so, sir. It was all a long time ago.”

“You're being quite puzzling, Inspector.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sloan stolidly. He took out the letter James Hibbs had given him and handed it across the desk to the solicitor. “Perhaps you'd care to take a look at it.”

Arbican took the letter and read it through quickly. “I'm sorry I couldn't remember the name but I must have written hundreds of letters like this. In fact, Inspector, it's neither an uncommon name nor an uncommon letter.”

“I suppose not, sir.”

“It was—er—as you say quite a long time ago, too.”

“Over twenty years.”

“Then you can't really have expected me to remember.” He smiled for the first time. A quick professional smile. “I was a comparative youngster then, cutting my legal teeth on routine where I couldn't do any harm.”

“But you did write it?”

He scanned the letter again. “I must have done. These are certainly my initials at the top—F.F.A. Therefore”—he frowned—“therefore we must have done business with this Mrs. G.E. Jenkins.” He looked curiously across at Sloan. “And so?”

“And so you might have some records, sir,” responded Sloan promptly.

“I very much doubt it at this distance of time. We destroy most records after twelve years except conveyances and wills. However, we can soon see.” He rang for Miss Chilvers whose look of patient resignation had changed with the passage of time to one of plain resentment. “Miss Chilvers, will you please see if we have any records of a Mrs. G.E. Jenkins of—” he looked down at the letter, “Boundary Cottage, Larking.”

Miss Chilvers withdrew but her unforthcoming expression started a new train of thought in Sloan's mind. He waved vaguely towards the outer office. “Perhaps, sir, whoever actually typed the letter might remember. Not Miss Chilvers naturally …”

Arbican looked at the letter again and shook his head.

“No?” said Sloan.

“I'm afraid not. I should say that our Miss Lendry typed this letter. Her initials are there after mine—W.B.L.”

“Couldn't she help?”

“No. She isn't with us any more.”

“Perhaps we could find her,” suggested Sloan. “Do you know her address?”

“I'm sorry. I was using a euphemism.” He sighed. “Miss Lendry's dead. About six months ago.” He tapped the letter. “She wouldn't have been all that young when this was written, but she'd have remembered all right.”

“I see.”

“Been with the firm for years,” said Arbican. “Knew everything.”

“Right-hand woman?” suggested Sloan helpfully.

They could hear Miss Chilvers bumping her way round the filing cabinets in the outer office.

Arbican sighed. “It's not the same without her.”

Sloan knew what he meant. Miss Chilvers returned with little ceremony to announce that she couldn't find anything about a Mrs. G.E. Jenkins at all anywhere.

“Thank you,” said Arbican. He turned to Sloan. “I'm sorry, Inspector, it doesn't look as if we're to help you with this Mrs. Grace Jenkins but if we do come across anything …”

Sloan got to his feet. “Thank you, sir. I'd be much obliged if you'd let me know.”

Arbican handed the letter back. “Whoever she was, it looks as if she got her settlement all right.”

“Settlement?” said Sloan sharply.

The solicitor pointed to the letter. “Isn't that what that was?”

“Was it?” countered Sloan.

“I can't remember,” said Arbican cautiously, “but it reads to me now as if it could have been. We advised her to accept the man's offer—that phrasing sounds like a settlement to me but I may be wrong. It's all a long time ago, now, Inspector, and I certainly can't remember.”

“Murder by motorcar!” exploded Superintendent Leeyes. “Are you sure, Sloan?”

“No, sir.” Sloan was both tired and hungry. “Not yet.”

It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening and they had just got back to Berebury Police Station after an hour's driving along the main road from Calleford.

“But Crosby found some tire prints in a gateway where the car turned and came back, and Dr. Dabbe says she was run over twice.”

“Twice?” said the superintendent, just as Hepple had done.

“Twice. Once alive, once dead.”

“Macabre chap, Dabbe.”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan paused. “It's not exactly the sort of road where you could miss seeing someone lying in it.”

“So that makes you think that …”

“I think,” said Sloan heavily, “that she was knocked down from behind on that bend on purpose by someone who afterwards turned in the entrance to Shire Oak Farm and who came back and deliberately hit her again.”

Leeyes grunted.

“Only he had a bit of bad luck.”

“It sounds to me,” said the superintendent sarcastically, “as if he wasn't the only one who had a bit of bad luck.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, in what way was he unlucky?”

“He happened to kill her outright the first time he went over her which meant the pathologist knew he'd gone over her twice.”

“How?”

“Because the second lot of injuries were post-mortem ones. They don't—bleed,” he added elliptically.

“You wouldn't convince a jury on that alone, Sloan.”

“I shouldn't try,” retorted Sloan spiritedly. “But it's not alone. Put it together with the breaking into of the bureau and the fact that whoever Grace Jenkins was she wasn't the mother of the girl.”

“Ah, yes. I was forgetting the daughter had been smuggled in in a warming pan.”

“That's about the only explanation that fits at the moment,” agreed Sloan gloomily. “There's something else, too, sir.”

“What's that?”

“This woman—Grace Jenkins—was having her daughter on about something else. Her age.”

“Her age?”

“Yes, sir. She told the girl she would be forty-six next birthday. Dr. Dabbe says she was older than that.”

“He should know, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else?”

“She'd had her hair dyed.”

“Who hasn't?” said Leeyes cynically.

“From blonde to brunette.”

“It's usually the other way,” agreed the superintendent.

“The girl's hair is dark,” said Sloan, “but the father's is fair—noticeably fair—even in a photograph. Grace Jenkins was fair too—before she had her hair dyed.”

“A pretty puzzle,” Leeyes said unhelpfully.

“Yes, sir. So far we've confirmed that the woman went to Larking when the girl was a small infant and passed her off to everyone as her own.”

“It's been done before.”

“Yes, sir. They rented a small cottage in the grounds of The Hall estate.”

“Buried in the country.”

“Exactly, sir. The rent is very low indeed. Seems almost nominal now but it may have been fair enough at the time. Landlord says he isn't allowed to put it up.”

“He may not have wanted to,” observed Leeyes.

“That thought had occurred to me, sir.”

“That's been done before too,” said the superintendent emphatically.

“What has, sir?”

“Parking an infant in a corner like that. Where you can keep an eye on it.”

“Without acknowledging anything,” Leeyes grunted. “What's he like?”

“Hibbs? Dark. But it's not a father we're short of, sir, it's a mother.”

“Someone who couldn't acknowledge it either, I daresay,” said the superintendent.

“Perhaps. Then who is Grace Jenkins?”

“And why kill her?”

“Aunt?” said Sloan as if he had not spoken. “Nanny? Or grandmother?”

“Wet nurse, more like,” growled Leeyes.

Sloan told him about the letter and the interview with Arbican. “He thought the wording read like the outcome of a settlement rather than straightforward renting.”

“There's nothing straightforward about this case,” said the superintendent irritably. “Nothing at all.”

“No, sir.”

“We don't even know for a start that the deceased has been correctly identified.”

“We've no evidence either way about that,” said Sloan carefully. “The only actual evidence we've got that will stand up in a coroner's court is that she was childless. We've got none as to who she is.”

“Then,” said the superintendent irritably, “you'd better get some, hadn't you, Sloan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And quickly.”

Henrietta refused to stay the night at the rectory.

“It's very kind of you,” she said awkwardly. “Mrs. Thorpe asked me to go to Shire Oak as well but I don't think I will, all the same. I feel—well—I feel I ought to begin as I mean to go on.”

“You may be right there,” conceded the rector, though the kindhearted Mrs. Meyton was all protestation. “I'll just walk back with you, though, and see you safely home.”

“Is it?”

“Is it what?”

“Home,” said Henrietta.

He took the question very seriously. “You know, what you need is a good solicitor.”

“I feel,” she said fervently, “as if I need more than that. A magician, at least.”

But she was grateful to him for escorting her home and said so.

He came indoors with her and checked that Boundary Cottage was secure for the night.

Henrietta pointed to the photograph on the mantelpiece. “Now I know why the police were so interested in my father.”

“Yes.”

“I wasn't able to tell them much.”

The rector nodded slowly. “Your mother never spoke about him to me.”

“She did to me—but mostly about the sort of person he was. Not,” bitterly, “concrete facts for policemen.”

“No.”

“And she wasn't my mother.”

“I was forgetting,” he apologized obliquely.

“It's made me realize how little I really know about him too.”