In a Dry Season (16 page)

Cynthia Garmen and I were bridesmaids and we wore matching taffeta dresses made out of some old curtains. Just for an extra special touch, I cut up some lace to trim our knickers. I don't know about Cynthia—she certainly never said anything— but the things made my thighs itch through the entire service.

It was 7 June 1941, a lovely day, with clouds like trails of spilled milk spelling out Arabic characters in the sky.

The ceremony went smoothly. Reverend Graham conducted the service with his usual oratorical skill and gravity. Barry Naylor, Matthew's best man, didn't forget the ring, and they all got their lines right. Nobody fainted, though it was exceedingly hot in the church. Mother shed a few tears. There was no confetti, of course, there being a paper shortage, and there was something else different that nagged away at the back of my mind, but I didn't remember what it was until much later that night.

We stood outside for photographs. Film was expensive and hard to obtain, but we weren't going to let Matthew's wedding day go by without some sort of visual record, and one of his friends from the Home Guard, Jack Cheswick, fancied himself as a bit of an amateur photographer. Mr Truewell, the chemist, was obliging, and the film cost us only twenty Passing Cloud. Luckily for us, the pictures turned out all right, though the album got lost in one of the many moves that came later.

We held the reception in the church hall. Of course, I had done most of the catering myself, though I was able to leave the last-minute assembly to my helpers, Sue and Olive. We had to apply in Leeds for an allocation of rations, and Sue, who had got married herself just a couple of months earlier, had warned me it was advisable to double your estimate of the number of guests. Consequently, I said we were expecting a hundred people. Even so, we only got two ounces of tea, which we had to eke out with some of our own ration to make it even drinkable.

Luckily, our first American food on Lend-Lease had just arrived in the shop, so we had Spam for sandwiches, and tinned sausage meat, which was wonderful for making sausage-rolls because you could also use the fat left in the tin to make the pastry. There wasn't much to drink, but we did manage to get a keg of watery beer from the Shoulder of Mutton and we brought out some sweet sherry we had been keeping in our cupboard. Mr Stanhope supplied a bottle of gin and some wine. The wedding cake was the biggest disappointment. Icing had been banned nearly a year ago, so we had to make do with a cardboard and crêpe fake. Still, it looked nice in the photographs.

The highlight of the reception was the band. Matthew's friend Richard Bright played trumpet with the Victor Pearson Dance Band, so we got at least half the band to come and play for their supper.

Gloria and Matthew led off the dancing, of course, and a lump came to my throat as I watched them. After that, it was a free-for-all. The music was all right if you liked that sort of thing, but I found it all either too noisy and frenetic or too mushy and sentimental.

I talked to Michael Stanhope for a while and he remarked on how beautiful he thought Gloria looked and what a lucky man Matthew was. For once, he didn't say anything nasty about the war. Betty Warden, who had managed to wangle an invitation somehow, sat with her nose in the air most of the night, disapproving of everything and everyone, but I must say that when she danced with William Goodall, she seemed like a different person. So did he, for that matter. Almost human, both of them.

Alice Hill was cheerful and talkative as ever, and I rather think she developed a fancy for Eric Poole that very night. They certainly danced closely together often enough.

Gloria came up to me at one point—she had changed now into a long, flared skirt and a pink blouse—with a little sweat beaded on her brow and upper lip from dancing too energetically. Her eyes were shining. I think she'd had a drink or two.

She rested her soft, delicate hand on my arm. “This is the happiest day of my life, Gwen,” she said. “Do you know, just six months ago I thought I would never laugh or dance again. But thanks to you, your mother and, of course, dear Matt . . . Thank you, Gwen, thank you so much.” Then she leaned forward quickly and clasped me to her bosom, giving me a little peck on the cheek. It was awkward, and with her being so small I had to bend. I could smell the gin on her breath. I'm sure I blushed, but she didn't remark on it.

“I haven't seen you dancing,” she said.

I shook my head. “I don't. I mean, I can't.”

“I'll teach you,” she said. “Not right now, of course . . . but I'll teach you. Will you let me?”

I nodded stupidly. “Yes. If you want.”

“It's the
least
I can do.”

Then she excused herself and went to talk to Mother and Cynthia, smiling on everyone she passed with those Hardy-heroine eyes of hers.

I did my bit, moving from table to table, being polite to my distant relations, removing Uncle Gerald's hand from my knee without drawing attention to the fact that it was there.

The local people started to drift home around sunset to make sure they had all got their blackout curtains in place. Our relations were staying with friends in Harkside, so they began to leave, too, before it got too dark to see their way across the fields.

Matthew and Gloria went to Bridge Cottage for their first night together as man and wife. Whether this was their first
time
together, I have no idea. It may be hard to believe now, when everyone seems to be very sophisticated about sex, but I knew very little of such things back then. I had no idea, for example, what men and women actually
did
when they made babies.

The next day they were going to Scarborough for a three-day honeymoon. Matthew had already booked a room at a guest house in St Mary's, near the castle. After that, it was back to university for Matthew—with his finals coming up soon—and back to Top Hill Farm for Gloria, though she would live at Bridge Cottage and walk or cycle to and from work.

Mother was talking to Sue and Olive at the door when I finally excused myself through tiredness and set off for home alone. It had been a long, hard day.

Though it was late, a deep purple and vermilion glow still lit the sky in the west, behind the dark mill. The streets were quiet, but I could still hear music coming from the church hall behind me. Back home, I made sure that the blackout curtains were drawn tightly, then, weary to the bone, I went to bed.

It was only when I was on the very edge of sleep and heard the thrumming and droning of the bombers taking off from Rowan Woods
RAF
base that I remembered what had bothered me so much outside the church after the wedding.

Not only had there been no confetti, there had been no wedding bells, either. All the church bells had been silent since 1940 and were only supposed to ring if there was an invasion. The thing was, I hadn't even noticed at first because I had got so used to the silence.

I thought that was very sad, and I cried myself to sleep that night.

Annie paused with the dusty file folder in her hands when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She hoped it would be
PC
Gould bringing her a cup of tea, so she was surprised when she saw, instead,
DCI
Banks.

“Inspector Harmond told me you were down here,” Banks said.

Annie turned her nose up and gestured around at the musty-smelling, ill-lit basement room. “Welcome to central records,” she said. “You can see how often we dip into our history around here.”

“Don't worry. One day it'll all be on the computer.”

“When I'm long since dead and buried.”

Banks smiled as he ducked under an overhead pipe and walked over to join her. “Anything yet?”

“Quite a lot, as a matter of fact. I've been on the phone most of the day, and I was just checking some missing-persons files.”

“And?”

“It's a bit of a confusing period for that sort of thing. Just after the war. There were so many changes, so many people coming and going. Anyway, most of the ones who
went missing seemed to turn up eventually, either dead or alive, or in the colonies. There are a couple of young women who fit the general description still unaccounted for. I'll follow up on them.”

“Fancy a pint? The Black Swan?”

Annie smiled. “You took the words right out of my mouth.” What a relief. If she had been hoping for a cup of tea, the prospect of a pint of Swan's Down was even more appealing. She had been in the stifling basement for the best part of the afternoon, and her mouth was full of dust, her contact lenses beginning to dry out. And it
was
gone five on a Friday afternoon.

Comfortably ensconced on a padded bench just a few minutes later, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, pint already half-finished, Annie smacked her lips. If she were a cat, she would have been purring.

“I checked the Voters' Register first,” she said, “but the clerk in the council office told me it was frozen at the start of the war. The last person they've got listed for Bridge Cottage is a Miss Violet Croft. I had a bit more luck with the Land Registry. Violet Croft rented the cottage from the Clifford estate, and the manager kept impeccable records. She lived there between
14
September
1919
and
3
July
1940
, so she must be the old lady Ruby Kettering remembered, the one the village kids thought was a witch. The cottage remained empty until June
1941
, when a Mr and Mrs Shackleton took up residence there. It might have been requisitioned for the billeting of evacuees or military personnel in the interim period, but there was no record of that, and there's no way of finding out.”

“I doubt that many places stayed empty for long during the war,” said Banks. “Maybe some soldiers got billeted
there, killed a local tart in a drunken orgy then decided to cover their tracks?”

“It's possible.” Annie gave a slight shiver.

“We're talking about wartime,” Banks went on, “and that complicates matters. Nothing was normal during the war, I shouldn't imagine. People moved around a lot. Army camps and air force bases sprang up overnight, like mushrooms. Evacuees came and went. It was easy to disappear, change identity, slip through the cracks.”

“But people had identity cards and ration books. The council clerk told me. He said there was a National Registry at the beginning of the war, and everyone got identity cards.”

“I imagine those sort of things were open to a fiddle easily enough. Who knows, maybe we're dealing with a Nazi spy done in by the secret service?”

Annie laughed. “Mata Hari?”

“Maybe. Anyway, what happened to Miss Violet Croft?”

Annie flipped over a page in her notebook. “I dropped by St Jude's next and found the young curate very helpful. They've got all the old parish registry records and magazines from St Bart's stored in the vestry there. Boxes of them. Violet Croft, spinster of the parish, died in July
1940
, of pneumonia. She was seventy-seven.”

“That lets her out. What about the Shackletons?”

“Much more interesting. They were married at St Bart's on
7
June
1941
. The husband's name was Matthew Stephen Shackleton, the wife's maiden name Gloria Kathleen Stringer. The witnesses were Gwynneth Shackleton and Cynthia Garmen.”

“Were they Hobb's End residents?”

“Matthew Shackleton was. His parents lived at
38
High Street. They ran the newsagent's shop. The bride's listed as being from London, parents deceased.”

“Big place,” Banks muttered. “How old was she?”

“Nineteen. Born
17
September
1921
.”

“Interesting. That would put her within Dr Williams's age range by the end of the war.”

“Exactly.”

“Any mention of children?”

“No. I looked through the registry of baptisms, but there's nothing there. Was he certain about that, do you think?”

“He seemed to be. You saw the pitting for yourself.”

“I wouldn't know a parturition scar from a hole in the ground. It
could
have been a post-mortem injury, couldn't it? I mean, these things are often far from accurate.”

“It could have been. We'll check with Dr Glendenning after he's done the post-mortem. Do you know what? I'm beginning to get a vision of St Catherine's House looming large in your future.”

Annie groaned. Checking birth, marriage and death certificates was one of the most boring jobs a detective could get. The only positive aspect was that you got to go to London, but even that was offset by the department's lack of willingness to grant expenses for an overnight stay. No time to check out the shops.