Murder in the Afternoon (3 page)

‘Never.’

‘How did Bob explain the fact that Harriet saw her father and thought him dead?’

‘He said that she would have been scared in the quarry. Last year, someone fell to his death there. Perhaps she saw shadows, or imagined something. The children tell stories about the quarry. They think goblins live in little caves in the slopes. Bob said.’

My mind worked overtime. ‘How long would it have taken Harriet to go to the farm, seek help, and get back to the quarry?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. Arthur made her wait till he’d finished the evening milking.’

‘An hour?’

‘It could have been an hour, or a little less. It was half past six by the time I went to the quarry to see for myself, and here’s the queerest thing …’

‘Go on.’

She took a sip of water. Her hands began to shake. ‘Ethan was making a sundial of blue slate, a very special job. Harriet and Austin both told me that when they arrived with the bite to eat for their dad, the sundial was standing there proud as you like, looking as finished as it might ever be. But by the time I arrived, after Harriet had
told me her tale, it was going on dark. The sundial was smashed to smithereens, and there wasn’t hair nor hide of Ethan.’

She put her head in her hands, and just for a moment I thought myself in one of the melodramas that mother and I sometimes go to see at the Drury Lane Theatre in Wakefield.

She looked up. ‘What am I supposed to think? Harriet’s not a little liar, but there was no sign of him.’

‘Does Ethan drink?’

She gave a rueful smile. ‘No one could work in a quarry with all that dust and not drink. But he wouldn’t booze himself into a stupor at his work.’

‘Might there be any other explanation for what Harriet saw?’

She rested her forearms on the table and leaned forward. ‘I’ve been over and over that myself. Harriet’s a daddy’s girl. She’d heard us rowing. If Ethan said for her to tell me that he was laid out cold … But no, she wouldn’t have kept it up.’

‘What did you row about?’

She shook her head. ‘Summat and nowt. I wanted him to do summat in the house, and chop a few logs, and not be working on Mrs Ledger’s sundial for her birthday when he should be with us. And I feel so terrible now that we parted on bad terms but if he’s taken that as an excuse to bugger off, I’ll brain him.’

It vexed me that she seemed to be holding something back. And I am not so well known that my address is as familiar as 221B Baker Street.

‘Mary Jane, if you want my help, you must be candid. You haven’t even said how you found me.’

‘Someone gave me your address.’

‘Who?’

‘Does it matter?’

It would matter very much if she would not tell me. After ten long seconds, she said, ‘A relative of mine. She knew about you.’ As if to forestall any questions about this helpful relative, she continued, ‘It wasn’t such a terrible row with Ethan. He’d taken no food with him on Saturday because I wouldn’t put it up. Let his belly bring him home, that’s what I thought. Of course Harriet had to defy me …’

We were beginning to go round in circles. It was time to stop talking and act. I stood up. ‘You said the quarry opens for work at seven o’clock. It’s just turned five. Let’s go there now and you can show me where Harriet saw her father. I’d like to see it before men start work for the day.’ I did not add that any evidence there may have been would likely have been trampled underfoot by searching quarrymen and the local bobby. ‘Give me a few moments to get dressed.’

I left my visitor in the kitchen and tapped on the adjoining door that connects Mrs Sugden’s quarters.

My housekeeper took a few moments to answer. She had drawn on the warm maroon check dressing gown that had belonged to her late husband, fingers fumbling for its silky, fraying cord. Her long grey hair was braided in a single plait. Without spectacles, the plain face looked naked and vulnerable.

I apologised for disturbing her and quickly explained about my visitor.

‘And so I’m going to Great Applewick with Mrs Armstrong …’

‘At this hour?’

‘I want to get an early start, take a look at the quarry
where her husband was last seen, before men start work. I don’t imagine they’ll take kindly to a posh nosey parker tramping about.’

‘I’m uneasy about this, Mrs Shackleton, on your own …’

I cut her off. ‘You’ll see the name and address on the kitchen table. Would you tell Mr Sykes where I’ve gone, and that I’ll call on him when I have more definite information?’

Sykes, an ex-policeman, is my assistant and lives a short distance away.

I left Mrs Sugden with her uneasiness.

Mary Jane appeared at the kitchen door. ‘I need the lavatory.’

‘I’ll show you. It’s upstairs.’

My portmanteaux still stood in the hall. Mary Jane glanced at the suitcases. ‘Are these to go up?’

‘Yes but they’re heavy,’ I said lamely.

She picked up one in each hand. ‘Not as heavy as kids and sacks of spuds.’ She marched ahead of me up the stairs. ‘Where shall I dump ’em?’

‘In my bedroom – there. Thank you.’

She carried the cases into my room, and then came back onto the landing. I turned to her. In the dim light, with her high cheekbones and slanting eyes she had the look of a cautious cat.

I switched on the bathroom light.

She sighed. ‘I wish we had a bathroom.’

When I did not answer, she said accusingly, ‘I’m not unused to them you know. I wouldn’t store coal in the bathtub.’

As I dressed, it occurred to me that anyone who could carry two full portmanteaux up the stairs would be able to
drag the body of an errant husband to some hiding place in a quarry.

What did a person wear to go tramping round a quarry? Corduroy breeches, cap and boots. It would be a men only preserve. All the more important to get a move on and arrive before the males of the species started work. At least the rain had stopped. I dressed quickly, in a smartly cut tweed costume. Country clothes, suitable for a shooting party. My stout shoes, bought last year in Harrogate, would come in handy. A spare pair of Cuban heels and an extra pair of stockings would not go amiss.

Mary Jane Armstrong waited for me in the hall. I handed her Gerald’s motoring coat. ‘You’ll need this. There are goggles in the car.’

The coat reached her ankles. There it was again as I looked at her, the niggle about where we had met before.

‘Mary Jane, before we go, there’s just one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Where do we know each other from?’

She tried to turn up the coat cuff.

‘I can’t say.’

‘I’m not budging till you do.’

She looked at me, and then glanced away. ‘It’s a long time since I saw you, Catherine. You were a few weeks old. I was toddling about. A man came to take you away, and I cried. I didn’t want him to take you.’

She looked steadily at me, her feline eyes daring me to contradict. ‘My maiden name was Whitaker, same as yours before you were given the name of the people who adopted you. Catherine, I’m your sister.’

My heart thumped so hard I felt she would hear it. Little wonder she had been reluctant to say how she “knew” me. I was a few weeks old when I was adopted,
and I knew the name of my natural family, and that they lived in Wakefield. Beyond those simple facts lay a mystery that I had so far felt no inclination to unravel.

We stood a few feet apart in the hallway. Mary Jane Armstrong may or may not be genuine; she may or may not be a murderess.

I felt suddenly unsteady on my feet. I reached out and touched the wall, to anchor myself. Mary Jane looked at me with a mixture of concern, and something else. Fear? That I would turn her away?

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.’

But she had come. And here we stood with our coats on, ready to go.

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘Our sister, Barbara May. She always followed your progress.’

Progress. The word conjured up school history: kings and queens making epic journeys, lodging with favoured nobles; eating their subjects out of house, home and peace of mind.

And “Barbara May”. Did everyone in the Whitaker family have two names? Was that the reason for my being turfed out of the clan?
We can’t have a girl with just the one name. Get shut of her. That nice police officer and his wife will take her off our hands. Mr Dennis Hood and his charming and childless wife, Virginia, affectionately known to her friends as Ginny. She’s a soft touch.

Mary Jane was not even claiming to be the one who followed my progress. I had Barbara May to thank for that. Perhaps Barbara May would turn up next. Find my lost dog, love. Give me the loan of a shilling.

Mary Jane may be telling the truth, or she could be a glorious confidence trickster whose story I had swallowed
without chewing. That would explain the lump in my craw.

‘How did Barbara May find out where I live?’

‘It was in the
Mercury
, when you married. Barbara May worked as a cleaner at the infirmary, where your husband used to work.’

I could not be sure, but thought she looked a little embarrassed. She did not explain whether Barbara May followed Gerald home, or poked about in the infirmary files for his address.

She added, ‘Mam was very pleased when you married a doctor.’

Shut up, Mary Jane. Don’t say any more.

In the thick silence, neither of us looked at each other as I hitched my satchel onto my shoulder, and reached out to open the door. The key did not want to budge, nor the knob to turn. Don’t let her see how shaken I am. Don’t let her see that I need two hands: the right hand to turn the handle, and the left hand to stop the right hand shaking.

‘Right, Mary Jane. Let’s go.’

I would think about this sister business later. For now, I must put it out of my mind and concentrate on the business in hand. She had come to me for help.

As we walked up the road, my legs felt leaden and yet there was a strange lightness, as if I no longer belonged to myself and might float away.

We walked up the quiet street to the old stable my neighbours let me use as a garage for the Jowett. Silver cobwebs decorated the hedgerows.

There was lightness in Mary Jane’s step as the motoring coat slapped her ankles, and an air of blitheness about her, as though she had shuffled off all her worries and everything would be all right, now that she had found me. Even through the fog of trying to make sense of her words, I recognised her mood. It was familiar to me from when I helped women after the war. The relief of having someone on one’s side creates the illusion that all will be well. Now was not the moment to burst the bubble.

Sister. She was my sister. This little girl, Harriet, who had found her father’s body, was my niece. And there was a nephew. What was his name? Austin. Little Austin, she had called him.

The horror of what those children had discovered hit me somewhere else, deep inside.

‘Where are the children now?’ I asked.

‘I left them sleeping. I put a note on the table in case they wake before I get back.’

Early in the morning, everything makes more noise. The door of the old stable where I garage the Jowett creaked loudly as I opened it. Mary Jane gazed at the car. ‘What a beautiful motor! The kids’ll want a ride in this.’

She was acting as if we were about to have a day out, instead of beginning what might be a murder investigation.

‘Shut the door when I drive out would you?’

She stepped well aside as though expecting to have her toes crushed by the car wheels.

When she had closed the doors, she clambered in.

I handed her the map. ‘You’ll have to tuck your hands up your sleeves to keep warm. I forgot to bring extra gloves.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Don’t talk to me as I’m driving because the noise will fly your voice away. But you can put this map where I can get at it.’

She took the map. ‘There’s tramlines much of the way.’

There would not be too many opportunities for me to take a wrong turn on the twisting lanes that led from Headingley to Great Applewick, but it could not be entirely ruled out. The road towards Guiseley was not one I had driven in a long time.

As we left Headingley behind and drove into the country, pink streaks in the sky turned gold, and then faded to white. A half-hearted sun put in a wary appearance. Apart from the sound of the engine, the world was quiet and peaceful. Even horses and cows in the fields had not yet begun to stir.

Mary Jane turned up her collar and pushed her hands up the sleeves of the coat.

I glanced at her quickly. Here was someone who knew my birth mother, brothers, sisters, who had known my father, and formed part of their lives. All of them remained a mystery to me. As I carefully negotiated a bend in the road, a terrible loneliness came over me. Having refused to think about the family who gave me up, I had never needed to give them weight. Now she had pushed her way in, selfishly, without a by your leave.