I was slightly surprised, mainly by the thought he must have been a very different man in his youth. It was hard to conceive of any great beauty being remotely interested in him now.
‘Isabelle was a fortune seeker. She’d come from a nice middle class background but she wanted more. She’d had flings with a few eligible bachelors with prospects, but their parents all knew her reputation and soon steered their sons away. It was only someone like Arthur, who would certainly have trouble attracting a new wife and could see Isabelle would look after his baby son, who would settle down with her. I know they’d also had a bit of a thing going when his first wife was ill, before he’d lost his good looks.’
‘If she was so focused on winning a rich husband, why would she be interested in a salesman like yourself, Gerald? Or are you just trying to look better than you are?’
My words stung him, exactly as I intended.
‘I didn’t say she wanted to marry me. She didn’t want to marry most of the men she dated as long as they’d a few bob to spend on her and weren’t too hideous. I wasn’t half bad looking twenty years ago and I had a good few pounds in the bank — until she relieved me of them!’ Bamford spat out the words.
‘So you’d have a motive to do her some harm.’
Bamford roared with laughter at this suggestion.
‘You’re saying I’m so mad with Isabelle for giving me a good time, helping me spend my money and throwing me over for another fool, that I wait a generation before killing her. Then for good measure I murder her stepson? Do me a favour.’
‘Believe me, Bamford, I’ve seen lots of murders and I’ve learned this: sometimes fury erupts at once, but often it smokes and smoulders on a slow fuse, waiting and waiting until the inevitable explosion. The question is, could Gerald Bamford, either in a fit of rage or in a cold, calculated, fashion, commit murder? That’s what I need to find out.’
Something of his original meekness returned as he realised he was being considered as a serious suspect.
‘Do I need to call a solicitor?’
‘That’s your privilege, Gerald, but perhaps there’s no need yet. We’ve not arrested you and you’re only helping us with our investigations into three suspicious deaths.’
‘Three? You can’t mean you think Jenny was murdered as well? And you imagine I’d do it? I adored the girl. I never told her when she was alive, you know, but I did. I’d never do anything to hurt her.’
Sawyer placed three mugs on the table, one in front of Gerald Bamford, the others on our side. I’d asked him to join us so he’d be able to see any discrepancies in Bamford’s story, particularly in relation to local events. I was hoping he’d be smart enough to decide what he should challenge and what should be saved for use later.
Bamford had calmed down by the time the tea arrived but I let him drink in peace, so he could mull over where my next line of questioning might take us. Part of the craft of interviewing is to understand when to bombard a suspect and when to stay quiet, gradually letting the pressure mount until the truth bursts out. I decided to change tack.
‘Remind us where you were on the day of the deaths, Gerald.’
‘I was away working, in Leeds.’
‘Is that where you went on the day of the funeral, as well? Strange you didn’t stay around.’
Bamford took another body blow.
‘No one told me about Jenny until I got back the night before the funeral. I’d been on the road ever since she died. I told you I don’t get on with Arthur so I didn’t feel like hanging around and, anyway, I can’t afford not to be working.’
‘Why don’t you get on with Sir Arthur, Gerald?’
‘Just a business deal, that’s all.’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s years ago. I had the opportunity to make an investment and I approached Arthur to lend me the cash. He refused, saying he didn’t think it was sound enough. Later, I found out he’d gone behind my back and invested himself. Made a real killing. I went round to see him and we argued. He threw me out, laughing, and told me never to go to his house again.’
‘You must have been pretty angry.’
‘I was.’
‘Mad enough to take it out on his family?’
Bamford didn’t respond.
‘So you’re saying you were in Leeds on the day of the murders. Can anyone vouch for you?’
‘I expect I knocked on nearly two hundred doors, like I do every day, so someone would remember me. Problem is, I couldn’t tell you exactly which streets I’d been in, except it was probably in the Burley area.’
‘A little convenient, isn’t it?’
‘Have you ever been to Leeds, Inspector? Street after street of terraced houses, all of them looking exactly the same. I’ve even found myself going back to the houses I’d done the previous day if I haven’t made a note of where I finished off.’
Sawyer interjected. ‘So you do keep a record of where you’ve been, Mr Bamford?’
‘Not really. When I remember I scribble the name of the street I’ve covered last on a scrap of paper. I leave it in my case but throw the old ones away each night when I tidy up and restock. I’d keep a note of anyone who particularly asked me to call back but they’re few and far between. Not much money in that part of Leeds you know, and blokes like me calling door to door are ten a penny.’
I picked up the questioning again. ‘If, as you say, so many doorstep salesmen are around, no one’s going to be able to pick you out in particular, are they? Where were you staying in Leeds?’
‘Same place I always stay, a cheap commercial digs near the station. Mrs Bradley’s the landlady. Does a nice breakfast and minds her own business. Lots of these women are really nosy cows, always prying. I suppose they only take in lodgers so they can pick up on bits of gossip to share with their friends.’
‘You’ll give Constable Sawyer here details of how we can contact this Mrs Bradley. We’ll check your story, but let’s get back to what you were saying about Lady Isabelle and your meeting with her. You said you’d have to “tell her the truth and damn the consequences”. What was that truth?’
Bamford seemed to have recovered his composure and leaned back in his chair again, his brow furrowed and his hands pressed prayer-like under his chin. He waited several seconds before he spoke.
‘I can only make this clear one step at a time, Inspector.’ He was now plainly relishing the drama once more. ‘The next thing you need to understand is that Jenny wasn’t actually my daughter. My wife and I had been trying for a child of our own for a while without any success so our doctor suggested we try to adopt. He put us in touch with an orphanage run by nuns in Warwick and they had a pretty little toddler who had been with them since she was born. I fell in love with her the minute we met and persuaded Barbara we’d be as happy with her as we would be with a baby. The nuns told us nothing of the child’s background, except that she’d been left when she was a few days old because her mother hadn’t been able to keep her. We took her gladly and raised her as our own.’
‘And did Jenny know she was adopted?’
Bamford hung his head.
‘No. We never got round to telling her. We always thought we’d need to break the news one day but the time never seemed right. When we first had her I was soon away in the War and she was a child so Barbara thought she’d be too young to understand. Later, when I got back, Barbara and I had so many troubles of our own — we were breaking up and it didn’t seem right to explain to Jenny she wasn’t our child after all. I fully intended to tell her the truth before she got married but then the letter arrived.’
‘Letter?’
‘I’d been working in Wolverhampton for a couple of weeks and when I got back home there was a letter waiting for me from the orphanage. It explained they’d received a note from one of the nuns who used to work there and she’d asked them to forward it to me. It seems that Jenny was Isabelle’s daughter.’
Now it was my turn to sit back in my chair to take i
n this latest bombshell. Sawyer and I looked at each other and I nodded for him to take over the interview.
‘You may think I’m being a bit dense, Gerald, but I still can’t see how it might have been an impediment to Jenny and Tom getting married. It’s not like they were related, is it? We already know Tom wasn’t Isabelle’s son.’
Bamford leaned forward and stared Sawyer straight in the face. His eyes had a slightly demented look and he choked with emotion as his next words spewed out.
‘That’s it entirely, Constable. They were half-brother and half-sister! The dates tie up. Jenny was the child of Isabelle and Arthur.’
Sixteen
Cudlip was pouring my nightly Vimto when the telephone rang behind him. We’d been discussing the prospects for a war and his concerns for his sons, both of whom were old enough to be called up. The landlord himself had been in the last one so had experienced at first hand the dangers they’d face. He put the half-full glass down on the bar.
‘I’ll just get this if you don’t mind, sir.’
I nodded as he turned away and picked up the telephone.
‘Evening — yes, he’s here, I’ll get him. It’s for you, Inspector. Constable Sawyer, says he needs to speak to you urgently.’
Cudlip, exuding curiosity, got on with cleaning some glasses.
‘Sawyer? What is it? Are you coming up to join me for one?’
‘No, sir — you need to get here, a boy’s body has been found.’
The night was terrible and Jack Cudlip, the eldest of the landlord’s sons, wrestled his father’s car down the country lanes in the driving rain and wind. From time to time he’d have to swerve to avoid branches which had fallen into the road. Whenever we passed a clearing in the trees the vehicle would rock violently as the gale slammed into its side.
The car finally swung into a farmyard and I wished I’d had the foresight to bring boots. There was a sea of mud all around and the stench from the barns was almost unbearable, even through the closed windows. I stepped out and was soon up to my ankles in the mire. Freezing water filled my shoes and the cloying sludge prevented me from running for shelter into the cowshed. By the time we were all inside I was soaked to the skin.
Sawyer quickly filled me in on events. Earlier in the evening he’d been chatting to a friend in the village who told him he’d heard Billy Sharp was hiding in a barn owned by Alf Nash’s uncle. Nash had been drunk and shouting his mouth off a couple of nights earlier about knowing where Billy was hiding. So Sawyer headed over to try to find the young gardener. When he arrived he bumped into a farmer, who turned out to be Nash’s uncle, coming out of his yard in a very disturbed state.
‘He said he’d gone out to put his cows away for the night and found the boy’s body in his barn, his skull caved in. He had no telephone himself so was going to run up to the parish church to ask the vicar to make a call to the local police station. That’s when he met me and I came in here to find this. I told him to go back over to his house and I cycled up to the vicarage to call you.’
The farmer hadn’t had to look hard to find the body. It was sprawled in the centre of the shed at the bottom of a ladder; on its back, face caked in blood. It was a young man in his late teens with a large gash above his left ear. Going by the clothes and the boots, he’d been a labourer of some sort. Closer inspection showed he was also missing two fingers from his right hand, recently severed. Jack Cudlip had followed us inside but soon he was outside again, retching in the pouring rain.
‘Nasty. How do you think he died, John?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir, I might have thought he’d fallen from the ladder if it wasn’t for the missing fingers, but with those it doesn’t look much like an accident, does it?’
‘Certainly doesn’t. We’ll need to get an opinion from the police doctor when he arrives. Nip up and ask the farmer to come back over, if you would. And tell him to bring some more lamps with him.’
Albert Pardow certainly looked the part, with his face furrowed and tanned, wearing Wellington boots and a tattered tweed jacket which had seen better days. He carried with him two storm lanterns, immediately throwing long shadows into all corners of the barn. I asked him to hang one of the lamps on a beam and to hold the second one over the boy’s body. I carried on with my examination whilst we spoke.
‘Thanks for coming over, Mr Pardow. This must have been quite a shock for you.’
‘Aye, it was. A rare shock. Poor lad. Only glad it was me found him and not the wife. She’d often bring the cows up for milking in the evening but she’s away at her sister’s, helping with the kids till the new one’s born.’
‘So there’s only you here at present? No-one else on the farm today?’
‘Farm’s not big enough to support more than the two of us, even though when she’s away I’d welcome the help. That’s why I was a bit later than normal coming up here, I got tied up fixing a fence over in the bottom field.’
‘So what time did you find him?’
‘Round about half six. It was after dark, although it was murky enough an hour or so before with all this rain, so a bit hard to tell for certain. I then had to chase up to the vicarage for the telephone, ’cos we don’t have one here yet. That’s when I bumped into the constable.’
‘And when would you have been in the barn before that?’
‘Just after it got light, as usual. This morning it was about seven o’clock. Tell you the truth, it must have been a few minutes after, ’cos I listened to the news on the wireless before heading out. Takes me about an a hour to get the cows milked and sorted before taking them back down to the field, so I’d say I wouldn’t have been in here between half past eight this morning and half past six tonight.’
‘And where were you the rest of the day?’
‘Well, after I’d left off the cows I cleared out the pigs and hens. It was fairly dry in the morning so I started ploughing the ten acre field. That’s when I discovered the fence between there and the bottom field was damaged from last week’s winds. I came up to the house for a bite in the middle of the day then went into town to buy stuff to mend the fence. I got back about three o’clock and set about fixing it. As I said, with this weather it took me longer than I expected so I was down there until dark, then fetched the cows back up.’
‘So you didn’t hear or see anything up here earlier? Would you know if anyone came into the yard when you were down in the field?’
‘Not likely I would, unless they made a good deal of noise. Even from the house the shed and yard are well hidden so I might not have heard anything from in there either.’
‘Thank you for your help, Mr Pardow. I’ll need you to go through it in detail again with Constable Sawyer, so we have a proper record, but it shouldn’t take too long. Pass me the lamp and I’ll let you be on your way out of this awful night. The constable will go up with you, and perhaps you might offer young Mr Cudlip a cup of tea, or something stronger? He looks like he could do with it. We’ll want to be around for a while — the doctor, then the ambulance, I’m sure you’ll understand — so it might be helpful if you could arrange to keep the yard and shed clear until we’re done.’
With Sawyer, Jack Cudlip and the farmer gone I examined the barn in more detail. Above the milking stalls there was a hayloft so I climbed up to it. In the dim glow of the lamp I could make out a makeshift straw bed in one corner, where the lad had been sleeping. Protruding from another pile of straw was a pair of handlebars. I carefully moved the straw aside and, sure enough, a bicycle had been covered over to hide it from view.
Back down the ladder I studied the area around the body. I lowered the lamp and confirmed what I’d suspected almost since we arrived inside. There was a clear track in the mud where the body had been dragged into the cowshed. I followed its line, noting the dark stains where the killer had paused for breath, allowing the boy’s blood to seep down onto the earth. As I stood in the doorway and raised my arm to spread the glow as widely as possible, two lighter objects
were illuminated in the sea of muck. I bent down and wiped the spattered mud away. I shuddered as I picked them up and placed them in one of the bags I use for preserving evidence.
‘So you reckon he was murdered outside, sir?’
Sawyer and I had returned to the Victory after the police doctor had done his work and the murdered boy’s body had been removed for a post-mortem.
‘I’d say so. We’ll have to wait for the doctor’s opinion but it looked to me like he’d been struck on the side of the head. He must have lain there with the blood running down his face until the killer dragged him by his feet into the shed where he was left lying on his back.’
‘And you found his missing fingers in the yard?’
‘Well, they completed the grisly picture.’
‘How did he lose them, any idea?’
‘I imagine he put his hand up to protect himself and they were chopped off by whatever struck the lad on the head. From what I can see of the state he’s in, it was something heavy, sharp and narrow. Like an axe or the corner of a brick. We’ll know better what it was when the doctor’s cleaned him up. With a bit of luck we’ll also be able to have him identified formally when that’s done, but for my money it has to be Billy Sharp.’
‘The bike seems to match the one stolen from Charlie Himlet on the day of the shootings, so looks likely. I expect we can now take Sharp off our list of suspects as well. Did you find anything else in the yard?’
I laughed grimly.
‘Not a chance. The ground was so chewed up with the rain, the cattle and the car, we’d even have been lucky to find the body if it had been left out there.’
‘Do you think this one is connected to the other deaths then, sir?’
‘If this is Billy Sharp then I’d put my shirt on it, though I’m not as convinced as you he’s no longer a suspect. He was there when the shootings happened, he disappeared and he’s been hiding, and we also know he’d been caught playing with George Perkins’ shotgun earlier in the morning. Perhaps someone suspected Billy had killed Tom, Jenny and Isabelle and decided to be the judge and jury — and executioner. Anyway, you might as well get off home, there’s not much more you can do tonight and we’ll have a long day tomorrow checking out all those alibis again. I’ll need to go round to see Billy’s mother as soon I’ve finished here.’
A Shadowed Livery Page 18
