Embroidering Shrouds

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Come in. Come in. Sit down.’ She paused, suddenly awkward. ‘Look, I was about to make some tea.’ There was an air of desperation in the invitation which again puzzled Joanna. She felt that they should accept.

  While Lydia Patterson was clattering noisily in the kitchen, humming some unrecognizable tune, Joanna prowled, policeman like. Mike, as always, stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching her silently.

  It was the surface of the desk that drew Joanna towards the window. It overlooked the miniature farmyard outside. And as though the animals were aware of her interest the woolly coated sheep lifted its head and stared at her, so did the hens lately evicted from the house, and the duck. Idly, Joanna wondered what the duck was called. Orange? She smiled, then her eyes dropped to the surface of the desk scattered with sheets and sheets of paper, an exercise book, tightly handwritten, and a couple of skilled line drawings of the animals outside. The hens and sheep were instantly recognizable, so too were the pigs and the goat. But when she lifted the drawings, expecting more to be underneath, she found some sepia photographs. Joanna picked one up: heavily posed, children from some vague time between the wars. A tall boy, sausage suited, dark eyes staring at the camera. He held a hoop in his right hand, a stick in the other. Either side of him stood two solemn-faced girls in spotless white pinafores, one about ten, the other maybe five. They too stared at the camera, dark-eyed, solemn-faced. And between the three children there was no hint of the animosity waiting in the wings.

  The photograph was more than sixty years old but there was no need to ask who they were. They were posing on the front steps of Brushton Grange, the picture taken from quite a few yards away. There was an expanse of flat, croquet lawn in front of the three children.

  The photographer must have been standing roughly on the spot where Nan Lawrence would build her home.

  Joanna picked up a second photograph. One of the girls was much older now. It was impossible to tell which it was, both were so altered – Nan by the blows of death, Lydia by the wads of fat which padded her cheeks. But one of the girls then had been very pretty, Jo peered closer, more than pretty, beautiful – with smooth cheeks, large eyes and hair cascading down her back. And on the girl’s face there was the vaguest hint of a smile, a pleased, self-satisfied smile.

  Lydia bustled back into the tiny room carrying a Formica tea tray and some chipped mugs. Sugar spilled from a glass dish. She handed round a packet of chocolate Hob Nobs with a rueful glance at her bulging stomach. ‘Weakness of mine,’ she said, stuffing two of the biscuits in her mouth. Today she was wearing a flowered smock which billowed out at the waist. Her eyes picked out the sepia photograph in Joanna’s hand. ‘Nan,’ she explained quietly. ‘Just after she was engaged. Lovely picture, isn’t it? I’ve been looking at them.’

  Joanna nodded, replaced the picture on the desk and moved forward to take the mug of tea.

  Lydia Patterson aimed a coquettish smirk at Korpanski. ‘Surely you’re not going to stand in the doorway all the time you’re here, Sergeant?’

  Mike grunted, accepted the tea and refused a chocolate Hob Nob. Lydia offered one to Joanna who took it.

  ‘Why have you come here today?’

  ‘Just to talk to you, Miss Patterson.’

  ‘And you think just talking to me will help you find my sister’s killer?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  Lydia Patterson’s eyes gleamed intelligently. They followed Joanna’s glance across at the table. The picture of Arnold with his two sisters was now on top. She gave a deep, heartfelt sigh. ‘Times,’ she said.

  ‘Your father,’ Joanna began.

  Lydia laughed. ‘Was a crusty old thing,’ she said. ‘But he was clever.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about his will,’ Joanna continued. ‘He left your sister land she had no use for. He left your brother the family house he didn’t want. What did he leave you, Miss Patterson?’

  The eyes appraised her. Lydia stood up, her huge arms quivering with emotion. ‘That was the best of it all,’ she said, moving towards the desk. ‘The very, very best bit. My father –’ Her hand rested on the sheets of paper smothered with words and sketches. ‘I don’t know how much my brother’s told you or whether you’d understand anyway. His gifts, you see, were not gifts but Trojan horses meant to be indicators of our weaknesses. I was fifteen years old when my father died. It was 1945. The end of the war and my father’s death are, to me, blurred into one event. I remember Victory parties and somewhere in the middle a wake. I recall flags waving and a day of sombre clothes. Which came when I have no idea, it’s all such a long time ago and I didn’t mourn my father anyway. Even as a child I felt little affection for him, I was wary of him. His death was almost certainly much much less important to a fifteen-year-old than the fact that the soldiers came home and people felt glad.’ She dropped her eyes, wiped her face with the flat of her hand. ‘Nan was twenty and Arnold a handsome and wonderful soldier returning from faraway lands. He was my hero.’

  Joanna could not reconcile this vision with the bent old man who lived surrounded by such decay. Could time really be such a destroyer, to turn Nan, the dark-eyed beauty filled with such self-satisfaction, into the battered thing she had seen on the floor of Spite Hall?

  Time and spite, an effective eroder. But age had not withered her so much as her character. She listened to Lydia’s account, feeling as though the years were peeling away.

  ‘I do remember the day the solicitor came to the house to read the will.’ Lydia swallowed. ‘Arnold was given the house – which as you rightly say he didn’t want. He always hated Brushton Grange. When he came back from the war he threatened to pull it down given half the chance. Father used to mutter, “Over my dead body.” ’ Lydia gave a sour smile. ‘Just a phrase. Anyway, Nan was given the land which you observed was no use to her, she was no farmer.’

  ‘Her husband was though. Why didn’t David Lawrence farm the land?’

  ‘He had all but died in the war. He was like a baby when he came home; he couldn’t have managed a farm. He had been wounded by a sniper’s bullet, but more than that his spirit was broken, his mind destroyed. He couldn’t believe he wouldn’t be shot at if he ventured out in the fields, so he stayed indoors and allowed Nan to run his life as she found fit. And me? You asked what my father had left me? It was the cruellest gift of all, they laughed when my portion was read out, I was told my legacy was my intelligence.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘At the time’, Lydia said, ‘I was considered – Oh, these days they would have realized I was dyslexic, possibly through the traumas, the worry of war. Maybe it was lack of good teachers – they all went to the front, you see, or maybe it was simply the way my father tried to destroy what fragile confidence I possessed. I was not subnormal, but nobody knew. They were all too busy with the war effort and afterwards with celebrating. But then no one spent any time with me. There were no nice, tidy labels. I was considered thick.’

  She picked up some of the sheets of paper, let them scatter over the desk. ‘But the last laugh was on me. David Lawrence, returning from the war, left with little of his physical strength had plenty of time to teach a girl to read. I adored him,’ she said simply. ‘He unlocked the –’ She wiped away a tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. ‘Do you know what these sheets of paper are?’

  Joanna shook her head.

  ‘I write books,’ Lydia said. ‘Oh, they’re just children’s stories. I didn’t find a Stephen Hawking level of intellect. They’re just life as I know it.’ She peered out of the window at the animals grazing contentedly. ‘Tales of a smallholding, squabbles between animals, that sort of thing. Shamelessly anthropomorphic, but they sell. Kids like them.’ There was more than a hint of defensiveness in her attitude. ‘Since the middle nineteen sixties I have made a reasonable living out of my stories.’ She gave a lopsided smile. ‘My father would have been furious, quite furious. He would hate to know how he had been thwarted, out
witted, and by David Lawrence of all people. He had no time for him. Here.’ She tugged a drawer open and pulled out a couple of books, gaudily covered paperbacks, one with a hen on the front, the other a sheep, both had humanoid expressions on their faces.

  ‘Take them home. Give them to your kids. Who knows. I might even gain a couple of new fans.’

  Mike caught his. ‘Thanks.’

  It was with a shock that Joanna caught hers and realized that by now she too had a ‘kid’ at home. It was an unwelcome thought.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Joanna and Mike spent the first part of Friday afternoon reading through statements, Joanna delaying the moment when she should return home. At the same time she acknowledged that wherever Eloise Levin was would not feel like home to her. The antagonism between them was far too tangible because she blamed Joanna for the break-up of her parents’ marriage. In her most depressed moments Joanna wondered whether she was right. Counsellors might protest that there was only room for a mistress in an imperfect relationship, but Jane and Matthew would have muddled along somehow, like many couples. Besides, what quality of relationship did she and Matthew have now? Not perfect. It was flawed every time Eloise’s name cropped up and her physical presence was a thousand times worse. Eloise was acute enough to sense Matthew’s guilt and play it for all she was worth. It was her trump card – constantly overplayed. Joanna’s biggest dread was that the girl would one day ask to come and live with them permanently and Matthew would not say no. She gave a big sigh which Mike quickly picked up on.

  ‘I can guess what you’re thinking about,’ he said, ‘and it’s nothing to do with the case.’

  She gave him a rueful glance.

  ‘How long’s she staying?’

  Joanna shrugged.

  ‘Well, don’t ask me how to get rid of unwelcome guests,’ he said. ‘I’d hardly qualify to give you any advice. Can’t manage it myself, Jo.’

  It brought the faintest of smiles to Joanna’s face. ‘She’s still with you then?’

  ‘We’ve tried everything’, he said ‘in turns. Being nice. Being horrible. Talking. Not talking. Listening to her advice. Ignoring it completely – and her. I tell you what, Jo. Life was good before she came, only we didn’t appreciate it, we didn’t know how good we had it until it had gone.’ He pushed his fingers through the jet black hair and stared gloomily at her. ‘I’d give anything to get back to our place and see her cases packed and in the hall. Anything.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  They felt close, bonded by common enemies. Silently but companionably they worked through the piles of statements, looking up every ten minutes or so to exchange grins and comments. ‘Found anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  At five-thirty they were disturbed by the telephone. It was the desk sergeant, Bill Tylman had called in asking whether they had found out anything new about the case, did they want to speak to him?

  ‘Hang on a second.’ Joanna smothered the mouthpiece and eyed Mike. ‘I only spoke to Tylman this morning, what’s he “dropping by” for?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘Only one way to find out.’

  ‘Why not,’ she said into the receiver. ‘Send him in.’

  She put the phone down thoughtfully. ‘I don’t expect interviewing Tylman will advance the case one jot but at least it’ll delay the evil moment when we have to face our unwelcome guests.’ Mike grinned back at her and the comradeship between them warmed a few more degrees.

  Bill Tylman was much as they’d remembered him, ruddy-faced, honest-eyed, filled with a sort of prurient excitement that Joanna found vaguely distasteful.

  He began with explaining away his presence. ‘I just wondered how you were getting on. I was just passing, thought I’d pop in.’ He glanced anxiously from one to the other.

  Jo indicated that night’s evening paper. Tylman interviewed by one of their main reporters, the headline, The Trauma of Discovering a Body’.

  ‘Still grabbing the headlines, Mr Tylman?’

  He had the grace to blush clumsily. ‘Funny, ain’t it? Local papers call you a hero for anything.’

  ‘Well, in the case of Cecily Marlowe you were a hero. If you hadn’t found her...’ Joanna let the sentence hang in the air.

  ‘I know. Don’t bear thinking about.’ Tylman began to relax.

  Always a better situation for worming out the truth. When they were off guard.

  ‘She was in a bad way, poor old duck, frightened out of her wits. But once the papers got a sniff of it, wouldn’t leave me alone.’ There was a puff of pride clinging to him.

  ‘And now, Mr Tylman?’

  ‘Leave me alone? Well–’ His attempt at modesty was going to fail. They both knew that.

  ‘I just chat to them, almost forget I’m talking to a paper. Get a shock myself, reading my name in so much. Of course, it ain’t the same – finding a body.’

  ‘Not so much of a tale to tell?’

  He simply wasn’t wise enough to know the pair of them were setting him up.

  ‘It’s just a different story when someone’s dead.’

  ‘And you still made the front page locally.’

  ‘And all of a sudden Tylman saw where they were coming from.’ His honest eyes clouded.

  ‘Now look here. I didn’t ask for them to make a story out of it –’

  ‘How did they know?’

  ‘I don’t know how they ...’ His eyes seemed to shrink. ‘Someone must have told them.’

  Mike took a couple of steps towards the milkman. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve remembered anything that might help us? Something you forgot before.’

  Tylman licked dry lips. ‘Not a thing, Sergeant. Absolutely nothing, I promise you. I’ve told you the lot.’

  ‘And we’, Joanna put in sweetly, ‘can’t really discuss the case with you.’

  ‘Fine.’ Tylman’s eyes darted towards them. He wanted out. ‘Well, if I do think of something –’

  ‘Just one more thing.’

  Tylman had his hand on the door handle, his back towards them, even so they could read tension in the set of his shoulders.

  ‘Cecily Marlowe. Did she have her milk left at the back door or on the front doorstep?’

  ‘The front.’ Tylman was definitely wary now.

  ‘You heard her call that day?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s how I knew she was in distress.’

  ‘From the kitchen, Mr Tylman?’

  He half nodded.

  ‘But the kitchen door was shut.’

  They had gained few real facts from Cecily Marlowe but in this she had been certain because it was she who had pulled the door closed behind her. She had heard the front door slam and pulled the kitchen door closed before returning to her frightened hiding place, under the kitchen table.

  Tylman seemed to wither. ‘Was it?’

  Joanna nodded, deliberately holding his gaze with her own until he was quite out of the door.

  They laughed as soon as the milkman had left the room. ‘That rattled him,’ Joanna said. ‘Little ... He was obviously just nosing around to gather more details to feed to the papers.’

  ‘Now, now.’ Korpanski held his hand up. ‘No bad language, please, not ladylike.’

  She scowled at him. ‘Your mother-in-law’, she said, ‘is beginning to have an effect on you, Korpanski. And I’m not sure –’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Mike gave her a quick grin. ‘How about I buy you a quick drink at the Quiet Woman on your way home.’

  ‘It isn’t on my way home, in fact it’s in the opposite direction.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘What are you up to?’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s six o’clock, Jo. Opening time.’

  Then she clicked. ‘And Grinstead will already be propping up the bar, having queued outside for the last half hour. Well, Mike, whatever you think, I certainly need a drink before facing Miss Eloise.’

  True enough, Grinstead was propping up the bar, halfway down,
at the very least, his first evening beer. Opening time meant non-stop drinking time to him. An unsavoury character, he didn’t know whether to hail Korpanski as an old friend or a threat, the sergeant could be both. Grinstead never had trusted Joanna. He watched the two of them thread their way through the early evening drinkers.

  ‘Hello, sir.’ Grinstead had learned it was better to call Korpanski sir until you were sure which hat he was wearing, friend or policeman.

  ‘Buy you a drink, Melvin?’

  Grinstead relaxed whilst still eyeing Joanna warily. ‘Thanks, guv. Don’t mind if I do.’

  It was hard to decide how old Grinstead was. He could have still been in his thirties. He looked about fifty but Joanna knew these old lags aged quickly. It was, in a way, a hard life. Not without its stresses.

  ‘Melvin.’ Watery grey eyes turned on her. ‘We’re interested in anything you can tell us about the recent burglaries committed against old ladies.’

  He took the pint from Korpanski and drank deeply, his eyes never moving from Joanna’s face. He didn’t speak until his glass was half-empty and his mouth was free. ‘It’s Inspector Piercy, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, Melvin,’ she said. And waited while he put the glass to his mouth again.

  ‘I only know somethin’ about the early ones,’ he said, in a rush, when he had all but drained his glass, leaving nothing but dregs and froth which he gazed at with maudlin sadness.

  Joanna lifted her eyebrows towards Mike. He took the glass from Grinstead and had it filled. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘The ones in the spring,’ he said, ‘they was youngsters. No harm in them. Very young, know what I mean?’

  ‘Habitual offenders?’

  ‘Not for that,’ he said.

  ‘Then what?’

  Grinstead licked his lips. ‘Cars.’

  ‘Locals?’

  ‘They was in an accident early July.’

  ‘Fourteen-year-olds?’

  Grinstead nodded. It was enough. It told her everything. Gave them names, addresses, everything.

  ‘What about the other lady? The one that had a broken hip?’