She jumped up from her chair.
Right, I’m going out again to Travellers. It’s where I saw Lucas Calverte with sudden viciousness twist and twist a clump of long grass he had pulled up and toss it away to destruction. Yes, aged he may be, but there’s still strength in those hands of his. And thirty years ago there would have been even more.
Chapter Twenty-Three
By the time Pip had returned from his errand with the anonymous letter, Harriet had decided that, before she went to visit Calverte, she would find out what she could about his origins. And she had thought of a simple way to do that.
‘Listen, Pip,’ she said, ‘this may not work, but even if it doesn’t we’re no worse off. What I want you to do, straight away, is simply ring up Lucas Calverte saying you’re a journalist writing about the history of the office of Undersheriff for the county magazine — ’
‘I’ve seen it,’ Pip broke in. ‘Glossy. Called — Called something. Yes. Of course. Just called Birrshire.’
‘Right. Then all you’ve got to do is ask the old gasbag where he was born. Was it, you could ask, within the county boundary.’
Pip’s knobby cheeks above the neat beard shone with sudden glee. He seized the telephone. Harriet flipped through her notebook and read the number out. Pip punched it up.
Almost at once the phone was answered. Pip went into his spiel.
Listening, Harriet admired the way he was bringing conviction to his role. Early years in advertising paying off, she thought.
Impossible to make out what the gasbag was saying at the far end. But whatever it was, after one short interruption, it seemed to be enough.
‘Thank you, sir. That’s very helpful,’ Pip the journalist said, with a nice touch of obsequiousness.
He put the handset back in place.
‘That’s curious,’ he commented.
‘Curious? Why?’
‘It turns out Calverte was born, not in any of the posh places in Birrshire, but in the next county. In Gralethorpe. He was a bit reluctant to say so, but, as you heard, it needed only one tiny prompt before he realized his birthplace wasn’t the sort of fact he could hide from a persistent journalist — like me.’
‘Gralethorpe,’ Harriet said. ‘I see what you mean, curious. I know Gralethorpe, I made an inquiry there quite recently. No, a small mining town like that, friendly enough but covered in coal dust from one end to the other, is not at all the sort of place where one would have expected Undersheriff Lucas Calverte to have entered the world. You know, I think that before I go and see him, I’m going to visit Gralethorpe again. This very afternoon in fact.’
‘With me, ma’am?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll need to go to Gralethorpe as the second half of a pair of investigative journalists. No, I’ll leave you with the dangerous task of fending off Mr Newcomen when he wants to know why we’re not making enough progress.’
*
Before setting out, Harriet got Pip to check the Gralethorpe register of electors for anyone ‘with that distinctly upper-crust name of Calverte’. He had no luck, but he did find a Miss Abigail Calvert, without the e. That comparative lack of success did not make Harriet abandon her decision. So she set out to see what she might learn from this Miss Abigail.
The address Pip had found for her was in one of Gralethorpe’s many grimed-over working men’s terraced houses. When its door was opened to her careful tap on the knocker, she saw a woman in her seventies or eighties who seemed to cry out to have applied to her the epithet ‘apple-cheeked’. She was as upright as a signpost, too, and her brightly alert eyes were giving this newcomer a sharply inquiring look.
‘Good afternoon,’ Harriet said, rapidly abandoning the persona of a council official which she had decided was likely to be her best way of finding out what she wanted to know. ‘I am a police officer, Detective Superintendent Martens, and I’m hoping you can assist me with an inquiry we have about a namesake of yours, or almost a name — ’
‘That’ll be Luke,’ Miss Calvert chipped in, quick as a darting squirrel.
‘Yes. Or Lucas.’
‘Well, you can’t be here because Lucas Calverte’s done something wicked. He was always too concerned with what folk might think to do anything amiss.’
‘Miss Calvert,’ Harriet said, the scent now breast-high, ‘may I come in and ask you some questions?’
‘I don’t reckon I could keep you out. But come in, and welcome. I was just going to get myself a cup of tea.’
Harriet was too old a hand at playing a useful witness to decline the offered tea. She sat waiting with happy patience in the little spick and span front room while from the kitchen in the back there came the clink of cups, the whistle of the kettle.
‘So you want to know something about my cousin Luke,’ Miss Calvert said as she came in with a flower-painted tin tray complete with teapot, sugar basin, two large cups, also flower-patterned, and a plate of shortbread biscuits.
‘You call him Luke,’ Harriet said, feeling her way. ‘But I know him as Lucas, Mr Lucas Calverte, former Undersheriff for the County of Birrshire.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s my cousin Luke. On away and up, up, up, from the moment he was old enough to fly. To fly away from me in the end, to tell you the whole truth.’
‘From you?’
A quick, bright, apple-cheeked smile.
‘Oh yes. I don’t mind who knows about it now, though I will say I was hurt, hurt in the heart as they say, when one day Luke, who’d shown every sign of liking me, came into this very room — I’ve lived in this house all my born days, you know — and told me he was off to join the army. Well, worse than that. It was the Indian Army he was going into, and he would be away for years and years.’
Yes, Harriet said to herself, I can see the man who ended up as the scourge of the badly-behaved youth of Birchester telling this nice old lady, who once thought she was going to be his wife, that at a moment’s notice he was off out of her life.
‘Oh, but he rose up out there, did Luke. Rose up to be an officer, and, when he came back to England, never set foot in Gralethorpe again. That was when he changed his name to Lucas and stuck that extra e, on the end of Calvert, as if he was ashamed of where he came from. When I saw his photo in the newspaper the time he was made an Undersheriff, whatever that may be, that was the first I knew he was back here and had set up to be a gentleman.’
‘And you had once hoped to marry him?’
A bubble of laughter.
‘Oh, I’d never have let him be a husband of mine, for all his cajoling ways. And, to tell the truth, I dare say he’d have never tied the knot himself. Not unless I’d let him put me in the family way. And I wasn’t going to do that, however much I might have liked it. No, Luke Calvert ran off from Gralethorpe, not to get himself away from me, but because he couldn’t stand the narrowness. Chapel twice every Sunday, and being told by everyone just what you had to do and what you’d not. Oh, aye, especially that not. Those sermons we got, in chapel and out, and the chapel ones never less than the full hour and hellfire every minute of that. How I hated them.’
She sent Harriet a quickly mischievous glance.
‘I may have kept Cousin Luke in his place,’ she said. ‘But I wasn’t one of your goody-goody girls, and Luke wasn’t the only one buzzing round. I see you’ve a wedding band on your finger, so I mustn’t say too much about husbands. But from all I’ve seen in my life, I think I’m a great deal better off with never having let any one of those buzzing bees catch me to cook and clean for him.’
‘I dare say you’re right, though I must admit my John is about as good as they come, and does his share at the stove too.’
Then you’ve been lucky, or you’ve been deceived. But I never was. I could see what they were made of, in spite of all their sweet talk. And I was proved right. You’re from the Birchester Police, aren’t you? Well, does the name Ezra Yates ring a bell with you?’
Harriet took herself back to
her earlier days in the city and its notorious B Division area. And, yes, the name Ezra Yates came up as a flashing light, though she could not at all recall what criminal act had put it there.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the name does ring a bell.’
‘Ah, well, I can see you don’t remember too much about Ezra. But he had a nasty turn to him, even back then when he was courting me, and even though I liked him for it. He left Gralethorpe, too. Loved me and left me. But I’ve always kept up with him, a card at Christmas if nothing more. And so I read all about his little bit of trouble in the paper. Blackmail, they said it was. Writing letters; wanting to be paid to keep quiet about some old gentleman’s naughtiness.’
And now bells were ringing louder and louder.
Ezra Yates, at the time living near enough to his native Gralethorpe to get his name in the local paper for writing anonymous blackmailing letters. Couple that with his knowledge, from half a century ago and more, that Undersheriff Lucas Calverte was no born grandee and it was not difficult to pinpoint who had written anonymously to the new Chief Constable of Greater Birchester Police.
It all fits.
But, no. No, it does not all fit. There’s one missing piece. And a very large piece, too. How on earth did Ezra Yates, wherever he is now, get to know that the Boy Preacher murder was under active investigation?
‘Ezra Yates?’ she asked. ‘Did you mention that, even after all these years, you kept in touch with him? That must be true love, even if it’s only on a Christmas card.’
Seventy-year-old Abigail Calvert gave a little giggle.
‘You’ve guessed my secret,’ she said. ‘You’re sharp enough. No wonder you’ve risen up in the police. But, yes, I’ve always had a soft spot for that bad lad Ezra.’
‘So where do you send your cards to now?’ Harriet slipped in, casually.
‘Oh, to Birchester. Ezra’s a shoe mender there, still got his shop in Moorfields, though it’s years since I’ve seen him there.’
Right, Harriet said to herself. I’ve learnt all I need now. Ezra Yates, anonymous letter writer, a shoe-mender’s shop in the Moorfields area.
‘Miss Calvert, I’ve already taken up too much of your time. I’ll say goodbye now. And thank you for the tea, and the biscuits.’
Abigail Calvert gave her a sharp look.
‘In a hurry to be off, are you?’
*
Right, yes, shrewd old biddy, Harriet thought, speeding out of Gralethorpe on the Birchester road, I am in a hurry. The sooner I find Ezra Yates and put the fear of God into him over his letter-writing activities, the sooner I’ll be able to get out of him how he got to learn that the inquiry is active. And the sooner I’ll have something to report to Mr Newbroom that ought to keep him quiet for a bit.
She took Pip with her to Moorfields, where they had no difficulty in finding, in a narrow street too rundown even to shelter one of the seedy area’s plentiful pom shops, the little cabin where Ezra Yates — his name above the door — offered to mend shoes. An offer, it seemed, in the age of fashion-statement trainers, few people were taking up.
The shop, with darkness setting in, was lit up, if dimly. When Harriet pushed the door open she saw an old man, cigarette dangling from his intent mouth, hammering nails into a shoe on his last.
‘Mr Ezra Yates?’ she said, infusing her voice with a certain degree of menace. ‘Greater Birchester Police.’
At once she saw the back, still bending over the shoe, freeze into rigid apprehension.
‘Detective Superintendent Martens and Detective Constable Steadman. We have some questions to ask you.’
Ezra Yates left his last, three or four bright nails still sticking up from the shoe on it.
‘I’ve had all I want of you police,’ he grunted.
‘I dare say you have, Mr Yates. But, if despite having served a term for one extortion offence you persist in writing anonymous letters, you can expect to have a great deal more to do with us.’
‘I never wrote no letters like that.’
‘But you did, Mr Yates. You wrote a letter to the Chief Constable of the Greater Birchester Police. It had your fingerprints on it, you know. So you can stop pretending you know nothing about it.’
And thank goodness, she thought, that I did send the letter to be tested. Should he persist in his denials, if by chance Fingerprints come up with something halfway decent, we can charge him. Though not with lese-majesty in daring to address Mr Newbroom.
But there was no need to have any such evidence.
‘What if I did write to him?’ Ezra Yates growled. ‘If Luke Calvert murdered that preacher boy all those years ago, then he ought to have swung for it. And so he ought today. If I’ve helped him on his way, then you ought to be thanking me, not coming in here and telling me I done wrong.’
‘And how do you know the Boy Preacher case is being investigated again now?’
Will he spill out the answer? Or will I have to tussle with him over it? And perhaps lose out?
‘I heard, didn’t I? Heard somewhere. Everybody must know about it.’
‘No, Mr Yates, everybody does not know about it. And your correspondent, my Chief Constable, is very angry because you seem to have got wind of it.’
‘But I — I ain’t done nothing wrong. If I just heard that murder was being gone into all over again, well, I just did, didn’t I? Nothing wrong in that. Nothing for no Chief Constable to be angry about.’
Harriet recognized wryly that Mr Newbroom’s anger did not always mean trouble for members of his force. It had its uses.
‘No,’ she said, ‘you’re wrong. The Chief Constable’s right to be angry, very angry indeed. You committed an offence in sending an anonymous letter at all, and to send one to him puts you in very serious trouble. He’s very likely to order me to bring a case against you, and one that will stick.’
Ezra Yates looked more than a little scared now.
‘So, why don’t you tell me just how you heard about the Boy Preacher investigation? And then we’ll see if we can’t persuade Mr Newcomen that you didn’t mean to commit an offence.’
Barely five seconds of thought, and then Ezra Yates looked up.
‘It was at the AA,’ he said.
‘The AA? Alcoholics Anonymous? You belong to that?’
‘Yeh. Years ago I started. Don’t need to be prayed at about the drink any more now. Been off it a long time. But I go once a week still. Company, much as anything.’
‘And someone at the meeting said they knew the Boy Preacher’s murder was being investigated again?’
Harriet failed to keep the doubt out of her voice. It all seemed so unlikely.
‘Not at the meeting. Out on the steps afterwards. Nobody wouldn’t say something like that when they were all telling how they’d kept off the stuff for however long it was.’
‘No, I suppose not. But someone after the meeting told you? Who was it?’
‘Who was it? Who was it? I couldn’t know, could I? Nobody at the meetings uses their name. Wouldn’t ever go otherwise. Should have thought you’d know that. Bloody detective superintendent, aren’t you?’
‘That’s enough of that. And, if you really don’t know your informant’s name, you’d better tell me all that you do know about them, and pretty quickly.’
The old shoe mender’s moment of defiance trickled into nothingness like the last spurt from a defective water tap.
‘A lady. It was a lady.’
‘All right, that’s something. But tell me more.’
‘Ain’t no more to tell. She’s this lady, well-spoken if you like, and somehow she’s taken a bit of a shine to me. So we stop after and chat. Couple of minutes. About the weather. Anything comes into her head.’
‘I see. And how did it come about that at one moment you were saying it’s wonderful weather for May and the next she was telling you — ’
She came to a halt.
Ezra Yates, reformed alcoholic, she thought, may not know the name of the lady who h
as taken ‘a bit of a shine’ to him. But I do.
‘Oh, very well,’ she snapped at the miserable shoe mender. ‘If you know nothing, you know nothing. And I suppose, as you’ve done your best to co-operate, we’ll say no more about that letter to the Chief Constable. But you take care you never do anything like that again. Understood?’
And she swung out of the little shop.
Outside, Pip almost tugged at her sleeve as if he were an importunate child.
‘Ma’am, why? Why leave all of a sudden like that?’
‘Because,’ Harriet said, ‘I know who it was who blabbed to that awful old man about the inquiry. Can’t you guess?’
Pip’s forehead creased in perplexity.
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Think. Who, among the very few people who actually know the inquiry into the Boy Preacher’s death is live again, is likely to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.’
‘I — I can’t think of anybody.’
‘That’s because, Pip, you’re going over in your mind a list, a very short list, of likely women police officers. But it isn’t a police officer. It’s someone else on the Headquarters staff. So who will it be?’
A slow dawning of recognition.
‘I know. I know. Or at least I think I do. It’s — Don’t people always say that the Chiefs secretary, Pansy, seems half-drunk all the time? It’s her, isn’t it? Her.’
‘Yes, of course it is. But keep this strictly under your hat. Pansy may have a drink problem but she doesn’t deserve, especially working for who she does, to be the victim of any worse Headquarters gossip than she already is. Okay?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Right. Now, there’s something rather more urgent to be done than stopping office gossip. There’s what I’ve found out about once-upon-a-time Undersheriff Lucas Calverte, otherwise Luke Calvert, humble son of Gralethorpe.’
The Dreaming Detective Page 21
