Henrietta Who? iscm-2

by Catherine Aird

  "Not well put, but I am with you."

  "In fact," went on Crosby morosely, "we hardly know anything." He did not like walking.

  "We know a woman was killed by a motor vehicle in— er—unusual circumstances."

  They were not far now from the fatal bend in the road. Crosby looked up and down. "You couldn't not see someone on a road as narrow as this."

  "No." Sloan reverted to Grace Jenkins. "We know that she was childless."

  "But," put in Crosby, "that she pretended not to be."

  "Just so," said Sloan. "An interesting situation."

  "And that's all we do know," concluded Crosby flatly.

  "Try again," advised Sloan, "because it isn't."

  Crosby's brow became as furrowed as one of the Thorpe's ploughed fields.

  There's something fishy about the photograph and the medals?"

  "There is." Sloan was already listing in his own mind the inquiries which would have to be made about the photograph and the medals. "But go back to the woman for a moment…"

  Crosby's brow resumed its furrows.

  "Why," asked Sloan helpfully, "was she killed?"

  There was a long pause. "Search me," said Detective Constable Crosby at long last.

  "If Sergeant Gelven wasn't on annual leave, Constable, I wouldn't have to," said Sloan crisply.

  "No, sir."

  They had passed the bad bend now and were walking towards the centre of the village. The Hall lay over on their right, nestled into the folding countryside in the sheltered site selected in their wisdom by its Tudor builders. It would be in the best situation for several miles around and there would have been a spring or a good well nearby.

  They walked past the gates. They were well hung and newly painted. Nothing, thought Sloan, gave you as good a view of the state of a property as the gates. Mr. James Hibbs was clearly a man of means who was prepared to pay attention to detail.

  "I think we know why she was killed," said Sloan.

  The church had come into view now. It, too, was on the right of the road. If Sloan knew anything about landowners there would be a gate through into the churchyard from the grounds of The Hall. The ultimate in status symbols.

  "Do we?" said Crosby cautiously.

  "You mentioned adoption…"

  "Yes, sir."

  "There comes a point when—like it or not—it is customary to tell the adopted child the—er—truth about its parents or lack of them."

  "Twenty-one," said Crosby.

  "Just so. All wrong, of course. The right time is before they can understand."

  "Yes, sir. The psychologists say …"

  "I understand," said Sloan coldly, not liking the word, "that you should stress that they are chosen." He looked Crosby up and down. "Not an unhappy accident of fate like everyone else's children."

  "No, sir."

  They could see beyond the church now to the Rectory and the patch of grass that presumably did duty as a village green. No one could have called Larking picturesque—which probably meant it was spared a good deal—but it was by no means unattractive.

  "I think she was killed because the girl is going to be twenty-one next month."

  "And someone doesn't want Henrietta to know who she is?" responded Crosby brightly.

  "Don't strain yourself thinking too hard, Constable, will you?"

  "No, sir."

  "She tells us she is going to be twenty-one in April," con-tinued Sloan, "and I think she has been correctly informed on this point, but April would be too late for the killing of Grace Jenkins for two reasons…" He waited hopefully for Crosby to enumerate them.

  Crosby said nothing.

  "Two reasons," went on Sloan in a resigned way. When he got back to Berebury he would look up the leave schedules to see when Sergeant Gelven was coming back. They weren't going to solve anything at all at this rate. "One of them is that the girl would have been back from college by then."

  Crosby nodded in agreement.

  "The other is…"

  "Daylight," said Crosby unexpectedly.

  "Exactly. By April the last bus would be getting to Larking in the twilight rather than the sort of darkness you can easily run someone down in. There's another thing…"

  Crosby cocked his head like a spaniel.

  "This wedding…"

  "She wouldn't let them get married," said Crosby. "That chap Hibbs told us that."

  "Have you thought why not? Thorpe's a nice enough lad by all accounts…"

  They were right in the centre of the village now and he and Crosby knocked on the door of the house of the last perknown to have seen the late Grace Edith Jenkins alive.

  "That's right," said Mrs. Martha Callows, not without relish. "I reckon me and Mrs. Perkins was the last to see her. On the last bus, she was, same as we were."

  She admitted the policemen into an untidy house, knocked a cat off one chair, scooped a child out of another and inthem to sit down.

  "The last bus from Berebury?" asked Sloan with the air of one anxious to get everything clear.

  "There aren't any other buses from anywhere else," Mrs. Callows said, "and there aren't all that many from Berebury. If you miss the seven five you walk."

  "Quite so. Was it crowded?"

  "Not after Cullingoak. Most people get out there. Get down, you." This last was said to the cat, which, thwarted of the chair, was settling on the table.

  "Where did you get out?"

  "The Post Office. That's the only stop in Larking. We all got out there. Me and Mrs. Perkins and her."

  "About what time would that have been?"

  "Something short of eight o'clock."

  The cat had not, in fact, troubled to get down and was now investigating some dirty plates which were still on the table.

  "You'd been shopping?" said Sloan generally.

  "Sort of. Mrs. Perkins—that's who I was with—her husband's in hospital. That's why we was on the late bus. Visiting hours. 'Course, we'd been round the shops first… Berebury's a long way to go for nothing."

  "Quite so. Had Mrs. Jenkins got a shopping basket?"

  "Now I come to think of it," said Mrs. Callows, screwing up her face in recollection, "I don't know she had." Her face cleared suddenly. "But then she wouldn't have, would she?"

  "Why not?" enquired Sloan with interest.

  "Friday's her day for Berebury. Not Toosday. She goes in Fridays, regular as clockwork. Always has done."

  "Not Tuesdays?"

  Mrs. Callows shook her head. "Not shopping."

  "I see. Tell me"—Sloan was at his most confidential— "tell me, was she her usual self otherwise?"

  A wary look came into Mrs. Callows's eye. "Yes, I suppose you could say she was."

  Sloan tried another tack. "Cheerful?"

  "I wouldn't say cheerful meself. Polite, of course, hoh yes, always very polite was Mrs. Jenkins, but not what you'd call cheerful."

  "Talkative sort?"

  Mrs. Callows shook her head. "Not her. Never much to say for herself at the best of times but take Toosday f'r'instance. 'Good evening,' she says. 'We could do with a bit better weather than this, couldn't we? Too windy.' And passes right down the bus to the front and sits there by herself."

  "Kept herself to herself?"

  "That's right. She did." Mrs. Callows reached out absently and gave the cat a cuff. It retreated but only momentarily.

  "She didn't tell you how she'd spent the day?" asked Sloan.

  Mrs. Callows sniffed. "She wouldn't tell us a thing like that. She wasn't the sort."

  "I see." Sloan reverted to officialese. "We are naturally anxious to trace Mrs. Jenkins's movements on Tuesday…"

  "There I cannot help," said Mrs. Callows frankly. "Neither of us set eyes on her until we got to the bus station."

  "What about afterwards?"

  "When we got back to Larking, you mean?"

  "That's right." Sloan waved an arm. "Other people, for instance. Was there anyone about?"

  She
shook her head. "We didn't see anybody else, but then we wouldn't, would we?"

  "Why not?"

  "Because it was Toosday, like I said."

  "Tuesday?"

  "The first Toosday," amplified Mrs. Callows. "Institoot night."

  "I see. So what happened when you all got off the bus?"

  "She turned down the lane towards her house. Mrs. Perkins and me—we went the other way. That was the last we saw of her."

  "I see," said Sloan. "Thank you."

  "It's a nasty bend," volunteered Mrs. Callows suddenly.

  "Indeed, yes. By the way, did you see any vehicular traffic?"

  Mrs. Callows looked blank. "Oh, you mean cars? No, none at all."

  Sloan and Crosby rose to go.

  "Except," she added, "the ones parked outside the King's Head."

  Sloan and Crosby took a look at the King's Head car park on their way from Mrs. Callows's house to the Post Office.

  It was an asphalt affair and disappointing.

  "We won't get a tyre print on this." Crosby stood in the middle of it and stamped his foot. "Hard as iron."

  Inspector Sloan didn't appear to be interested in the surface of the car park. He was moving about and looking down the road to his right.

  "Anyway," went on Crosby, "she was killed on Tuesday. Today's Friday. Other vehicles would have come in here since then and rubbed them out."

  "What exactly can you see from here, constable?"

  Crosby looked down the road. "The Post Office, sir, and a telephone kiosk, the fork in the road to Belling St. Peter, the signpost and so forth." He paused, then, "A woman pushing a pram, a delivery van, a row of horse chestnuts…"

  "This is not a nature ramble, Crosby."

  "No, sir."

  "Anything else?"

  "There's the church, sir, beyond the bus stop."

  "Precisely."

  Crosby looked puzzled. "Is the church important, sir?"

  "No."

  "The bus stop?"

  "Don't overdo it, Crosby, will you?"

  "No, sir." He turned back to Sloan. "Where to, now, sir?"

  "The Post Office. To see a Mrs. Ricks. The admirable Hepple says she knows everything."

  But this was not quite true.

  While confirming that the late Grace Jenkins always went into Berebury on Fridays, and seldom, if ever, on Tuesdays, Mrs. Ricks was unable to say why she had left on the early bus and come back on the late one. Sloan squeezed alongside a sack of corn while the tall Crosby ducked out of the way of a vicious-looking billhook which was suspended from the ceiling. It was above his head—but only just.

  "I don't know," she wheezed regretfully. It was an admission she rarely had to make. "She wouldn't have said. She wasn't a talker."

  "So I heard," said Sloan.

  "I saw her leave in the morning," offered Mrs. Ricks. "In her best, she was."

  "Was she?" said Sloan, interested.

  "And she was gone all day. At least I never saw her get off a bus before I closed." Mrs. Ricks apparently monitored the bus stop outside the Post Office window as a matter of course.

  "Nasty things, car accidents," observed Sloan to nobody in particular.

  "You needn't think, officer," said Mrs. Ricks, divining his intentions with uncanny accuracy, "that you'll find anyone to say a word against Mrs. Jenkins, because you won't."

  "Madam, I assure you…"

  "She didn't," went on Mrs. Ricks with the insight born of years of small shopkeeping, "mix with people enough to upset them, if you see what I mean."

  Sloan saw what she meant.

  "Difficult job, all the same," he said diffidently, "bringing up a child without a father."

  Mrs. Ricks gave a crowing laugh. "She brought her up all right. She never did anything else all day but look after that child. And that house of hers."

  "Devoted?" suggested Sloan.

  Mrs. Ricks gave a powerful nod. "It was always 'Henrietta this' and 'Henrietta that' with Mrs. Jenkins," she said a trifle spitefully. "A rare old job it was to get her to take an interest in anything else."

  "I see."

  Mrs. Ricks gave a sigh and said sententiously, "Here today, gone tomorrow. We none of us know, do we, when we shall be called…"

  Sloan got her back to the point with an effort. "Do you happen to know which is her pension day?"

  "That I do not," declared Mrs. Ricks. "But I can tell you one thing…"

  "What's that?"

  "That she never got it here."

  "Oh?"

  "There's some that don't." She looked round the crowded little store, saleable goods protruding from every square inch of wall and ceiling space, and lining most of the floor too. "They like where bigger."

  Sloan saw what she meant. The sales point of the billhook was practically making itself felt.

  "Especially," said Mrs. Ricks in her infinite wisdom, "if it isn't as much as they'd like you to think. Sergeant, wasn't he?"

  Sloan nodded.

  Mrs. Ricks sniffed. "Sometimes they were. Sometimes they weren't."

  Calleford Minster rose like an eminence grise above and behind the clustered shops at the end of Petergate. Mr. Arbi-can of Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind would be very happy to see Henrietta but her appointment with him was not until a quarter to three. Farmers as a race lunch early and Henrietta and Bill Thorpe had time to spare.

  Henrietta turned towards the Minster. "It's lovely, isn't it?"

  Bill Thorpe turned an eye on the towering stone. "It's more than lovely. Do you realise it could be useful to you?"

  "To me?"

  He nodded. "That chap in the photograph…"

  "My father," responded Henrietta a little distantly.

  "He was—what did you say?—a sergeant in the East Cal-leshires?"

  "That's right. What about it?"

  "He was killed, wasn't he?"

  She flushed. "So I understand."

  "Well, then…"

  "Well then what?"

  "Calleford's their town, isn't it?"

  Henrietta sighed. "Whose town?"

  "The East Calleshires," explained Bill Thorpe patiently. "The Regiment. They've got their barracks here. Like the West Calleshires have theirs in Berebury."

  "What if they have?"

  He pointed to the Minster. "If this is their home town then I think we might find their memorial in the Minster here, don't you?"

  "I hadn't thought of that," she said slowly. "He—my father—'ll be there, won't he?"

  Bill Thorpe led the way towards the Minster gate. "We can soon see."

  The East Calleshires did have their memorial in the Minster. Henrietta followed Bill Thorpe into the Minster and down the nave. She lagged behind slightly as if she did not want to be there, glancing occasionally at the memorials to eighteenth-century noblemen and nineteenth-century soldiers.

  An elderly verger led them to the East Calleshire memorial on the North wall of the North transept.

  "It catches the afternoon light just here, you know," he said. "Nice piece of marble, isn't it?"

  "Very," said Bill Thorpe politely.

  "They couldn't get no more like it," the man said. "Not when they came to try. Still, they weren't to know they were going to need a whole lot more less than twenty years later, were they?"

  Bill Thorpe nodded in agreement. "Indeed not. That knowledge was spared them."

  "So that," went on the man, "come 1945 they decided they would put those new names on these pillars that were there already. Quite a saving, really, though the money didn't matter, as it happened." He signed. "Funny how often it works out like that, isn't it?"

  "Very," said Bill Thorpe.

  "The same crest did, too." It was obvious that the man spent his days showing people around the Minster. His voice had a sort of hushed monotone suitable to the surroundings. "That's a nice bit of work, though they tell me it's tricky to dust. They don't think of that sort of thing when they design a monument."

  "I suppose not."


  The verger hitched his gown over his shoulders. "You two come to look somebody up?"

  "Yes," said Bill. "Yes, we have."

  "Thought so. People never ask unless they particularly want to see someone they was related to." He looked them up and down and said tersely, "First lot or second?"

  "Second."

  He sucked his breath in through gaps in his teeth. "It'll be easier to find them."

  " 'An epitaph on an army of mercenaries' " said Bill Thorpe sadly as the old man wandered off.

  Henrietta wasn't listening.

  "Bill," she tugged his sleeve urgently. "Look."

  "Where?"

  She pointed. "There…"

  "It goes," agreed Bill Thorpe slowly, "from Inkpen, T. H. to Jennings, C. R."

  "There's no one called Jenkins there at all," whispered Henrietta.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bill Thorpe shifted his weight from one foot to the other and considered the matter.

  "He should have been here, shouldn't he?"

  "He was in the East Calleshires," insisted Henrietta. "My mother always said he… I was told he was but there's the photograph too."

  "The man in the photograph was wearing their uniform."

  "Exactly," said Henrietta.

  "But that's all."

  "All?"

  "All you know for sure," said Thorpe flatly.

  Henrietta turned a bewildered face back to the memorial. "Do you mean the man in the photograph wasn't killed?"

  Bill ran his eye down the names. "He may have been killed and not called Jenkins."

  "Or," retorted Henrietta astringently, "I suppose he may have been called Jenkins and not been killed."

  "That is the most probable explanation," agreed Thorpe calmly.

  "How—how am I going to find out?"

  "Did you ever see your mother's pension book?"

  "She didn't cash her pension at the Post Office," she said quickly. "She took it to the bank. She told me that. Then she used to cash a cheque."

  "I see."

  There was a long pause and then Henrietta said, "So that, whether or not he was my father, he wasn't killed in the war, was he?"

  "Not if he was in the East Calleshires and was also called Jenkins," agreed Bill Thorpe, pointing to the memorial. "Of course there is another possibility."

  Henrietta sighed but said nothing.

  "He might not have been killed on active service," went on Thorpe.