Henrietta Who? iscm-2

by Catherine Aird

  "Go on."

  "Holly Tree Farm," said Crosby slowly, "Rooden Parva, near Calleford."

  "The plot thickens," said Sloan rubbing his hands.

  "That's what the girl told us, wasn't it, sir? Holly Tree Farm."

  "That's right. She said she didn't know the second bit." He paused. "Get me the Calleford police…"

  Sloan spoke to someone on duty there, waited an appreciable time while the listener looked something up and finally thanked him and replaced the receiver.

  Crosby stood poised between the door and the desk. "Are we going there, sir?"

  "Not straight. We're calling somewhere on the way. They've looked up the address. There's no one called Jenkins there now. Walsh is the name of the occupier." Sloan looked at his watch. "It's nearly twelve. Do you suppose Hirst nips out for a quick one before lunch?"

  "Hirst?" said Crosby blankly.

  "The General's man. We must know what's so sinister about the magic words Hocklington-Garwell."

  Which was how Detective-Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby came to be enjoying a pint of beer at The Bull in Cullingoak shortly after half past twelve. The bar was comfortably full.

  "He usually comes in for a few minutes," agreed the land-

  lord on enquiry. "He's got the old gentleman, see. Got to give him his lunch at quarter past. Very particular about time, is the General. Same in the evening. He can't come out till he's got him settled for the night." He swept the two plainclothes-men with an appraising glance. "You friends of his?"

  "Sort of," agreed Sloan non-committally.

  The landlord leaned two massive elbows on the bar. "If it's money you're after you can collect it somewhere else. I'm not having anyone dunned in my house."

  "No," said Sloan distantly. "We're not after money."

  That's all right then," said the landlord.

  Sloan allowed a suitable pause before asking, "Horses or dogs?"

  The landlord swept up a couple of empty glasses from the bar with arms too brawny for such light work. "Horses. Nothing much—just the odd flutter—like they all do."

  "Did he come in last night?"

  "Hirst?" The landlord frowned. "Now you come to mention it, I don't think he did. Perhaps his old gentleman wanted him. He's not young, isn't the General."

  "Quite," agreed Sloan. "What'll you have?"

  It was nearly ten to one before Hirst appeared. He came in quietly, a newspaper—open at the sporting page—tucked under his arm. He looked a little younger in the pub than he had done in the General's house but not much. His shoes were polished to perfection and his hair neatly plastered down but he, like his master, was showing signs of advancing age. Sloan let him get his pint and sit down before he looked in his direction.

  "I fear, Hirst, that I upset the General last night," he said.

  Hirst looked up, recognised him and put down his glass with a hand that was not quite steady. "Yes, sir. That you did."

  "It was quite accidental…"

  "Proper upset, he was. I had quite a time with him last night after you'd gone, I can tell you."

  "You did?" enquired Sloan, even more interested.

  "Carrying on alarming he was till I got him to bed."

  "Hirst, what was it we said that did it?"

  "The General didn't say." He lifted his glass. "But he was upset all right."

  "I was asking him something about the past," said Sloan carefully, watching Hirst's face. "Something I wanted to know about a woman who—I think—was called Grace Jenkins."

  There was no reaction from Hirst.

  "Do you know the name?" persisted Sloan.

  "Can't say that I do." Reassured, he took another pull at his beer. "It's a common enough one."

  "That's part of the trouble."

  "I see."

  "Garwell's not a common name," said Sloan conversationally.

  "No," agreed Hirst. "There's not many of them about."

  "And Hocklington-Garwell isn't common at all."

  Hirst set his glass down with a clatter. "You mentioned Hocklington-Garwell to the General?"

  "I did."

  "You shouldn't have done that, sir," said Hirst reproachfully.

  "This woman Jenkins told her daughter that she used to be nursemaid to the family."

  "No wonder the General was so upset. In fact, what with her ladyship being dead, I should say it would have upset the General more than anything else would have done."

  "It did," agreed Sloan briefly, "but why?"

  Hirst sucked his teeth. "Begging your pardon, Mr. Sloan, sir, I should have said it was all over and done with long before your time."

  "What," cried Sloan in exasperation, "was all over and done with before my time?"

  "That explains why the General was so upset about your being a detective, sir, if you'll forgive my mentioning it."

  Sloan, who had been a detective for at least ten years without ever before feeling the fact to be unmentionable, looked at the faded gentleman's gentleman and said he would forgive him.

  "I kept on telling him," said Hirst, "that it was all over and done with." He took another sip of beer. "But it wasn't any good. I had to get the doctor to him this morning, you know."

  "Hirst," said Sloan dangerously, "I need to know exactly what it was that was over and done with before my time and I need to know now."

  "The Hocklington-Garwell business. Before the last war, it was. And she is dead now, God rest her soul, so why drag it up again?"

  "Who is dead?" Sloan was hanging on to his temper with an effort. A great effort.

  "Her ladyship, like I told you. And Major Hocklington, too, for all I know."

  "Hirst, I think I am beginning to see daylight. Hocklington and Garwell are two different people, aren't they?"

  "That's right, sir. Like I said. There's the General who you saw yesterday and then there was Major Hocklington—only it's all a long time ago now, sir, so can't you let the whole business alone?"

  "Not as easily as you might think, Hirst."

  "For the sake of the General, sir…"

  "Am I to understand, Hirst, that Lady Garwell and this Major Hocklington had an affair?"

  Hirst plunged his face into the pint glass as far as it would go and was understood to say that that was about the long and the short of it.

  Detective-Inspector Sloan let out a great shout of laughter.

  "Please, sir," begged Hirst. "Not here in a public bar. The General wouldn't like it."

  "No," agreed Sloan. "I can see now why he didn't like my asking him if he was called Hocklington-Garwell. In the circumstances, I'm not sure that I would have cared for it myself. Would a note of apology help?"

  "It might, sir." Hirst sounded grateful. "But why did you do it, sir? It's all such a long time ago now. We never had any children in the family, sir, so we never had any nurseat all. And there's no call for a nursemaid without babies to look after, is there?"

  "I asked him, Hirst, because a woman, who is also dead now, had a sense of humour."

  "Really, sir?" Hirst was polite but sounded unconvinced.

  "Yes, Hirst, really. I never met her but I am coming to know her quite well. She misled me at first but I think I am beginning to understand her now."

  "Indeed, sir?"

  "A very interesting woman. Give me your glass, will you?"

  "Thank you, sir. I don't mind if I do."

  The Rector of Larking and Mrs. Meyton joined Henrietta as soon as the inquest was over. She was standing talking to Bill Thorpe and Arbican.

  "There is very little more you can do at this stage, Miss Jenkins," the solicitor was saying. "You must, of course, be available for the adjourned inquest."

  "I shan't run away." Henrietta sounded as if she had had enough of life for one morning.

  "Of course not," pacifically. "And then there will be the question of intestacy."

  "What does that mean?"

  Mr. Meyton coughed. "I think that is the greatest virtue of educat
ion…"

  Arbican turned politely to the Rector, who said:

  "You learn the importance of admitting you don't know."

  "Quite so." Arbican turned back to Henrietta. "Grace Jenkins appears to have died without making a will. That is to say"—legal-fashion, he qualified the statement immediately—"we cannot find one. It hasn't been deposited with the bank, nor presumably with any Berebury solicitor…"

  "How do you know that?" asked Bill Thorpe.

  "There is a fairly full account of the accident in yesterday's local newspaper. I think any Berebury firm holding such a will would have made themselves known by now."

  "The bureau," said Henrietta heavily. "I expect it was in the bureau."

  There was a little silence. They had nearly forgotten the bureau.

  Arbican coughed. "In the meantime, I think perhaps the best course of action would be…"

  "I think," Bill Thorpe interrupted firmly, "that the best course of action would be for me to marry Henrietta as quickly as possible."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rooden Parva was really little more than a hamlet.

  It lay in the farthest corner of the county, south of Calle-ford and south of the much more substantial village of Great Rooden. Sloan and Crosby got there at about half-past two when the calm of a country Saturday afternoon had descended on a scene that could never have been exactly lively.

  "This is a dead-and-alive hole, all right," said Crosby. They had pulled up at the only garage in Rooden Parva to ask the way and he had pushed a bell marked For Service beside the solitary petrol pump.

  Nothing whatsoever happened.

  "Try the shop," suggested Sloan tetchily.

  They were luckier there. Crosby came out smelling faintly of paraffin and said Holly Tree Farm was about a mile and a half out in the country.

  "This being Piccadilly Circus, I suppose," said Sloan lookat all of twelve houses clustered together.

  "They said we can't miss it," said Crosby. "There's only one road anyway."

  Holly Tree Farm lay at the end of it. It, too, had fallen into a sort of rural torpor, though this appeared to be a permanent state and in no way connected with its being Saturday afternoon. The front door, dimly visible behind a barricade of holly trees, looked as if it hadn't been opened in years. Knocking on the back one alerted a few hens which were pecking about in the yard but nothing and nobody else. The farmhouse was old, a long low building with windows designed to keep out the light and a back door built for small men.

  They turned their attention to the yard. A long barn lay on the left, its thatched roof proving fertile ground for all manner of vegetation. Beyond was a sinister little shed about whose true function Sloan was in no doubt at all. Two elderly tractors stood in another corner beside a rusty implement whose nature was obscure to the two town bred policemen.

  "Is that a harrow?" asked Crosby uncertainly.

  "I'd put it in the Chamber of Horrors if it was mine," began Sloan when suddenly they were not alone any more.

  A woman wearing an old raincoat emerged cautiously from behind the barn.

  "Are you from the Milk Marketing Board?" she called, keeping her distance.

  Sloan said they were not.

  She advanced a little.

  "The Ministry of Agriculture?"

  Sloan shook his head and she came nearer still.

  "No," she said ambiguously, "I can see you're not from them." She had a weatherbeaten face, burnt by sun and wind and she could have been almost any age at all. Besides her old raincoat, she had on a serge skirt and black Wellington boots. "We paid the rates…"

  There were no visitors at Holly Tree Farm it seemed, save official ones. Sloan explained that he was looking for a man called Cyril Jenkins.

  "Jenkins," she repeated vaguely. "Not here. There's just me and Walsh here."

  "Now," agreed Sloan. "But once there were Jenkins's here."

  Her face cleared. "That's right. Afore us."

  "Splendid," said Sloan warmly. "Now, do you know what became of them?"

  "The old chap died," she said. "Before our time. We've been here twenty years, you know."

  Sloan didn't doubt it. It was certainly twenty years since anyone repaired the barn roof.

  "We got it off the old chap," she said. "The young 'un didn't seem to want it."

  "The young 'un?" Sloan strove to hide his interest.

  "Yes." She looked at him curiously. "He didn't want it. He'd been away, you know, in the war."

  "That's right."

  "Didn't seem as if he could settle afterwards. Not here."

  Sloan could well believe it. Aloud he said, "It isn't easy if you've been away for any time."

  "No." She stood considering the two men. "Times, it's a bit quiet at Holly Tree, you know. There's just Walsh and me. Still, we don't want for nothing and that's something."

  It wasn't strictly true. A bath wouldn't have been out of place as far as Mrs. Walsh was concerned. Say, once a month…

  "This young 'un," said Sloan. "Did he ever marry?" She nodded her head. "Yes, but I did hear tell his wife died."

  "Where did they go after you came here?" It was the question which counted and for a moment Sloan thought she was going to say she didn't know.

  Instead she frowned. "Cullingoak way, I think it was."

  "Just one more question, Mrs. Walsh…"

  She looked at him, inured to official questions.

  "This old man, Jenkins…"

  "Yes?"

  "Did he just have the one son?"

  She shook her head. "I did hear there was a daughter too but I never met her myself."

  The Rector and Mrs. Meyton had taken Henrietta out to luncheon in Berebury after the inquest. Bill Thorpe had declined the invitation on the grounds that there were cows to be milked and other work to be done. It was Saturday afternoon, he explained awkwardly, and the men would have gone home. Whether this was so, or whether it was because of the silence which had followed his mention of marriage, nobody knew. He had made his apologies and gone before they left the Town Hall.

  Arbican had arranged for Henrietta to come to see him on Tuesday afternoon following the funeral in the morning. He had also enquired tactfully about her present finances.

  There had been a lonely dignity about her reply, and Arbican had shaken hands all round and gone back to Calleford.

  The mention of money, though, had provoked a memory on the Rector's part.

  "This little matter of the medals," he began over coffee. "Yes," she said politely. It wasn't a little matter but if Mr. Meyton cared to put it like that…

  "It solves one point which often puzzled me." He took some sugar. "Your mother…"

  She wasn't her mother but Henrietta let that pass, too. She was beginning to be very tired now.

  "Your mother was a very independent woman."

  "Yes." That was absolutely true.

  "Commendable, of course. Very. But not always the easiest sort of parishioner to help."

  "She didn't like being beholden to anyone."

  "Exactly." He sipped his coffee. "I well remember on one occasion I suggested that we approach the Calleshire Regimental Welfare Association…"

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. For a grant towards what is now, I believe, called 'further education.' In my day they called it…"

  "After all," put in Mrs. Meyton kindly, "that's what their funds are for, isn't it, dear?"

  "Yes," said Henrietta.

  "But, of course," went on Mrs. Meyton, "it was before you got the scholarship, and though they always thought you would get one, you can never be sure with scholarships, can you, dear?"

  "Never," said Henrietta fervently. She had never been cerherself, however often people had reassured her.

  "Mrs. Jenkins was quite sharp with me," remembered the Rector ruefully. "Polite, of course. She was always very polite, but firm. Scholarship or no scholarship she didn't want anything to do with it."

  Mrs. Meyton said some peopl
e always did feel that way about grants.

  The Rector set his cup down. "But, of course, it all makes sense now we know that Cyril Jenkins wasn't killed in the war."

  "No, it doesn't," said Henrietta.

  "No?" The Rector looked mildly enquiring.

  "You see," said Henrietta, "she told me that the Regimental Welfare people did help."

  "How very curious."

  "I know," she said quickly, "that the scholarship is the main thing but it's not really enough to—well—do more than manage."

  The Rector nodded. "Quite so."

  "Money," concluded Henrietta bleakly, "came from somewhere for me when I got there."

  "You mean literally while you were there?"

  "Yes. The Bursar saw that I had some at the beginning of each term." She flushed. "I was told it was from the Calleshire Regiment otherwise…"

  "Otherwise," interposed Mrs. Meyton tactfully, "I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted it any more than your mother would have done."

  "No."

  The Rector coughed. "I think this may well be pertinent to Inspector Sloan's inquiry. Tell me, did the Bursar himself tell you where it came from?"

  Henrietta frowned. "Just that it was from the Regiment Welfare Association."

  "How very odd," said the Rector of Larking.

  This information was one more small piece which, when fitted exactly together with dozens of other small pieces of truth (and lies), detail, immutable fact, routine enquiry, known evidence, witnesses' stories and a detective's deductions, would, one day, produce a picture instead of a jigsaw.

  This particular segment was relayed to Inspector Sloan when he made a routine telephone call to Berebury Police Station after leaving Rooden Parva. He and Crosby had called in at the Calleshire County Constabulary Headquarters to ascertain that the Calleford search for one Cyril Jenkins, wanted by the Berebury Division, had not yet widened as far as the villages.

  "Have a heart," said Calleford's Inspector on duty. He was an old friend of Sloan's called Blake. Rejecting—very vigorously—the obvious nickname of Sexton, he was known instead throughout the county as "Digger."

  "There's dozens of small villages round here."

  Sloan nodded. "Each with its own separate small register, I suppose?"