Henrietta Who? iscm-2

by Catherine Aird

  "That's right." Blake pushed some tea in Sloan's direction. "Your Superintendent as horrible as ever?"

  "He doesn't change," said Sloan.

  "What with him and Happy Harry,"condoled Blake, "I don't know how you manage, I really don't."

  For better or worse, Superintendent Leeyes was on duty for this weekend.

  "Well, Sloan," he barked down the telephone, "how are you getting on?"

  "Not too badly, sir. I've got a couple of promising lines of enquiry at the moment."

  "Hrrmph." The Superintendent didn't like optimism in anyone, least of all in his subordinates. "How promising?"

  "Once upon a time, sir…"

  "Is this a fairy story, Sloan?"

  "A romance," said Sloan shortly.

  Leeyes grunted. "Go on."

  "Once upon a time a certain Lady Garwell seems to have had an affair with a Major Hocklington."

  "Did she, by Jove?" mockingly.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Got her name mentioned-fn the Mess?"

  "I fear so, sir."

  "Things aren't what they were in my day, Sloan."

  "No, sir, except that this was all a long time ago."

  "That makes it worse," retorted Leeyes promptly. "Much worse. Morals were morals then. I don't know what they are now, I'm sure."

  "No, sir." The Superintendent's views on vice were a byword in the Division.

  "This Lady Garwell…"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Are you trying to tell me that this girl who's the cause of all the trouble…"

  That was a bit unfair. "Henrietta, sir?" he said, putting as much injury into his tone as he dared.

  "Henrietta." He paused. "Damn silly name for a girl, isnt it?"

  "Old fashioned," said Sloan. "Almost historical, you might say."

  Leeyes grunted. "You think she's the—er—natural outcome of this affair?"

  "I shouldn't like to say, sir. Not without further investigation. The General's practically gaga."

  "Doesn't mean a thing," replied Leeyes swiftly. "Or rather, it helps the case."

  "In what way, sir?"

  Leeyes gave a chuckle that could only be described as salacious. "Suppose he's married to some young thing…"

  "Well?"

  "Then she's much more likely to dilly-dally with this young Major Somebody or Other."

  "Hocklington, sir."

  "Much more likely," repeated the Superintendent, who was by now getting to like the theory.

  "Yes, sir. I see what you're driving at." That was an understatement. "But we don't know for certain that she was young."

  "Then find out."

  "Yes, sir." He swallowed. "Any more than we know that Major Hocklington was young…"

  "It stands to reason, Sloan, that they weren't old. Not if they had an affair."

  "No, sir." Sloan didn't know Mrs. Leeyes. Only that she was a little woman who bred cats. He wondered what it was like, being married to the Superintendent. He said inconse"She's dead. Lady Garwell, I mean."

  "That doesn't stop her being Henrietta's mother," snapped Leeyes.

  "No, sir."

  "What about Major Hocklington?"

  "Hirst—that's the General's man—didn't know."

  "Then find that out, Sloan, while you're about it."

  "Yes, sir."

  "After all, she could have been in early middle age twenty-two years ago." The Superintendent himself had been in early middle age for as long as Sloan could remember. "And then died herself comparatively early."

  "Dead and never called her mother, in fact," misquoted Sloan, who had once seen the Berebury Amateur Dramatic Society play East Lynne—and never forgotten the searing experience.

  Literary allusions were lost upon the Superintendent who only said, "And get Somerset House to turn up Hocklington-Garwell in the Births for twenty-one years ago. Or just plain Hocklington, if it comes to that."

  "Or Garwell," pointed out Sloan. "An illegitimate child takes the mother's surname, doesn't it?"

  Leeyes grunted. "At least it's not Smith. That's something to be thankful for."

  "You don't suppose," asked Sloan hopefully, "that her ladyship—if she was, in fact, Henrietta's mother—would have taken out an affiliation order against the father?"

  "I do not," said Leeyes.

  "Pity."

  "Those sort of people don't." An eager note crept into the Superintendent's voice. "What they do, Sloan, is to dig up a faithful nanny who knows them well and they park the nanny and the infant in a cottage in the depths of the country."

  Sloan had been afraid of that.

  "And"—Leeyes was warming to his theme—"they support the child and the nanny from a distance."

  In Lady Garwell's case the distance—either way—so to speak—would be considerable, she being dead. Sloan presumed he meant Major Hocklington and said, "Yes, sir, though I still can't see why Grace Jenkins should have to die just before the girl is twenty-one."

  "Ask Major Hocklington," suggested Leeyes sepulchrally.

  "Or, come to that, sir, why Grace Jenkins went to such enormous lengths to conceal the girl's true name and then talked quite happily about the Hocklington-Garwell's. If Lady Garwell were the mother, it doesn't make sense."

  "Someone has been sending the girl money at college," said Leeyes. "She and the clergyman have just been in to say so."

  "Maintenance," said Sloan.

  "Via the Bursar."

  Sloan scribbled a note, his Sunday rest day vanishing into thin air. "We could leave as soon as we've seen Cyril Jenkins…"

  "And," said Superintendent Leeyes nastily, "you could see Cyril Jenkins as soon as you've had your tea and sympathy from Inspector Blake."

  Cullingoak was more certainly a village than Rooden Parva. It had all the customary prerequisites thereof—a church standing foursquare in the middle, an old Manor House not very far away, shops, a Post Office, a row of almshouses down by the river, even a cricket ground.

  "All we want," observed Crosby, "is a character called Jenkins."

  "No," said Sloan, "if the civil register is correct, is called Cyril Edgar and should live at number twelve High Street."

  "Dead easy," Crosby swung the car round by the church. "That'll be the road the Post Office is in, for sure."

  "Stop short," Sloan told him. "Just in case."

  "Sir, do you reckon he's her father?"

  "I'll tell you that, Crosby, when I've seen him."

  "Likeness?"

  "No." Sloan remembered Mrs. Walsh with a shudder. "Something called eugenics."

  They found number twelve easily enough. Most of the High Street houses were old. They were small, too, but well cared for. Neither developers nor preservationists seemed to have got their hands on Cullingoak High Street. None of the houses were once 'wrong" ones now "done up" for "right" people. There was, too, a refreshing variety of coloured paint The door of number twelve was a deep green. Sloan knocked on it.

  There was no immediate reply.

  "Just our luck," said Crosby morosely, "if he's gone to a football match."

  It was implied—but not stated—that had Detective Constable Crosby not had the misfortune to be a member of Her Majesty's Constabulary, that that was where he would have been this Saturday afternoon in early March.

  "Berebury's playing Luston."

  "Really?"

  "At home."

  That was the crowning injustice.

  Next Saturday Crosby would have to spend good money travelling to Luston or Calleford or Kinnisport to see some play.

  Sloan knocked again.

  There was no reply.

  He looked up and down the street. There would be a back way in somewhere. The two policemen set off and walked until they found it—a narrow uneven way, leading to back gates. Some as neatly painted as the front doors. Some not. None numbered.

  Crosby counted the houses back from the beginning of the row. "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve." He stopped at a gate that was still han
ging properly on both hinges. "I reckon this is the one, sir."

  "Well done," said Sloan, who had already noticed that that back door was painted the same deep green as they had seen in the front. "Perhaps he's one of those who'll answer the back door but not the front."

  They never discovered if this was so.

  When they got to the back door it was ever so slightly ajar.

  It opened a little further at Sloan's knock, and when there was no reply to this, Sloan opened it a bit more still and put his head round.

  "Anyone at home?" he called out.

  Cyril Jenkins was at home all right.

  There was just one snag. He was dead.

  Very.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Superintendent Leeyes was inclined to take the whole thing as a personal insult.

  "Dead?" he shouted in affronted tones.

  "Dead, sir."

  "He can't be…"

  "He is."

  "Not our Jenkins," he howled. "Not the one we wanted…"

  "Cyril Edgar," said Sloan tersely. That much, at least, he had established before leaving number twelve and a pale but resolute Crosby standing guard. "As for him being ours…"

  "Yes?"

  "I should think the fact that he's had his brains blown out rather clinches it."

  Sarcasm was a waste of time with the Superintendent. "Self-inflicted?" he inquired eagerly.

  "Impossible to say, sir, at this stage."

  "Was there a note?"

  "No." Sloan paused. "Just a revolver."

  He wasn't sitting in the comfort of Inspector Blake's office now. He was in the cramped public telephone kiosk in Cul-lingoak High Street hoping that the young woman with a pram who was waiting to use it after him, couldn't lip-read. At least she couldn't hear the Superintendent.

  Sloan could.

  "What sort of revolver?" he was asking.

  "Service." Sloan sighed. "Old Army issue."

  "Officers, for the use of, I suppose," heavily.

  "Yes, sir."

  Leeyes grunted. "So it's still there?"

  "Yes, sir. Silencer and all."

  "Not out of reach, I suppose?"

  "No, sir."

  "I didn't think it would be."

  "By his right hand."

  "That's what I thought you were going to say. No hope of him being left handed?"

  "None. I checked." Sloan had searched high and low himself for signs which would reveal whether Cyril Edgar Jenkins had taken his own life or if someone had taken it for him.

  "I don't like it, Sloan."

  "No, sir." Sloan didn't either. There was nothing to like in what he had just seen. The recently shot are seldom an atsight and Cyril Edgar Jenkins was no exception. He had been sitting down when it had happened and the result was indescribably messy. Experienced—and hardened—as he was, Sloan hadn't relished his quick examination. At least there hadn't been the additional burden of breaking the news to anyone. "He lived alone," he told Leeyes. "Mrs. Walsh out at Holly Tree Farm was quite right about his wife. She did die about eight years ago."

  "Who says so?"

  "The woman next door. Remembers her well."

  "Which wife?" demanded Leeyes contentiously.

  Sloan paused. "The one he had been living with ever since he came to Cullingoak."

  "Ah… that's different." Sloan could almost hear the Superintendent fumbling for the word he wanted. "She might have just been his concubine."

  "Yes, sir, except that we couldn't find any record of a marriage between Cyril Edgar Jenkins and Grace Edith Wright in the first place…"

  "I hadn't forgotten," said Leeyes coldly. "Now I suppose you're going to set about finding out if he was really married to this second woman…"

  What Sloan wanted to do—and that very badly—was to set about finding out who had killed Cyril Jenkins.

  "Yes, sir. In the meantime, do you think Dr. Dabbe would come over?"

  "I don't see why not," said Leeyes largely. When he himself was working through a weekend he was usually in favour of as many people doing so as possible. "What do you want him for?"

  "Inspector Blake is handling the routine side of this, seeing as it's in his Division," said Sloan, "but I want to talk to Dr. Dabbe about blood."

  There was no shortage of this vital commodity in the living room of number twelve Cullingoak High Street.

  Sloan had vacated the telephone kiosk with a polite apolto the girl with the pram. In the manner of a generation brought up without courtesy, she had favoured him with a blank stare in return. Oddly disconcerted, but without time to wonder what things were coming to, he had hurried back to the house.

  His friend, Inspector Blake, had just arrived from Calle-ford and was standing surveying the scene.

  "Nasty."

  Sloan could only agree. Crosby, who had been surveying the same scene for rather longer and more consistently than either Blake or Sloan, was looking rather green at the gills.

  "He got wind that you wanted a little chat, did he then?" asked Digger Blake. He had brought his own photographer and fingerprint man with him and he motioned them now to go ahead with their gruesome work.

  "Perhaps," said Sloan slowly. "Perhaps not."

  "Not a coincidence anyway," said Blake.

  "No. Someone knew."

  "Many people realise you wanted this word or two with him?" Digger's questions were usually obliquely phrased.

  "Enough." Sloan took a deep breath. "A girl who said she saw him in Calleford yesterday afternoon." Henrietta had probably been right about that, now he came to think of it, but how significant it was he couldn't sort out. Not for the moment. "Her solicitor. He knew, of course. He's called Ar-bican."

  "That'll be Waind, Arbican & Waind, in Ox Lane," said Blake. "There's only him left in the firm now."

  "And a young man called Bill Thorpe…" He hesitated. "I can't make up my mind about him."

  "What's the trouble?"

  "Too ardent for my liking."

  "It's not whether you like it, old chap," grinned Blake. "It's if the lady likes it."

  "She's got quite enough on her plate as it is," said Sloan primly.

  And he told Digger the whole story.

  "A proper mix-up, isn't it?" Blake said appreciatively. "Rather you than me."

  "Thank you. Crosby, if you want to be sick go outside."

  "Who else knew you wanted Jenkins?" asked Blake, who was nowhere near as casual as he sounded.

  Sloan frowned. "The Rector of Larking and his wife. Meyton's their name."

  "Lesson One," quoted Blake. "The cloth isn't always what it…"

  "It is this time."

  "Oh, really? And who else is in the know?"

  "No one that I know of. There's a James Heber Hibbs, Esquire…"

  "Gent?"

  "Landed Gent," said Sloan firmly, "of The Hall, Larking, but he doesn't know about Jenkins. Not unless the girl's told him and I don't quite see when she would have done. Owns about half the village if you ask me."

  "For Hibbs read Nibs," said Digger frivolously. "Has he got a missus?"

  "Yes, but you call her madam, my lad."

  "And their connection with this case?"

  "Obscure," said Sloan bitterly.

  "Anyone else?"

  Sloan hesitated. "There's a certain Major Hocklington but…"

  "But what?"

  "He might be dead."

  "I see. Well, when you've made your mind up…"

  "He might have had the M.C. and the D.S.O., too."

  "That'll be a great help in finding him," murmured Digger affably, "but I'd rather he had a scar on his left cheek, if it's all the same to you."

  "There's always the possibility," said Sloan, "that he had an agent."

  "If he's dead, for instance?" Blake moved out of the photographer's line of vision.

  "That's right."

  Blake pointed the same way as the photographer's camera. "He's not going to tell you. Not now."

 
"No," said Sloan morbidly, "though, oddly enough, I'm after his blood too."

  It was something after eight o'clock that evening when Inspector Sloan, supported by a still rather wan-looking Constable Crosby, reported back to Superintendent Leeyes in person at the Berebury Police Station.

  "As pretty a kettle of fish, sir," Sloan said, "as you'll find anywhere."

  "Suicide or murder?" demanded Leeyes.

  But it wasn't as simple as that.

  Dr. Dabbe had got to Cullingoak at a speed which, as far as Sloan was concerned, didn't bear thinking about. He was well known as the fastest driver in Calleshire and nothing that his arch enemy, Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division, could do seemed to slow him down at all.

  At the house Dr. Dabbe had met his opposite number, the Consultant Pathologist for East Calleshire, Dr. Soriey McPherson. The two doctors had treated each other with an elaborate and ritual courtesy which reminded Sloan of nothing so much as the courtship display of a pair of ducks at mating time.

  With professional punctiliousness each had invited the other's opinion on every possible point.

  The upshot—after, in Sloan's private opinion, a great deal of unnecessary billing and cooing—was that Cyril Edgar Jenkins had probably been shot in the head by someone sitting opposite him across the table, who had pulled out a revolver and leaned forward.

  "We can't be certain, of courrrse"—Dr. Soriey McPherson had rolled his "r's" in an intimidating way—"but it looks as if the rrevolver was placed in deceased's rright hand after death."

  "I see, Doctor."

  "Suicide," he went on, "was doubtless meant to be in-ferrrred."

  Sloan thought the "r's" were never going to stop.

  "We'll be needing a wee look at the poor chap's fingerprints on the revolver handle. D'you not agree, Dabbe?"

  Dr. Dabbe had agreed. The powder burns, the position of the shot, the body, the revolver, all indicated murder made to look like suicide.

  Sloan said all this to the Superintendent "But only inferred, sir. Not proved yet."

  Leeyes snorted in a dissatisfied way. "Except, then, that he's dead, we're no further forward…"

  Sloan said nothing. If Leeyes cared to regard that as progress there was nothing he could say.

  "What about the blood?" said the Superintendent.

  "Dr. Dabbe's grouping it now. He's going to ring."