The Hiding Places

by Katherine Webb

  Superintendent Blackman, from the Chippenham branch of the police, had his hand raised to the knocker just as Irene dragged the front door open. Tucked away in the old schoolroom, she hadn’t heard the rattle and growl of the car, pulling into the yard. Constable Dempsey from Ford, a fresh-faced young man with clear green eyes, stood at Blackman’s shoulder. Startled, caught off guard, Irene’s first instinct was to smile. Just as she had always been taught to. But the superintendent’s face was so firmly chiselled into an expression of respectful gravity that he could do nothing to alter it; Constable Dempsey smiled before he could help it, but then fell serious again. Irene blushed and took a step backwards, dropping her eyes. Her levity, her green scarf, her ridiculous smile. As Nancy had once said, she really had no idea how to behave.

  ‘Mrs Hadleigh,’ said Blackman. ‘My continued condolences at this tragic time for you, and your household.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you,’ said Irene.

  ‘Have I called at a bad time? I’ve come to keep you – and Miss Hadleigh – appraised of the progress of our investigation.’

  ‘Oh? I’d understood there wasn’t to be much of one,’ said Irene, and straight away wished she hadn’t. The two policemen stood in silence until she stepped back to admit them. ‘Won’t you please come in? I’ll ask Clara for some tea.’

  She took them into the drawing room at the far end of the house, where there was too much floral fabric – swathes of curtain and pelmet, cushions, rugs and upholstered footstools. The air smelled of dust, dog, and the rankness of the vase of flowers in the swept-out fireplace, where the water had gone murky. The two police officers looked ill at ease in their setting, clasping their hats in their hands, and Irene remembered that Nancy had taken them into the front kitchen before, and seated them at the long pine table. ‘Please do sit down, gentlemen. I’ll go and find Nancy,’ she said, awkwardly, but then heard Nancy’s smart footsteps coming along the corridor anyway.

  ‘Why on earth have you come in here?’ she said, from the doorway. ‘Hardly fitting. Shall we up sticks?’ The young constable got to his feet.

  ‘Well, since we’ve already settled, perhaps we might remain?’ said Irene, with a flutter of defiance, and the constable glanced at Nancy before sitting down again.

  ‘Hardly matters, I suppose,’ said Nancy, going to stand by the window with her back to them. Superintendent Blackman cleared his throat.

  ‘As you know, ladies, the jury at the inquest into the death of Alistair Hadleigh returned a verdict of unlawful killing, for which Donald Cartwright has now been formally charged. He will soon be moved from Chippenham to Devizes prison to await his appearance before magistrates, where he will, I have no doubt, be committed for trial at the next assizes, in six weeks’ time.’ The superintendent paused as Florence came cringing into the room with the tea tray. Irene found her hands shaking as she poured. The policeman’s words returned her to the inquest, and the horror of listening to the doctor – Dr Holbrook of Chippenham – describe the post-mortem examination he had carried out on Alistair, and the violence of his wounds: a blunt trauma wound to the back of the head, significant but not having caused the skull to fracture; five deep lacerations to the neck, severing the major blood vessels there; a further laceration to the face, most likely caused by the same instrument – consistent with the weapon being a heavy shovel, used first flat, and then with its edge to hack at the neck. The attack was hurried, passionate, and carried out by an assailant of significant physical strength. The cause of death was loss of blood. Now, as when she had heard the words spoken, Irene had to swallow down a hot rush of nausea that swept through her. The exact feel of the cold, slippery blood, sliding beneath the heel of her hand, returned with horrible clarity.

  Blackman watched her carefully, and with more sympathy now, as she handed him a rattling cup and saucer. ‘Are you well enough for me to go on, Mrs Hadleigh?’ he asked gently, at which Nancy snorted, then waved a hand for him to continue when he looked across at her. ‘Young Cartwright claims innocence, in the vaguest terms, but the evidence against him is as clear-cut as any I have encountered before. Such grievous injuries could only have been inflicted by a man of some strength, and in an outburst of rage, to which, many will testify, the young man is prone. The case is as open and shut as any I’ve known.’

  ‘He was such a gentle lad before the war damaged him,’ said Nancy, shaking her head. ‘And very bright. He’d been planning on going up to Oxford to read engineering.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Irene, thinking of Donald’s slow movements, and the faraway look in his eyes. As though the air were thicker for him, as thick as water, and he was forced to swim rather than walk.

  ‘Anyone would have told you, if you’d asked.’ Nancy shrugged. ‘He destroyed some rose bushes, recently. Hacked them to pieces with a hoe. For no reason – just one of his lapses. I don’t know if Alistair spoke to him about it, or perhaps rebuked him. Perhaps Donald felt aggrieved.’

  ‘Perhaps. It is most tragic,’ said Blackman, perfunctorily. ‘But the fact remains that the young man has now proven himself a danger to others. The judge may be lenient, given the circumstances of his … alteration, but then again – as with a mad dog – perhaps it would be wisest and kindest all around to …’ He was interrupted by a gasp from the doorway, and there was Pudding Cartwright, face stricken, mouth open in shock.

  ‘Good grief, Pudding!’ Nancy cried. ‘You can’t just come wandering in, child!’

  ‘How can you let him say such things about Donny?’ said Pudding. ‘You’re talking about hanging him, aren’t you? Aren’t you?’ she demanded of the superintendent, who had the grace to look uncomfortable.

  ‘Now, Miss Cartwright, it—’

  ‘My brother is not a mad dog! Or a murderer! Tell them, Miss H – he would never have hurt Mr Hadleigh! He just wouldn’t! There’s been a terrible mistake – this is all a terrible mistake. Donny has always been as gentle as a lamb, and—’

  ‘But that’s not entirely true, is it, Miss Cartwright?’ said Blackman. ‘Constable Dempsey here was called out to an incident only last year, in which your brother attacked another young man—’

  ‘He didn’t attack him! He just … it was just … he was provoked!’

  ‘Indeed. An altercation over a young lady, as I understand it.’

  ‘Aoife Moore. Donny was supposed to marry her, but after the war … They were goading him about it. It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘Young miss, I’m afraid that violence is always the fault of the one who perpetrates it, whatever duress they might be under.’

  ‘But what possible reason could Donny have to hurt Mr Hadleigh? I’ll tell you – none at all! He always loved Alistair! And Alistair was always so kind to him … to everyone …’ Huge tears brimmed along Pudding’s eyelashes. Constable Dempsey got to his feet, drew out his handkerchief and offered it to her clumsily.

  ‘Here you go, Pud— Miss Cartwright,’ he said, but she looked at the handkerchief as if she didn’t know what it was for.

  Horrified by the scene, Irene folded her arms tightly and perched on the edge of her chair. She was so ashamed that Pudding, the girl groom, was visibly more upset about Alistair’s death than she was herself that she could hardly stand to witness it. She stared down at the faded rug and imagined herself far away, in London, with the reassuring drone of traffic and a throng of anonymous faces in which she might hide. No longer on display, no longer watched all the time, no longer always wrong. At that exact moment she realised she hadn’t had any word from Fin, when he must by then have heard about Alistair’s death.

  ‘This is ridiculous.’ Nancy’s hard voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Pudding, do stop that din, child. I know how desperate it all is, I really do, but you must brace yourself up. Wailing won’t help.’

  ‘But, Miss Hadleigh, I can’t bear it! I can’t! Donny would never have hurt Alistair; he had no reason to. Alistair wasn’t at all cross about the roses … He’s innocent – h
e told me so himself!’ Pudding’s voice was drenched in misery. Constable Dempsey hovered near her, uneasily, and seemed uncertain whether he ought to pat her shoulder or not.

  ‘As far as anyone can tell me, Miss Cartwright, nobody had any cause to harm Mr Hadleigh. Which, I fear, only makes it all the more likely that the attack was carried out by someone beyond reason,’ said Blackman. For a moment, Pudding simply stood, panting, the breath hitching in her chest.

  ‘I saw Tanner passed out drunk at the mill! Just a couple of weeks back … I saw him. I’d gone in to fetch Donny out of the generator room. He was asleep in the coal heap with a bottle in his arms! I bet Alistair spoke to him about it. Maybe he even threatened to fire him from the mill – he’d been drunk so many times before! And everybody knows what he’s like – he’s a brute! He—’

  ‘He has an alibi, Miss Cartwright. And I have checked up on it. You aren’t the only one willing to point the finger at Mr Tanner, and—’

  ‘An alibi from some member of his own family, I bet!’

  ‘Indeed not. From Bob Walker, the landlord at the White Horse in Biddestone, who informs me that Mr Tanner was so drunk by closing time the night before the murder that Mr Walker felt obliged to carry him out to a storage shed at the rear of his premises and leave him to sleep it off, where Mr Tanner was still to be found when he was ejected at nine the following morning, by which time Mr Hadleigh had already been slain.’

  ‘But … he might have come away, and gone back again, mightn’t he?’

  ‘It’s highly unlikely, given the distance involved and the state of incapacitation he was reportedly in. And, let us not forget, there simply isn’t a single shred of physical evidence that he was involved in any way.’

  Pudding’s chin sank to her chest for a moment, and she took a deep breath. Then she looked up, and her eyes landed on Irene, and they were lit with desperation.

  ‘What about her?’ she said, wildly. There was a pause, and Pudding raised her hand to point at Irene. ‘What about Mrs Hadleigh? She didn’t love Alistair! Anyone could see that – Ma Tanner said as much, right to her face! And … and she inherits everything, doesn’t she? Manor Farm and the mill and all of it – it’s all hers now, isn’t it? And she can do as she pleases!’ The air in the drawing room seemed to curdle. Irene was stunned. A hindquarter of her brain was amazed that this matter of inheritance hadn’t occurred to her sooner, and noted that the cause of much of Nancy’s continued hostility, and her sideways remarks, were now a good deal clearer. The thought of what she had inherited settled onto her with the weight of a millstone. There could be no scot-free escape to London; she was far more tangled up in Slaughterford than she’d realised. But mills and farms could be sold, she reminded herself – or tenants found. Which left Nancy without the home she’d lived in all her life – evicted from the last place where she might surround herself with the ghosts of her family.

  ‘But … I don’t want it!’ said Irene, like a child.

  ‘See?’ said Pudding, her conviction seeming to grow. ‘See? She doesn’t even deny that she didn’t love him!’

  ‘Pudding, that’s enough. Irene was here all that morning, as the servants can testify. And she’s so thin she’s practically feeble – there’s no way she could have … hurt Alistair in that way,’ said Nancy.

  ‘She might have sneaked out! She didn’t love him, but she was stuck with him until death, otherwise, wasn’t she?’ Pudding was trembling all over, though Irene couldn’t tell which particular emotion was shaking her. Superintendent Blackman got to his feet.

  ‘Miss Cartwright, it doesn’t do to go about flinging accusations at innocent people,’ he said, severely.

  ‘But … but that’s exactly what you’re doing to Donny!’ she said.

  ‘No, indeed it is not.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t me! How could it have been? I could never do such a thing.’ Irene sprang to her feet and found her voice.

  ‘Mrs Hadleigh, nobody is accusing you of anything,’ said Blackman.

  ‘I am! I’m accusing her,’ said Pudding. ‘I knew there was something not right about her when I first met her. How could anybody not love Alistair? She probably planned this all along – she probably planned it when she married him.’ This said, Pudding dissolved into uncontrollable sobs.

  ‘Clara!’ Nancy called sharply down the corridor, and the housekeeper, who’d clearly been loitering within earshot, appeared and led Pudding away. Constable Dempsey watched her go, his expression full of concern until he noticed his superior watching him.

  Irene sat back down again, tingling, feeling naked; Nancy stood across from her with her arms folded, and the two policemen exchanged a glance.

  ‘Perhaps that’s enough for now,’ said Blackman. ‘We’ll see ourselves out, Mrs Hadleigh, Miss Hadleigh. I’m sure we will meet again before long.’ He nodded to each of them, politely enough, but Irene noticed that his eyes, as they settled on her, were different from before. A good deal of the sympathy had gone from them, and something harder had come in its place. Something questioning, and watchful, and a lot like suspicion. Irene thought of the way she’d smiled as she’d opened the door to them, and the emerald scarf around her neck, and went cold.

  6

  Allies

  The holding cell at Chippenham police station was small and sparse, with a grubby stone floor gored here and there with deep scratches, and bars on the tiny window. An officer from the front desk led Pudding and Dr Cartwright through, though every line of his face read of disapproval. The brass buttons on his uniform gleamed, he smelled of boot polish and camphor, his breath of onions, and Pudding was glad her father had come with her. It seemed unlikely that she would have been admitted on her own. The officer made a big show of checking, through the hatch, that Donny wasn’t waiting just inside the door to ambush him, before rattling his keys in the lock and steadily pulling back the bolts. Once Pudding and her father were inside, he locked the door behind them, and the sound of it gave Pudding a shudder. The foul smell of the slop bucket was strong. Donny was sitting on the edge of his narrow bed wearing the same shirt and trousers Dr Cartwright had taken him days before. They were well creased, and looked stale, and Pudding’s first thought was that when Donny got home he’d need a damn good scrub in the tub. It was still beyond her comprehension that he might never get home. She refused to think it.

  ‘Hello, Donny,’ she said. She didn’t want to sound tremulous, or grave, or too perky, so in fact she didn’t know how to try to sound. Normal was out of the question. Her brother smiled fleetingly, and got up to come closer to her. He held her arm in his right hand, squeezing it gently.

  ‘Hello, Pud, Dad,’ he said, shaking his father’s hand as he had always done. But this time Dr Cartwright pulled him into a quick, tight embrace, clapping a hand on his shoulder as he let him go. Donny didn’t like to be hugged, though he had done, before the war. This time, however, he didn’t pull away. ‘Can we go home now?’

  ‘Not yet, Donald. I’m afraid not. Soon, I hope,’ said the doctor, and Pudding heard how he hated to lie. ‘But it could be a goodly while yet. You’ve to go before a judge first.’

  ‘And the judge will say I can come home?’

  ‘We hope so, Donny. We do hope so.’ Pudding saw the way her father’s smile refused to kindle, repeatedly sparking but then dying on his lips. She saw the desperate sorrow in his eyes. Donny nodded slowly, and sat back down on the bed.

  ‘I used to like Chippenham. But I don’t like it here much,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Dr Cartwright. ‘I don’t suppose you do, son.’

  There was a long pause then, in which Donny merely sat, and Pudding and her father merely stood. Noises came from the street outside, and it seemed obscene to Pudding that life should just carry on as it always had – with farmers carting in their produce to sell, and livestock being driven to market, and travelling quacks and salesmen proclaiming their latest miracle cure or must-have gadget, and newspaper boys shouting th
e headlines, and children bickering over cigarette cards. Chippenham was carrying on as normal, as though nothing was wrong, when nothing was normal and nothing was right. With a sudden loud roar of machinery and clanging of bells, they heard the fire engine approach and fly past, on its way to some emergency, and instinctively she and Donny looked to the window. It had been one of their favourite things, before the war – seeing the big, shining pump engine go flying past, with the men and their ladders clinging to its sides, cheered on from the street, shouting at people to move out of the way. Back then it had been pulled by horses, now it was horseless, which Donny liked even better. But they couldn’t see out of the tiny, high window, and so they turned away again. Pudding refused to start crying, so she went and sat down next to her brother, and took his hand.

  ‘What’s the food like, Donny?’ she asked him. He shrugged one shoulder.

  ‘It’s not up to much, Puddy. Stew with too many carrots, most days. Not like Mum’s cooking.’

  ‘Well, we’ve brought you some bits and pieces to keep you going – a coffee cake, and some fruit.’ Donny nodded absently, and Pudding wondered how much of his situation he really understood. The hope that where there was ignorance there was bliss was tenacious, but Pudding had been caught out, time and again, assuming that just because her brother didn’t react, he didn’t realise.

  ‘I didn’t hurt Mr Hadleigh, Pudding,’ he said then.

  ‘I know you didn’t.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking and thinking, and making sure I remember it right, and I do remember. I went over to the offices because the door was open and the rain was getting in. And I found him lying there. I don’t … I don’t remember exactly what came next. For a while I … got lost. I thought about Moggy Catsford, my friend in France. And then I was in the generator house, looking at the machines, and I must have picked the shovel up, I suppose, and then.’ He stopped talking suddenly, as though he’d simply run out of words.