The Hiding Places

by Katherine Webb

  Pudding gave her father a significant glance, and couldn’t understand the doubt in his eyes. It made her feel she needed to try harder, go faster, push further.

  ‘Did you see anybody else in the offices, Donny? Did you see anybody … perhaps running away?’ she said. Donny stayed quite still for a long moment, and then shook his head. ‘Did you see Mrs Hadleigh?’

  ‘Pudding, that’s quite enough.’

  ‘Mrs Hadleigh?’ Donny’s brow furrowed in confusion. ‘No. Or if I did, I don’t remember. They think I did it, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh, Donny. They do, at the moment – but I am going to change that.’

  ‘Pudding—’ Dr Cartwright shook his head, but added nothing else.

  ‘Mr Hadleigh is always kind to us. He’s kind to everybody. I should never want to harm him.’

  ‘I know, Donny. And I am going to make sure they realise that. I am going to prove who it was that did hurt him, and then they’ll let you come home. All right?’ She squeezed his hand hard, until he looked at her, from that far-off place, and nodded.

  ‘Right you are, Pud,’ he said, and her heart swelled up to bursting.

  ‘Now, son, they’ll be taking you to Devizes jail soon, so you can see the magistrate there. I don’t want you to worry about that. You just do as they ask you, and always tell the truth, and we’ll come and see you there very soon, all right?’

  ‘All right, Dad. Will Mum come next time?’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to see about that. It might upset her, you see, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?’ Donny shook his head, and Pudding smiled at him as best she could. She stared into his eyes, searching, and recoiled when she saw, deep in the depths of them, a flicker of fear. She stood up quickly, because she couldn’t bear it and didn’t know what else to do.

  ‘I shall find out the truth of it, Donny, and you’ll be home with us soon. I promise,’ she said, with her heart hammering and a feeling like she might overflow. The camphor and onions man came back then, rattling his keys again.

  ‘Time’s up, I’m afraid,’ he said curtly. So they left Donny perched on the edge of the bed as he had been upon their arrival, and went back out into the heedless, sunny day.

  ‘You must be very careful, Pudding, who you go about accusing. You will lose your job at the farm,’ said Dr Cartwright. Pudding hadn’t told him that she’d already named Mrs Hadleigh to the police. And right in front of Nancy. Her gut gave a spasm when she thought about it. ‘But then,’ her father went on, ‘perhaps that wouldn’t be such a terrible thing. Perhaps we ought to think about you continuing on in college somewhere. Somewhere away from all this.’

  Pudding kept her silence as they walked back to the bus station, not stopping to eat or go shopping or to watch the busy street life – it had not been that kind of outing. She could feel her father’s reprimand, his fear for her and for her brother, and part of her did indeed struggle to picture Irene Hadleigh – frail, tired, immovable Irene Hadleigh – picking up a shovel and attacking Alistair with it. It was hard enough to imagine her leaving the house to go down to the mill in the first place. But she had all but confessed to not loving her late husband, Pudding reassured herself, so she was clearly flawed in some significant way, and she was the only person with any kind of motive. Pudding took a deep breath, trying to marshal her thoughts when they threatened to scatter out of control. She would make it all come right, she swore to herself. She felt again the shudder as the cell door had locked behind them, and the terrible, unimaginable horror of Donny never coming out of there again. She would not allow herself to fail.

  She didn’t like to think about the immediate consequences of her accusation. With Hilarius’s wisdom still fresh in her mind, she went to fetch in the Hadleigh horses in the afternoon, just as she normally would, and rode Baron, Robin and Bally Girl in succession, by the end of which her legs were tired and she was as grimed with sweat as the animals. She rubbed them down and mixed their feed, then stood in the blessed shade of the tack room, cleaning all the bridles, and all the while she cast furtive glances at the house, expecting to see Nancy or Irene Hadleigh coming across to tell her to leave, permanently. Each time a door opened or closed, her heart jerked. But neither woman appeared, and she was left to wonder whether they even knew she was there, still at work. Whether they assumed she had resigned, after her sensational performance. She sat a while to think whether or not she should announce her continued presence in some way, until she realised that they must know, since, clearly, no other provision had been made for the care of the horses. Then she was left with the simple realisation that they’d disregarded her words, her outburst. That nobody had taken it seriously. That nobody took her seriously. She went to muck out the cob house and found a swallow’s nest that had dropped from the rafters and smashed against the cobbles. Three naked baby birds were dead amidst the wreckage, and their oversized yellow beaks were so tragically clownish, and Pudding felt so powerless, that she surrendered to tears for a short while.

  At the end of the day she trudged up the hill towards home, watching the daisies disappear beneath her big, booted feet and not knowing whether to be happy or angry that they merely sprang back upright once she’d passed. She stopped, realising that she was angry, and was deliberately grinding one into the sod when movement in the woods to her left caught her eye. Startled, she looked hard into the dappled shadows and tangled undergrowth beneath the trees, and then relaxed when she saw a woman in rough, peasant clothes – a long skirt snagging on the brambles, a collarless blouse with the sleeves rolled up – with a familiar thatch of thistledown hair obscuring her face. Pudding didn’t bother to call out to her – she knew from experience that she’d get no reply. But there was movement and the sound of a twig snapping underfoot from further down the hill as well, and when Pudding refocused her eyes she saw a man moving away in the opposite direction. She couldn’t make him out clearly, but he was tall and angular, and moved with a kind of steady, resigned tread that spoke of hardship. A Tanner, perhaps. Pudding waited until they were both out of sight and earshot, and wondered about the secret, other world they lived in, so different to her own. A world of clandestine meetings in summery woods; a world where you were wanted, and your brother was not in jail, wrongly accused of the murder of one of your favourite people in the whole world. Her envy of them was like a sudden, sharp pang of hunger.

  She was so surprised to see the police superintendent’s car parked outside Spring Cottage – spoked wheels dusty, headlamps like wide, alarmed eyes – that she stopped and stared at it for a moment, trying to imagine what it meant. They were all at the kitchen table, stifled by an uncomfortable atmosphere, with cups of tea in front of them. Superintendent Blackman and Constable Dempsey, and her parents. Ruth, their daily, was at the stove with a pan full of acrid piccalilli, her ears and eyes practically on stalks. Louise Cartwright looked clear-eyed and harried – like a mother missing a son ought to look, though Pudding couldn’t be pleased about that just then. The silence as she came into the room rang, and she blushed crimson at once, feeling as though she must have transgressed in some hideous way and not even been aware of it.

  ‘Hello, Pudding,’ said Constable Dempsey, and was silenced by a glance from his superior. Just then Pudding remembered a game of Assassin, played one Sunday afternoon when she was about eleven: a group of Ford and Slaughterford’s youngsters, standing in a circle in silence, the assassin winking at people to ‘kill’ them, and everyone else trying to see them do it and denounce them before they themselves got killed. She’d looked across at Pete Dempsey and found him staring at her, and she’d stared right back, and they’d kept it up for a long time, each one waiting for the other to wink, until the look of constipated intensity on Pete’s face had given her a fit of the giggles.

  ‘Miss Cartwright, I wonder if you and I might have a further conversation about recent events,’ said Blackman, without preamble, and it wasn’t a question.

  ‘Well. Yes,’ said Puddi
ng, dry-mouthed, wondering if it was in fact a crime to accuse somebody of another crime; wondering if the Hadleighs were going to prosecute her for it, and how on earth she would save Donny if she herself were in jail.

  ‘Good,’ said Blackman, getting to his feet. ‘Is there some other room we might use?’ He addressed the question to Pudding’s father, who also got to his feet.

  ‘Yes, of course. We’ll go into the sitting room,’ said the doctor, but the superintendent held up one hand.

  ‘That’s quite all right, Dr Cartwright. I am sure your daughter can guide me there. Perhaps you might remain with your wife for the time being.’ He nodded to Pudding to lead on, and with an anxious glance at her father, and at Ruth behind him, she did just that.

  Blackman closed the sitting room door behind them, and Pudding waited to be told to sit down, even though they were in her home. The policeman had such an impenetrable watchfulness about him that Pudding could hardly bear to be alone with him; though she had nothing to hide, he made her feel as though she most decidedly did. The reflection of light on his round spectacles made it hard to see his eyes clearly. His hair was darkly oiled, and his skin was smooth – in spite of his air of authority, Pudding wondered if he wasn’t much older than Alistair had been.

  ‘Now, Miss Cartwright—’ he began.

  ‘Oh, everyone calls me Pudding,’ she said, trying to smile, trying to relax. He gave her a steady look, and she decided not to interrupt again. He spoke with the deliberate elocution of a man trying to lose a regional accent.

  ‘Miss Cartwright, I understand that this whole business has been very upsetting to you. That it continues to be so. For a child such as yourself to have witnessed the terrible scene at the mill of last week is to be most deeply regretted. I understand that you were fond of Mr Hadleigh, and are very fond of your brother as well. I can imagine that to lose both of them in such a way is distressing.’

  ‘I’m not a child, I’m almost sixteen, and I haven’t lost Donny,’ said Pudding, resolutely. ‘Donny didn’t kill Mr Hadleigh.’

  ‘So you keep saying. Now, Miss Cartwright, I need you to listen very carefully to the questions I am about to ask you, and I need one other thing to be wholly clear: it is imperative that you answer them as truthfully as you possibly may. That means with facts that you are certain of, not with ideas that you wish to be true. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Blackman.’

  ‘It’s Superintendent Blackman. Now, Miss Cartwright. What can you tell me about the relationship between Mrs Hadleigh and your brother, Donald?’

  ‘Their relationship? What do you mean?’

  ‘Were they close? Were they perhaps … on friendly terms?’

  ‘Well … no. I don’t think so. I don’t think Irene Hadleigh is on friendly terms with anybody here.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been told that she hasn’t cared to involve herself with the village since her arrival. That she doesn’t seem to care overly much for … making Slaughterford her home.’

  ‘Well, that’s certainly true.’

  ‘So you never saw Irene Hadleigh and your brother together?’

  ‘What do you mean, together?’

  ‘Talking together, for example. Or perhaps was Donald invited into the house? For tea?’

  Pudding stared at the policeman in bewilderment. He stared right back, and didn’t blink.

  ‘No, of course he wasn’t,’ she said.

  ‘You’re quite sure of that?’

  ‘She wouldn’t invite anybody in, least of all Donny. I saw her talking to him once and she looked horrified – she looked like she was afraid of him. Which is stupid, just because he has a scar on his head, and—’ Pudding cut herself off, beginning to see what Blackman was driving at.

  ‘So you did see them talking together?’

  ‘Just that one time, but it was out in the garden, and I think she was asking about some flowers for the house.’

  ‘You overheard the conversation?’

  ‘No, I just—’

  ‘Stick to facts, please, Miss Cartwright.’ Superintendent Blackman made a note of something in a small black jotter. ‘Mr Hadleigh spent much of each day at the mill, or in town. Nancy Hadleigh is also out a good deal of the time, on farm business or on social calls. Which means that Irene Hadleigh has often been left alone in the house. Would your brother have told you if he’d had any other kind of contact with her? She’s a very attractive woman, after all. And very fashionable. Did Donald ever tell you that he found her so? Did you ever see him, perhaps, watching Mrs Hadleigh? Do you think he would still notice … such a thing, since his injury?’

  ‘No. I don’t know,’ said Pudding, dumbly. ‘How could he watch her? She almost never comes out. He never said any such thing to me, and the only thing he likes to watch is the machines in the mill. He was going to be an engineer, before it happened – did you know that? He was so clever.’

  ‘Yes, your mother told me as much. Now, are you quite sure you can tell me nothing whatsoever about a friendship between your brother and Mrs Irene Hadleigh?’

  ‘Donny doesn’t have any friends,’ said Pudding, quietly. ‘None but old Jem Welch. And Alistair Hadleigh. All the other people he used to know find it too hard now.’

  ‘And you, of course,’ said Blackman, staring at her again. ‘A most loving and loyal sister.’ He made it sound like a bad thing to be.

  ‘A loving and loyal sister is not the same as a friend.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Blackman snapped his jotter shut and stood up.

  ‘Wait – do you think Irene Hadleigh is involved, then? Please tell me – have you realised it wasn’t Donny? Because I know it wasn’t him!’

  ‘However hard it may be, Miss Cartwright, I fear you’ve little choice but to begin to accept that your brother, though he may have been out of his mind at the time, did kill Alistair Hadleigh. All the evidence points to it. What is puzzling to me is the reason why. As you say, nobody has a bad word to say about Mr Hadleigh, and every man in the mill tells me that your brother only ever went into the machine rooms at the mill, never the offices.’

  ‘Yes! You see? It can’t have been—’

  ‘I’m also told by those who have worked with Donald since his return from the war that he rarely takes anything upon himself. That he has little initiative, though he works hard and steadily at a job when somebody sets him to it.’

  ‘That’s right, yes. So you see—’ But Pudding cut herself off again, as she began to see. ‘You think Irene Hadleigh put him up to it?’ Disbelief made her voice rise.

  ‘She has inherited the estate in full, and she does seem curiously unmoved by her husband’s untimely death. And she is a beauty … I wonder if she might not have found out a way to persuade your brother to act on her behalf.’ The policeman clamped his mouth shut and blinked rapidly three times, as though realising he’d said too much. ‘But this is merely a theory voiced aloud, Miss Cartwright, as yet entirely un-corroborated and certainly not to be bandied about.’

  ‘If … if it’s true, would they let Donny go?’ Pudding asked, her mind racing ahead.

  ‘No, indeed. I fear not, Miss Cartwright. Whatever the reason he did it, the fact remains that he has murdered a man. There can be no doubt about that – Mrs Hadleigh’s servants confirm she did not leave the house that morning, and in any case it is inconceivable that she would have the strength to inflict such wounds.’

  ‘But … if it was all her idea? If she coerced him somehow … or tricked him?’

  ‘I presume she would need to have his trust, or his … admiration, in order to achieve such an aim. And you have just finished telling me, Miss Cartwright, that there was no such close relationship between the two of them. I suspect this theory of mine will prove to hold no water whatsoever. I merely wanted to see if you could give it any credence, and you have answered me well enough.’

  He opened the door and held out his arm to usher her back through it, and Pudding rose reluctantly. She didn’t want to ret
urn to the kitchen, and let the moment pass. She felt that, somewhere in the conversation they had just had, there was a glimmer of hope for Donny, though she couldn’t quite catch it. She was loath to leave in case she missed it altogether.

  ‘My brother did not kill Alistair Hadleigh, Superintendent Blackman,’ she said, weighting the words with every ounce of her conviction. ‘And the worst part of it is that the person who did kill him is out there somewhere, right now, knowing that they are getting away with it. Knowing that you are letting them get away with it.’ Blackman paused, letting his arm drop back to his side. Behind his glasses, his eyes were entirely impenetrable; his breathing was so soft and slow it was imperceptible, and beside him Pudding felt like a gasping, wobbling, helpless thing. But he was considering her words, she could tell. Eventually, he gave a minute shake of his head.

  ‘One must always try to find the why in these things, Miss Cartwright,’ he said. ‘Who else has a reason to kill Mr Hadleigh? The answer is nobody. But your Donald, since his injury, does not seem to need much of a why at all.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that. And somebody did have a reason,’ said Pudding, and saw interest light Blackman’s steady eyes. ‘The real killer had a reason,’ she said, and the interest vanished. Blackman turned away from her, and she knew she had failed.

  * * *

  Clemmie’s sisters were so desperate to know the identity of her lover that when they saw the alphabet Rose had written down, they made Clemmie sit at the table and tried again to teach her to write. Clemmie had been apathetic towards the letters at school, but the fact that she now had cause to learn made no difference. The letters fought her, just like spoken words did, and she certainly wasn’t going to let them coax a secret from her that she was more determined than ever to keep.