He parked his car in a park near the seafront, and shuddered as he stepped out of it to walk along the promenade. A cold North wind was whipping in off the sea. Far out, across the grey and choppy waves, he could see a ship – a tanker, probably – making its way stolidly along the coastline. A couple of teenagers were playing on the beach with a dog, which was making wet sand spray in their faces, and two or three solitary figures walking ahead of Tim were bending their heads into the wind. Otherwise, everywhere was deserted. All the vendors’ stands were boarded up for the winter and the Ferris wheel stood still, its cars rocking crazily with each gust of wind. Even the cafés that Tim passed were closed.
Newton Court consisted of a row of long, low buildings that took up almost the entire length of Newton Road, which was a shortish street leading directly off the promenade. The buildings were made of red brick faced with pebbledash, and dated, Tim guessed, from the middle of the nineteenth century. Each was a separate small house, two storeys high, with two windows on either side of a door that was reached via a short path, and two above them. The houses were joined to each other by a series of archways, but they did not form a terrace as such. The roofs were apparently flat, since they could not be seen, but were obscured from view by fake battlements. The windows had shutters, which were painted a dull green and appeared to be permanently fastened back against the pebbledash. An alcove had been built into the wall between the two upper windows of the middle house. It contained a wooden sculpture of a sailor leaning against an anchor, holding some rope and netting in one hand and a fish in the other. It was brightly painted in primary colours. The whole enterprise had probably been the whimsical architectural brainchild of some wealthy Victorian philanthropist.
Since the residents each seemed to occupy a separate dwelling, Tim reasoned that it was probable that they were relatively self-sufficient. Therefore Newton Court might not be a ‘home’ in the Elmete Grange sense, but was more likely to consist of what local councils were pleased to call ‘sheltered accommodation’. That this might be the case cheered him up a little, though he was puzzled as to how it might square with Marjorie Needham’s description of her brother’s blindness and mental confusion.
Tim had not contacted anyone to tell them of his visit, and supposed that first he had better try to find the matron of the place, or whatever was the title that the person who ran it went by. He climbed the steep steps that led up through the central archway – Mr. Philanthropist had had little thought for elderly legs and a sailor’s imperfect sense of balance on land when he had designed these – and found himself standing in an enclosed grassy rectangle. There were seven of the almshouses on each side of it, making the whole complex much larger than he had at first thought.
Tim took his bearings. The place was not just quiet: it seemed to be deserted. Yet there were curtains at all the windows, and everywhere was neat and tidy. The windows looked polished, the doors were freshly painted, the gardens well-tended. He was walking along the gravel path which divided the lawn into two, uncertain whether to try knocking on one of the doors, when he saw an arrow painted in black paint on the wall next to the central archway of the far block of buildings, with a small wooden plaque above it. The word ‘Warden’ was inscribed on the plaque in capital letters.
He walked towards the archway, and saw a door set into the wall beneath it, with an illuminated bell to one side of it. He was about to ring the bell when the door opened, and two women dressed in nurses’ uniforms came out. They were both young, and chattering noisily. The taller of the two saw him first, and stopped talking to her companion in mid-sentence. They viewed him warily.
“Can I help you?” the taller one asked, after a short silence. “If you’ve come to see one of the residents, visiting hours are from two ‘til four in the afternoon.”
Tim showed her his ID card.
“Detective Inspector Yates, South Lincolnshire Police. I’ve come to talk to the warden. Is she in?”
The women relaxed a little. The taller one laughed.
“The warden’s name is Jack Denning. Captain Jack Denning. He’s always here, except when he’s on leave. If you’d like to wait in here, I’ll ask him if he’ll come out to see you. I think he’s still in his office at the moment. He won’t have started his rounds yet.”
She held open the door for him, while her shorter colleague stepped to one side to allow him to pass. Tim discovered that he had been ushered in to a small anteroom, or waiting room. It was painted a dull cream. Two rows of three chairs faced each other across a small table and there was an electric fire mounted high on the wall. The walls were decorated with posters about hygiene and emergency first aid procedures. There was a green baize board bearing notices of visits from the mobile library and the occupational therapist and a calendar listing social events such as a concert and ‘film night’.
The taller nurse disappeared through the other door in the room, which obviously led deeper into the house. The shorter nurse hovered, apparently not sure of whether or not to make conversation, but clearly determined not to leave Tim on his own. Tim stood under the electric fire reading the notices on the notice-board.
The taller nurse was gone for some time. When she returned, she was preceded by a powerfully-built man of about fifty-five. He was dressed in a naval uniform. He extended a large hand and, when Tim held out his own in response, crushed it for an unpleasantly long time in a fierce grip.
“Captain Denning,” he said. The two nurses melted away.
“Detective Inspector Yates, South Lincolnshire Police.”
“What can I do for you?” Tim realised that Captain Denning was some three inches taller than he was, and was looking down his nose as he spoke in a clipped, business-like voice. There was a slight burr to his speech; Tim thought that he might have come from the West Country. Evidently he was no great respecter of the police.
“I’m investigating a murder – that of Kathryn Sheppard, whose skeleton was discovered by the side of the A1 two weeks ago. You may have seen something about it in the news, or in the papers. I’m trying to trace people who may have come into contact with Kathryn in the last few months of her life. One of her friends was a young woman called Bryony Atkins. We think that Bryony stayed for a while in a house next door to the house which was occupied by the sisters of one of your residents.”
“I see. A bit of a tenuous link, isn’t it?”
“It would be, if that was all there was to it. But we have reason to believe that the resident had formed a relationship with Bryony’s mother – in short, that they were having an affair.”
“Very interesting.” Captain Denning smiled sardonically. “Of course, all our residents are sailors. Not renowned for fidelity, you know. Love ‘em and leave ‘em. A girl in every port. I’m sure you know the stereotypes. Who is the resident, by the way?”
“His name is Frank Needham. It was his sister Marjorie who suggested that we should come and visit him – she still lives in the same house, in Westlode Street, in Spalding, where they were brought up. We know that Frank wasn’t living there at the time of which I’m speaking; it was his childhood home, but he had moved out by then. But he came back frequently. I do understand, by the way, that Frank is blind and that his mind has become confused. Marjorie told us that as well. If you think that it would be inappropriate or futile to try to speak to him, of course I will accept your professional judgment and leave him in peace.”
He noticed that while he was speaking Captain Denning’s face had flushed an unattractive brick red.
“I know Marjorie Needham!” he barked. “Damned busybody of a woman. She comes here sometimes, though not as often as she should – thank God. Frank doesn’t really want to see her. It is his other sister he misses – Iris, they’re twins – but Marjorie never brings her here. She says that Iris can’t make the trip, because she is blind. As you say, Frank’s blind, too: obviously a weakness that the tw
ins share. But apart from that, he’s as fit as you’d expect for a man nearly ninety, and no more ‘confused’ than most people of his age. Many of the residents here are much frailer and more gaga than he is. Some have round-the-clock nursing care: self-sufficiency is not one of the conditions of living here. The woman’s talking twaddle, which squares with my experience of her.” Captain Denning paced the few steps between the two doors, his hands behind his back, his expression one of extreme annoyance.
“So do you think it would be all right for me to have a short conversation with Frank?” Tim ventured.
“I don’t see why not. Have to ask him, of course. Wait here.”
He returned in a remarkably short time, his face now alive with curiosity.
“Frank says that he’ll see you. He says that he’s surprised that the police didn’t contact him before. He wasn’t talking about Kathryn Sheppard, though, or at least I don’t think so. The liaison that you told me of: it was with Dorothy Atkins, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Do you remember the case, sir?”
“Of course I remember it. I doubt if anyone who was old enough to read the newspapers at the time could forget it. The woman who killed her mother-in-law. Amazing to think that Frank had a fling with her.”
Tim inclined his head in agreement. It was wonderful how notoriety opened doors.
He followed Captain Denning back across the lawn to the back door of one of the houses that faced the street. The warden knocked perfunctorily before entering, and motioned Tim to follow him. Tim found himself standing in a small square kitchen with an open fire. The room was spotlessly clean, but the air was rank with the smell of stale tobacco smoke. A rather heavy old man was sitting in front of the fire, his legs swathed in a blanket, a stick by his side. His resemblance to Marjorie Needham was striking: he had the same oblong face and shock of thick untidy grey hair. Instead of her quick, darting eyes, however, his rolled in the random, unsettling way peculiar to the sightless. He was wearing a hearing-aid. He grasped the stick when he heard Tim approach and made as if to stand.
“Please, Mr. Needham, don’t trouble to get up for me,” said Tim, moving quickly across the room to take his hand. “I’m Detective Inspector Tim Yates, of the South Lincolnshire Police. Thank you for agreeing to see me. I think that Captain Denning has told you why I’ve come.”
“Yes.” Frank Needham spoke slowly, with a strong Lincolnshire accent. “I don’t know no girl called Kathryn, though.” His voice was peevish and he didn’t sound bright, but he was quite lucid. Tim wished that Captain Denning had not described the reason for his visit in quite so much detail. How he had achieved this in the short space of time that he had spent alone with Frank Needham was a mystery.
“Don’t worry about Kathryn for the moment, Mr. Needham. I’d like you to focus on your friendship with Dorothy Atkins, if you would.”
The old man cackled.
“You mean Tirzah. I thought you’d get on to that. Friendship! That’s a good word for it.” He leered as much as it was possible to leer without the use of his eyes.
“When did your relationship with Tirzah start?”
Frank Needham paused to consider.
“It was a lot longer ago than folk realised. I was in the navy, you see, and not home much, so folk didn’t pick up on it. And we was what you might call discreet. That was her word. She didn’t want a scandal.”
“So can you recollect when it began – about when, anyway?” Tim persisted.
“It was – let me see. Well, I can’t tell you the year, but it was well before Hedley was born, because she tried to lay him at my door. Not publicly, of course, but in private, so that she had a sort of hold on me. But I wasn’t having any of it.”
Despite the fact that his favourite mantra as a policeman was ‘never be shocked’, Tim found it difficult to conceal his surprise.
“Can we just go over that again, Mr. Needham? Are you saying that Dorothy Atkins – Tirzah – suspected that you were the father of her son, Hedley?”
“That’s it. And I’m also telling you that I wasn’t having any. Thought I was born yesterday. The dates didn’t add up, see. By the time she fell pregnant, I’d been at sea a good two months, by my reckoning.”
“So you think that Hedley was in fact Ronald Atkins’ son, just as everyone would have assumed?”
He cackled again, and brought on a fit of coughing. His face was alarmingly red when it subsided, and Tim could see that the hand that held the cane was shaking.
“Have a care, Inspector,” said Captain Denning warningly.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Jack,” said Frank Needham. “I’ve not enjoyed myself so much in a twelvemonth. ‘As everyone would have assumed’! Well everyone might have assumed, but I knew different. She hadn’t slept with Ronald for a long time. Barely let him touch her after Bryony was born, so she said. And I believed her. Despised Ronald, she did.”
There was a pause.
“Well?” said Frank. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”
“Ask you what, Mr. Needham?”
“Who I think Hedley’s father was. Not ‘think’, really – I’m positive, though I can’t prove it.” Without waiting for a reply, he continued with a flourish. “It was Colin Atkins – ‘Uncle’ Colin!”
He sat there, looking sightlessly up at Tim, beaming and triumphant. There was a protracted silence while Tim decided how best to react. Finally Captain Denning cleared his throat. When he spoke to Frank, his tone was gentle.
“You may be right, Frank, but it was all a long time ago, and I doubt if it could be proved who the father was now, because the man who you’ve mentioned is presumably dead.”
Frank was unperturbed. He beamed at both of them. Tim could almost have believed that there was a glint in his empty gaze.
“As you say, Jack. But I know it. And something else I know, too.” He lowered his voice.
“What’s that, Mr. Needham?”
“I know that Tirzah didn’t kill Ronald’s ma. Of course I can’t prove that either; but I knew Tirzah inside out.” He cackled again. “And I can tell you that she didn’t have it in her to kill no-one. Drive them round the bend, yes, but that was different. Besides, the police never got to the bottom of it, as I said to Iris at the time. It was staring them in the face and they didn’t cotton on.”
“I’m not sure that I follow you, Mr. Needham. What didn’t the police cotton on to?”
Frank Needham sighed with mock impatience.
“The girl, of course. Bryony. She disappeared and it was before Doris died. A few days before, at least. I was home on leave and I said to Iris, there’s something odd going on next door. It was after Tirzah and the kids come to stay. I saw them – Ronald and Hedley, and Colin was there, too – digging a hole in the old orchard. I was still seeing Tirzah then, but funnily enough it was harder to meet her when she was living next door than when she was on the estate. Because all the rest of them was hanging around all the time. We’d meet up by the fire station for a cigarette when it was getting dark, and once or twice we managed to sneak back to her house on the estate. I said to her, I said, ‘What’s going on in the orchard?’ And she was normally open with me – I knew exactly how she felt about all of them – but this time she clammed up. Wouldn’t speak to me about it at all. I was certain something bad had happened, but I was sure that she wasn’t mixed up in it – at least not more than she had to be. I saw a helplessness in her then, that I’d never seen before.”
“What did she say when you challenged her, Mr. Needham? Did she say anything at all?”
“She said that if I didn’t mind my own business, we were finished. And I told her I was getting pretty fed up with the whole thing, anyway. I didn’t mean it: she and I went deep. But we parted on bad terms. I went back to sea and she was arrested soon after. I was still away and it wasn’t my business to go making things worse,
but Mam used to send me the papers and I was surprised that they never noticed the girl was missing. So I kept out of it. I did write to Tirzah once in prison and I asked her about Bryony, but she returned the letter unopened. Then Mam had one of her tantrums and said that it was bad enough that I’d been carrying on with a married woman, but that, God forgive me, I should let up now that I knew she was a murderer as well. So I did. No point in trying to keep on with it, was there, when Tirzah didn’t want it and my family didn’t either and she likely to be in prison all of her life in any case?”
“So did you never see her or speak to her again, after the occasion that you’ve described?”
“No, never. Still carry a torch for her, though.” The old man’s gleeful mood had vanished. His face puckered. “I didn’t marry, myself, in the end. If you see her, tell her that Frank was asking after her.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The men who worked at Bevelton’s Tractors were somewhat bemused by the order to dig up their own yard. At first they thought that their boss, Henry Bevelton, was joking, but one look at his face told them that he found the situation far from funny. If they had not understood before, when two policemen turned up to watch the proceedings, they realised that it was no laughing matter.
Henry Bevelton, who was a wiry little man with a strangely plump face and bulbous nose, had decided that he had better be nice to the policemen – since he wanted his yard putting back in exactly the order that it had been in before this started, all costs borne by the constabulary, as he had been promised – and get Gloria, his accounts lady, to offer them some tea. They accepted, but declined his offer to drink it in the tiny cockloft of an office into which his own desk and Gloria’s were crammed, explaining that they needed to watch the digging all of the time. Gloria was therefore tasked with carrying tea out to them.
In the Family Page 23
