A Death Left Hanging

by Sally Spencer

  ‘An’ whoever I have to hurt,’ Woodend reminded her.

  ‘Yes,’ Jane Hartley agreed. ‘I believe you’ll uncover the truth whoever you have to hurt.’

  Seven

  Neither the passage of time nor the machinations of man had treated Hebden Brow very kindly, Monika Paniatowski thought. Thirty years earlier, when Margaret Dodds lived there, it must have stood on the very edge of Whitebridge. The houses would all have been single family residences, probably owned by mill managers, successful doctors, and businessmen who were still not quite rich enough to buy themselves houses which had grounds, rather than gardens. Then, the moors would have sloped gently upwards, away from the backs of the houses, while the rest of the town climbed aspiringly towards their fronts. But that golden age was long gone. Now most of the houses themselves had been converted into flats, and the untrammelled wilderness behind them had been conquered by a brash new council estate.

  Paniatowski stood at the front door of the house – the one in which Fred Dodds had met his bloody end – and examined the four bell pulls. It was unlikely, she decided, that anyone living in the house now had known the Doddses. In fact, given the transient nature of both fame and infamy, it was unlikely that any of them had even heard of the notorious hammer murderer and her victim-husband. So was there even any point in asking?

  ‘You! Young woman! Are you from the council?’ asked a husky voice to her left.

  Monika turned towards the driveway of the next house. The speaker had short white hair, and at first Monika thought it was a man. Then she noticed that below the severe tweed jacket were an equally severe tweed skirt and a pair of strong legs clad in sensible woollen stockings.

  ‘Are you deaf?’ the woman demanded. ‘I asked you if you were from the council.’

  ‘Why should I be?’ Monika countered.

  ‘Because after all the letters of complaint I’ve written to the town hall, I’ve a right to expect them to get off their backsides and send somebody round.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I’m not from the council,’ Monika confessed. ‘I’m from the police.’

  ‘Really?’ the woman asked sceptically.

  ‘Really,’ Monika assured her.

  ‘So what exactly is your position in the Force? Are you some kind of officer-wallah or something?’

  ‘No, I’m a detective sergeant.’

  ‘The Major – that’s my husband – always used to maintain that you should never send a woman to do a man’s job. But I suppose times change, whether we want them to or not.’ The tweedy woman sighed. ‘Still, if there’s one thing I learned on the North West Frontier, it’s to work with whatever authority is around,’ she continued, brightening a little, ‘and I’m sure that a few days behind bars will do those hooligans a great deal more good than a strongly worded letter from some jack-in-office down at the town hall would ever have done.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m following you,’ Monika confessed. ‘A few days behind bars would do who more good?’

  ‘Those bohemians in the upstairs flat next door. The ones who play their filthy jazz music until nearly dawn,’ the woman said. ‘You really are remarkably poorly informed for an officer of the law, you know.’

  ‘I’m not here about your neighbours,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘At least, not about the neighbours you’ve got now.’

  A look of comprehension came to the tweedy woman’s weather-beaten face. ‘You want to ask about the Dodds family,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. Did you know them?’

  ‘Far better than I ever wished to,’ the woman replied. She glanced quickly up and down the street. ‘We’d better go inside, because the people who live around here nowadays can smell a police officer from a mile away – and if they see me talking to one now, they’ll only think that the Major’s been threatening to horsewhip someone again.’

  The woman – Mrs Fortesque – led Paniatowski into her living room. There was a tigerskin rug on the floor, and garish Indian prints hung from the walls.

  ‘We moved in here in 1931, the Major and I,’ she said, indicating to the detective sergeant that she should sit down. ‘In those days it was generally understood that if a soldier was prepared to serve his twenty-five years – and was willing to live fairly modestly after that – he should be able to retire in his late forties. Which is what the Major did. He came from land-owning stock in this area, so when we left British India, this is where we put down our roots.’

  ‘And you said you knew the Doddses,’ Paniatowski prompted.

  ‘That’s right. It’s entirely due to them that Hebden Brow went into such decline.’

  ‘Because of the way they behaved when they were living here?’

  ‘That, too! But what I’m really talking about is what happened as a result of the murder. How would you feel about buying a house in which you knew someone had been recently battered to death on the lounge carpet?’

  ‘I wouldn’t really fancy the idea.’

  ‘No, and neither did anyone else. The house stayed empty until the end of the war. Then, what with all the damage done to housing in general by Jerry’s bombing, plus the fact that people suddenly had more money in their pockets, there was a strong demand for accommodation. That was when some bright spark got the idea of turning the house next door into flats. As soon as we got a whiff of it, of course, the Major and I tried to buy the place ourselves.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we knew that the sort of people who took the flats would not be the sort we were used to living side by side with. Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet the asking price, even when we’d scraped together all the capital we could lay our hands on. So we had no choice but to sit back and watch as the commercial travellers and assistant shop managers moved in. And once the rot had started, it soon spread. Our other neighbours didn’t like the change any more than we did. They sold their houses – to property developers naturally, since they were the ones who were offering the highest price – and that really sealed the neighbourhood’s fate.’

  ‘Why didn’t you move yourself?’ Paniatowski asked – aware that it had nothing to do with her investigation, but still curious.

  Mrs Fortesque looked embarrassed. ‘The Major was a very dependable soldier,’ she said. ‘Not as showy as some I could mention, but he did his duty well enough.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t see . . .’

  ‘The strain of helping to run an empire was starting to tell on him even during our last couple of years in India. By the time we needed to sell this house, his nerve had gone completely. He just couldn’t stand the idea of any upheaval, you see. So here we stayed.’

  There was a short, somewhat embarrassing silence, then Paniatowski said, ‘You were going to tell me about the Doddses.’

  ‘That’s right, the Doddses. Mr Dodds was some sort of importer-exporter. Claimed to be quite keen on the Conservative Party, though I’m not sure how genuine that was.’

  ‘You think he was putting on an act?’

  ‘I think he wanted to get on in the world – meet the right people. He would have liked to be a gentleman, you see. Even tried to pretend that he already was one, though as far as I was concerned he was about as convincing as a punkah-wallah wearing spats and a monocle.’

  Which was roughly what Mr Bithwaite had said, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘What about Mrs Dodds?’ she asked.

  ‘Different kettle of fish entirely. It was obvious that she’d been brought up in what we used to call “genteel poverty”.’

  ‘So they were very different?’

  ‘Yes, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Nowadays people talk far too much about the romance of marriage, and far too little about what each of the partners can contribute to it. My own marriage was as much an arranged one as any of the Indian marriages that we presume to look down on, but still the Major and I . . .’ She paused. ‘I do go on, don’t I? Must be something to do with my age
.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Paniatowski said, only a little insincerely.

  ‘Well, I do mind. People are willing enough to call the old gaga as it is, without us wandering off the point and giving them more fuel for their fires. So – to get back on the point – what was I saying?’

  ‘That the Doddses were very different to each other?’

  ‘That’s right. That may have been the reason they decided to get married – because each of them could bring a different strength to that marriage. She, you see, gave him a little more class. And in return, he gave Margaret and Jane financial security.’

  Mr Bithwaite, in slightly less charitable terms, had said basically the same thing, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘So you remember Jane, do you?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I remember her. She’d be hard to forget. She was a beautiful child. The Major and I never felt any urge to have any children of our own, yet we’d catch each other looking doe-eyed at little Jane.’

  ‘Was it a happy marriage?’

  There was a faint tapping on the door. ‘If you’ll excuse me a moment, that’ll be the Major,’ Mrs Fortesque said.

  She stood up, walked across the lounge, and opened the door to reveal a frail old man with a bald head and a huge white moustache.

  ‘Have you had a good rest, Major dear?’ Mrs Fortesque asked, raising her voice slightly.

  The old man looked slightly panicked, as if such a question were far too complicated for him to answer.

  ‘A good rest?’ Mrs Fortesque repeated.

  ‘Yes . . . I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Well then, come and sit down, Major dear. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea as soon as I’ve finished talking to this young woman.’

  The Major crossed the lounge in a slow shuffle, while his wife followed closely behind him in case her help was needed. The walk appeared to exhaust the old man, and he sank gratefully into an overstuffed leather armchair, which all but swallowed him up.

  Mrs Fortesque returned to her own seat opposite Paniatowski’s.

  ‘You were asking if the Doddses’ marriage was a happy one,’ she said. ‘It seemed to be happy enough when they first moved in, but then they started having loud arguments – or, at least, she was loud.’

  ‘What were they arguing about?’

  ‘I’m not the kind of person who eavesdrops on her neighbours’ disputes,’ Mrs Fortesque said, with a hint of reproach in her voice. ‘Whenever it got heated enough for me to hear, I turned the wireless on.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about the night on which Mr Dodds was murdered?’

  ‘Not likely to forget, am I, not with all the fuss it caused.’

  ‘So what can you tell me?’

  ‘We must have had half the Whitebridge police force outside the front door,’ Mrs Fortesque said.

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. I meant before that.’

  ‘Before?’

  ‘Did anything unusual happen?’

  Mrs Fortesque laughed. ‘Not anything you’d call unusual in this day and age.’

  ‘But something you would have called unusual back then?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I would,’ Mrs Fortesque said. ‘In 1934, the motor car was still something of a novelty, you see. Even quite rich people regarded an automobile as a luxury. I don’t think there were more than two or three of them on this entire brow. And we certainly weren’t used to them driving past the house at a hundred miles an hour, as we are now.’

  ‘Go on,’ Paniatowski said encouragingly.

  ‘I heard two cars that night. I wasn’t paying particular attention, but I’d have said that they were about half an hour apart. And both of them stopped very close to here. I wouldn’t be willing to swear to it under oath, but I’m almost certain they pulled up next door.’

  ‘Did they stay long?’

  ‘No. Not more than a minute each time.’

  ‘Jane!’ Major Fortesque said suddenly. ‘They came for little Jane!’

  A look that was half compassion, half irritation, swept across Mrs Fortesque’s face.

  ‘Who did, Major dear?’ she asked, turning towards her husband. ‘Who came for her?’

  ‘They took her away,’ the old man said.

  ‘We’re talking about the night Mr Dodds was murdered,’ Mrs Fortesque said patiently.

  ‘Why did they take her away?’ the Major mumbled.

  Mrs Fortesque turned back to Paniatowski. ‘He’d grown quite fond of Jane,’ she explained. ‘He took it very badly when he couldn’t see her any more.’

  ‘Was Jane here on the night her stepfather was murdered?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Shouldn’t that information be somewhere in your records?’ Mrs Fortesque asked. Her eyes suddenly narrowed with realization and suspicion. ‘You’re not trying to test my memory, are you?’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  ‘Not trying to find out whether or not I’m any more than just a batty old lady?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Paniatowski lied.

  ‘Then, in answer to your question, no, Jane wasn’t here on the night her stepfather was murdered. She was spending a week with her aunt – the one who adopted her after her mother was hanged. She’d been gone about three days when Frederick Dodds was killed. There! Have I passed the test which you protest – a little too loudly in my opinion – that you never set me?’

  ‘I . . . er . . . really, I’d have asked anybody, of any age, the same question,’ Paniatowski said, hoping that she was not blushing as much as she thought she deserved to be.

  She searched her mind for some distraction – anything to steer the conversation away from the fact that she’d tried to trick the old woman and been thoroughly caught out.

  ‘How . . . how long was it between the second car going away and the police arriving?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think it can have been more than ten minutes. I might be wrong, of course. Thirty years is a long time to remember something like that, especially . . .’ and she gave Paniatowski a look that showed that she had not forgotten and still not quite forgiven, ‘. . . especially for a batty old lady like I am.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘But don’t take my word for it,’ the old lady continued relentlessly. ‘If you want to be certain, you can always read the statement I made to the police at the time, now can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I can,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  At least, I can read it if it’s still there, she thought. I can read it if, in the interest of making the case against Margaret Dodds tidier and more straightforward, it hasn’t been removed and destroyed by Chief Inspector Sharpe.

  Eight

  Bob Rutter placed the documents which Jane Hartley’s private detectives had prepared for her at the left-hand edge of his desk, and the documentation from Chief Inspector Sharpe’s investigation to his right.

  The difference between the two sets of papers was striking. The barrister’s detectives had produced a small series of concise reports, each one typed (with double spacing) on foolscap paper, and presented in a crisp new folder. There were considerably more documents from the original investigation. They were yellow with age, and thick with dust. Some were typed, some handwritten, some typed with handwritten annotations in the margins. They were stacked in a tower that both dwarfed the newer collection of documents and – given the tower’s tendency to sway – threatened to bury them.

  Rutter picked up one of the newer files and began to look for something he could cross-reference with similar material from the earlier investigation. It took him no time at all to decide that Harold Brunskill would provide him with as good a starting point as any.

  Brunskill himself was long since dead, Jane Hartley’s detectives reported. However, they had spoken to the deceased man’s daughter. She quite clearly recalled that shortly after Margaret Dodds’ arrest her father had gone to the police station, to volunteer the information that he had seen the very same woman s
ome distance away from Hebden Brow at the time the murder was supposed to have taken place.

  The daughter had never learned what happened during her father’s interview with the police. She had tried to ask him about it on a number of occasions, she told the private detectives, but he had immediately become guarded and insisted that she let the matter drop.

  Whatever the result of the interview, Rutter thought, it was significant that Brunskill – whose statement could have raised reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury – had never been called to give evidence.

  So what had occurred during the interview, he asked himself as he reached across to the perilous tower of the earlier investigation. And would any evidence of it still be in existence?

  He was moderately surprised to discover that there was indeed a record of it – to find, in fact, a handwritten report on the subject near the top of the stack.

  INTERVIEW WITH HAROLD BRUNSKILL

  Harold Brunskill (53) of 17 Bradshaw Row, Whitebridge, was questioned as to his claim that he had seen Margaret Dodds coming out of the telephone box in front of St Mary’s Church at approximately the time Frederick Dodds met his death. Since the church is a mile away from the Dodds family home, it was decided that his claim should be investigated more fully.

  Brunskill has a long criminal record, and at first it was suspected that he might have been bribed by friends of Margaret Dodds to provide her with an alibi. However, this suspicion was probably unfounded, since within minutes of the interview starting Brunskill made the totally unsolicited statement that he now thought that he had made a mistake. He had indeed seen a woman resembling Margaret Dodds, he admitted, but looking at the photograph he now saw in front of him, he felt that the resemblance was not close. Besides, he had confused his dates, and it was the day before the murder that he had seen the woman. I asked him if he was sure of that, and he said that he was. I asked him how he had come to make such a mistake, and he explained that the doctor had prescribed him heart pills, which sometimes made him confused. Finally, just to make certain that it was his initial statement which was incorrect, I asked if it would help if I were to place MD outside the church, on the spot where he at first he claimed to have seen her, and have him stand on the spot from which he had made the observation. He said it would not, as he was now sure both that he had made the observation on another day and the woman he had seen had not been MD. He apologized for having wasted my time.