The Bones in the Attic

by Robert Barnard

  “They know about the problem, the people at the school, and they’re very sympathetic, and as a rule it’s onlyperhaps once or twice a year that she gets troubled—that’s the word we use among ourselves—and has to take a week or so off. They’ve got someone who’s glad to cover.”

  “And all this began when?”

  Mrs. Carpenter shook her head doubtfully.

  “Well, not in 1969, but looking back we can see the seeds of it then. At the time we just thought it was a phase that would pass. Caroline, you understand, was always a quiet child. She has a brother, but he’s seven years older, so they were never playmates. She was middling at school, enjoyed singing in the choir, went to Sunday school. You could see when she was playing with the others in these houses that she was always the quiet one, the one they took for granted.”

  “Did that worry you?”

  “Not overmuch, not then. Nothing wrong with a quiet child. My feeling at the time was that she was quiet because she thought about things a lot. Wondered whether it was right to do things or not. Even if we told her to do something there’d always be a little pause before she’d do it. Oh, I don’t want to make her out to be a little saint,” she said hurriedly, perhaps imagining skepticism in Matt’s face. “I expect she could be naughty, though I don’t remember any example, not of any importance. She certainly could dig her heels in about things, though. . . .”

  “And then?”

  “That time you talk about, the summer of 1969, she went quiet—even quieter. It was difficult to get a word out of her. She didn’t want to mix, she spent more and more time in her room—just sitting, so far as I could see—and it made me sick with worry. But—well—I put it down to—you know—adolescence.” A blush spread over her face,telling Matt something about the household Caroline had grown up in, its difficulties in talking over potentially embarrassing subjects. “Anyway,” she went on hurriedly, “it was two or three years later that the real crisis came: in the run-up to the GCE. She wasn’t a brilliant student, like I say, but we might have expected her to do solidly well. But her schoolwork had suffered, and there was a lot of pressure on her and . . . well, we thought that was it. I think now it was just the last straw: it on top of what had gone before.”

  “What happened?”

  She looked down into her lap. All the really serious things, Matt thought, went undiscussed in the Carpenter household.

  “Oh, I don’t want to go into too much detail. It seems like disloyalty to Caroline. She just went off her head—babbling nonsense, crying, refusing to leave her room, then suddenly going out at night, going missing, being found wandering miles away.” She paused, reluctant to reveal to him the next thing, but in the end making up her mind she had to: “Sometimes when she was found she’d say she was looking for the baby.”

  There was silence in the room for a time.

  “I see,” said Matt. “Did you understand then what she was talking about?”

  “Never. And she never said anything in her better times. No, it was not until . . . Well, it’s not your fault, and it’s better to know, isn’t it? At the time we began to think that the talk about a baby was some hidden pain and distress disturbing her, that not having one was a sort of symbol to her of her inability to lead a normal life.”

  “And there was never any question of marriage and children, I suppose.”

  “No, there wasn’t. For about twelve or fifteen years things were bad, really bad. One good day, one bad day, one good week, one bad week. We tried mental institutions, we tried different psychiatrists, it felt as if we’d tried everything. The pattern for all that time remained pretty much the same, until gradually, very gradually, the good times began to get longer, her grip on reality stronger. Oh, the bad times were still there, and during them she would often disappear, making us mad with worry.”

  “I think that on one occasion she came here.”

  “Yes, I’m not surprised. We had moved to Barnsley, you see, when my husband had got a promotion in his job. That was two or three years after the bad times started, when Caroline was eighteen or so. I’d never associated her illness with these houses, but perhaps I should have done. . . .”

  “And now she’s improved so much she can even take on a job.”

  “Yes.” She smiled up at him. “We thank God for that, and we’re so proud of her. She loves being with the schoolchildren, she loves just having to get up in the morning, take the bus, have a routine. So—you’ll have guessed I have something to ask you.”

  “I’ll do anything I possibly can.”

  “I wouldn’t want to hinder you in trying to find out what happened to this poor little baby. That would be wicked. But I know, as surely as I know this is my right hand”—she held it up—“that Caroline can’t have been involved, not really involved, beyond perhaps knowing what happened, and for some reason blacking it out, or feeling she has to keep quiet about it.”

  “That sounds to me what must have happened.”

  “Obviously I’m asking you not to trouble Caroline.”

  “I can promise you that straightaway.”

  “I’m also asking if you would let me know if you’re going to be on television or radio. When she heard that radio interview she had one of her worst setbacks in years. I need not to be on tenterhooks the whole time as to whether it might happen again.”

  “Of course. I’ll willingly let you know. Give me your telephone number—”

  Mrs. Carpenter was already scrabbling in her handbag, and she handed him a scrap of lined paper on which she had already written her address and number. But she was looking for something else too, and finally she handed him a small color photograph.

  “That’s Caroline, about three years ago. One of the good times, of course. I always thought she was quietly pretty. She would have made such a good mother.”

  The face looked out at him shyly. Behind the figure was a promenade and a pier. Presumably the face said something different to her mother, but to Matt it said: “You want to think I’m having a good time, and I’ll try to convince you of that.” But behind the smile, in the eyes, in the set of the mouth, there was a timorous dread, a sense of disaster around the corner. He registered that the “fairish hair going gray” that Mrs. Goldblatt had used when describing the strange woman in the back lane perfectly described the hair of the woman in the snapshot.

  “Yes, she is pretty,” he said, handing it back. “Will you promise me one thing? Will you tell me anything that she says that might help me to find out the truth about what happened?”

  “I promise, but she won’t. I know that,” said her mother with conviction. “She has blotted it from her mind. Even during her—her bad periods, she never lets anything slip, beyond the talk of a baby. She’s rather cunning at those times—looks at us as if we’re expecting her to say something about what’s troubling her, but she’s not going to.”

  “I wasn’t just thinking about the baby’s death,” said Matt, “but about the whole situation among the children living in these houses at that time, or anything she might say about any one of the children she played with.”

  “I see. Well, if she does say anything, certainly I’ll pass it on. But, you see, the children who lived here are all part of what I now realize is the problem: the death of the baby. I can’t recall that she has mentioned any of their names in years, so I don’t expect she’ll start mentioning any of them now.”

  “Unless hearing the broadcast has stirred up memories.”

  Mrs. Carpenter got up at that.

  “Yes, but we can’t select the memories, can we?” She paused at the door of the living room. “If she remembers the children round her that she used to play with, she’ll remember the baby. I don’t want that. Those children should all be in their early forties now. But I can’t forget that two of them are dead.”

  “Two of them?” Matt’s face showed his surprise. “I knew about Eddie Armitage.”

  “Poor Eddie. The nicest lad you could meet. And
Colin Mather, the boy who came every summer to stay with his grandparents. He injected himself with an overdose of heroin when he was twenty-one. I heard about it as soon as it happened, because, though we’d moved, I was still friendly with the Mathers. The inquest said accidentaldeath, but there’s accidents and accidents, as I’m sure you know, being in news and broadcasting and that. I love my daughter, Mr. Harper. I’ll do anything to protect her. There’s no way I’m going to bring up those names, or try to get her to talk about them.”

  When she was gone, Matt thought about what she had said. Two children dead from ten children who’d made up the two five-a-side teams was probably above average, but not wildly so, remembering the dangers, pressures, and epidemics such as AIDS that had been the lot of young people since the sixties. Still, he could well understand Mrs. Carpenter’s fears that pressuring her daughter could lead to a third death.

  He wondered about his own unwillingness to press the matter. He thought that if he’d been a police officer he would have felt obliged to take things further, ask Caroline about her obsession with a baby. He, on the other hand, had immediately felt that his concern about the baby’s death was not worth any threat to a living woman’s mental stability. He was investigating out of curiosity, and for personal reasons. No one was vigorously investigating the baby’s death as a crime.

  Yet that, surely, was what it was.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Resta Immobile”

  Matt’s remarks to Jason Morley-Coombs about the punishment taken by a professional footballer’s body had been heartfelt, because some of the injuries he had sustained had a nasty habit of putting in a reappearance. The next day, an old ankle injury did just that, and Matt went into the by now well-practiced routine from previous visitations: he rang Radio Leeds to say he’d be off for two or three days, but could be ferried there and back if there was something that imperatively called for him. Then, disliking staying in bed, he had the children move an easy chair in his study close to the phone and settled into it, still in his pajamas because dressing was more trouble than it was worth, and surrounded by newspapers, books, notepads, and pens. He went carefully over his notes from his first finding of the bones and found himself in one respect more puzzled than he was when he started.The main phone call of the day was, rather to his surprise, one from Harry Sugden.

  “They told me you were laid up at Radio Leeds. I’m in a house waiting for t’ paint to dry, but the bloke says it’s OK to ring you. No news to speak of, but I just wanted to tell you that I’ve driven round the old streets I used to live in a couple o’ times, trying to pick on t’ house where Lily Marsden used to go visiting. Not much luck there. I’ve noted down six or seven places where ’appen it could be, but t’ truth is, I could ’ave noted six or seven more. There were never one place where the bells rang and said: ‘It was ’ere.’ Sorry about that.”

  “You’ve done your best,” said Matt. “Perhaps if you slipped the addresses into the post I could do some following up. Unfortunately I heard yesterday that your other spy, Colin Mather, died quite young.”

  “Aye, ’appen I did hear about that, years ago. We were never close.”

  “There’s been something niggling in the back of my mind, Harry. Do you remember the day I first came up here to Houghton Avenue and scored that goal?”

  “Oh, aye. Couldn’t forget that.”

  “One of the girls—I’m pretty sure it was Marjie—went off to dancing class, and I played the rest of the game in her place.”

  “Aye.”

  “But whenever I came up to play later Marjie played too, but I still had a place in the team. So there must have been someone playing in that first game who never played later. I’ve counted up: there were eight Houghton Avenue children, plus you, plus me—two five-a-side teams. Who made up the tenth before I came along?”

  Harry Sugden could almost be heard thinking.

  “Oh, aye! Of course!” he said at last. “That would ’a beenBen Worsnip. He allus went away wi’ his family to Blackpool in the middle o’ August, but he liked a game o’ football, did Ben. . . . Now you mention it, ’e used to come along wi’ Colin an’ me, spying on Lily Marsden. He started the idea she were showing her all to some dirty old man. Allus had a mucky mind, did Ben Worsnip.”

  “Any idea if he’s still in the area?”

  “’E wor three year sin’. Sold me a package of life insurance—a good ’un too. Good terms because we were old mates. ’E wor wi’ Commercial an’ General then. ’Appen you could ring them and contact him that way. You could drive around wi’ him an’ see if you have better luck than I did.”

  “That’s an idea. Does he still have a mucky mind?”

  “Oh, no. Happily married man wi’ bairns—takes it out of a man. No time for that sort o’ thing. But he’s still football mad. Keep him sweet an’ on the ball by telling him some tale o’ playing against Gary Lineker.”

  “I never did, even in the Cup. And in general he was always out of my league.”

  “Well, make up a few whoppers for Ben Worsnip.”

  Matt thought long and hard, sitting there in his swivel armchair, and occasionally wincing with pain, about how best to approach Ben Worsnip. He had no mental picture of the boy he had been—and why should he have one? He had probably only been there for that first game.

  In the event, the approach couldn’t have been easier. He rang the head office of Commercial and General, was told Mr. Worsnip was now working there, and was put straight through to him.

  “Mr. Worsnip? Your name was given me by Harry Sugden.”

  “Harry?” said the voice at the other end, which had put aside its Yorkshireness in a way Harry had never felt the need to. “Well, it’s a while since we did business. Is it some type of special insurance you’re after?”

  “No, no—or not immediately, anyway. My name is Matthew Harper, and I work for Radio Leeds. It’s a very old matter I’m hoping you can help me with—the time when you and Harry used to come up and play football with the children in Houghton Avenue.”

  “Ah . . .” Matt could almost hear the brain ticking over. “I haven’t seen you on the telly, but the wife has mentioned you. The wife was a childhood sweetheart, like, and came from the Raynville Road area, so she was interested.”

  Matt had jolly visions of adolescent fumblings in the field by the Kirkstall Power Station or in the thickets of Gotts Park Golf Course.

  “I don’t know what she’s told you—” he began.

  “No, wait,” said Ben Worsnip, who knew what he wanted, and seemed trained to get it. “I want to get this clear in my head. You’re Matt Harper who played for Bradford City a while back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, are you also the little boy called Matt who came up and played with us one summer, starting with a brilliant goal that I saw and going on to a few more that I heard about when I got back from bloody Blackpool?”

  Matthew knew there would be no point in denying it.

  “Yes. We’re trying to play down my involvement at the time, for the moment. How did you latch on to it?”

  “I think it’s been in the back of my mind since the wife mentioned the case, and the name of the person who wanted information about the people in the HoughtonAvenue houses. Then again, I could have seen you reading the news, and your face could have rung a bell. If I could read how the human mind works I wouldn’t be peddling insurance. Now, how can I help you?”

  “Like you said I think you were playing five-a-side that first game, when I came up to watch you all and showed off by joining in and putting in a goal. Then I think you must have gone away on holiday with your parents.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve worked out too. Blackpool in August was regular and nonnegotiable. I certainly don’t recall playing again with you after that first game. The word was that you went from strength to strength.”

  “That’s true, though I say it myself. I was brilliant all summer. That was my peak season, when I was seve
n.”

  “Don’t put yourself down. I’ve seen you play for Bradford City, and you were always good. Not brilliant, but good.”

  “Thanks very much. Now, though you went off to Blackpool or wherever—”

  “Blackpool. Like I say, nonnegotiable. My family must have been out of their minds.”

  “Still, I believe you were already, with Harry and Colin Mather, keeping an eye on Lily Marsden.”

  “Lily Marsden!” said the voice with delighted recognition. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in years.”

  “Why were you so interested in her?”

  “Because we thought she was taking her clothes off for some dirty old man,” he said promptly and without embarrassment. “If it wasn’t something much worse.”

  “Right,” said Matt. “That’s what I’d gathered. And this was because she was making mysterious calls at a house in the Raynville Road area.”

  “Aye, that’s right. We saw her go there once, all secretiveand surreptitious, and then we kept a watch on and off and found out she made frequent visits. Colin saw more of her than we did, and he said she had a money supply from somewhere.”

  “Did you ever find out who she was visiting?”

  “Not while I was around.”

  “Why didn’t you just go up to a neighbor and ask who lived in that house?”

  “Too straightforward, I suppose,” said Ben after a moment’s thought. “Kids don’t think like that. We were Emil and the Detectives or may be the Famous Five. And we were most likely afraid we’d be sent away with a flea in our ears—probably would have been too. Why would kids want to know something like that?”

  “So you never heard later?”

  “No, I’m sure I didn’t. I expect when we came back from Beastly Blackpool all my usual mates were back from holiday too, so I didn’t have much to do with the children from the top.”

  “Now, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: Do you think you could identify now the house Lily was visiting?”

  There was silence.