Dying In The Wool: A Kate Shackleton Mystery

by Frances Brody

  He chewed with his mouth open in the way he knew irked her. When they were first wed, she asked him – actually asked him – not to slurp his soup. He never did anything but slurp now. Let her put up with it. Let her put up with everything. One useful part of being married so long was that he knew every little habit that grated on her.

  She did not have the sense to leave it alone.

  ‘People will think …’ She stopped. A look of alarm crossed her face, as well it might.

  ‘What? What will people think? Go on, go on.’

  ‘That you took the scoutmaster’s side against your own master because you’re still smouldering over that dratted loom picker. They’ll say it was spite.’

  ‘You’ll say it was spite you mean. No right-minded person would blame me.’

  How dare she say it was spite? It was a matter for the law. Anyone with an ounce of sense would know that. Constable Mitchell would stand on his head for a quiet life. He would have hush-hushed the whole episode. Joshua Braithwaite would have been home in his own bed, being doctored and danced attendance on if it had been up to Constable Mitchell.

  ‘Some people will think it unchristian that you and Mr Wardle dealt with Mr Braithwaite in that manner.’

  ‘Unchristian! The man tried to commit suicide. How Christian is that? The man is a whited sepulchre, always has been.’

  ‘He’s only human. How would any man feel if their son was killed?’

  ‘Thousands have lost sons. What kind of example is he setting? The whole scout troop – lads we’re instilling duty and patriotism and high principles into – they have to know that cowardice of that kind must be punished severely.’

  ‘I hope you won’t say that if the mill goes under without him and we’ve to give up this house and find ourselves back where we started, which is nowhere.’

  ‘How dare you woman?’

  ‘How dare I? Because I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’ Her eyes gave a spark of defiance that he had not seen for a long while. ‘And if Joshua Braithwaite took it into his head to leave this world, I pity him and I understand. You make my life not worth living sometimes. God would forgive me if I shuffled off this mortal coil.’

  His mouth fell open.

  She glared at him. ‘This war may have taught many that they must go on living regardless, when their hearts have been torn out. Perhaps it has also taught us that there is no need to go on to the bitter end.’

  The door opened.

  Silence held while Hettie brought slices of bread and butter that she had forgotten.

  ‘Thank you, Hettie,’ Marjorie said pointedly.

  A thought struck Arthur Wilson like a bolt of lightning. Joshua Braithwaite had had his wife. Joshua Braithwaite had cuckolded him. That could be the only explanation for this worm turning on him, for her unexpected defiance, for her championing of a sinful suicide.

  When they had finished eating, she got up and left the table without a word. He knew what she was up to. She’d be out walking that damned dog of hers. He’d half a mind to do it in. He’d tried once, but Marjorie realised. She saw the empty dish and a couple of grains of bright-blue rat poison. Spooned soft soap into the beast’s mouth till it spewed.

  It wasn’t a normal dog for a female to have, a great beastly Weimaraner with eyes like headlights. She’d stay out as long as she could, till dark, and beyond if there was a moon – keeping away from him.

  They retired to bed. Marjorie sat on the stool before her dressing table, brushing her hair, as if it deserved brushing. The only reason they shared a room still was that he knew how dearly she did not want to and how much she would have preferred him to move across the landing and leave her alone.

  He snatched the brush from her. She jumped.

  He thwacked the brush flat on the crown of her greasy head. ‘You think I don’t know what all that was about earlier.’

  She did that thing he hated, folding her arms about herself, refusing to look at him.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Arthur.’

  ‘Sticking up for Braithwaite in that way.’

  ‘I only said …’

  ‘I should have guessed. He’s done every other woman who’s come within his little circle. It must have been when you were young and worth doing.’

  Her mouth opened in surprise, she was about to protest. He brought his fist into her solar plexus with such force that she fell off the stool.

  She lay there.

  The dog started to bark, threatening him. He insisted it be kept outside, and now he was glad of that or the damn thing might decide to tear him to pieces. It occurred to him he could take it for a walk, throw its ball over a steep fell. Only it wouldn’t walk out with him.

  That was when the knocking came on the downstairs door. Hettie didn’t trouble to stir herself. She’d be fast asleep.

  Wilson opened the casement window and leaned out, expecting some news. Perhaps Braithwaite was dead after all. Perhaps Constable Mitchell had a good reason for sending him to the new hospital.

  In the moonlight, he could not make out the figure.

  ‘What is it?’ he called.

  ‘It’s Paul Kellett.’

  ‘What the blazes do thah want at this time of neeght?’

  ‘I can’t shout it. Come down. It’ll be worth your while.’

  That was Kellett all over. He didn’t thee and thou any more. If the chamber pot had been full, Wilson might have tipped it on Kellett’s head. But his second thought was that perhaps the man did have something to say that would be of interest. After all, he’d been thick as thieves with Braithwaite at one time. And now he worked at the new hospital.

  Wilson did not beat his wife again that night. That was a job that required his full attention, and his full attention was now elsewhere.

  Kellett had his collar turned up and his cap pulled down, like a man up to no good. Wilson didn’t ask the fellow in but kept him in the porch.

  ‘What’s this about, Kellett?’

  ‘Summat to your advantage, if you can toss a ball. Mr Braithwaite’s in a spot of bother …’

  ‘Thah can say that again.’

  ‘He wants to make it right, over the loom picker invention, whether he’s around or not.’

  ‘Conscience pricking him is it?’

  ‘Pin yer lugs back and you won’t be sorry. There’s summat he rightfully wants out of his office. I said I’ll fetch it for him. Only I don’t have a key for’t mill, and you do. Give it to me and I’ll go in under cover of dark and get what’s lawfully his. Not a soul as will be any wiser. There’s fifteen quid on account and fifty when he has his wallet by him.’

  ‘And whose word have I got for that?’

  ‘Mine.’ Kellett put his hand in his pocket and brought out a five pound note.

  ‘Bugger off. Him and thee made a fortune on them dyes.’

  ‘Then you’ll be daft to say no.’

  ‘What is it he wants out of his office? Is he planning on legging it?’

  ‘Less we know the better.’ Kellett took another fiver from his pocket. ‘It’s a small thing I’ve to fetch.’

  Wilson’s hands itched to take the money.

  ‘I’ll be party to a crime if I let thee have key.’

  ‘Not if I come in and help meself, and fetch it back and no one the wiser.’

  ‘What’s his new offer to me on the loom picker? He knows I was diddled.’

  ‘What he give you was fair. I know cos it’s what I got when I passed on me idea for a new drainage pipe in’t dyehouse. If he comes through this trouble, you can have yer name on’t picker and a cut of future sales.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t come through?’

  Kellett offered his hand. ‘He’ll keep his word or you can cleave it from my flesh.’

  Reluctantly, Wilson took Kellett’s hand. ‘I’d sooner deal with organ grinder than the monkey.’ He nodded at a board on the porch wall. It had hooks and keys and a big old outdoor coat that smelled of dog
.

  Wilson moved the coat to reveal a key ring with two large keys.

  Kellett reached for the key ring.

  Wilson grabbed his wrist. ‘Not so fast. What if safe’s robbed and they chase me over it?’

  Kellett gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘I’m no safe cracker, daft bugger. Braithwaite wants a small thing, summat that’s his.’

  ‘Tell us what he’s after, or there’s no key leavin’ this house.’

  ‘He’s after the key to his bank safe deposit box. Come with if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I’m not coming with. On your head be it. But why should I give Braithwaite a way out?’

  ‘Because …’ Kellett produced two more crackling fivers. ‘Yer key’ll be back on this hook before you can say poor old Job.’

  ‘It better be.’

  Above them, the casement window snapped shut.

  15

  Worstedopolis

  Something rattled the window pane – a wind-blown twig, or a pebble signal from Sykes? I switched on my flashlight. Two thirty a.m.

  My yawn was wide enough to catch a passing tram. If Neville Stoddard had let me look at the board meeting minutes, they would never have assumed this weighty importance for me. As it was, I felt sure there must be some clue to be gleaned about Joshua Braithwaite’s state of mind, or of dirty dealings, prior to his disappearance. I drew on a bulky sweater and thick skirt over my silk pyjamas.

  I tiptoed down the back stairs, using my flashlight, and left the house by the back door. For a moment I waited, to be sure no lights came on, but I had disturbed no one. Stepping out into the crisp, cold moonlit air shocked me into wakefulness. Almost Easter and the weather still arctic. In the distance, the mill loomed vast and forbidding, a massive dark shape on the skyline, its chimney pointing an accusing finger at the starry sky.

  Sykes was in heavy shadow by the mill gates, his bicycle somewhere out of sight.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he whispered as I came closer. ‘I’ll go in and look at the minute books. From 1914 you said?’

  I refused his offer. Having met the family, I felt sure I’d be able to pick up on any nuances that might provide hints – though of what I couldn’t say.

  Sykes produced a bunch of keys. He tried one in the lock of the wicket that was set within the larger gate. It did not work. He tried a second, a third, a fourth. The lock yielded.

  We stepped through the wicket gate into the yard. The wind blew a strand of wool across my cheek. Sykes locked the gate behind us.

  To our left stood a gatehouse, for the timekeeper who marked the cards of latecomers. To the right was the now devastated dyehouse. In the moonlight, the half-demolished wall, pile of bricks and slanted lintel took on a new horror. I stared at the ruins, the spot where I had photographed Kellett and his fellow workers and from where he must have run from the building moments before the roof caved in, screaming, running for his life, running to his death in the canal.

  The door to the mill proved more difficult. None of Sykes’ keys fitted the lock. He took something from his pocket that resembled a curved knitting needle and inserted it into the keyhole. After a few deft movements, the lock clicked open.

  ‘Where will you be, Mr Sykes? You’ll need to lock the door after me.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘No! Wait outside.’

  He didn’t budge. ‘Kellett shouldn’t have been in the dyehouse alone and you shouldn’t be here on your own. Everyone needs back-up.’

  He looked at his boots, not at me, and made no move to leave. It was no time to argue.

  The place felt strange after my last visit when it practically rattled and hummed with a symphony of slams, whistles, crashes and roars. We wore soft shoes; thick walls kept out the wind. Only our own breathing disturbed the silence.

  Once again, I passed the offices that had been such a hub of activity during the day. Purchasing, Sales, Wages.

  ‘I think it’s this one – the secretary’s office where I saw the minute books on the shelf.’

  As we entered the airless office that reeked of cigarette smoke and tedious routine, I felt annoyed with Stoddard that his ridiculous secrecy had led to this middle of the night cloak and dagger stuff.

  The feeling must have showed.

  ‘It could be a daft waste of time, that’s true, but you never can tell. Always best to follow your instincts.’ Sykes reached to the shelf for the large bound volume, whose spine announced Company Minutes. He placed it on the desk. Then he pulled down an accounts book. I opened the minute book at August, 1916, intending to work backwards. Neatly typed pages have a way of looking entirely innocuous. If there was some skeleton in a cupboard, there would hardly be a diagram to tell me which cupboard. But I’d come this far.

  Nothing seemed more certain than that reading these minutes would send me back to the land of nod. Intricate titbits of information gave me an insight into the difficult business of running a mill. But something significant did begin to emerge.

  What seemed to me surprising was that prior to the spring of 1916 Braithwaite dominated every discussion. Yet months before his son’s death, he had begun to abnegate responsibility.

  On topics related to the renewal of fire insurance, the introduction of a new machine, replacing a loom, Braithwaite made no comments. Discussions, while Edmund was still able to attend, took place entirely between Stoddard, Evelyn, Tabitha and Edmund.

  ‘Mr Braithwaite had no comment’ became a frequent entry.

  Why?

  In previous meetings, 1914, 1915, he had led discussions at every turn. No matter was too small for his personal attention. He had opinions about everything. Early in 1914, before Edmund and Tabitha were brought onto the board, he berated Stoddard for refusing to have electricity in the mill house when it had been installed in the mill. Stoddard, endearingly I thought, said he preferred gas light – it was gentler, and really that was not a matter for discussion in the board meetings as far as he was concerned.

  One other topic caught my eye. In early 1916, it was proposed by Mr Stoddard to wind down activity at the dyehouse, due to shortage of labour. He proposed that piece dyeing should be contracted out.

  I looked up from the minutes. ‘Mr Sykes, you know you said about Kellett being out on the road, on his profiteering rounds with the German dyes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Take a look at this.’

  Sykes read the paragraph I pointed out to him. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Yes. I wonder at what point Kellett came back into the dyehouse. We know he went to work at the hospital for a short time. I wonder was it something of a comedown for him, to be back in the dyehouse doing dirty manual work, however skilled.’

  ‘And well paid?’ Sykes queried. ‘Better than being an orderly I should think. Sounds as if his coming back got the mill out of a hole.’

  ‘Anything interesting in the accounts?’

  ‘Only by omission.’ Sykes closed the accounts ledger. ‘Whatever Braithwaite was earning from the sales of the von Hofmann dyes, it was going in his back pocket or under his mattress. It didn’t come into the firm.’

  ‘So why was he squirrelling away his ill-gotten gains? What was it for?’

  Sykes replaced the accounts ledger on the shelf. ‘People who are used to raking in money don’t need a why or a what for. They see the accumulation of wealth as part of God’s plan.’

  We both heard the sound at the same moment.

  Footsteps echoing through the building. Footsteps on the stairs.

  I recognised the step as it got nearer, a man walking steadily, as if he had a long way to go and must pace himself.

  ‘Stoddard,’ I whispered.

  ‘What the blue blazes is he doing here at this time?’

  Quickly I returned the minute book to the shelf.

  Tabitha told me her Uncle Neville started work early. I checked my wristwatch. He started at four o’clock in the morning?

  He had reached the co
rridor.

  ‘Let me face him, Mr Sykes. I don’t want him to know we’re working together.’

  Sykes thought for a moment, then nodded.

  I stepped into the corridor. ‘Good morning, Mr Stoddard. I thought if I got here early enough, you may agree to let me read those company minutes.’

  He stopped. ‘You! How did you get in?’

  ‘I learned all sorts during my brief time volunteering with the Women’s Police Service before I joined the VAD.’

  Lie. I wished I did know how to pick a lock. Must get Sykes to teach me.

  Stoddard paused. Don’t go in there, I willed him. If he did, I felt sure Sykes would be behind the door and it would be up to me to keep Stoddard’s attention while he flitted along the corridor.

  Stoddard stood rooted to the spot, bursting with quiet fury. ‘How long have you been in here?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘Long enough to find what you wanted?’

  ‘I could hardly do that when I didn’t know what I was looking for.’

  He flung open the door. The office, illuminated by the light from the corridor, looked undisturbed.

  ‘Please don’t worry about confidentiality, Mr Stoddard. I’ve abandoned my plans to set up a rival textile establishment a little further along the canal.’

  His face was like thunder, but at least I had turned his attention from the office. For a moment Stoddard simply stared at me. I could sense Sykes, behind the door, holding his breath.

  ‘What the blazes … What do you expect to find, woman? A minute saying, “Resolved by Neville Stoddard to oust and disappear Joshua Braithwaite so that he can take over the mill, step into Joshua’s shoes …” and what?’

  Marry his wife, I wondered.

  ‘You said it, not I.’

  ‘That’s preposterous. Get out. Get out of my mill before I do something I regret.’

  ‘Very well.’ I turned and walked silently back along the corridor, holding myself erect and defiant but inwardly shaking. To my relief and consternation, Stoddard marched behind me, his boots drumming on the stone floor. At least Sykes would be able to find a hiding place.

  I expected Stoddard to walk me to the door. He bounded beside me across the yard.