Authors: Elizabeth Corley
‘This is an interesting bit of carving, Mr Willett.’ Nightingale had instinctively chosen to comment on the most expensive item in the room.
‘Mr Wainwright gave us that after we’d bin with ’im for thirty year. Nice, in’t it?’
‘Very. Thirty years is a long time. Did you live on the Wainwright Hall estate throughout?’
‘Yup, in Bluebell Cottage. Pretty little place, good soil.’
The conversation died and they waited in uneasy silence until Mrs Willett returned. The tea was good and strong, but Nightingale had to argue determinedly against sugar – Mrs Willett being very concerned about her obvious need to put on weight.
‘Then you’ll have a piece of my fruit cake, won’t you?’
Millie Willett was a small, tough woman with a short, simple haircut and stern eyes. The hands that passed the plate of fruit cake to Nightingale had traces of arthritis in thumb joints and knuckles.
Nightingale took the smallest available slice and nibbled a corner. It was delicious, and the rest of the portion disappeared far more quickly than she’d intended, much to Mrs Willett’s delight. Courtesies dispensed with, Cooper set to business. His workmanlike, practical style suited the Willetts perfectly, and they were soon chatting away like old friends, whilst Nightingale
took notes. The couple had clearly liked their employer and enjoyed their responsibilities on the estate. They didn’t volunteer many comments, and Cooper was forced to broach the subject of the will. The mood changed at once.
‘Why do you think Mr Wainwright changed his will?’
‘Couldn’t say.’ Joe Willett clamped his lips shut and glared at his wife. His bulbous nose glowed pink as his eyes blinked in indignation behind his black-plastic-framed glasses. Mrs Willett opened her mouth to speak, but with a stern ‘Millie!’ from her husband, she took a sip of tea instead.
‘I know you want to be loyal to your employer, and none of us wishes to speak ill of the dead, but we’ve already heard the rumours and we’re trying to find out the truth.’
‘You should know better’n to listen to gossip, a man in your position, Sergeant.’
‘But if it’s the truth – and the truth suggests that all was not well at Wainwright Hall before Mr Wainwright died – then we have no choice but to listen, Mr Willett.’
‘Joe …’ Millie had edged anxiously to the near corner of her seat. ‘Joe, I—’
‘No, Millie! That’s enough.’
Cooper changed tack.
‘I know Mr Wainwright was a good employer, good as anyone could look for, but you’re not doing him or his memory any favours by staying silent, you know.’
‘A good man’s name is worth an ounce of discretion, Sergeant Cooper. And he was a good man, for all that’s been said about him.’
‘True, but …’ Cooper leaned forward conspiratorially in his armchair, and the others angled forward automatically in response. ‘I think I should tell you – and this must remain strictly between us, mind.’ Mr and Mrs Willett nodded
vigorously
. ‘Well, there’s a chance, that is to say we suspect, though we can’t prove anything, that Mr Wainwright’s death was … suspicious.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Yes. It may not have been suicide.’
‘There! Told you, Joe, told you. Said it was too convenient by half, so soon after she’d—’
‘Millie! That’ll do.’ Joe Willett turned to Cooper suspiciously. ‘You just sayin’ this, or ’ave you got
grounds
?’
‘Oh, we’ve got grounds all right, we just haven’t got any proof; only hearsay and gossip, and we need more.’
‘So you came to us thinking we’d shop him?’
‘No! Thinking you might be able to help us trap a killer, before they kill again. It’s already too late for Graham Wainwright.’
That silenced him. It even silenced Millie, but Cooper waited patiently, sensing that the mood in the room had just shifted in his favour. They’d talk now.
Joe Willett stood up and took a battered leather tobacco pouch from a drawer, then reached down the side of his armchair and extracted a worn pipe.
‘I think more tea’s in order, Millie.’
Nightingale watched in open-mouthed amazement as Mrs Willett automatically stood up and started to gather their cups.
‘Won’t be a moment.’ She stopped suddenly and glared at her husband. ‘Don’t you start without me, mind.’
There was no danger of that. The slow filling and tamping of the pipe proceeded with mind-numbing ritual as far as Nightingale was concerned, but Cooper watched with
contentment
.
‘That’s a lovely old briar, isn’t it?’
‘Aye. Lovely.’
The two men nodded in mutual understanding as Nightingale tried to find something to concentrate on that would dampen her impatience and irritation with the whole occasion. She spotted a photograph album in the wall unit.
‘May I?’ she asked. Joe Willett shrugged.
The photographs were old, mostly black and white, and taken with a camera with a fixed field of focus. Only the last few pages were in colour. She flicked through them as Joe Willett and Cooper started to talk about the merits of various pipes, reading the inscriptions printed painstakingly beneath the images: ‘Joe and baby Joey at Yarmouth’, ‘Miss Selina Wainwright pushing Joey in his pram’. Then, several pages later, ‘Selina’s engagement (Joe in tails serving!)’. There were a lot of images of Selina, who was a clear-faced brunette with a
determined jaw; then suddenly the photos of her stopped.
Others continued: harvest festivals, summer fêtes, several bonfire night celebrations, one complete with brass band. Nightingale realised that the Willetts’ whole lives had revolved around the Wainwright estate, and Bluebell Cottage looked idyllic. How must they feel now, having been cast out of it after nearly thirty-five years to live here in a concrete box stuck halfway up an inconvenient high-rise dwelling?
‘Tea up!’
More tea, more cake. Mr Willett set his carefully filled pipe to one side. In all that time he hadn’t put a match to the tobacco, yet he seemed content.
Nightingale put the album down. They all took a sip of tea. Without preamble, Millie started talking as her husband looked on.
‘Well, where to start? At the beginning, I suppose. Mr Wainwright had one son, Graham, born forty-two years ago this September. I remember it because my mum was in service to Mrs Wainwright then, and she had a terrible time with the birth – Mrs Wainwright, I mean, not my mum, she’d had all of us by then, all seven, if you can believe that.’
Mr Willett raised a meaningful eyebrow which, mercifully, his wife saw. Suitably redirected, she carried on.
‘Well, Mr Wainwright had wanted a big family, but that wasn’t to be; there was no way the missus could have any more. Poor thing, but still, at least it was a boy.’
Nightingale seethed, but kept her feelings from showing.
‘Master Graham was spoilt rotten; anything he wanted, he had. So, naturally, he didn’t turn out quite as his parents had hoped. He went through that many schools. Anyway, he was the son and heir, that’s how he was treated, and that’s how he behaved.
‘Poor Mrs Wainwright died a few years after, very premature, such a shame, and my mum was getting on then. So Mr Wainwright asked her, “Who could you recommend to be housekeeper?” and she says, “Why, my Millie,” and just like that, there we were. Course, Joe had to come too, wouldn’t’ve been proper otherwise, but the estate needed more help and it beat farming. We had a fantastic few years, didn’t we, Joe? That
was about the time that young Selina got engaged, but that didn’t last long. Heavens, that was a scandal and a half. She was Mr Wainwright’s youngest sister …’
Nightingale recalled the photos of the determined brunette.
‘… and she was good to us. She lived with her brother, and he was so proud when she became engaged to Julian Sands – that was his best friend, see.’
‘Millie, get on with it.’
‘But this is relevant. No sooner is she engaged than she goes and elopes, and not with Sands either, but with that travelling salesman, Henry Smith.’
The clouds parted for Nightingale.
‘Alexander’s father?’
Mrs Willett nodded approvingly.
‘Exactly. It was a love match an’ no mistake. I can remember her in tears in the kitchen of Bluebell Cottage – we were almost of an age, y’see, and who else did she have to turn to? My, she was a headstrong miss. She had that stubborn Wainwright streak – ruthless, you’d call it in a man. But to be fair, it was the real thing with Smith, and if her brother had found out he would’ve killed them both rather than lose her. Anyway, “Millie,” she says to me, “I have to follow my heart, even though I know it will break his.” That was her brother she was talking about, not Sands – never did take to him. And it did, of course – break Mr Wainwright’s heart, I mean. He never forgave her. Worked for years to disinherit her, not just from any right to his estate, but also from her mother’s trust fund. I’ve never seen such hatred as he had for Henry Smith. You never want to cross a Wainwright. Firm and fair they are if you’re on their side, but if not … By ’eck, I’ve seen some fellas suffer for crossing them.’
‘Get to the point, Millie.’
‘Nearly there.’ Mrs Willett was quite immune to her husband’s impatience, and with a start, Nightingale realised that it was the wife who had the upper hand in this marriage, whatever the superficial tea tray evidence suggested to the contrary.
‘Well, now then. The point is that Mr Wainwright spent a
fortune
on legal fees to make sure his sister had no claim to any of the family money, but, bless her, she didn’t seem to care a bit. She was hopelessly in love and stayed that way,
so far as I could tell, until the day she died.’
‘So why did Mr Wainwright change his will to benefit her son – Alexander? It doesn’t make sense.’ Cooper sounded baffled.
‘Exactly! It didn’t. It doesn’t. But I don’t think he did it of his own free will.’
‘Pardon?’
‘What I mean is, I think he was
confused
.’
‘Speak plain now, Millie, if you’re going to speak at all. They haven’t got all day.’
Millie shifted in her chair and poured more tea. Now it had come to it, she appeared reluctant.
‘Well, first of all, Miss Selina wrote to her brother begging him not to cast off his nephew. She didn’t care about herself, and knew there was no hope for her husband, but young Alexander was a different matter. She was desperate for him to know his family, and so the poor lad was sent to Wainwright Hall during the school holidays. He had a miserable time. Graham was ten years his senior and as cruel as teenage boys can be. His uncle barely tolerated him; poor lad’s blessed with his mother’s eyes, so he was a constant reminder to Mr Wainwright of the sister he’d lost.
‘And his other cousins, the daughters of his Aunt Julia, were part of a smarter set. They didn’t wear trousers with three-inch hems bought so they’d last two winters, and home-knitted jumpers. Poor kid. All it did was show him that he didn’t belong, but he knew how much the visits meant to his mum, so he pretended he loved it, for her sake. In truth, I thought it was going to ruin him at one stage, but then he seemed to grow a tough skin and survived.’
‘Did Alan Wainwright never acknowledge him?’ Nightingale felt a touch of sympathy for Alexander Wainwright-Smith.
‘Acknowledge is a tricky word. I think he got used to him. He was a decent enough lad, obliging – ask Joe, he was always helping us in the kitchen or garden. But he was shy, and so out of place it irritated his uncle, a real burr in his side. Mr Wainwright was wont to blame the lad’s father for all Alexander’s weaknesses, and that got in the way.’
‘And yet he left him half his estate!’ Cooper was growing impatient.
‘Hmm, well, left
him
, you say…’
‘Millie, I said now—’
‘Oh, hush, Joe, it’ll out. But it’s from folk who’ll tell it straight.’ She fixed Cooper and Nightingale with a bird-like eye and took a deep breath, fully into her stride. Joe pulled at his pipe and retamped the bowl.
‘Well. Where to start? Don’t worry, Sergeant, I’ll be brief. Alexander left school with three A levels and was all set on university when his uncle suddenly ups and offers him a job at the works.’
‘The works?’
‘The old brickworks. Shoulda been sold years ago, but Mr Wainwright wouldn’t part with it. Anyway, as I was saying, it was a take-it-or-leave-it affair, and he took it.’
‘What was the job?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, but it was at the bottom, right at the bottom, in the dust and the dirt. Still, his mum was pleased, and of course Alexander never let on what he was actually doing. And by gosh, he worked hard. He was soon out of the yard and in the works proper, then into an office job. When the brick business closed up, he was moved on to Wainwright Enterprises. I don’t know what he was doing, but he was in a suit by then.
‘Young Alexander was a real worker, but I think that irked his uncle even more, what with Graham so unlike his cousin. Anyway, within a couple more years he had his own office and his career looked solid. But then he upset Mr Wainwright all over again. He started evening classes – some sort of Open University degree, I think it was. I remember him trying to explain it to Joe once – and he joined the music society; that’s where he met little Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth Price.’
‘At which? The society or his evening classes?’
‘Mm, not sure.’
‘Why did that upset his uncle?’
‘It was a show of independence. Mr Alan was a decent man, but he was a tyrant with his family, he ruled all of them with a rod of iron. That’s why Alexander’s mum ran away. He’d
of never let ’er marry for love. Alexander’s going to night school was right out of order, but he went ahead and did it anyway. That’s the Wainwright stubbornness – he’s got his fair share all right. As a consequence, he stayed in the same job for all the time he took the course, nigh on three or four year, I reckon.
‘Then ’e goes and marries Sally-my-lass, and within months he’s on the up again. And he and the new wife are favourite guests of his uncle.’
‘So that’s why he was given an inheritance?’
Mrs Willett looked sly.
‘P’raps, p’raps not.’
‘Millie! I will not have unfounded gossip in this house, ’specially if it’s slanderin’ the dead.’