For Better For Worse (43 page)

‘What sort of photographs?’ Garfield pressed.

Bear was going through Nelson’s wallet.

‘The woman in the picture looks like Mrs Royal,’ said Nelson, carefully avoiding Mrs Goodall’s eye. ‘She’s posing like … you know.’

‘Posing?’ said Mrs Goodall. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

Bear put the wallet back in Nelson’s pocket and patted his chest.

‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ Nelson agreed quickly, ‘except she’s … she’s got no clothes on.’

Mrs Goodall gasped. Lottie looked puzzled. ‘But why would she do that?’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sarah stoutly. ‘Annie is not that sort of girl.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Nelson. ‘Like I said, the girl in the pictures
looks
like Mrs Royal.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Lottie.

‘He’s going to release them here, in Worthing,’ said Nelson.

‘But that will ruin her reputation,’ said Mrs Goodall.

‘Exactly,’ said Bear. ‘Then she would lose her good name and her child. You should have come to us sooner.’ He jerked his head towards Garfield.

‘And what would you have done?’ said Nelson. ‘Would you have arrested a man for having photographs of his wife?’

Garfield uncuffed the prisoner. ‘What did you hope to achieve by seeing Mrs Royal?’

‘I dunno,’ said Nelson, rubbing his wrists. ‘I just wanted her to know.’

While she was listening, Sarah had been going over some other things in her mind. There were other oddities they’d never solved. Was it possible that this was the man who had cut Jenny’s hair? It didn’t make sense if he was simply trying to warn Annie about some photographs, but what with everything else that had been going on, the assault on her daughter had been all but forgotten.

‘What about my daughter’s plait?’ said Sarah. ‘Was that your doing, and if so, why did you cut it off?’

‘Cut off her plait?’ said Mrs Goodall faintly.

‘What plait?’ Nelson protested loudly. ‘I don’t know nothing about no plait.’

‘We’re going to check your story before we let you go,’ said Garfield.

‘Nah,’ said Bear, ‘let him go.’

Garfield looked a tad surprised, but Nelson didn’t hang around for him to change his mind. Picking up his fallen trilby, he hurried down the path. ‘Thanks mate,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘I owe you one. Watch out for them photographs.’

‘Was that wise?’ Mrs Goodall asked. ‘Shouldn’t you have taken a statement, given what he’s just said about Mr Royale?’

‘We know where to find him if we want him,’ said Bear. ‘I searched his wallet, remember?’

Sarah moved closer to Mrs Goodall. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You were amazing.’

‘I was a fool,’ said Mrs Goodall modestly. ‘It’s a good job Detective Truman and his colleague turned up when they did. If that man had turned around and seen that I only had my late husband’s walking stick poking in his back, we might both have been in trouble.’

‘Well, thank you anyway,’ Sarah insisted. ‘You came just in time.’

All at once Mrs Goodall let out a gasp. ‘My bath! Heavens above, I left the taps running.’ And with, that she hurried away.

Once she was gone Bear turned to Sarah. ‘Look, I know this is an awful lot for you to cope with at the same time, but we’ve come back here because we have a shrewd idea where Henry and his accomplice are.’

Sarah seemed surprised.

‘We want to have another look through the stuff in Kaye’s office again,’ said Bear, by way of explanation. ‘We’re looking for something specific.’

As they went inside, Bear told them about the address on the scrap of paper found in Kaye’s suitcase. ‘It’s a bit of a mystery how it got there, but we know she wasn’t the only one in that car. We think that some papers must have been spilled when the car crashed. Henry must have grabbed most of them, but this one was missed.’

‘What did it say?’ asked Lottie.

‘When we showed it to Mr Dobbin,’ said Garfield, ‘he agreed that it was a solicitor’s paper instructing the sale of a property. 42 Pier Road, Littlehampton.’

‘But that was my old home,’ Sarah gasped. ‘I had to give it up when Henry left. I couldn’t afford the rent.’

‘The house belonged to Henry,’ said Bear quietly.

‘No,’ said Sarah shaking her head. ‘I had a rent book.’

‘The house
belonged
to your husband,’ Bear repeated more emphatically.

Sarah stared at him in disbelief. ‘Then why did the landlord put the rent up …?’ her voice trailed and her eyes filled with tears. ‘It was just to get me out, wasn’t it?’

Bear nodded.

‘How could he do that?’ Sarah said brokenly. ‘How could he do that to his children?’

Bear put his hand over hers. ‘I don’t know.’ His voice was gentle and their eyes locked.

‘We also discovered that Mrs Annie Royal’s home in Horsham was owned by Henry Royale,’ Garfield interjected.

Sarah found it hard to grasp what they were saying. ‘I don’t understand …’

‘It seems that Henry fleeced vulnerable women of their savings,’ said Garfield. ‘And used the money to buy property after property.’

‘The point is,’ said Bear, ‘if we want to prove there’s a pattern here, we need to find out where Kaye lived when she was married to him.’

‘We’ve checked the other two properties, Pier Road and the house in Horsham, but Henry isn’t there,’ said Bear. ‘We need to find that other address.’

‘We’re wondering if he has taken Edward there,’ said Garfield.

Sarah inhaled sharply.

‘It was Chichester,’ Lottie suddenly said.

Everyone turned to look at her. ‘When she got me out of that terrible place,’ she went on, ‘Kaye said she was sorry she hadn’t known I was so close by. She lived in Chichester for many years before moving here.’

‘Come to think of it, Lottie’s right,’ said Sarah. ‘She once told Annie and me that she’d lived in Chichester.’

‘Do you know the address?’ said Bear eagerly.

Sarah shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m not sure she ever said the actual address.’

Lottie’s face coloured as she shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

The two policemen went into Kaye’s office and shut the door.

Sometime later, Bear and Garfield emerged from the office. They looked tired. ‘Anything?’ asked Sarah eagerly, even though she could tell by their dejected expressions that they’d found nothing.

‘Let’s ask Annie,’ said Sarah going to the phone.

It was late, and at first Judith was reluctant to wake Annie, but once Sarah had explained everything, she brought Annie to the telephone.

‘Any news?’ Annie asked.

‘Nothing concrete,’ said Sarah, ‘but Bear maybe onto something.’

‘I don’t know,’ Annie wailed when Sarah explained everything once again. ‘He never talked about his past.’

Sarah heard her choking back her tears. ‘Oh please don’t cry, darling.’

‘Oh Sarah,’ Annie wept. ‘What am I going to do? I feel so alone.’

‘But you’re not alone are you, darling,’ said Sarah. ‘We’re all desperate to find Edward, and we don’t want to leave any stone unturned. Think for a minute will you, darling. Was there anything he might have let slip?’

‘Not that I can’t think of,’ Annie sighed. ‘Oh, hang on, wait a minute … I found some photographs in his secret drawer when he got arrested.’ Her voice was brightening up. ‘There was something written on the back of one. They’re in my room.’

‘Can I go and get them?’ Sarah asked eagerly. ‘Where are they exactly?’

‘There’s an old Turkish delight box on my dresser,’ said Annie. ‘I put them in there. You will ring me back and tell me if you find anything?’

Sarah hung up and ran upstairs two at a time, calling, ‘She’s got some old photographs,’ over her shoulder.

She hadn’t been in Annie’s room since the night she took the shawl away from Edward. It was neat and tidy but his things were scattered all around. The blue elephant he liked on his bed, the rattle which always made him laugh and that yellow cardigan Lottie had spent so long knitting him. But tonight, with the others piling into the room behind her, Sarah had no time for sentimentality. ‘She mentioned they’re in a Turkish delight box,’ she said, looking around wildly. It wasn’t on the dresser.

‘Is this it?’ Lottie was holding it up.

‘Where was it?’ asked Bear.

‘In the wardrobe,’ said Lottie.

A minute later they were all poring over them. One was of Henry in swimming trunks. He looked much younger and even more good-looking. He stood next to a youthful Kaye who had a long cigarette holder in her hand and her hair was tied up in a white turban. The other photographs were of a man sitting on a wall and a third picture of Henry in a garden which overlooked a field.

Sarah turned over the photograph of the man sitting on the wall. On the back Kaye had written
Bunny Warren RIP.

‘So that was Bunny Warren,’ said Sarah. He was tall, muscular and good-looking.

‘Who is Bunny Warren?’ Bear asked.

‘She was going to marry him,’ said Sarah softy, ‘but he was killed. I think he may have been the father of her baby.’

But Bear’s attention had been caught by something else. ‘Look at that chap in the background,’ he said, scrutinising the picture of Henry in the garden carefully. ‘That’s not a field. He’s in cricket whites. This was taken at a cricket match.’

He flipped it over. There was something written in pencil on the back of one of the photographs. It was very faint, but using a magnifying glass, Lottie brought up from the office, they could just make out ‘Priory Road August 1927.’

‘I’ll lay any money that that’s the county cricket ground,’ said Bear excitedly.

It had been frustrating having to wait until the next day, but if they were going to work out from the photograph where the house was, they needed daylight. The area where the search was to begin was stunning. They had walked all along the cricket ground in Chichester and it didn’t take long for Bear to satisfy himself that this was the place which was in the background of the photograph they had studied last night. Having spent a little time trying to work out where the photographer must have stood all those years ago, he could see that little had changed.

As soon as they spotted the cottage, their suspicions were confirmed. There was a black Bentley in the driveway, registration LLD 732, but no sign of anyone inside the property. Thinking that the suspects had already flown, Bear was about to give it up as a wasted journey when Garfield lifted the lid of an enamel bucket outside the back door and found it contained soiled baby’s nappies. The men retreated to the police car which they’d parked in a nearby lane and played a waiting game. In fact, they didn’t have to wait there very long. Coming along the road they saw a well-dressed middle-aged woman pushing a battered old pram. The two things didn’t go together at all. As she approached the cottage, Bear stepped out of the car.

‘Mrs Browning?’

The woman stopped dead in her tracks. She stared at the two policemen for a second then she let go of the pram handle and began to run. Her age and her size made her slow. It didn’t take much to apprehend her and a moment or two later Bear caught her arm, shouting, ‘Oh no you don’t!’

He and Garfield stood either side of her. ‘Please don’t take me to prison,’ she cried.

‘I have reason to believe that you have taken that child away from its mother unlawfully,’ said Bear. ‘You have, in fact, kidnapped him.’

‘No, no I promise you,’ Ada cried. ‘I brought him here for his father.’

As Bear had grabbed her arm, she had let go of the pram. It was on an incline. Nobody noticed that when Ada let go of the handle, it teetered on the edge and then slowly began to move.

‘But you snatched him from his pram and brought him here without his mother’s permission,’ Bear insisted.

‘Henry was supposed to be here,’ Ada wailed.

‘So where is he?’ said Garfield, more than a little disappointed that Henry wasn’t around.

‘I don’t know!’ Ada wept.

Unnoticed by them all, as they spoke, the pram was moving away from them and gathering speed.

‘Where were you going with the baby?’ Bear asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Ada cried again.

‘But you must have had some sort of a plan,’ said Garfield

Suddenly, Edward woke up and began to cry. The three of them turned around and, to their horror, saw that the pram was heading straight for a pond by the bend in the road. Letting go of Ada, Bear and Garfield raced after it with a shout. The pram sped down the embankment, its wheels already in the water and heading towards the reed beds. As it hit a muddy ridge, it began to tip forwards. Garfield hurled himself at the handle, but Bear was already there. Just as the whole thing was about to upend itself, he steadied it and pulled it back as he skidded along the embankment. Garfield was not so lucky. He toppled and sat down in the muddy reed bank. By the time the men had got the pram back on the towpath, they both looked a mess, but they didn’t care. Edward was safe and that was all that mattered.

*

To keep things as normal as possible while Edward was missing, Sarah took Jenny to school. When they walked into the playground, Mrs Audus told her the Headmistress wanted to see her again. Sarah went straight to her office. When she opened the door, another woman was sitting in front of the desk. She was wearing a threadbare brown coat and a floral headscarf. Sarah didn’t recognise the woman but she did recognise the boy standing beside her. He was stockily built and his knees badly scabbed from frequent falls. His hair was badly cut and tousled. William Steel.

‘Oh, Mrs Royal,’ said the Head as she walked in. ‘This is Mrs Steel and her son, William. William has something to say to you.’ The child sniffed an emerging globule of mucus back into his nose and turned a tear-stained face towards her.

‘Come along William,’ said the Head. ‘This is Jenny’s mother. What do you say?’

Mrs Steel gave her son a hefty nudge. ‘Mrs Audus caught him calling your girl names.’

‘I’m sorry,’ William mumbled.

‘I can’t hear you, William,’ said the Head.

‘I’m sorry,’ said William a little louder.

‘I had no idea he was upsetting your daughter,’ said Mrs Steel. ‘I don’t know what his father is going to say about all this.’