Murder in the Afternoon (10 page)

She sighed. ‘I just can’t fathom it. I wonder now if his head hasn’t been turned by some firebrand socialist female who preaches free love. But it’s no more than a feeling.’

I persisted. ‘I’m talking to everyone who may be able to help. It could be that some little thing you tell me will fit with something else, and make sense.’

She thought for a moment, and seemed reluctant to speak. I waited.

Mrs Conroy blew her nose. ‘Don’t mistake me. I wouldn’t say this to anyone in the village. I’m telling you candidly and between these four walls because you’ve taken on to help Mary Jane. And I hope you can, and I hope I’m wrong. I feel for her because she was an incomer, like me, and people round here will take a quarter of a century before they’ll say to your face that you never will fit in. But they talk about her in the village in a way they don’t talk about me because I don’t give them anything to go on.’

‘What do they say?’

‘Oh it’s nonsense. Gossip and tittle tattle. It doesn’t amount to enough currants to throw at a bun from t’other end of kitchen.’

‘It won’t go any further. I want to help if I can.’

‘I don’t know what they say about her. When they see me, the whispering stops. I just hear her name, that’s all.’

‘Linked to any other name?’ I prompted.

‘Aye. Linked to the names of who she used to work for.’

‘The doctor?’ I remembered Miss Trimble telling me that Mary Jane was in service there.

‘No. Not the doctor. After she left off working for the doctor and his wife, she went to the big house for several years, with the the Ledgers. Ethan reckoned that’s where her grand ideas came from. The cottage wasn’t good enough for her, once the novelty wore off. But I don’t blame the lass, and I don’t blame Ethan.’ Her voice softened when she mentioned Ethan’s name. ‘Ethan was very kind to me.’ Mrs Conroy hesitated. ‘There is just one thing.’

‘Oh?’

‘I feel terrible betraying a confidence …’ She pushed her hands into the pockets of her pinafore. ‘Ethan came to talk to me one night last week, when Bob was in the Fleece. Him and Bob weren’t speaking by then. Ethan asked my advice.’

‘What about?’

‘About himself and Mary Jane. They’d had a big row, he wouldn’t say what about. He said it wouldn’t be so bad if she would at least be more sympathetic to The Cause, as he calls it.’

‘Then he must think you are sympathetic to … the cause.’

‘Me? I haven’t a political bone in my body, but I make a point of never contradicting, and that lets men think you agree, which is always the best policy.’

‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘Please don’t let on to Mary Jane. He shouldn’t have come. I’d be mortified if she knew. Their troubles were between the two of them.’

She stood at the door to see me out. As I left the farmyard, the girl was sweeping the yard, and teasing the dog as it darted for the sweeping brush, wagging its tail, wanting to play.

‘Clever boy. Who found his own way back from them bad children, bad, bad, bad, bad.’

‘Where did the dog go?’ I asked. ‘Did someone take it?’

The girl pretended not to hear me.

It seemed she was happy to talk to an animal, but not to a human being. I followed her lead and spoke to the dog, patting his head. ‘You brought me here didn’t you? What’s your name?’

When the dog didn’t answer, the girl spoke for him.

‘Billy.’

‘And what children whisked you away, Billy?’

‘Harriet and Austin took you,’ the girl told the dog. ‘But you come back.’

Bright sheets and pillowcases billowed in the breeze in the Armstrongs’ back garden. Clearly Mary Jane did not let a possible tragedy interfere with domestic activities. She stood by the door, beating a rag rug, stopping as I came within earshot. ‘Would you believe what those kids of mine have done?’

‘They’re at school aren’t they?’

‘Huh! Set off to school nice as ninepence and never arrived. I had a child bringing me a note from the teacher about their absence. Where do you think they went?’

I hate it when people pose questions when what they mean to do is tell you something, but I played the game. ‘I don’t know where they went, Mary Jane.’

I followed her into the house where she lay the beaten rug down carefully. ‘Up to the farm they went, sneaky as you like, grabbed the farm dog, tied it on a piece of string and let it sniff Ethan’s cap. They’ve been haunting fields and ditches. It makes me look such a fool with the teachers.’

That explained the wandering sheepdog. It must have grown tired of being pressed into service and escaped. ‘Poor kids.’

‘Aye, poor kids indeed.’ She stared at my muddy shoes as I sat myself down in the one good chair. ‘But at least they’re trying.’

In other words, I wasn’t trying. ‘Look, Mary Jane, you haven’t been straightforward with me. You led me to believe that you’d be out of this house, with its well and its hard work, and out of this village where you claim no one likes you, that you’d be out like greased lightning given half a chance. And then I find out that Ethan could have found work in York. And you didn’t tell me he was being encouraged to stand for parliament.’

She gave a dismissive gesture. ‘Oh that.’

‘You say Miss Trimble doesn’t like you, but you don’t say why. Sergeant Sharp doesn’t like you, but you don’t say why. You told me you came to Great Applewick to work for the doctor …’

‘I did at first.’

‘… and now I discover that you worked for Colonel Ledger …’

‘For Mrs Ledger …’

‘Mrs Ledger then. So will you go to the Hall and ask a simple question? Did Colonel Ledger go to the quarry on Saturday?’

The house was spotless, but Mary Jane pounced at a smudge on the fender, rubbing at it with a rag. ‘I don’t have to ask because working there I know all too well that the Colonel wouldn’t have gone to the quarry. As for Sergeant Sharp not liking me, well it’s no mystery. If you want to know, I once laughed at him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I didn’t know any better and I couldn’t help it.’

‘What was funny?’

‘Whenever there’s a village do, he stands up and gives a recitation. If Ethan had warned me that it wasn’t a comic turn I wouldn’t have showed myself up. I couldn’t stop laughing. When I realised he was in earnest, I tried to pretend it was a cough from a tickle in my throat.’

‘He won’t remember, or hold that against you.’

‘Oh he will. He was spouting Horatius.’ She threw out her chest, took a deep breath and began to recite, ‘“Lars Porsena of Closium, by the Nine Gods he swore, that the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more.” It was all his dramatic actions got me going. “East and West and South and North,” flinging out his arms hither and thither.’

In spite of my annoyance with her, she made me laugh. I could picture the solemn moment and Mary Jane getting the giggles.

‘What about Miss Trimble? Did you laugh at her too?’

Mary Jane heaved a sigh. ‘Do you do this to everyone you investigate for? Demand a life story? I mean, say I’d robbed a bank, what would that have to do with Ethan going missing and whether you could find him?’ She picked up a teacloth from the oven door and hung it on a hook. The missal sent by Miss Trimble still lay on the table. She picked it up. ‘I might as well tell you or someone else will. When the girls in her friendship group marry, Miss Trimble gives them a missal bound in white calfskin. She keeps an eye on the calendar and if the date of the first confinement is less than nine months after the wedding, she takes the missal back.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘That tells you what kind of a place Great Applewick is.
I should have gone when Ethan had the chance.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know why. I can’t remember.’ Mary Jane made fists of her hands and growled her frustration.

‘There must be a reason you wouldn’t leave. It was only as far as York, not the other side of the world.’

‘The children,’ she said quietly. ‘I was thinking of the children, if you must know.’ It was not a good answer, but would have to do. For now. She changed tack, becoming exasperated – with me. ‘And I told you Sergeant Sharp would be no help. He thinks I smashed the sundial and drove Ethan away. In his book, Ethan’s a revolutionary and I’m no better than I ought to be.’

We were getting nowhere. Time to move. ‘Come on, Mary Jane. You’re going to show me the way to the Hall. We need to ask Colonel Ledger whether he went to the quarry, or if Ethan went to see him.’

‘Can’t you go on your own?’

‘I need you to show me the way.’ I guessed that the Ledgers may be more willing to answer questions if I turned up with Mary Jane, their former employee, now a damsel in distress.

White clouds scudded across a blue sky. A man with a cart rattled past us across the cobbles. A woman came from the bakery, basket over her arm.

A carter and his mate manhandled a beer barrel to the trap door outside the Fleece. The pub’s worn sign creaked in the breeze, its paint peeling. The sign showed an exceedingly woolly sheep hovering miraculously in mid air, back curved, eyes shut.

The patient brewery carthorse pawed the ground, nostrils flaring a small cloud into the morning air.

When we reached the war memorial, I paused. Mary Jane stood beside me.

For the last couple of hours, I had put out of my mind the thought that Mary Jane was my sister. Now I wondered what the recent years had meant for this family of mine that I knew nothing of.

‘Mary Jane, did any of our family perish in the Great War?’

‘Yes. Our brother Bert, cousin Geoffrey and Uncle Tommy – our dad’s brother.’

‘Uncle Tommy wasn’t too old to enlist?’

‘He was. He went almost right through, thinking he could keep an eye on their Geoffrey and our Bert.’

Mary Jane watched me reading the names on the War Memorial. ‘Your husband’s name will be on one of these, Catherine.’

‘Yes.’

My only disagreement with Gerald’s family had been about their wanting to put his name on their local war memorial, among the list of the dead. Why should he be there? I’d asked. Missing does not have to mean dead. In the end, they had his name inscribed without my permission.

I gave myself a little shake. ‘Come on. Let’s get to the Hall.’

Mary Jane seemed better, once on the move, taking me to the top of Town Street, pointing out the chemical works and the mill.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like for her to come here as a girl and go into service, far from her family. ‘Where is the doctor’s house, where you came to work?’

‘Back there, not far from the vicarage.’

We turned into a lane where Mary Jane came to a halt. ‘You’ll find your way from here, along Back Lane, past the reservoir, and up the track.’

‘Mary Jane, we’re doing this together.’

She made a derisive noise. ‘It’s pointless. The colonel wouldn’t go chasing to the quarry at Ethan’s beck and call. Not a man in his position. You needn’t bring him into this.’

‘You asked me to investigate. Let me say who we need to and needn’t talk to.’

She hesitated, and then fell into step with me. We walked in silence along a narrow lane, between rows of lime trees. The sunlight formed shadowing patterns on Mary Jane as she walked so that the light and shade on her changed with every step she took.

You’re my sister, and I don’t know what to make of you. I feel suspicion and mistrust, as though you have drawn me into a web
.

The substantial house appeared suddenly, behind a low dry-stone wall. Because of its distance from the mill chimney and the smoke, the sandstone was not blackened but held the warmth of its original colour. With its immaculately kept drive and extensive gardens, the dwelling gave off an unmistakeable whiff of abiding privilege.

‘Tell me about the Ledgers, Mary Jane. Colonel Ledger commissioned Ethan to make the sundial. And he owns the quarry …’

‘And quarries all over the place, and mines. His own family were in glassmaking. It’s Mrs Ledger’s side that were the big landowners. They have an interest in the mills as well.’

‘What kind of man is he?’

‘He’s approachable. People like him.’

On either side of the iron gateway crouched a carved lion. I stroked the mane of the one nearest to me. ‘Has the walk given you courage? Shall we beard the Ledger lion in his den?’ She did not answer. ‘You have a simple enough question to ask of Colonel Ledger. He’s your husband’s employer after all.’

‘I can’t. I can’t humiliate myself by asking.’ A bitterness entered her voice. ‘Ethan wouldn’t have gone off without a word to someone. Only it wasn’t me, that’s all. Someone will know, but not the colonel.’

‘What’s Mrs Ledger like?’

‘She’s … exquisite. You’ll never have met anyone like her.’

‘How did you come to work for them, when you started out by working for the doctor and his wife?’

‘Mrs Ledger took a fancy to me when I came up here to fetch medicines. She asked the doctor could she have me. Well, I was only fifteen and cock-a-hoop to be chosen. I worked here until I married.’ She seemed on the verge of tears, as if being here brought back some memory she would rather forget. ‘When I left, Mrs Ledger thought I would marry Bob Conroy and live at the farm. Her family and his have a long connection. But I married Ethan, and I know she was disappointed. And then last week, Ethan tried to make the quarrymen go on strike because of something happening in another mine. And I felt sorry for those people in the mine having their wages cut, and Ethan took donations. Why wasn’t that enough? Ethan was brass faced. He’d lost the battle, he said, but he’d win the war. I feel bad about everything. Mrs Ledger will look at me and she won’t say anything, but she’ll think I married the wrong man. And I didn’t, Kate. I love Ethan.’