Murder in the Afternoon (13 page)

Austin claimed to have heard a goblin hiding behind the hut. A real aunt would know whether Austin’s imagination teemed with scary bogeymen, or whether he caught the sound of someone who did not want to be seen or heard – a killer, lurking behind the masons’ shed.

Surely that could not have been Mary Jane? She would not have let her own children find their father’s body. That would be unnatural.

How long I sat there, I did not know. There was some vague thought at the back of my mind that the vicar would wish to speak to the person who found his sister’s body. I heard the noise of the children, coming out of school. One or two made a shortcut through the churchyard, paying me no heed.

And then someone spoke. Clearly, I heard the name. Ethan Armstrong.

Where had the voice come from? Had I conjured the name?

I walked the path between the graves, looking not at the old stones, but at the new. Ethan Armstrong, stone mason, must have carved some of these names. Perhaps Raymond, Ethan’s apprentice, would carve his master’s name, if ever Ethan’s body was found.

And then I saw him, bending over a grave, rocking back and forth, muttering to himself. Had I found Ethan Armstrong? My own voice sounded strange as I spoke to him.

The man turned to look at me. It was not the man whose
photograph Mary Jane had shown me. He did not look embarrassed, but seemed unaware of his rocking and his muttering. He stared at me for a moment, as though trying to work out what country was this, what person accosted him.

Then he stepped back, staring at me, suddenly realising the strange impression he created. A gaunt, wiry man with long arms, he dipped his head to one side and raised his hands in a gesture of harmlessness, or surrender. With some effort, he smiled, showing even teeth near enough to white. The broad forehead and heavy brow gave him a sad look. He had the fresh-faced ruddy skin of a country man, his eyes the colour of stone.

‘My wife, Georgina, she said to look out for you. You must be Mrs Shackleton.’

‘Yes. Mr Conroy?’

‘Bob. Excuse the muttering. I was talking to my brother.’ He nodded at the grave. ‘He was killed in the quarry last year.’

‘I heard you speak Ethan’s name. You were telling your brother about him?’

‘Yes,’ Bob Conroy said softly. ‘My brother Simon was the true farmer, a shepherd. He lost his life in the quarry, rescuing a lost lamb. This business with Ethan brought it all back.’ He stepped a little to one side, allowing me to join him.

I read the inscription, and the date of Simon’s death, just a year, a month and a day ago.

Bob watched me, and then said, ‘Ethan carved a text on the back of the stone as well. Read that.’

He waited. I stepped from the path and read the inscription on the reverse of the headstone.

He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber; he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

These lines from the Gospel of St John struck a wrong note. They were not the lines I would have chosen for a shepherd who died trying to save a lamb.

I bowed my head to the gravestone, with the feeling that I was being introduced to the dead man when it would be more usual to make the acquaintance of the living. ‘Ethan carved this?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re Ethan’s good friend I believe?’

He jutted his chin forward in an almost aggressive way. ‘Yes. Friend and comrade. We were at school together. We fought together. Harriet has to have been wrong. He’ll turn up.’

The forced optimism in his voice did not light his eyes or change his serious expression.

Perhaps it was the breeze through the leaves of the willow tree, or realising how outnumbered we are by the dead. A sense of foreboding sent a shiver through me.

‘I’ve written letters,’ Bob said, ‘to our comrades, to ask whether Ethan has been in touch with them. I’ve posted half a dozen letters today. I can’t understand that he would leave without a word.’

‘When you say you’ve written to comrades, do you mean wartime comrades?’

‘I mean his friends in the trade union and labour movement. And yes, some of them served in our regiment.’

I remembered the amount of paperwork in Ethan’s chest, the painstaking minutes of meetings in Ethan’s writing and in another hand, perhaps Bob Conroy’s. Letter
writing would give Bob something to do, and he would know all the people Ethan may have been in touch with.

‘I’m glad you’re doing that, Mr Conroy. So you and Ethan are fellow revolutionaries?’

He laughed gently. ‘Ethan’s a visionary, but he has no illusions. Those who fear we’re on the eve of a revolution overestimate us. There are too many powerful people who’ll fight tooth and nail to keep things as they are.’

‘Then Ethan must have enemies?’

‘We’re not important enough for that, though Ethan would think differently.’

I looked again at the inscription on the reverse of the shepherd’s gravestone. ‘You said Ethan carved this?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s …’

‘Go on.’ His head jutted, like a tortoise peeping from its shell. ‘Tell me what
you
think he meant by it.’

When I did not answer straightaway, he sighed, as if reluctant to continue, as if the man in the grave may have ears that flapped. ‘Shall we sit down somewhere Mrs Shackleton?’

We walked the path, beyond the older graves and the willow tree until we came to the seat I had vacated not so long before.

‘Will this do?’

Conroy sat with his back to the tree, like some latter-day Green Man who might find his way into the trunk and never be seen again.

‘So tell me, Mr Conroy, why did Ethan carve those cryptic lines from scripture?’

‘Our farm is adjacent to Ledgers’ land. We have the freehold. Last spring, a child brought word to say that one of the lambs had lost its way and was by the quarry. It was
a Sunday you see so there was no man at work to pick it up and bring it home. I don’t know exactly how it happened. But Simon went alone to save the lamb. Next thing I heard, he lay dead in the quarry bottom.’ He sighed. ‘I carried him home myself.’

His large hands cradled his kneecaps, as though he were a boy who had fallen and grazed himself and was trying to make it better. He rocked slightly.

I thought he had forgotten that he intended to explain the inscription, but after a long time, he said, ‘Those words that Ethan carved, “He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber”, he meant Colonel Ledger.’

‘Colonel Ledger? Why?’

‘The colonel wanted to buy our farm. Ethan thought that Ledger was behind Simon’s death. Oh he didn’t say that to me. He didn’t have to. We each knew what the other was thinking right enough. Ethan believed that Ledger wanted Simon out of the way. Without him, he thought I’d sell. He made an offer while Simon was alive, and he made another, the week after Simon was buried.’

‘Why would Colonel Ledger want your farm?’

‘Because the existing quarry is near exhausted. The colonel sent his engineer across one day to our far meadow. Simon caught him taking samples. There’s a rich seam – a millstone grit that’s high quality. We’re near the railway line. He has the labour force here. As long as Simon was in this world, there’d be no question of selling up. With Simon gone, Ledger counted that I would give up the land. I almost did. Hadn’t the heart for going on. But Ethan encouraged me. He said to hold fast. What if I had a son, he said, and then I would be sorry to have lost the farm.’

‘But your brother’s death was an accident. He’d gone to find a lamb that had strayed.’

‘Yes. And that’s what I think. But Ethan has a mind to see beyond to other motives, and sometimes he’s right. We never found out what child brought the message.’

‘Did he think the colonel pushed Simon to his death?’

‘Not the colonel himself, but he could have made his wishes known. It wasn’t Ledger made us the offer directly, it was his man.’

‘But you didn’t sell then.’

‘Ethan persuaded me not to. He helped me whenever he could. But it was no use. We had a bad winter, sick animals, the price of feed has been more than I could stand. A week ago yesterday, I told Ethan that I’d accepted the colonel’s offer’

We sat in silence. At a nearby grave an old woman set down a mat and knelt. She began, in an increasingly loud and complaining voice, to tell the occupant of the grave about the door coming off the kitchen cupboard.

After his outpouring of emotion and suspicion regarding his brother’s death, Conroy placed his palms on the bench and seemed to be gathering his composure.

I risked a question. ‘Mr Conroy, perhaps you can help with something that puzzles me.’

‘What is it?’

I handed him the cutting.

A well provided and pleasant lady seeks well provided amiable gentleman with a view to joining lives and fortunes.

Box No. 49

‘Does this mean anything to you?’

He scanned it, and then blushed. ‘I hope Mary Jane
doesn’t think Ethan would chase after another woman.’

‘She didn’t know what to think.’

Conroy shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’ He stood. ‘I have to get back to work.’

We walked together through the churchyard. As we reached the lych gate, I tried once more. ‘Do you know why Mary Jane wouldn’t leave Great Applewick last year, when Ethan could have got work on the Minster?’

He hesitated. ‘Don’t think ill of Mary Jane. You see, there’s more to it.’

For a moment, he looked as if he regretted his words. ‘She … you see … well, they have two bairns buried in the chapel graveyard. Perhaps that’s what keeps Mary Jane tied to this place.’

‘I didn’t know,’ I said simply.

‘I don’t think she likes to talk about it. Shall I show you?’

We crossed the street to the rival place of worship and walked beyond the chapel to where the neat gravestones stood row on row. It was a small headstone. Two children, born after Harriet, had died within a month of each other, at ages three and two; one named after his father, and one named after me.

‘They caught the whooping cough,’ he said simply. ‘Mary Jane was beside herself with grief.’

He left me standing there. Sometimes it seems the world is just one great big sphere of loss, spinning fast, trying to topple us all over the edge.

Slowly, I walked back towards the cottage. It struck me that there was a great deal Mary Jane did not like to talk about.

As I turned the bend, a few yards from the cottage, the children dawdled towards me along the lane. ‘Are you off somewhere?’

Austin said, in a sulky voice, ‘I don’t want to go again.’

Harriet sighed. ‘We have to apologise for taking Billy and making him search for Dad.’

‘Billy?’

‘The sheepdog.’

‘Did you cover much ground?’

Harriet shook her head. ‘Billy didn’t want to do it. He ran off.’

‘Didn’t go to the moor,’ Austin chipped in.

‘The moor?’

‘That’s where we would have gone to search,’ Harriet said quietly. ‘That’s where we go sometimes.’

Austin looked hopeful. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and back again. I waited to hear what he would have to say.

‘We can go in your motorcar.’

‘Another time. I have to talk to your mam.’

‘Where do motorcars go?’ he asked.

‘Motorcars can go anywhere.’

Harriet tugged at his sleeve. ‘Come on!’

‘It was clever of you, Harriet, to think of giving Billy your dad’s cap to sniff, and to search.’

She didn’t answer. They set off walking, slowly, as though whatever energy they had for the day was used up this morning, trying to turn a sheepdog into a bloodhound.

I knocked and opened the cottage door. The room sparkled, neat, tidy and spotlessly clean. While I had dropped everything to rush to Mary Jane’s aid, she played the good housewife.

As if she read my thoughts, she said, ‘If Ethan comes back, I want him to see everything’s as it should be. I don’t want him to think he can upset me. I won’t go to pieces because he takes it into his head to disappear.’ She waved at the chair by the fire. ‘Better sit down and tell me how you got on.’

I flopped into the chair.

‘You mucked up your shoes again.’ She sat on a buffet and unlaced my shoes. ‘You can’t go round looking like you’ve tramped across Hawksworth Moor. I’ll polish them for you.’

I felt too done in to argue, and did not know where to start. I should begin by telling her about Miss Trimble, but had not taken it in myself yet.

‘Did you go out this afternoon?’ I asked.

‘No. Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘I’ve known you for eleven hours and you don’t just wonder. What’s happened?’