Murder in the Afternoon (17 page)

She had already gone through the barrier when he arrived. He spotted her, on platform one.

‘Is number one the platform for the Leeds train?’ Sykes asked at the ticket desk. He guessed she may be going there to connect with another train.

‘Aye. Train in three minutes.’

Sykes bought a ticket. He wheeled his bike through. Now there would be the complication of putting his bike in the luggage van and having to lose sight of her. Couldn’t be helped. He admired Mary Jane’s timing.

The train steamed in. An elderly man opened a carriage door for her. She nodded an acknowledgement and stepped elegantly into the train, with a smooth unhurried movement.

The muscles in Sykes’s arms ached as he manoeuvred the bike into the luggage van.

It was a relief to stand upright.

The guard blew his whistle. The train slowly left the station. Its sound and movement lulled Sykes into a reverie. But when it stopped, he peered out – just in case.

She wasn’t going to Leeds. This was Horsforth. She was getting off. Confound the woman. Sykes leaped into action, bumping into the conductor as he grabbed his bicycle, apologising, saying this was an emergency, thrusting the ticket under the conductor’s nose, pushing his way out of the carriage and onto the platform.

He need not have worried. Mary Jane strolled leisurely from the station. Sykes followed, wheeling his bike through the barrier, feeling foolish. He could have taken the train to Horsforth this morning. It would have shortened his ride considerably. The train did not go from Great Applewick to Headingley, but it did go to and from Horsforth.

Mary Jane left the station, like an actress making an entrance. She strode in a stately fashion, as though a brass band marched behind her.

By the kerb outside the station, Sykes paused, as if resting a moment, and checked his pockets.

Mary Jane stood still and looked about her. From further down the road, a man climbed out of a Wolseley. He wore a good, dark suit. A cashmere coat was draped over his shoulders. He walked with an easy, confident stride. She went to meet him. All he did was touch her hand but there was something in the touch, in the way they fell into step and turned together. They would not notice him even if their backs were not turned to him, so absorbed were they in each other. The man helped her into the car, in a slow and deliberate manner.

The motor pulled away from the kerb.

Sykes forgot his saddle soreness and began to pedal, and pedal, and pedal. He freewheeled downhill, keeping the motor in sight, until it drew up outside an inn. He would kick himself if this turned out to be some wild goose chase and the woman was not Mary Jane Armstrong. What if he had watched the wrong cottage? No. Dismiss that thought. It was her all right.

The man stepped out of the car. He opened the door and offered his hand to the woman. Head erect, as if she stepped from fancy motors every day of the week, she
glided onto the pavement. Together, they entered the inn, going not in the front door, but round the side.

Sykes cycled closer, wheeled his bike to the back of the inn and padlocked it to a railing. No assignment was worth the loss of Thomas’s bicycle. He unfastened his traveller’s attaché case from the carrier. Then he remembered to remove his bicycle clips.

The polished oak door swung open into a vestibule with inner doors on either side, half glass panelled. To his left, picked out in dark green leaded lights, were the words
TAP ROOM,
and to the right,
SNUG.
He decided on the snug with the guess that from there he would have a view across the bar into the
LOUNGE.

A waiter in long white apron stood behind the counter, polishing a glass with great concentration. He wore his hair in the style of Rudolph Valentino, darkened with pomade and slicked back. His small moustache was equally well pomaded. He turned to face Sykes, with a cheery, ‘What can I get you, gov?’

‘Do you have food on?’

‘We do. Pie and peas.’

‘Then I’ll have plate of pie and peas and a pint of your house bitter.’

‘Good choice, sir.’

The waiter disappeared. Sykes guessed he had gone to the kitchen to place the pie and peas order. While he was gone, Sykes looked across the bar into the lounge. No sign of the car driver and the lady.

Sykes found his way through the lounge, out to the back where a pair of lavatories sported newly painted doors that neither reached the lintel of the doorway nor the ground. Sykes went inside. Neatly cut squares of newspaper hung on a nail. He availed himself of the facilities,
then returned to the snug. His pint sat on the table, along with a knife and fork.

Through the window, he saw the motor, gleaming in the afternoon sun. There would be some other dining room, a function room upstairs, perhaps a private room. This couple did not wish to be seen together in public.

Sykes took a long drink of the foaming pint, and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘Here you are, sir.’ The waiter balanced the plate on the palm of his hand. The sharply folded starched white teacloth over the waiter’s arm came perilously close to Sykes’s left eye.

What will they rush me for this, Sykes asked himself. You were always charged well for clean aprons and snowy white cloths.

‘Thank you.’ Steam and a succulent odour of gravy rose from the pie. ‘Looks good.’

Well, hang it. Whatever the cost, he deserved this after his morning’s exertions, for effort if not for results.

The waiter nodded at the attaché case. ‘Traveller are you?’

‘After a fashion. Hosiery and such like.’

‘Ladies’ stockings?’ The Rudolph Valentino waxwork waiter looked suitably impressed.

‘Some,’ said Sykes. ‘I’ll open the case for you after I’ve had my dinner, if you like.’

The waiter shook his head sadly. ‘Out of my reach I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘You never know,’ Sykes said cheerily, cutting into the pie.

‘Enjoy it.’

‘I intend to.’

Moments later, the waiter was back, bringing a second pint. ‘On the house.’

‘Cheers!’ said Sykes, glumly wondering if this was meant to cost him a pair of stockings. If so, he should have his stockings-worth. He nodded through the window. ‘That’s a fine motor.’

‘It is.’

‘Belongs to the landlord?’

‘No. He hasn’t given up the horses yet. That’s the colonel’s.’

‘Colonel Ledger?’ Sykes stabbed a guess.

‘Aye. You know him?’

‘Know of him that’s all. I suppose everyone round here does. Do you think he’ll be interested in a pair of stockings?’

The waiter smiled. ‘He could well be, but it’ll be more than my life’s worth to bring it up. Mind you, he’s an approachable chap. You can talk to him, not like his late father.’

He retreated behind the bar, polished a glass, and then disappeared.

Sykes ate slowly, savouring the pie. Not in every job would there be the good excuse to sit in an inn beyond your means and enjoy a leisurely dinner. He laid down the knife and fork, but left some beer at the bottom of his glass. How long could he sit here without looking like a man who had nothing to do? There was not even the excuse of keeping out of the rain. It was a fine day out there.

Well, he would risk it. He took out his notebook. Travellers had to keep a note of their stock after all, and plan visits. Here would be as good a place as any to loiter over his paperwork.

The waiter appeared again behind the bar. ‘Anything else, sir?’

‘No. But I’ll pay for what I’ve had.’ Sykes pushed the pencil behind his ear.

He walked across to the bar, carrying his plate with him.

‘Thanks,’ the waiter said.

Sykes paid and went back to his seat. As an afterthought, he opened the attaché case and took out a pair of stockings. ‘My compliments.’

‘That’s very swell of you,’ the waiter said. ‘I wasn’t angling for …’

‘I know you weren’t. But the food was good, the ale superb, and you gave me a free pint. What more could a man want?’

Except, in future, a little more information. Always good to have someone to come back to.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ The waiter went to answer a bell.

Sykes picked up his case. It would look odd to stay here much longer. Besides, the place would be shutting soon.

In the yard, he put on his bicycle clips and unlocked the bike slowly. He re-fastened the attaché case to the carrier, and snailed his bike along the yard.

The man and woman came through the side door and walked to the motor. They were not touching. There was about a foot of space between them. Sykes wished he could read that space, and work out what it meant.

Courteously, the man extended his hand to help her into the car. She seemed to demur and would have walked away, but he insisted. She climbed in, a little awkwardly, Sykes thought.

He expected the car to turn and climb the hill in the direction it had come, but it went down, and so he followed.

The man drove with one hand on the wheel, and the other on the woman’s shoulder.

By the time Sykes reached the bottom of the hill, the car was drawing away. The woman stood on the other side of the road, at the tram stop that would take her back to Great Applewick.

‘A late lunch,’ Dad had agreed.

It was already the middle of the afternoon; a very late lunch indeed. And I was not sure there would be enough fuel in the tank for me to reach Wakefield.

The Jowett and I powered along familiar routes through the smoky city, past warehouses, mills and engineering works. Grime darkened my motoring goggles. Wiping them with gloved fingers did not help much. And then the world opened into countryside, fields, pit shafts, and ramshackle cottages.

At Newton Hill, I stopped for fuel. As I climbed from the car, a stocky red-haired attendant appeared from a hut. He wore dark blue overalls and brought the reassuringly powerful smell of engine oil in his wake. ‘Come far have you?’

‘Just from Leeds. Would you top up the spare can, too, please?’

I was glad to stretch my legs and shake off the dust. My day had started with a vividly disturbing dream in the early hours. A ghostly Miss Trimble stood beside the bench in the churchyard, wearing a moleskin-coloured dress, her head half turned towards me. On either end of the bench sat two
spectres coated in white quarry dust, all three fighting for attention, all speaking at once. What did the dead say?

Miss Trimble murmured, ‘The Ladies’ Friendship Group will go to bits without me …’

The dead shepherd said, ‘My dog Billy, he listens for my footsteps.’

Ethan’s words vanished before I caught them.

‘Off into Wakefield, miss?’ the attendant called to me.

‘Yes. Being taken to lunch by my father.’

‘All right for some!’ He whistled as he filled the tank.

The sun shone, and made the world a more cheerful place, for those not pestered by ghosts from the past.

All these years, I had chosen not to think about being adopted, pushed it to the back of my mind. Now, thanks to Mary Jane, the information exploded, and kept on exploding.

Every family is complicated in a different way. I can entirely hold onto the whole lineage of my adoptive mother’s family. The first baron earned ennoblement as a thank you for his niftiness with a pen on behalf of Elizabeth I. Mother drew it all out for me on a sheet of foolscap when I was five. She let me crayon the squares that denoted generations. She provided me with an atlas so that I could pinpoint her ancestors’ land-grabs.

The attendant finished filling the tank. He began to wash flies and dirt from the windscreen. ‘Don’t know how you saw through this, miss.’

‘You’re doing a grand job,’ I said. But my thoughts were elsewhere.

Dad’s family is military. He was the first to find his way into the police force. One entire shelf of the family china cabinet holds polished medals, won in campaigns dating back to the late seventeen hundreds.

My husband Gerald’s family also has certain features that allow me to get the hang of them. They crossed the border from England to Scotland and back again. When I think of the Shackleton family, my image is of a kilt-wearing exodus from Edinburgh of clever women and medical men.

Where do I fit into any of this remarkable history?

Nowhere. If we go by blood, I have as much notion of family history as the sparrow pecking at something by the petrol pump.

When I was about seven, Mother told me that I was adopted, and tried to explain what it meant. After the explanation, she took a quarto sheet and said did I want to have it drawn? I said no, and scribbled on the sheet.

By turning up unannounced, Mary Jane had forced me to look at a bloody great fault line running through my own history. My blood ties were to Mrs Whitaker, Barbara May, and the lost brother, cousin and uncle who died in the Great War.

‘All done,’ the attendant said.

I settled my bill and gave him a tip for his cheerfulness. He was a man who loved his work.

As I drove away, I could not shake off the image that Mary Jane had planted in my mind: an infant being carried from a Wakefield house in the crook of my father’s arm.