Murder in the Afternoon (20 page)

White Swan Yard, second door on the right.

Back through Cross Square, past Bread Street and across Westgate, and there it was: White Swan Yard. I stepped through the opening and into the courtyard. Only a look, that’s all. A look at the place.

A slightly sour smell of drains and cabbage mingled with the hoppy, beery aroma from the White Swan. A line of washing hung across the top end of the yard, a greyish sheet, a petticoat and a pair of drawers. Halfway up the yard, a woman in a long black dress and white pinafore scrubbed a windowsill. An enamel bucket on the ground beside her was surrounded by splashes of water. A contented dog lay on the flags, lazily scratching its ear.

No strangers ever came into this yard, I guessed. They would have no reason to do so.

I glanced at the second house on the right. A white curtain covered the lower window pane, and a partly unrolled paper blind shaded the upper part. Step and windowsill were scoured clean. Blue curtains hung at the upstairs window. The door was painted brown.

The door of the first house opened. Small children tumbled out.

Was she there, in the second house, the woman who had given birth to me and had given me up? If I stood here long enough, would some unknown brother come home for his tea, or did she live alone? Perhaps she worked for her living, or looked after grandchildren. I had no idea. There would be one easy way to find out. All I had to do was knock on the door.

But I didn’t want to know. This was enough. Just to look. My hand made a fist, but not so that my knuckles would rap on the panel of that door. I left the yard and walked up and down the street, crossed and re-crossed the road, and then came back into White Swan Yard, to the second house on the right.

Eleven kids Mr and Mrs Whitaker produced, and for all I know several misses in between. Who did Mrs Whitaker give away? Me. Logic and sense told me that it was
nothing to do with the look of me, the touch of me, the smell of me, and yet how could she do it? Like an unwanted kitten, I was snatched and despatched.

My fist clenched, ready to land a knuckle punch on the door. But I did not need any more complications in my life. Mary Jane had butted in and got in the way of other plans.

Tomorrow I would visit the insurance offices, take on an assignment, I hoped. I would write a letter to my lover, arrange to meet him again soon. On visiting day, I would go to Catterick Hospital to … I did not let myself fully acknowledge that I would look for Gerald among men who had lost memories, suffered such injuries that they would forever desire to turn away from the world. Some smaller hospitals in various parts of the country had finally closed their doors, men moved to Catterick. It was an outside chance, but all the same …

The brown door of the second house on the right in White Swan Yard took on a life of its own. Every other feature in the courtyard faded to nothingness. There was just me, and that door.

If there were voices indoors, would I hear by inching nearer? Perhaps Mary Jane had taken my advice and even now was telling her mother all her troubles, including reporting the uselessness of that sister who was given up. They’d done the right thing, getting shut of her.

No sound.

What if she dies tonight, this woman who gave birth to me? Would it matter that I never saw her? I could choose not to knock. All I had to do was leave the yard, turn right, walk back to my motor, and drive home.

Dad was right. Let the police help Mary Jane. If ever a matter was a police matter, this was it. I’d said so from
the beginning. When the dust settled, then I might come back here, and knock on the door.

Besides, I should tell my real mother first, the woman who brought me up, the one who nursed me better when I was poorly. The one who always moans that no one but me will go to the pictures with her. It’s not true of course, but she says it to bring me back.

The sleepy dog on the pavement became bored with staring at me and shut its eyes.

I knocked on the door.

And the window was so close; I could look through it, across the gap between the curtain and the blind. There she was, sitting in a chair by the hearth. Some leisure then, she enjoys a sit down, peace and quiet.

She pushed herself up from the chair, a gaunt, grey-haired woman in a long dark skirt, a navy tabard over a long-sleeved jumper. I glanced away so that she would not see me looking. And then the door opened.

We stared at each other for a moment. Her skin under her high cheek bones was as lined as the tram terminus, criss-crossed with fine wrinkles. Her eyes narrowed, as if she thought she ought to recognise me.

‘Mrs Whitaker?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Kate Shackleton. You may know me if I say Catherine Hood.’

Her hand went to her heart. What an idiot I am. She could drop dead from shock and it would be my fault.

At the second house on the right in White Swan Yard, a woman dropped dead from shock today when confronted with her long lost daughter. A person close to the family said …

Sorry, Mary Jane. I didn’t manage to find your missing husband, but gave your mother a nice enough heart attack. Perhaps when Ethan’s body turns up you could arrange a double funeral.

But she did not drop dead. Instead, she opened the door wider.

‘You better come in.’

As she spoke, she glanced at the mantelpiece as though there might be a clock, to mark the precise moment of the infant Catherine’s return. There wasn’t.

She did not blink or look in the least surprised but said in a conversational way, as though picking up a topic she had just dropped, ‘I thought for a minute I was looking at my aunt Phoebe. You take after her.’

‘I was just passing,’ I said. ‘I won’t keep you.’

No more than you kept me
.

I glanced around the house. There were few comforts. Apart from the chair she sat in, only a couple of buffets and a table.

She saw me looking. ‘You were well off out of it, lass.’

I hadn’t meant it to come out in the way it did. ‘You had eleven children? Here?’

‘Ten, without you. Will you sit down?’

I saw that she meant me to take the chair, but I pulled a buffet from the side of the table and sat on that.

She returned to her chair. ‘You were just passing?’

Thirty-two years it had taken me to “just pass”.

‘I met Dad for a bite to eat in Websters.’

‘Very nice.’

‘I asked him about you. I thought it was about time we at least said hello. I hope that’s all right.’

‘It’ll be all the same if it’s not. You’ve said it now.’ She looked at me from top to toe, my hat, coat, stockings and shoes.
‘Did he tell you how it came about that you were taken to live with them?’

‘Yes.’ She did not use the word adopted. ‘You were widowed.’

She sighed. ‘Aye, that was it. And I’m sorry you was widowed by the war. Our Barbara May told me.’

‘Barbara May seems to know quite a lot about me.’

She nodded with pride at Barbara May’s extensive knowledge. ‘There’s always one knits the family together, remembers birthdays, marriages, deaths, the bairns’ names. In our family it’s Barbara May. She runs rings round us all. She found out where you live. She said she’d take me up there to see, and we could look through the window if you weren’t in. I said no. But now you’re here. Is it down to Barbara May that you’ve come?’

‘No. It’s because of Mary Jane.’

‘Mary Jane?’ She drew back her head, pulling her chin into her neck, as if a little more space was needed to take in this piece of unlikely information.

‘She came to see me.’

‘Did she now? Then she must be in bother. She never goes to see no one unless she needs summat. What’s up?’

I wished now I had kept Mary Jane out of it. I wished now I had left this visit to another day. ‘You don’t see much of her and the children then?’

‘No. Mind, Ethan calls in. He’s a good lad. If he’s at one of his meetings roundabout, he makes a point of coming in, and never empty handed. Allus a couple of eggs, or a corner of ham, or a pound of flour. Once he brought me a chicken.’ She chuckled at this extravagance. ‘By, it took some plucking.’

I smiled, and stood to go. ‘I’ll call and see you again another time, if that’s all right.’

‘If you like. If you’ve a mind to.’

‘Well, goodbye.’

What should I do? Shake her hand, kiss her cheek, or touch her hair? I did nothing. As I stood by the door, she put her hand on my arm.

‘What’s up with Mary Jane that she came mithering you?’

There was no point in lying. She would find out soon enough.

‘Ethan’s gone. She hasn’t seen him since Saturday.’

She reached round me and unhooked a coat from the back of the door. ‘I better go to her.’

‘No really, I’m sure …’

‘I’m the one she should have come to. Will you take me there? I know you’ve got a motor car. It’s blue.’

Barbara May must have told her.

‘Pass that shopping basket, eh?’

I picked up a shopping basket from the side of the table.

‘We can call and get one or two items, since she won’t be expecting us – me at any rate.’

I could say no. I should say no. What the hell was I doing here?

We were outside. She was locking the door and letting the key on its string fall back through the letter box.

The dog looked up. It hauled its old body from the pavement and stood wagging its tail.

As we left the yard, the dog trotted behind us.

‘That dog’s following us.’

‘Oh aye. Benjie’s my dog. He won’t be left behind.’

At the greengrocer’s, and the butcher’s, Mrs Whitaker asked for the shopping to be put on the slate, but I paid. Why did I have the feeling I would go on paying, and not entirely in cash?

*

She sat ramrod straight for the entire journey, motoring blanket round her shoulders, the large dog in her lap, only its head peering out from the blanket. Sometimes it looked with a worried gaze as we passed through quiet lanes, occasionally barking at nothing. When we were in the noise and smoke of the city, it relaxed and shut its eyes.

This is the best thing I could do, I told myself. Now Mary Jane will have someone who really is family to be with her, and the police to investigate Ethan’s disappearance. I can bow out.

It was turning dark when we reached Great Applewick. I followed the familiar road to Mary Jane’s cottage. The curtains in the downstairs room were drawn back, the blind up. A candle burned brightly on the window sill, as if to beckon Ethan home.

Mrs Whitaker opened the blanket and out jumped Benjie. The dog ran to the door of the cottage as though he knew all along this was our destination.

I helped Mrs Whitaker from the car and we walked together to the door of the cottage. She opened it and walked straight in. The children were in their pyjamas. Mary Jane sat at the table, drinking tea and smoking a cigarette.

She looked up in surprise. ‘Hello, Mam. Didn’t expect you.’

‘When were you going to tell me?’ Mrs Whitaker asked, unbuttoning her coat.

‘Grandma!’ Harriet ran to Mrs Whitaker who grabbed her and kissed her.

The dog had been relieving himself against the apple tree. He came rushing in. The room grew smaller.

I hovered in the doorway.

Mary Jane looked at me accusingly. ‘You said you wouldn’t come today.’

‘I can’t do any more, Mary Jane. The West Riding Constabulary are looking into Ethan’s disappearance. It’s out of my hands. When I’ve something to tell you, or there’s something I can do, I shall be here.’

Harriet was all ears. Mary Jane stood up and came outside with me, shutting the door behind her, saying, ‘Little pigs have big ears.’ When we were out of earshot, she said, ‘Nothing? Nothing?’

‘I haven’t abandoned the case.’

‘The case? So I’m a case?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Mam’ll love this. Turning up here, bossing us all around. That stinking dog of hers. Have you smelled its breath?’

‘The children like the dog. It’ll divert them.’

‘Oh it’ll do that. They’ll have it on a string taking it round the village.’ She drew on her cigarette, the tab so small it must have burned her nicotine-stained fingers. ‘Thanks for nothing.’

I opened the door and called goodnight to Mrs Whitaker and the children. Mary Jane went inside, shutting me out.

Just as I climbed in the motor, Harriet ran across, barefoot, holding something. ‘Raymond brought this for you. It’s pieces of slate from the sundial.’

She handed me a cloth knotted at its four corners, with something hard inside. These would be the flowers that Ethan had carved to disguise the flaw in the slate. If there were four, he had completed it. If three or less, he had been interrupted before the work was finished.

One more piece for the jigsaw, or perhaps not. I put the package on the seat beside me.