Murder in the Afternoon (23 page)

After several moments, Mr Duffield replaced the receiver with a sigh. ‘No luck I’m afraid. The advertiser mailed the copy, including postal order payment and the request that replies be sent to a Leeds post office box number.’

‘Isn’t that a little unusual? Wouldn’t your newspaper usually require a postal address?’

‘Not when something is paid in advance. And of course, in a matter like this, there is some delicacy involved on the part of the advertiser. My young friend remarked that it was very brave of the lady to make her requirements known.’ He rocked back and forth in his chair, hooking thumbs under the lapels of his coat.

I gazed at him steadily, listening to the devious ticktock of my own thoughts. After all, the worst he could say was no.

‘Mr Duffield, might I ask one more favour?’

‘What is that, Mrs Shackleton?’

‘Help me compose a reply to this well provided lady. I think there will be only one way to discover who she is, and that is to invite her to meet a well provided gentleman.’

Mr Duffield summoned his clerk to man the desk, while he and I retreated to an old oak table in the corner of the room where dust danced in the single shaft of foggy light from the high window.

After several false starts, we produced a fair copy of a letter to be addressed to a fair lady.

My dear lady

I am a childless widower of more than middle years, in not unsound health, and with, I believe, some good years ahead of me. In temper I am equable, in person clean living and sober.

Since the death of my wife, I shut up our country dwelling and now keep a floor in a respectable house where my landlady provides meals. Do not think this a sign of impoverishment, only that I choose not to deal with the vagaries of housekeepers.

Import and export occupied my youth. I now enjoy an income of one thousand guineas a year, which allows capital to remain untouched. My family own a flat in Mayfair, London, and occasionally I visit the capital.

I should relish the prospect of a friendship, or more, with a respectable lady whose means need not match my own (and if they did would be untouched by me). I have no strong objection to children as long as they be of quiet temperament.

Will you do me the honour of meeting me? I shall book a
table for lunch at the Griffin, Boar Lane, Leeds for noon this coming Sunday. Excuse presumptuousness and please feel at liberty to alter this arrangement if it does not suit.

After some discussion regarding the complimentary close and signature, Mr Duffield said that the lady would want to meet Mr Right, and a rock of a man. He plumped for P L Wright, Peter Wright. We could not decide what the L stood for but agreed it gave the moniker a flow, suggesting light, love and filthy lucre. He signed,

Yours sincerely

P L Wright

Mr Duffield frowned. ‘What about an inside address? I prefer not to give my own.’

‘Since the lady advertises in the Wakefield paper, a Wakefield address would be best. I have just the one.’

Mr Duffield agreed to write the letter in his best gentleman’s hand. For my part, I would speak to Mother and ask her to keep a close eye on the post, to ensure no letter was returned to sender, addressee unknown.

We completed the task and agreed that it would not be long before discovering whether our advertiser was a flesh and blood creature or a secret code.

‘We have a delivery going to Wakefield this morning. I shall ensure that my letter is despatched from the newspaper box office to the lady’s post office box by this afternoon.’

When I arrived home and let myself in, the telephone was ringing. Mrs Sugden answered.

‘One moment please.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered loudly. ‘It is a chief inspector from New Scotland Yard.’

‘Chief inspector?’

‘That is how the operator announced him.’

‘Thank you.’ I took the receiver from her. ‘Hello. Mrs Shackleton speaking.’

‘Kate.’

‘Marcus?’

‘Yes.’

‘Only Mrs Sugden thought the operator said chief inspector.’

‘Ah. I was going to tell you about that.’

‘You’ve been promoted?’

‘Yes.’

‘Congratulations. Wasn’t that rather sudden?’

‘It was in the air,’ he said modestly.

First I knew that promotions dropped from the air. He was better at keeping things to himself than I had realised.

So Marcus has been promoted. More money. The
requirement for a wife? Those thoughts raced through my mind before anything to do with investigations occurred to me.

‘I’m in your neck of the woods again, sooner than expected.’

Even the construction of his sentence left me unclear. Was he here now, or to be expected? I did not ask that.

‘Business or pleasure?’

He hesitated. Why did the man telephone to me if he planned to say nothing?

‘There’s a terrible crackle on the line, Kate.’

I tried again. ‘May I ask what area you are visiting?’

He said, cautiously, ‘It’s a little to the north and west of you.’

‘Marcus, is this a geography test?’

He laughed. ‘I hope we may meet up, and I didn’t want to spring it on you at a moment’s notice.’

Another brief exchange led me to gather that he would be basing himself at Otley police station, the headquarters for Great Applewick. I replaced the telephone in the cradle. Unless something dire had happened in Otley, events in Great Applewick merited the personal attention of the man Scotland Yard most frequently sends in our direction. I would have to wait and see whether his investigation focused on Ethan Armstrong’s disappearance; or Miss Trimble’s untimely demise.

But where did I fit in?

One thing was for sure and certain. I dared not now leave it till Sunday before telling my mother about meeting Mary Jane, and Mrs Whitaker. Marcus would have made courtesy contact with the headquarters of the West Riding Constabulary – Dad. And Dad would say to Mother, ‘I believe Kate’s friend is in the vicinity.’

I went upstairs and changed into an afternoon dress with matching coat.

‘Are you going out again?’ Mrs Sugden asked as I tripped downstairs and lifted my motoring coat from the hook. She can be very perceptive.

‘Yes. I’m off to Wakefield, to visit my mother.’

Mrs Sugden looked surprised but was tactful enough not to remark on the fact that it wasn’t Sunday, and we had a case.

‘The thing is, Mrs Sugden, my father wants me not to take Mary Jane’s enquiries about her husband any further. And nothing will convince him more that I’m following his wishes than going to see my mother on a weekday.’

‘And are we off the case?’ Mrs Sugden asked.

‘Well, of course. We wouldn’t fly in the face of a hint from the superintendent of the West Riding Constabulary would we? But if you plan further visits to a spiritualist church, well it’s up to you what you do in your spare time. And don’t be surprised if on the way you see Mr Sykes, selling stockings from his attaché case.’

My mother has the art of making a house comfortable and has passed that trick to me. She likes colourful throws over the furniture, uncluttered rooms, and rugs that look as though they may have flown in on their own initiative from Persia. Even before my parents moved to Sandal, when we lived in a West Riding Constabulary house as I was growing up, it was unlike any other police house in Wakefield. Of course, not every police officer’s wife has her own income to fall back on.

She was in her favourite corner of the dining room, curled in a chair by the window, reading. There was a fire
in the grate and the room oozed cosiness. I took off my motoring coat.

Mother glanced up at me with such a look of pleasure, full of smiles. She marked her place in the book, set it down and rose from her chair. ‘I’m sure you’d be better coming through on the tram than driving all this way. You’ll catch a terrible chill one of these days.’

‘Too many stops on the tram. It drives me mad.’

She moved to the sofa, patting the place beside her. ‘Come and sit down and tell me how you are.’

I draped my coat across the back of the sofa. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

‘And how was Berta?’

‘Aunt Berta’s on top form. She sent you that scarf you wanted from Derry & Toms.’

‘How lovely!’

Admiring the scarf would put off the moment when I would broach the subject of Mary Jane and Mrs Whitaker, not to mention using my parents’ address as a mysterious lonely hearts letter drop.

Mother took her button scissors from the sewing box. She cut the string of the Derry & Toms parcel and shook out the colourful silk scarf. ‘Perfect. That will go very nicely with something I’m having made up for the summer. I’ll show it to you later. Now tell me all about your visit to London. And what’s this about that nice Inspector Charles coming in this direction again?’

‘He’s a chief inspector now. He’s been called in to investigate some events in the Otley area. And that’s partly what I’ve come to talk to you about.’

As we sat side by side on the sofa, she listened while I told her the story of Mary Jane’s arrival at the house, in the early hours of Monday, the events of the past three
days, Ethan’s disappearance and Miss Trimble’s death.

‘Good heavens! And all I’ve done is reread a couple of chapters of this book that I can’t make head nor tail of.’

We were both acting as if there was no great weight to my having met Mary Jane, but it was no use pretending. ‘Mother, it was really the Mary Jane visit I wanted to tell you about. Because it led me to Mrs Whitaker in White Swan Yard.’

‘Ah.’ Mother sat back on the cushions as though she had lost the energy to hold herself upright. She did not look at me.

Finally she said, ‘I knew there was something. When Dennis said he’d given you lunch yesterday, and you’d gone back to the station, he said you’d be coming soon and telling me all about everything. I hope he’s better at concealing what he knows from criminals. I can always tell when he’s holding something back. Silly me. I thought it might be something between you and Marcus Charles. He seemed so charming when we met him in Harrogate last year. But it wasn’t that at all. It was your … your mother.’

I put my hand on her arm. ‘You’re my mother. No one else. How old was I when Dad brought me from the Whitakers’?’

‘Eight weeks I think. You would keep a kitten with its mother longer, but I wanted to be sure, and she …’

‘Was glad to be rid of me.’

‘No! Not at all. You mustn’t entertain such a thought. But if a thing is to be done, it’s best it’s done quickly.’

For a moment, neither of us spoke. ‘Mother, Mrs Whitaker and I had very little to say to each other. I took her across to be with Mary Jane. I’m not part of that family.’

She smiled. ‘It’s all right. It had to happen. Well, I suppose it didn’t have to happen that you should meet her but as one grows older there are all sorts of regrets, not for what you’ve done but for what was left undone. And who knows, you and she may get to know and like each other.’

‘Anything’s possible I suppose.’ I paused. ‘Dad said he fetched me out of the Whitakers’ house, and you stayed in the motor.’

She looked at her hands. ‘Even at the last moment, I feared she might change her mind.’ She turned to me, gave her warmest smile, and took my hand. ‘But I thank God every day that she didn’t and that you came home with us.’

Later, as she poured the tea and we dived into potted beef sandwiches, Mother asked about my visit to London last week.

She waved her hand dismissively as I began to tell her about my shopping trips and the dinner party Aunt Berta had given. ‘Berta’s told me all about shopping trips and menus. You went on a tour of Scotland Yard on your last day. Tell me about that, and how things were left with Marcus Charles. If he’s coming up here and likely to visit, then I need to know how matters stand, or don’t stand.’

I took my time over the sandwich.

‘It was absolutely grand, and totally disastrous, if you must know.’

‘That sounds interesting, which bit was which?’

‘We got on really well. He managed a day off, which we spent together.’ I did not mention that we also spent the night together, and that was fine too.

Mother is very good at hearing an unspoken but.

‘But?’

‘Mother, he is so old-fashioned!’

She shot me a surprised glance, which made me think Aunt Berta had tittle-tattled about my nights on the tiles. ‘He didn’t strike me as old-fashioned when we met him in Harrogate.’

‘You saw him for five minutes. When he toured me round Scotland Yard, he told me all about how they recruited policewomen in 1918, and then had to let them go, because of financial cuts. He said that when they first started, the women walked in twos …’