Murder in the Afternoon (41 page)

‘Perhaps she didn’t know how to stop.’ We sat in silence for a while, looking into the fire. A coal cracked and blue and orange flames sparked.

Sykes said, ‘It’s Bob Conroy I feel sorry for. They’re letting him out of hospital, so I thought I’d visit him, see if he needs a hand. Him and me struck up a bit of camaraderie that night in the Fleece, and then when I found him wandering on the moor. I wonder what will become of him, without his farm?’

‘I feel no sympathy for the idiot. He betrayed Ethan. He should have found his own wife without resorting to newspaper advertisements, then Ethan would still have been alive.’

‘All the same, he’s suffered for what he did.’

‘Good.’ I gazed at the fire, as though it were a crystal ball. ‘He’ll take up with Mary Jane, after a decent interval. He’s a well provided man, after all, and she’ll be a well provided woman.’

‘I’m going to ask him about Millie, whether he intends to look after her.’

‘She and Harriet seem to hit it off. Perhaps Mary Jane will take her in.’

I put a log on the fire. A little extravagant at such an unearthly hour, but all thoughts of sleep had fled.

Sykes leaned back in his chair, staring at the sparks the log made as it settled onto the embers. ‘I’m still not sure why Mrs Conroy killed Ethan.’

‘She made the mistake of using identical wording when she placed the advertisement that netted her Bob Conroy, and the latest one that Ethan cut out of the paper. She couldn’t risk being found out as a bigamist, and a murderess – though poor Ethan wasn’t to know that. When she claimed that Ethan came to talk to her about his problems, that was poppycock. My guess is that he told her to sling her hook. His mistake was in not telling Bob, but by then he and Bob were estranged. From what I’ve learned of Ethan, I believe he would still have wanted to spare Bob’s feelings. We’ll never know for sure.’

‘And she smashed the sundial because she could. And because it would help cast suspicion in other directions, on fellow workmen, or even Ethan himself – suggesting he’d got into a rage and abandoned his family and his work.’

‘But she planted the tools on Mary Jane, just in case.’

We talked in circles for another half hour or so, watching flames take hold of the log. Finally, Sykes stood up and pulled on his coat.

‘What will you do tomorrow, Mrs Shackleton? Take a well earned rest?’

‘I have a private matter to attend to that will take me up to the North Riding.’

‘Do you want a driver?’

‘No. This is something I need to do alone.’

The saddest birds
A season find to sing

Robert Southwell

The weather did its worst – a fierce mixture of wind and rain. Sheets of rain obscured my view. Rain leaked into the car from under the canvas. Dad’s neighbour, when he checked the motor, had pronounced it sound but extolled the virtues of newer models. On higher ground, the wind threatened to blow me and the Jowett into the ditch. Well, if I were to die of pneumonia, I had arrived at the right place. Catterick Hospital.

It was made up of so many buildings that I had no idea which way to go. Eventually, I spotted a chap trying to right his inside-out umbrella and asked for directions.

I parked outside what I hoped was the right building. The short dash for the door felt like walking through a waterfall. If I knew anything about matrons, I would be in trouble before I began – for dripping onto the tiled floors.

A porter took me to the matron’s office, where I introduced myself.

‘Ah yes, I have your letter,’ she said. ‘As I said in my reply, I doubt very much we can be of help. Let me give you a towel, and you can dry yourself a little. Here, let me take your coat. I’m sure I can find you a pair of slippers while your shoes dry.’

It was an unexpected kindness. I sat by the fire, drying my hair. She insisted on providing tea, a boiled egg and bread and butter soldiers, as though I were a child come crying home from school and in need of special care.

As I ate, she told me about the only two men who remained unidentified. One had total memory loss, and was lodged with a farmer and his wife a mile or so away. His description as short and stocky did not fit Gerald. The other man was brain damaged, and unable to speak.

‘I’ll take you to him when you are ready,’ she said. She had cleverly timed her words about the brain-damaged man so that I had finished the egg, bread and tea. Otherwise, my appetite would have flown up the chimney.

We walked in silence along an endless corridor, and turned into another shorter corridor. ‘He has been out of bed today, undertaking some exercises with the physiotherapist. If he’s asleep, we won’t disturb him.’

She opened the door to a private room. The man lay still. His head was shaved on one side, his eyes closed. Glad of the soft-soled slippers, I trod silently to the bed and looked down at him. I could see why she had brought me to him. His hair and eyebrows were dark. His face had been handsome once. But it was not Gerald. I shook my head.

We left the room. But it might have been, I told myself. I’m right to go on looking. ‘Why is his head shaved?’

‘He had an operation to relieve pressure on his brain. It’s not beyond hope that there’ll be some recovery.’

‘Has he been here … all this time?’

She nodded. ‘Look, there’s one other chap you might talk to. He’s not the man you’re looking for, but he was in the same areas, and the same regiment. He’s in because
of an infection that’s taken hold in his leg. It was amputated at the knee. And he’s blind. It’s too far for his family to visit, and I’m sure he’d be glad of a new voice. He’s even brought a book, that he’s always pressing the nurses to read to him.’

‘What book?’

‘John Masefield,
The Old Front Line
. You’d think they would have had enough of it, wouldn’t you?’

She thinks he knows something about Gerald, I told myself. But she doesn’t want to get my hopes up. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Walter Barker. Nice chap.’

His bed was at the top end of a ward, under a high arched window. I was glad not to have to run the gamut of beds. Matron brought me a chair and introduced me.

‘Mrs Shackleton came hoping for news of her husband, but I’ve persuaded her to chat to you for half an hour. Not that you deserve it, of course.’

He grinned. ‘I’m your star patient, you mean. You want to show me off.’

The banter was meant to hide that they had already talked about me. Walter Barker raised his hand in my direction. I took his hand, trying not to shake with nerves at the thought he might have some news for me. It was ridiculous after all this time. Five years since the end of the war.

‘Leave you to it then,’ Matron said.

He released my hand and I sat down.
The Old Front Line
was on the top of his locker, the page marked with a postcard.

‘My name’s Kate,’ I said, not wishing to spend an hour reading aloud and putting off that awful moment of finding out something, or nothing. ‘My husband Gerald
was in your regiment. He was the Regimental Surgeon. I got the usual telegram, but I’ve never been able to find anyone who could tell me about his last moments. And I believe that’s why Matron has brought me to you.’

‘Yes. She told me. Captain Shackleton, our MO. I think I saw him, twice.’

‘You think?’

‘Well, yes. I saw him. He … took photographs.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s why I remember him, the doctor with the camera. I saw him twice.’

If he was going to repeat himself, this could take a long time. I wanted to tell him to get to the point. Did he see him at the end? Did he see him die? But I could not ask those questions. I waited.

‘Yes, I saw him twice. Once in Albert, where the Virgin dives from the church tower.’

He paused. Perhaps his mind was affected, and I would be compelled to sit and listen to his ramblings.

‘Don’t think me mad,’ he said, as though he had picked up on my thoughts. ‘The church was built by the local priest to attract pilgrims. She’s a gilded statue, the Virgin and Child. An iron stalk attaches her to the summit of the tower. But a shell bent the stalk and she’s suspended, quite horizontal, precarious, looking as though she’ll come flying down at any moment. Men marched beneath her, up to the line, hoping she wouldn’t come toppling down on them. That’s when I saw him first.’

His voice had fallen to a whisper. Was he going to tell me that Gerald was killed by some falling statue of the Virgin Mary? It almost made me want to laugh. Gerald was not a believer, and especially not a believer in the

Scarlet Woman, as he called the Catholic Church.

‘He was setting up a tripod, on a day in May – but not like this day in May. It was fine, sunny. It was spring. I couldn’t see how it would make a good snapshot. She was too high. I was marching men in an easterly direction to Fricourt. Very straight line we formed, except where the marchers bowed out, to avoid trampling the man with the tripod. That’s it, I’m afraid. But that was the first time. I marched past your husband.’

‘That was Gerald,’ I said softly. ‘I remember now. He wrote to me about taking that photograph. He said it had come out better than he hoped. Trust him to go on developing and printing in the middle of a war.’

Walter laughed. ‘He had medical supplies to transport. That’s how he’ll have done it. What’s a couple more bottles of chemicals, or a dish or two when you are setting up a field station or a first aid post?’

Rain battered the window pane. ‘Is it cold out there?’ Walter asked.

‘It is. And I got soaked on the way here.’

A man on crutches made his slow way up the ward.

‘You said you saw Gerald a second time.’

‘Yes. He was setting up a first aid station. There was a quarry nearby, and that’s where he stored his supplies. But he’d come up to the front line, with a medic and a couple of privates. There was a chap further along he’d attended to.’ He paused again, and I guessed he was remembering that chap who needed attention, or some other, or seeing the day again in his mind’s eye.

‘We’d been hearing a bird with an unusual song. You always get countrymen or bird watchers who know every song there is, and can whistle them too. But no one knew what bird this was.

‘It was early morning, and I saw the Medical Officer – Captain Shackleton – going out into No Man’s Land with his camera, and a ladder. Someone had told him about this unusual bird. His sergeant was carrying the tripod would you believe? Madness. We were in full view of the Germans. They could have shot the pair of them at any time. But it was dull. Dull, dull, dull. The tedium ground you down. Nothing ever happened for hours, or sometimes days. The Germans may have been intrigued, watching to see what the mad Englishmen would do.

‘The pair of them followed the bird song. I watched him set up the tripod and the camera.
It’ll fly away,
I thought. No bird would sit there, waiting for them to point a camera at it. And some German will take a pot shot.

‘We all watched. No one spoke.

‘The sergeant climbed on the ladder, moved a branch to one side, and the MO clicked his camera.

‘Then they walked back. If any of the top brass had seen, they’d have been on a charge, but no top brass came that close. He looked very pleased with himself, Captain Shackleton. I asked him what kind of bird was it. And he smiled. He said that it was a golden oriole.’

For a long time neither of us spoke. Being blind, he could not see my tears. His hand moved across the counterpane, reaching for mine.

On the bookshelves in the drawing room was Gerald’s childhood set of encyclopaedias. Or was it in some natural history annual? Somewhere in the house nested a picture of a golden oriole. I wanted to know what it looked like.

I was looking through the pages when I heard footsteps in the street outside and recognised Marcus’s tread. He
was coming to take me out to supper. Tomorrow, he would be returning to London, and so I felt sure his Big Question would come this evening, in the restaurant, or perhaps afterwards when he brought me home.

The wife of a policeman. Mother, years ago, taking Lapsang Souchong and cake to a female prisoner in Wakefield. Mrs Sharp sitting with Mary Jane, or with the children in the farm cottage. Of course, the wife of a chief inspector would not even be called upon to do that. She would wait at home, and certainly not do any investigating on her own account.

The doorbell rang.

‘He’s here!’ Mrs Sugden called.

But I had found the picture I was looking for. A golden oriole, sharp eye, serious beak, glossy. “The male has a bright yellow body with black wings; the female a paler yellow. This bird is difficult to see and stays high in the tree canopy. A secretive bird.”

I wonder did Gerald hear the golden oriole sing.

For help with research into quarrying, thanks to Kevin Mone, Mick Holstead, Jason Lee, Alistair Mitchell, Craig Morrell, Ian Pickersgill and John Middleton Walker.

Charlie Holmes kindly shared his experiences of farming in the Yorkshire Dales.