Murder in the Afternoon (7 page)

‘Aye, that’s what she told me. Only someone else says different. And you’ll understand that I can’t say who it is, though it’s a person whose truthfulness cannot be gainsaid.’

A person, he’d said. That meant woman, or he would have said man. If her word was worth so much to the officer, then she must be well connected. ‘Miss Trimble, the vicar’s sister?’ I guessed.

He frowned.

I ignored the frown. ‘Harriet found her father’s cap under the bench in the mason’s hut this morning. It was dark when you searched. Is it not possible that something else was missed? The men are already arriving at work, and it could be a murder scene. I believe Harriet. She saw her father dead.’

He sighed and shook his head slowly at the gulf between us. ‘Now there we differ, Mrs Shackleton. Harriet may have seen her father having a lie down on work’s time. They all drink. They all go up to the ale house, and he’d been there, I checked. Ethan Armstrong thinks himself a cut above, but he’s as like as the next man to take a drop too much. This is the main point. His tools are gone. He and his missus had rowed – again. They’re known for it. He’s left. Now if he has gone for good, she stands to lose the house. It’s a tied house. Obviously she’s going to want to cling on.’

‘But Harriet saw …’

‘Did the little lad see anything? No, he did not.’ The
sergeant blew out his breath and shook his head. ‘You don’t know what these young girls can be like, Mrs Shackleton. Young girls is noted for telling tall tales. It’s a documented fact within the force. I don’t think it started with the war, but the number of girls who reported secret liaisons with wartime spies and attempted abductions by white slavers is legion. Young Harriet Armstrong probably believes her own fancies. A little liar can cause a lot of trouble in a place like this. By taking her seriously, you’re only encouraging her.’

‘If it is Harriet’s imaginings, where is Mr Armstrong?’

‘How well do you know the Armstrongs?’

This was a difficult question, to which the answer would be not at all. ‘It’s a family connection,’ I said truthfully. ‘My father knew Mrs Armstrong’s father, Mr Whitaker. He was a policeman in Wakefield,’ I added, hoping this would elicit a little more interest.

‘A policeman was he? Well then he wouldn’t have thought much to his son-in-law, take it from me.’

‘Why is that, officer?’

‘Ethan Armstrong’s a troublemaker. Tried to stir up the men to strike over summat that had nowt to do with them. Wanted them to support the miners at a pit owned by the colonel ten miles from here. The colonel is a fair man and a good employer. Armstrong doesn’t know which side his bread’s buttered. If and when I see him, I shall have one or two questions about wilful damage to a slate sundial.’

‘Surely he wouldn’t have destroyed his own work?’

‘There’s no telling what a man like that would do. His mind doesn’t work like yours or mine.’

Sergeant Sharp was smarter than I had given him credit for. Rather than warn me off, he was trying to recruit me
into the ranks of the reasonable: the good chaps who always share a sensible point of view.

‘Won’t you at least cordon off the mason’s hut, in case this does turn out to be a murder enquiry?’‘

His small eyes narrowed. I had overplayed my hand.

‘No, Mrs Shackleton, I will not.’

‘You’ll have no objections if I continue to make some enquiries?’

‘All sorts of objections, but it’s a free country, which it wouldn’t be if men like Ethan Armstrong had their way.’

I did not straightaway return to Mary Jane’s cottage. It occurred to me that if Miss Trimble, the vicar’s sister from whom Harriet fled, did indeed pop three hundred questions at a time, then perhaps my guess was correct and she was the sergeant’s person whose truthfulness could not be gainsaid and who claimed to have seen Mary Jane by the quarry.

St Justin’s church smelled powerfully of incense, Brasso and lavender polish. I walked down the side aisle. Abundant carnations decorated the altar and gave off an overpowering scent.

I did not sit long in the side pew in the gentle light from the stained-glass windows before Miss Trimble appeared. She recognised me as Harriet’s companion, but hesitated to approach until I smiled and budged along.

‘What a lovely church,’ I remarked as she slipped into the pew beside me.

‘Thank you. My brother and I do our utmost in the service of God and the parish. He could be answering the call in Brighton, but was guided to remain here, due to the church debt.’ A certain tone of regret in her voice led
me to think she would have packed for Brighton and let God take care of the debt.

‘I’m Mrs Kate Shackleton, visiting with Mrs Armstrong today.’

She straightened a hymnal. ‘Miss Aurora Trimble, sister of the vicar. I saw you earlier, with Harriet.’

‘Yes. Her mother sought my help.’ I thought it best to be direct, hoping that she would respond.

Miss Trimble sighed. ‘I wish Mrs Armstrong would seek my help. As a young girl, when in service with the doctor, as Mary Jane Whitaker, she was a conscientious member of my Girls’ Friendship Society.’

‘That was a long time ago I expect.’

‘1912,’ she said firmly. ‘On marriage, most girls join the Ladies’ Friendship Society, though that is not a transition that applied in Mary Jane Armstrong’s case. I had high hopes of her until … Well, naturally, I cannot divulge. But I do now believe she may have been more sinned against than sinning. I have a missal that I should like to return to her. That was why I wanted to catch Harriet, and to enquire whether there is any news.’

‘None I’m afraid.’

She sighed. ‘Pity. But God works in mysterious ways. I know that Harriet wants to walk in the Whitsun procession under the church banner with some of her school friends and I would like to encourage that. If Mr Armstrong has left the village, then there would be no impediment.’

‘Mr Armstrong would be an impediment?’

‘Did you know the man?’

‘No.’

‘I am sorry to say that Ethan Armstrong is an atheist and a revolutionary. A man should keep his marriage vows –
made in this church – but it does not surprise me that he has gone.’

‘You think he has just left without a word to anyone? Isn’t that rather strange?’

‘Strange men do strange things, Mrs Shackleton. He does not allow the children to attend Sunday school here or at the chapel. They go to the Quaker children’s meeting and I believe he would stop that if he could. A most ungodly socialist.’

‘But many socialists are Christians.’

‘He is worse than a socialist.’ She looked round. As though fearing the saints’ images on the stained glass might overhear and be shocked, she lowered her voice. ‘The man is a communist.’

‘All the same I’d like to try and find him, or discover what happened to him.’

‘Of course. And so would I. That is why I told the sergeant that I saw Mrs Armstrong by the quarry in the afternoon when I took my walk. I was trying to be helpful. I believe she went to plead with him not to abandon her, but that her pleas fell on stony ground.’

‘You think he has left his wife and children?’

‘It’s just the kind of thing to be expected of a man like that, a communist. Of course, Ethan Armstrong is not dead.’

‘How do you know?’

‘God would not call him. God would not want him.’

Well, there we have it: the secret of eternal life. Become a communist and live forever, because there will be no place for you in heaven or hell.

‘Are you sure it was Mrs Armstrong that you saw?’

‘She wears a most distinctive tartan cape.’

‘What time of day was this?’

‘I take a constitutional after my afternoon nap. It would have been about four o’clock. I walk by the mill, across the river, along the side of the railway track and back across the other bridge. That’s where I saw her.’

‘Did she see you?’

‘She had her back to me, walking towards the quarry.’

I began to see why Mary Jane had asked for my help. The sergeant did not believe Harriet. Miss Trimble told a tale of Mary Jane about to be abandoned by her husband. If this was a taste of village reaction, Mary Jane must feel very alone.

Miss Trimble brought a white calfskin-bound missal from her pocket.

A marker, a card printed with a prayer, fell from the book. I retrieved the marker, handed it to Miss Trimble, and watched as she flicked through the Sunday by Sunday entries, turning the pages more slowly until she reached Easter. She opened the book at the order of service for the Seventh Sunday after Easter: Whitsuntide. This was when Harriet expected to wear her new clothes, and, perhaps, to walk in procession. Miss Trimble inserted the marker. ‘Please give Mrs Armstrong this when you see her. She’ll understand.’

It was eight-thirty when I arrived back at the cottage. I knocked and opened the door.

Harriet sat at the table. She paused, a spoonful of porridge halfway to her mouth. The fair-haired boy beside her glanced up at me, a puzzled look in his slate-blue eyes. The pale almost translucent skin gave him the appearance of a flower fairy who belonged in the leaves of a bluebell.

Harriet said, ‘Mam’s upstairs. You can have some breakfast if you want.’

‘I’ll wait, thanks.’ I smiled at Austin. ‘Hello.’

He mumbled something into his porridge.

Harriet said to him, ‘This is Mrs …’ She changed her mind, or forgot my surname. ‘You can call her Auntie Kate.’

Another mumble from Austin. Perhaps he was as reluctant to be familiar towards me as was his sister.

‘To help us find out about Dad,’ Harriet answered his mumble.

I caught his next words. ‘Was the goblins there?’

She must have told him she’d been to the quarry.

‘There ’int no goblins. That’s just a story to keep kids out.’

He put down his spoon. ‘I heard the goblin behind the hut, crunch. The goblin saw me.’

‘Eat your porridge,’ Harriet ordered.

I pulled up a stool beside the child. ‘What was the goblin like?’

‘Waiting.’

‘He didn’t see a goblin,’ Harriet said wearily. ‘If he’d seen a goblin, I’d have seen a goblin.’

The little fellow let out a wail. ‘I heard a goblin crunch. It saw me.’

‘Shut up.’

‘You shut up.’

‘No. I said it first. You shut up.’

What did a goblin sound like, I wondered? The footprints behind the hut had been on the large side for a goblin, but about right for a woman, or a small man.

Raymond Turnbull had small hands. Did he have small feet, too? He would stand to gain this house if Mary Jane received notice to quit. And Raymond Turnbull was courting. He would marry next Saturday. He did not seem to me to have it in him to kill. But his father did.

‘I’ll go up and have a word with your mam.’

The stone steps of the narrow staircase were used like shelves, with an item on the left side of every stair: shoes; boot cleaning stuff; button box; Oxo tin with recipes peeping out; an old biscuit tin bursting with documents.

On either side of the top step was a bedroom, the one on the left not much bigger than a cupboard.

‘I’m in here,’ Mary Jane called from the tiniest bedroom, where she was stripping a single bed. This was the children’s room, and reeked of urine. Did poor little Austin always wet the bed, or was he distressed by his father’s disappearance? Mary Jane rolled the sheet into a
ball and dropped it in a pillowcase, saying, ‘That’s better. You can take the peg off your snitch.’ She nodded me across to the other room as she unceremoniously slung the laundry down the stairs, expertly avoiding all the tins, boxes and shoes as she did so.

The opposite bedroom was larger, but not much. It contained a double bed and dressing table. Mary Jane sat down on the bed and patted the space beside her. Speaking quietly, she said, ‘Harriet told me you saw Turnbull and Raymond, and that she found Ethan’s cap.’

‘Yes. And then I went to the police station. Not much joy with Sergeant Sharp, I’m afraid. He thinks Ethan has left you.’

‘I knew he’d say that. Did you tell him about the cap?’

‘Yes but it didn’t make an impression on him. When the children have gone to school, I want us to go over everything, check whether Ethan may have taken some belongings, or left some clue that might give us a lead. I’ll find out as much as I can today and that might force Sergeant Sharp to take the matter further. If he doesn’t, I will.’

She nodded, reached for a bolster, began to take off its cover.

‘After that, I’d like you to take me to the farm, and to see Colonel Ledger.’

She dropped the bolster. ‘Why?’

‘The farm because I want to talk to Bob Conroy and Arthur.’

‘But why the colonel I mean?’

‘Ethan sent him a note to come and see the sundial. If he came, he may have been the last person to see Ethan.’

She picked up the bolster and clutched it to her. ‘He won’t have. The colonel wouldn’t come to the quarry.’