Rosemary Aitken (5 page)

But there was no such outburst and when Effie dared to look, Mrs Thatchell was calmly threading her needle up again to stitch at the chair-back that she was working on. ‘Well! A good thing too! I don’t know why they didn’t think of going to him at first,’ she said. Her voice was sharp, but the angry flush was gone. ‘It might have saved us all this inconvenience. However, I don’t want to be unfair. I’m a Christian woman and Cook says you’ve had a shock. We shall let it pass, this time. But I warn you, Effie, if such a thing occurs again, I shall have to reconsider. Is that understood?’

It was no good protesting that it wasn’t likely to, and that it wouldn’t be her fault if it did! Effie could only stand and nod her head and – as soon as she was freed – rush back to the Miss Westons’ to get the silks and sermons as required. She did glance at the bookshelves, while she was in the shop, to make sure the Scarlet Pimpernel book was safely in its place, but she couldn’t see it anywhere. That was alarming, but she dared not linger long and she could only hope it had been taken out again. Otherwise poor Lettie would be in the soup! And all so that Effie could have a bit of a read! It made her feel quite dreadful, particularly when Miss Blanche was especially nice to her.

‘My dear Effie! How are you feeling now? Such a dreadful shock all this has been to everyone! That poor man dying in the cold and wet! I’m sure I shall have nightmares about it for a week. Now you’re sure you’ve got all the coloured silks you want? Then that will be a shilling – one and fourpence with the books.’

Miss Pearl was more direct. She came in while Effie was counting out the coins and said, ‘You going to tell us who that fellow was? After all he only came here asking after you and, next thing we find him lying dead out in our back court – on our premises without a by-your-leave.’

Effie shook her head. ‘Never seen him in my life before. I can’t imagine how he got my name. That nice young constable is going out to see Pa, see if he can help.’ She scooped her purchases into her wicker frail and added quickly, ‘And that is all I know, myself. Good-day, ladies! Thank you very much.’ She beat a quick retreat before Miss Pearl could ask her any more.

But it seemed that Pa was just as mystified. When she saw him, Thursday afternoon at Aunt Madge’s house (he had been working extra, other times, to get there, as she’d told the police) he took her immediately to one side. He led her to the little lean-to garden shed, which was Uncle Joe’s but where Pa liked to work sometimes. He was good with making things. This time he’d been using his pen-knife to fashion a small top out of a piece of birchwood for one of Madge’s boys. He picked it up again and starting whittling, but after a minute he looked up at her.

‘Now see here, Effie,’ he said in his bluff way, ‘don’t think I’m blaming you. But you can tell me, if there’s anything amiss. That tramp, for instance, that was found dead in the town – if he was something to you, you’d better let me know.’

She stared at him, amazed. ‘To me? Of course he wasn’t anything to me. Surely the policeman must have told you, Pa? I haven’t even the slightest notion who he was.’

He looked away and started shaping the body of the top, easing out the indentation where the string would go. ‘That so, Effie?’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Yet they say he went there asking for you by your name. How do you account for that then?’

She frowned at him. ‘I can’t account for it! That is why the policeman came to you. We were hoping that you could help us – that perhaps you or Mother had known him years ago?’ She realized that she’d allied herself with the constable and felt a surge of pinkness in her cheeks. Drat it – Pa was sure to read the wrong thing into that. ‘I certainly hadn’t! I kept saying so.’

He met her eyes then. ‘Well, if you say that, my maid, I daresay it’s true. But don’t you be surprised if others take a different view.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the house.

‘Uncle Joe, you mean?’ she queried, but of course he did. Her uncle always thought the worst of everyone and Aunt Madge generally went along with him, for the sake of household peace.

Pa nodded. ‘Made his mind up there’d been shenanigans, the minute that policeman turned up at the mine and asked to talk to me.’

‘Shenanigans?’ Effie had often heard the word, but she had only the faintest notion what it meant – except that it was something not-quite-nice that men and girls got up to now and then. ‘How could I be having shenanigans with him? I keep on telling you, I’d never seen or heard of him before.’

She was relieved to see Pa actually smile. ‘And I believe you – even if your uncle won’t. Not a girl for lying – never were.’ He met her eyes. ‘But you can’t blame people for jumping to conclusions over this. It is peculiar, when you come to think. A perfect stranger turning up and wanting you.’

‘So you didn’t know him either? You’re quite sure of that?’

Pa shook his head. ‘I can’t answer for your mother, naturally – but he wasn’t anyone that I could recognize. Not from round here either, by the look of it. They’ve found a faded label in his shirt which said it came from someplace in the London area, and they’re going to ask the police up there to make enquiries.’

‘But how can they make enquiries about a shirt? Must be thousands of them sold up in the capital. Hundreds of them, even in Penzance.’

Her father gave her a sideways look. ‘But this one looks as if it was bespoke. Obviously made a little time ago, but it’s possible the shirt-maker might remember who he made it for.’

Effie was positively goggling by now. Nobody that she knew had ever even owned a shop-made shirt, except for going to church, and as for made-to-measure! That sort of thing was just for gentle-folk. ‘But I thought he was a tramp?’

‘And probably he was. The police think it likely he was wearing hand-me-downs – everything was half worn-out and clearly made for someone twice as wide. No doubt given to him out of charity, but if the police can discover who used to own the things, maybe that person could tell them who he gave his cast-offs to.’

‘But would he remember?’

‘Very likely not. It’s only a faint hope. More likely there’ll be a missing person on the books, somewhere in the country, and they’ll match him up, much to the distress of his grieving family. If not, there isn’t much that they can do. It’s not a pressing matter – not as if the fellow met a violent death: they’ll keep him in the morgue a day or two, I expect, and give him a pauper’s burial if they can’t find out his name. Sad, of course, but don’t concern yourself. I was only worried, just in case there was anything you hadn’t told me of – I know it’s difficult sometimes and I’m not your Ma – but if he was nothing to you, I shan’t fret any more.’ He held up the top he had been working on. ‘Now, if you’ll pass me that little pot of varnish over there I’ll get this finished for Sam to take to school. He’s been longing for a whipping-top like all the other boys. I thought I’d make a couple for the feast. You coming home for that?’

She shook her head. Penvarris Feast Monday was quite a festival – brass bands and fancy dress parades and dancing in the street. Special services and cream teas at the Vicarage for the churchgoers, and saffron buns and teacakes for the Methodists, followed by sports and races and fair booths in the street; it was the only day, apart from Christmas, when they shut down the mine and only a few men went underground, for safety’s sake. Any girl in service who could possibly be spared would try to come home Friday evening and stay the whole weekend – there was a special horsebus laid on Monday night, to take them back to town.

But Effie Pengelly would not be one of them. Mrs Thatchell would never let her off – even if Effie had the nerve to ask. ‘Shan’t be able to. But you could save me a bit of ginger fairing, afterwards.’

Pa said, ‘Course I will, my lover. And I’ll try to fetch you a bunch of flowers from the procession too, when the girls on the decorated carts start to throw them to the crowds.’ He gave her a wicked grin – catching a posy from the feast queen or her maids was supposed to bring the catcher luck in matters of the heart. ‘Not that it’s likely to do me any good, but I know you always loved to have one when you were living home! Now pass me that bit of emery and let me finish off this whipping top.’

And that was that. Sammy came out to call them in to tea, and Pa didn’t speak of the dead man again. Uncle Joe and Aunty Madge looked questioningly at them when they came in, but Pa just shook his head and talked of something else – and though they exchanged glances, they didn’t say anything about the incident.

In fact, they said nothing very much at all – at least to Effie – right the way through tea, and when she said anything to them they were noticeably cool. It was the same thing afterwards: her uncle hurried the younger children quickly up the stairs without the story which Effie generally made up for them, and then when she went to give Aunt Madge her usual parting hug, her aunt picked up a tea-towel and evaded her. ‘Get on, Effie, you will miss your bus!’

Effie was hurt, but she recognized the signs. Her uncle still suspected her of those ‘shenanigans’ – whatever they might be.

Alex did not have the time to think of Effie much. Even when he was not busy accompanying a colleague on the beat, or being given impromptu quizzes by his sergeant on aspects of police procedure and the like (‘It is one thing to learn things off by heart for an examination, young Dawes; it is quite another to have them at your fingertips’), he was in the living-quarters with his Instruction Manual and his handwritten notes brushing up on how to write reports or tender evidence. At least there were a lot of other things that he had learnt by now: how to press his uniform and sew a button on, or simply make his bed and polish up his boots – none of them things he’d ever had to do before, not even in the years when he was away at school. He had found it very difficult at first.

Not that his family would sympathize, of course. They had never wanted him to join the police. Father had been a Major in what he called ‘the Regiment’ (the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, of course, but it was always spoken of as if there was no other in the world) and expected all his sons to follow him. ‘Why not the Regiment, lad, for heaven’s sake? The army – that’s the ticket, for a clever lad like you . . .’ And on and on he would go about how Great-grandfather had served with Wellington and won a gallantry medal at Quatre Bras. ‘The Thirty-second Regiment of Foot, it was called in those days, but the Cornish were famous for their bravery even then. And there’s been a Dawes as an officer in the regiment ever since. It’s in the blood, y’see! Unless it’s been diluted in the last few years.’

That was a dig at Mother, who was his second wife: both Alex’s half-brothers had signed up long ago. But she said nothing – she hardly ever did, except to murmur that Daddy mustn’t be upset. But Alex still ventured to voice his own dissent, remarking that few of those illustrious ancestors had died peacefully at home.

‘So I have spawned a sissy!’ The Major could be relentless when he tried. ‘Well, if the army’s too red-blooded for your taste, why not the church or – at the very least – the law? Though I did expect a son of mine to be prepared to serve his king and country, I confess!’

‘And what am I proposing, if not to serve “my king and country” as you say?’

His father thumped his cane upon the floor. ‘Don’t be cute, young fellow. You know what I mean. All this policeman business. It’s not our sort of thing. In fact I well remember my mother telling me that she was horrified, when she was young, to see the sort of men who were first recruited to the force – half-illiterate the lot of them, and apt to be caught out drinking and slovenly at the local pub. Not that apparently they lasted very long. Half of them dismissed before the month was out, she said.’

Alex kept his temper. ‘But that was long ago. Things are quite different now. There is a test before they’ll even take you on and as for character, look at our local constable – two commendations from the King for bravery!’

‘Indeed!’ A snort. ‘But the principle still holds. Of course our local bobby’s a good fellow, and all that – but he doesn’t have the sort of background that you have been fortunate to have. He was the son of some labourer on a farm.’

So it was no good explaining that it was this very man who had inspired Alex to join the force, by making headlines in the local press: first by stopping a panicked horse that bolted with a cart and then, a few months later, diving straight into the sea – still in his boots and tunic – to rescue a young woman who had fallen in and would otherwise have drowned. The only kind of heroism Father recognized was the military kind.

‘Besides, lad, you must see it’s an unpleasant sort of life. Dealing with people of the lowest kind, criminals and desperados and women of the street. And dangerous, to boot. A lot of these fellows carry arms and knives and wouldn’t think twice about attacking you. You read about it in the papers all the time.’

Never mind that Father had lost a leg himself – smashed to smithereens when some Boer sniper had shot a horse from under him – and was now reduced to limping round the house and grounds. Or that the family finances were running rather thin because an army pension was not enough to keep up the estate, and they were using up all Mother’s capital. All that was waved away. The police force was simply not for gentlemen. It had taken all Alex’s determination to persist.

But persist he had, despite his father’s best attempts to press him into other occupations. There had been a year or two of grace-and-favour placements here and there (including a humiliating term as a junior tutor at his old boarding school, which Father had arranged and Alex had cordially detested from the start) before at last the Major capitulated in a rage. ‘Very well, I suppose that now you’re turning twenty-one, I can’t stand in your way. I still think it’s folly, but you won’t be told. Go and be a policeman, if you’re so set on it, but then you’re on your own. Don’t come whining back to me because you want to quit. Though I’m convinced you will. I give you a month or two at most.’

So Alex was doubly determined to succeed and would not have admitted if he’d hated it – but, truth to tell, he liked it very much, from the moment that he went away to train. There was something about the ordered life which did appeal to him and he took a certain secret pride in wearing uniform and the conviction that he was of use – perhaps the Major had been right about there being something in the blood. He threw himself into the training course with everything he had and felt a quiet triumph when he came top of all the new recruits at the end-of-course examination.