Henrietta Who? (9 page)

“I know you are. It's not that.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

She shivered. “I feel I need to actually see the things I know there. Otherwise …”

“Otherwise what?”

“Otherwise,” she said soberly, “I think I shall go out of my mind.”

“Here,” protested Bill. “Take it easy. No one can make you leave if you don't want to.”

“Can't they just!” retorted Henrietta. “That's what you think, Bill.”

“You're a protected tenant,” insisted Bill firmly. “No one can make you leave. I'll see to that. Besides, Mr. Hibbs would never turn you out. He's not that sort of man.”

“I don't think he would either,” said Henrietta slowly. “He's always been very kind.” She looked at Bill and opened her eyes wide. “He's always been very kind.”

“Yes, yes,” said Thorpe impatiently. “I know. I think you're worrying about nothing.”

“I'm not.” She paused, then “Bill …”

“Yes?”

“I've got something to tell you.” She swallowed twice in quick succession. “You're not going to like it.”

“Try me,” he said evenly.

“The police say Grace Jenkins wasn't my mother.” Now it was out she felt better. “And,” she added defiantly, “I don't know who was.”

In the event his reaction was surprising.

He kissed her.

And then:

“You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that.”

Henrietta looked up at him in astonishment—he was half a head taller than she was—and said, “Why?”

“I thought it was me.”

“You thought what was you?”

“The reason why your mother wouldn't let us get married.”

“She wasn't my mother,” said Henrietta automatically.

“Exactly.” Bill Thorpe was beaming all over his face.

“I don't see what that's got to do with us not getting married.”

“Don't you?”

“No.”

“Silly.” He looked down at her affectionately. “We couldn't get married without her permission because you weren't twenty-one.”

“I know that.”

“She couldn't give it.”

“Why not?”

“Because she wasn't your mother. You've just said so.”

“I never thought of that,” said Henrietta wonderingly. “I thought it was only because she wanted me to finish my three years at university.”

“And I thought it was because she didn't like Bill Thorpe,” said Bill Thorpe ruefully.

“And all the time,” whispered Henrietta, “it was because she didn't want me to know I wasn't hers.”

“Until you were twenty-one,” concluded Thorpe. “I reckon you were to be told then.”

She shivered. “Now we may never know.”

“Don't you believe it.”

“Bill …” tentatively.

“Yes?”

“There must be some … some reason why she didn't want me to know.”

He nodded. “Knowing your mother I should say a good reason.” He hesitated. “She'd got all this worked out, hadn't she?”

“It rather looks like it. I … I don't know what to think.”

Bill Thorpe looked at the sky. It was the subconscious glance of a farmer. “What was it you wanted me to do, then?”

“Take me to Calleford this afternoon.”

EIGHT

“Where are we now, Crosby?”

It was a rhetorical question. Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby were, in fact, walking from Boundary Cottage towards Larking post office.

“We thought we didn't know about the mother,” responded Crosby. “Now we don't know about the father either.”

“Not well put, but I am with you.”

“In fact,” went on Crosby morosely, “we hardly know anything.” He did not like walking.

“We know a woman was killed by a motor vehicle in—er—unusual circumstances.”

They were not far now from the fatal bend in the road. Crosby looked up and down. “You couldn't
not
see someone on a road as narrow as this.”

“No.” Sloan reverted to Grace Jenkins. “We know that she was childless.”

“But,” put in Crosby, “that she pretended not to be.”

“Just so,” said Sloan. “An interesting situation.”

“And that's all we do know,” concluded Crosby flatly.

“Try again,” advised Sloan, “because it isn't.”

Crosby's brow became as furrowed as one of the Thorpe's plowed fields.

“There's something fishy about the photograph and the medals?”

“There is.” Sloan was already listing in his own mind the inquiries which would have to be made about the photograph and the medals. “But go back to the woman for a moment.”

Crosby's brow resumed its furrows.

“Why,” asked Sloan helpfully, “was she killed?”

There was a long pause. “Search me,” said Detective Constable Crosby at long last.

“If Sergeant Gelven wasn't on annual leave, Constable, I wouldn't have to,” said Sloan crisply.

“No, sir.”

They had passed the bad bend now and were walking towards the center of the village. The Hall lay over on their right, nestled into the folding countryside in the sheltered site selected in their wisdom by its Tudor builders. It would be in the best situation for several miles around and there would have been a spring or a good well nearby.

They walked past the gates. They were well hung and newly painted. Nothing, thought Sloan, gave you as good a view of the state of a property as the gates. Mr. James Hibbs was clearly a man of means who was prepared to pay attention to detail.

“I think we know why she was killed,” said Sloan.

The church had come into view now. It, too, was on the right of the road. If Sloan knew anything about landowners there would be a gate through into the churchyard from the grounds of The Hall. The ultimate in status symbols.

“Do we?” said Crosby cautiously.

“You mentioned adoption.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There comes a point when—like it or not—it is customary to tell the adopted child the—er—truth about its parents or lack of them.”

“Twenty-one,” said Crosby.

“Just so. All wrong, of course. The right time is before they can understand.”

“Yes, sir. The psychologists say …”

“I understand,” said Sloan coldly, not liking the word, “that you should stress that they are chosen.” He looked Crosby up and down. “Not an unhappy accident of fate like everyone else's children.”

“No, sir.”

They could see beyond the church now to the rectory and the patch of grass that presumably did duty as a village green. No one could have called Larking picturesque—which probably meant it was spared a good deal—but it was by no means unattractive.

“I think she was killed because the girl is going to be twenty-one next month.”

“And someone doesn't want Henrietta to know who she is?” responded Crosby brightly.

“Don't strain yourself thinking too hard, Constable, will you?”

“No, sir.”

“She tells us she is going to be twenty-one in April,” continued Sloan, “and I think she has been correctly informed on this point, but April would be too late for the killing of Grace Jenkins for two reasons.”

He waited hopefully for Crosby to enumerate them.

Crosby said nothing.

“Two reasons,” went on Sloan in a resigned way. When he got back to Berebury he would look up the leave schedules to see when Sergeant Gelven was coming back. They weren't going to solve anything at all at this rate. “One of them is that the girl would have been back from college by then.”

Crosby nodded in agreement.

“The other is …”

“Daylight,” said Crosby unexpectedly.

“Exactly. By April the last bus would be getting to Larking in the twilight rather than the sort of darkness you can easily run someone down in. There's another thing …”

Crosby cocked his head like a spaniel.

“This wedding …”

“She wouldn't let them get married,” said Crosby. “That chap Hibbs told us that.”

“Have you thought why not? Thorpe's a nice enough lad by all accounts.”

They were right in the center of the village now and he and Crosby knocked on the door of the house of the last person known to have seen the late Grace Edith Jenkins alive.

“That's right,” said Mrs. Martha Callows, not without relish. “I reckon me and Mrs. Perkins was the last to see her. On the last bus, she was, same as we were.”

She admitted the policemen into an untidy house, knocked a cat off one chair, scooped a child out of another and invited them to sit down.

“The last bus from Berebury?” asked Sloan with the air of one anxious to get everything clear.

“There aren't any other buses from anywhere else,” Mrs. Callows said, “and there aren't all that many from Berebury. If you miss the seven five you walk.”

“Quite so. Was it crowded?”

“Not after Cullingoak. Most people get out there. Get down, you.” This last was said to the cat, which, thwarted of the chair, was settling on the table.

“Where did you get out?”

“The post office. That's the only stop in Larking. We all got out there. Me and Mrs. Perkins and her.”

“About what time would that have been?”

“Something short of eight o'clock.”

The cat had not, in fact, troubled to get down and was now investigating some dirty plates which were still on the table.

“You'd been shopping?” said Sloan generally.

“Sort of. Mrs. Perkins—that's who I was with—her husband's in hospital. That's why we was on the late bus. Visiting hours. 'Course, we'd been round the shops first … Berebury's a long way to go for nothing.”

“Quite so. Had Mrs. Jenkins got a shopping basket?”

“Now I come to think of it,” said Mrs. Callows, screwing up her face in recollection, “I don't know she had.” Her face cleared suddenly. “But then she wouldn't have, would she?”

“Why not?” enquired Sloan with interest.

“Friday's her day for Berebury. Not Toosday. She goes in Fridays, regular as clockwork. Always has done.”

“Not Tuesdays?”

Mrs. Callows shook her head. “Not shopping.”

“I see. Tell me”—Sloan was at his most confidential—“tell me, was she her usual self otherwise?”

A wary look came into Mrs. Callows's eye. “Yes, I suppose you could say she was.”

Sloan tried another tack. “Cheerful?”

“I wouldn't say cheerful meself. Polite, of course, hoh yes, always very polite was Mrs. Jenkins, but not what you'd call cheerful.”

“Talkative sort?”

Mrs. Callows shook her head. “Not her. Never much to say for herself at the best of times but take Toosday f'r'instance. ‘Good evening,' she says. ‘We could do with a bit better weather than this, couldn't we? Too windy.' And passes right down the bus to the front and sits there by herself.”

“Kept herself to herself?”

“That's right. She did.” Mrs. Callows reached out absently and gave the cat a cuff. It retreated but only momentarily.

“She didn't tell you how she'd spent the day?” asked Sloan.

Mrs. Callows sniffed. “She wouldn't tell us a thing like that. She wasn't the sort.”

“I see.” Sloan reverted to officialese. “We are naturally anxious to trace Mrs. Jenkins's movements on Tuesday.”

“There I cannot help,” said Mrs. Callows frankly. “Neither of us set eyes on her until we got to the bus station.”

“What about afterwards?”

“When we got back to Larking, you mean?”

“That's right.” Sloan waved an arm. “Other people, for instance. Was there anyone about?”

She shook her head. “We didn't see anybody else, but then we wouldn't, would we?”

“Why not?”

“Because it was Toosday, like I said.”

“Tuesday?”

“The first Toosday,” amplified Mrs. Callows. “Institoot night.”

“I see. So what happened when you all got off the bus?”

“She turned down the lane towards her house. Mrs. Perkins and me—we went the other way. That was the last we saw of her.”

“I see,” said Sloan. “Thank you.”

“It's a nasty bend,” volunteered Mrs. Callows suddenly.

“Indeed, yes. By the way, did you see any vehicular traffic?”

Mrs. Callows looked blank. “Oh, you mean cars? No, none at all.”

Sloan and Crosby rose to go.

“Except,” she added, “the ones parked outside the King's Head.”

Sloan and Crosby took a look at the King's Head car park on their way from Mrs. Callows's house to the post office.

It was an asphalt affair and disappointing.

“We won't get a tire print on this.” Crosby stood in the middle of it and stamped his foot. “Hard as iron.”

Inspector Sloan didn't appear to be interested in the surface of the car park. He was moving about and looking down the road to his right.

“Anyway,” went on Crosby, “she was killed on Tuesday. Today's Friday. Other vehicles would have come in here since then and rubbed them out.”

“What exactly can you see from here, constable?”

Crosby looked down the road. “The post office, sir, and a telephone kiosk, the fork in the road to Belling St. Peter, the signpost and so forth.” He paused, then, “A woman pushing a pram, a delivery van, a row of horse chestnuts.”

“This is not a nature ramble, Crosby.”

“No, sir.”

“Anything else?”

“There's the church, sir, beyond the bus stop.”

“Precisely.”

Crosby looked puzzled. “Is the church important, sir?”

“No.”

“The bus stop?”

“Don't overdo it, Crosby, will you?”