SIXTEEN

“Dead?” said Henrietta dully.

“I’m afraid so.” Sloan wished her reaction could have been more like the superintendent’s. It couldn’t be doing her any good sitting here in Boundary Cottage, hanging on to her self-control with an effort that was painful to watch.

“Inspector,” she whispered, “I killed him didn’t I?”

“I don’t think so, miss,” responded Sloan, surprised.

“I don’t mean actually.” She twisted her hands together in her lap. “But as good as.”

“I don’t see quite how, miss, if you’ll forgive my saying so.” It occurred to Sloan for the first time that this was what people meant by wringing their hands.

“By seeing him.” She swallowed. “Don’t you understand? If I hadn’t seen him yesterday and recognized him, then he wouldn’t be dead today.”

This, thought Sloan, might well be true.

“Perhaps, miss,” he said quietly, “but that doesn’t make it your fault.”

“I haven’t got the Evil Eye, or anything like that, I know, but”—she sounded utterly shaken—“but if he was my father and I’ve been the means of killing him, I don’t think I could bear that.”

Sloan coughed. She had given him the opening he wanted. “That’s one of the reasons why we’ve come, miss. About the question of this Cyril Jenkins being your father.”

“Do you know then?” directly.

“No, miss. We don’t think he was but we can’t prove it either way yet.”

“Yet?” she asked quickly.

“Dr. Dabbe—he’s the hospital pathologist, miss—he says a blood test can prove something but not everything.”

“Anything,” she said fervently, “would be better than this not knowing.”

“If you agreed to it,” he said carefully, “and I must make it clear you don’t have to, it might just prove Cyril Jenkins wasn’t your father and never could have been.”

“Then,” said Henrietta in a perplexed way, “who was he and what had he got to do with us?”

“We don’t know.”

“Just that he’s dead.”

“That’s right, miss.”

She looked at him. “How soon can you do this blood thing?”

“If you would come with me to the telephone and ring Mr. Arbican—he’s entitled to advise you against it, if he thinks fit—then I could ring Dr. Dabbe now.” He grinned. “It won’t take him long to get here.”

It didn’t.

A stranger would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary should he have chanced to visit the village of Larking the next morning. Not, of course, that there were any strangers there. Larking was not that sort of village. A Sunday calm had descended upon the place and the inhabitants were going about their usual avocations. About a quarter of them were in church. At Matins.

Henrietta was there.

She was staying at the rectory now. She had been in that pleasant house on the green since late last night. Just before he had left, Inspector Sloan had said he would be greatly obliged if Miss Jenkins would take herself to the rectory for the night.

“Otherwise, miss,” he had gone on, “I shall have to spare a man to stay here and keep an eye on you.”

Mrs. Meyton, bless her, had been only too happy to have her under the rectory wing and Henrietta had been popped between clean sheets in the spare bed without fuss or botheration. The rector presumably had been wrestling with his sermon because she hadn’t seen him at all last night nor this morning when he had breakfasted alone between early service and Matins.

James Heber Hibbs read the First Lesson.

Henrietta was devoutly thankful that today was one of the Sundays in Lent, which meant that she didn’t have to listen while he fought his way through the genealogical tree of Abraham who begat Isaac who begat Jacob who begat …

She could listen to the Book of Numbers (Chapter 14, verse 26) with equanimity but she didn’t think she could bear to hear that unconscionable list of who begat whom when she was still no nearer knowing the father who had begat her. She sat, hands folded in front of her, while James Hibbs’s neat unaccented voice retailed what the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron.

She felt curiously detached. No doubt the events of the past week would fade into proportion in time just as those of the Old Testament had done but at the moment she wasn’t sure.

“… save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun,” said James Hibbs in those English upper middle class tones considered suitable for readings in church, which would have greatly surprised both Caleb and Joshua, son of Nun, had they heard them.

That had been how a man was known in those far off days, of course. It mattered very much whose son you were, which tribe you belonged to. One day, perhaps, she, Henrietta, would be able once again to look into a mirror without wondering who it was she saw there, but not yet. Definitely not yet.

A fragment of an almost forgotten newspaper article came back to her while she was sitting quietly in the pew. Somewhere she had read once that to undermine the resistance of prisoners in a concentration camp their captors first took away every single thing the poor unfortunates could call their own—papers, watches, rings, glasses, false teeth even. It was the first step towards the deliberate destruction of personality. After that the prisoners, utterly demoralized, began to doubt their very identity. Lacking reassurance in the matter, then surely existence itself would seem pointless, resistance became more meaningless still.

“Here endeth the First Lesson,” declared James Hibbs, leaving the lectern and going back to his wife in the pew which, abolition of pew rents or not, inalienably belonged to The Hall. He still walked like a soldier.

It didn’t seem possible that last Sunday Henrietta had been at college in Camford, finals the biggest landmark in her immediate future, Bill Thorpe more nebulously beyond, her mother always in the background.

Only she wasn’t her mother.

And the background had changed as suddenly as a theater backdrop. The man in the photograph on the mantelpiece had come briefly alive, and mysteriously was now dead again.

Uncomforted by the rector’s blessing at the end of the service, she waited in her seat until the church emptied. That, at least, saved her from all but the most barefaced of the curious. Mrs. Meyton insisted upon her lunching at the rectory. Henrietta demurred.

“When, my dear child, have you had time to buy food?” Mrs. Meyton asked.

Henrietta spoke vaguely of some cheese but was overruled by an indignant Mrs. Meyton.

“Certainly not,” said that lady roundly.

It wasn’t the happiest of meals. Henrietta ate her way through roast beef and Yorkshire pudding without appetite, one thing uppermost in her mind.

“They don’t say very much in the newspapers,” she murmured. “And the inspector didn’t tell me anything. Just that he was found dead.”

This was only partly true. The Sunday newspapers not available at the rectory had covered the death of Cyril Jenkins fairly graphically (WIDOWER DIES … GUNSHOT DEATH … BLOODSTAINED ROOM) but neither the Meytons nor Henrietta knew this.

The rector nodded. “I fear there is little doubt that his death is significant.”

“What I want to know,” demanded Henrietta almost angrily, “is if he was my father or not.”

She didn’t know yet if the little red bottle borne away last night by the pathologist—after a few mild, stock jokes about vampires—was going to tell her that or not.

Mr. Meyton nodded again. “Quite so.”

And in an anguished whisper: “And who killed him.”

“My dear,” began Mrs. Meyton, “should you concern yourself with—”

“Yes,” intervened the rector firmly, “she should.”

“I must know,” said Henrietta firmly, a tremulous note coming into her voice in spite of all her efforts to suppress it, “whether I am misbegotten or not.”

Dr. Dabbe could have told her something.

He telephoned the Berebury Police Station.

“That you, Sloan? I’ve done a grouping.”

“Yes, doctor?”

“The girl’s Group O.”

Sloan wrote it down. “Jenkins was AB, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right.”

“That means, Doctor, that …”

“That he is not the girl’s father,” said Dr. Dabbe dogmatically. “And that’s conclusive and irrespective of the mother’s blood group. A man with an AB Group blood cannot have a child with O Group blood.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Thank you very much. That’s a great help …”

“It’s an indisputable fact,” said Dr. Dabbe tartly, “which is more to the point.”

Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby reached the university town of Camford just before noon on the Sunday morning and drove straight to the center of that many tower’d Camelot. A friendly colleague directed them to Boleyn College.

“Funny person to call a ladies’ college after,” muttered Constable Crosby, putting the car into gear again. “Wasn’t she one of Henry the Eighth’s …”

“Yes,” said Sloan shortly, “she was.”

They found the decorous brick building on the outskirts of the town and waited while the porter set about finding the bursar, Miss Wotherspoon. She did not keep them long. A petite birdlike figure came tripping down the corridor. Sloan explained that he had come about Henrietta Jenkins.

“Jenkins?” said Miss Wotherspoon. “Nice girl.”

“Yes.”

“Not a First.”

“Oh?” said Sloan, who hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about but wasn’t prepared to say so.

“Perhaps a Second but I shouldn’t count on it.”

“No.”

“And,” Miss Wotherspoon sighed, “there’ll be some young man waiting to marry her who doesn’t care either way.”

“There is.”

Miss Wotherspoon shook her head. “No use trying to stop them,” she said briskly. “Take my advice about that. They hold it against you for ever afterwards.”

On that point Sloan was agreed with the bursar, but before he could say anything further she went on.

“But I’ve just remembered, Henrietta Jenkins hasn’t got a father.”

“That’s right,” agreed Sloan.

“Then you must be …” began Miss Wotherspoon—and stopped.

“Who?” prompted Sloan gently.

But he wasn’t catching the bursar out that way.

“No,” she said. “I think you must tell me.”

“The police,” admitted Sloan regretfully.

“You had better come to my study.”

She listened to Sloan’s tale without interruption, waited until he was quite finished and then announced that she would have to take him to the principal. He and Crosby tramped off after her and soon found themselves in a very gracious room indeed.

The principal was an impressive woman by any standard save that of fashion. She had a calm, still authority, responsive yet unsurprised. Sloan and Crosby were invited to settle into chintz armchairs and to repeat their story.

“I see,” said the principal when he had done, and not before. Both women exhibited a rare facility for listening. If this was the result of the education of women, then Sloan—for one—was all in favor.

“You will be able to see our difficulty, too,” said Sloan. “You have this girl whom we have reason to believe is being maintained here beyond such scholarships and grants as she may have been awarded.”

“True,” said the bursar, “but we were given funds on the condition that she never knew the source.”

“I don’t think she need,” replied Sloan seriously. “I can’t give you any sort of undertaking because this is a criminal case but unless such facts came out in open court I see no reason myself why she should be told.”

“In that case,” pronounced the principal, “I see no reason why Miss Wotherspoon should not divulge the—er—donor’s name to you.”

“Thank you, madam.”

Miss Wotherspoon disappeared in the direction of her study and returned waving a piece of paper.

“It wasn’t a lot,” she said. “Just a small check each term to make things more … what is the word I’m looking for?”

The word Sloan was looking for—and that very badly—was on the paper the bursar was holding. He retained his self-control with difficulty.

“Tolerable,” decided Miss Wotherspoon brightly. “Grants and scholarships are all very well but a girl needs a bit more than that if she’s going to get the most out of Camford.”

“The name,” pleaded Sloan.

Miss Wotherspoon looked at the paper in her hand. “Would it,” she said rather doubtfully, “be Hibbs? That’s what it looks like to me. J.A.H. Hibbs.”

Sloan groaned aloud.

“The Hall, Larking, Calleshire,” said Miss Wotherspoon for good measure.

“He never said why, I suppose?” asked Sloan.

“Just a brief note with the first check saying he thought funds at home were rather low and the enclosed might help.” Miss Wotherspoon waved a hand vaguely. “That sort of thing. The only condition was that the girl didn’t know. I could tell her what I liked.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“A service charity,” said the bursar promptly. “Plenty of girls receive money from them. There was no reason why she shouldn’t.”

“There was,” said the principal unexpectedly.

Sloan, Crosby and Miss Wotherspoon all turned in her direction.

“A very good reason,” said the principal.

Sloan cleared his throat. It had suddenly seemed to go very dry.

“What was that, madam?” She looked the sort of person who could tell a good reason from a bad one. If she thought it a very good reason …

“She wasn’t who she thought she was.”

“No. We have established that, madam, in Calleshire, but I should dearly like to know how you …”

“For entry to Boleyn College, Inspector, we require a sight of the candidate’s birth certificate.”

“Of course!” Sloan brought his hand down on the arm of the chintz-covered chair with a mighty slap. “We should have thought of that before.”

“Not, you understand, in order to confirm family details. We are not concerned”—here academic scruple raised its head—“with the father’s occupation but with the age of the candidate.”

“Quite so,” said Sloan, who was concerned about something quite different still. “How very stupid we have been, madam. This would have saved us a great deal—might even have saved a life.”

As before, the principal waited until he was quite finished before she continued. “Naturally this also applied in the case of Henrietta Jenkins.”

“Yes …” eagerly.

“With her birth certificate came a letter from the woman whom she believed to be her mother.”

“Grace Jenkins.”

The principal inclined her head. “This letter, which was addressed to me personally, explained that the girl did not know the name of her real parents and was not to be told it until she was twenty-one.”

“Yes?” even more eagerly.

“This I felt was a most unwise procedure and one I would have counseled against most strongly. However …”

Sloan was sitting on the very edge of his chair. “Yes?”

“However, her—er—guardian … is that who she was?”

“In a way,” said Sloan grimly.

“Her guardian’s wishes were entitled to be respected.”

“And?”

“The birth certificate was returned to Mrs. Jenkins and I have not mentioned the fact to anyone until today.”

“The name,” said Sloan. “What was the name?”

The Principal paused. “I don’t think I can be absolutely certain …”

“Henrietta who?” said Sloan urgently.

“I am left with the impression that it was Mantriot.”

Bill Thorpe walked down from Shire Oak Farm about half past two and called for Henrietta at the rectory. She went with him as much because the Meytons were obviously used to a postprandial snooze on Sunday afternoons as for any other reason.

“I told you I’d seen Cyril Jenkins yesterday,” she said by way of greeting. Her feelings towards Bill Thorpe were decidedly ambivalent.

“You did,” agreed Thorpe.

“What price him being my father?”

“Perhaps,” diplomatically.

“Or do you still think it doesn’t matter?”

Bill Thorpe grinned. “A gooseberry bush would still do for me.”

“Well!” exploded Henrietta crossly, “I think you’re the …”

“Or a carpet bag. At Victoria Station.” He took a couple of paces back and raised an arm to ward off an imaginary blow. “The Brighton line, of course.”

“The police,” said Henrietta, ignoring this, “probably won’t believe me, but …”

“The police,” declared Bill, “are trained not to believe anybody. It is the secret of their success.”

They had passed the entrance gates to The Hall now and were walking down the road to Boundary Cottage.

“I’ve just thought of something,” said Henrietta suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“If I’m not who I thought I was …”

“Yes?”

“I don’t have to be an only child.”

“No,” agreed Bill Thorpe.

“I thought you were going to say that didn’t matter either,” she said, a little deflated.

“But it does.” Bill Thorpe pushed open the gate of Boundary Cottage and stood back to let her go in first. “Very much.”

“Very much?”

“Just in the one set of circumstances.” He turned to shut the gate behind him, farmer through and through. “Unlikely, I know, but …”

“But what?”

“We must make absolutely sure,” he said gravely, “that you and I are not brother and sister. I have every intention of marrying you and that’s the only thing which could stop me.”

She laughed at last. “Not allowed outside ancient Egypt?”

“The word is, I believe, taboo.”

Henrietta led the way up to the front door, still laughing.

She stopped as soon as she opened it.

“Whatever’s the matter?” enquired Bill quickly. “You’ve gone quite white.”

She stood stockstill on the doorstep.

“Someone’s been in here,” she said, “since I left last night.”