THE ONLY TWO MEDICINES A BODY NEEDS
House-to-house enquiries had brought little to further the investigation. All the houses along Kiltarn Road had been visited and the occupants asked if they had seen or heard anything, but nothing came of the calls.
The farms above Bolehill Copse were also visited with the same result. Farmers go to bed early and most had been sound asleep, well past counting metaphorical sheep, at the time that the killer was presumed to have carried Emily up the path and into the copse. Except for Mrs. Annie Entwistle, the wife of Fred Entwistle of Midmorning Farm; a farm further up the hill from Bolehill Copse. If you were walking up the lane towards the copse, Midmorning Farm is off to the right, two-thirds of the way up the hillside, ideally placed to catch the full broadside of the northerly winds sweeping along the eastern edge of the Pennines.
This is what Annie Entwistle told PC Alan Edgeley:
‘Aye, I remember that night right well,’ she said as they sat at her well-scrubbed, bleach-smelling kitchen table, ‘not just for that poor lass, I mean who could do such a terrible thing? Terrible, I don’t know what the world is coming to, really, I don’t. As I was saying to Fred only last week….’
‘Please, Missus, what can you tell us about that night?’ Edgeley asked, sipping at the overly sweet but very weak tea she had insisted on brewing when he came calling at her door. She rarely saw visitors, and despite the gravity of the situation, Annie was determined to make the most of the opportunity.
‘Aye, right, well I had this terrible earache, it were like summat were drilling into me skull from inside me ear. I’ve never known owt like it for pain. We tried goin’ to bed, I thought; just get off to sleep if I can, maybe in’t morning it’ll have righted itself like. Anyway, no matter what I did, nowt seemed to work, I just couldn’t get off to sleep no matter what, so in’t end, I took me’self off downstairs to warm up some olive oil to put in me ear. Should have done it earlier I suppose, my old ma swore by that, she did. That and cod liver oil, the only two medicines a body needs she allus maintained, and as she lived to be ninety-two wi’out a day sick, who’s to say she’s wrong, eh?
As for Fred, he’ll take owt that the doctor gives ‘im wi’out questioning. Could be arsenic for all he knows, and ‘e’d swallow it down without a thought, now as for me…’
‘Please, Annie, it is Annie, isn’t it? That night. Did you see or hear owt?’
‘I were just coming to that, let a body get a word in edgewise and I’ll tell thee. There I was downstairs in’t kitchen and I warmed up a teaspoon of olive oil, poured it in me ear and plugged it in like, wi’ cotton wool.’
‘What time was this?’
‘I looked at the kitchen clock and it said twenty past two, but that clock always runs a bit slow, I must tell Fred ten times a day to get it fixed, regularise it or regulate it, whatever, and he always says ‘e will but ‘e never does, the idle sod.’
‘So, about two twenty, two thirty you reckon? And did you hear anything, see any lights? Anything unusual at all,’ said Edgeley, trying to hide his impatience; at this rate, he would be here all day.
‘Well, I’d gone back upstairs again, and the olive oil did seem to be working a bit, but I still couldn’t get off ‘cos he, Fred, ‘e was snoring like our prize Berkshire boar, you should hear him once he gets started, makes the rafters shake, I can tell you.’
‘Then what?’
“I thought I heard a motorbike, close by, not in’t farmyard or owt like that but from Kiltarn. Then it stopped, didn’t seem to go away. Just stopped, like.’
‘Did you get up to look out of the window?’
‘No, I’d just got settled back in bed, got warmed up again, me feet were like ice blocks, so I’d warmed them on Jacob, once he gets off, nowt wakes him, the roof could fall in on ‘im and ‘e’d still be lying there, sawing his way through all them logs. Should’ve known what he was going to be like, ‘e’ was like that on our honeymoon, Filey it was, we took a caravan and it used to rock and sway at night and not just from, well you know what, but ‘im snoring.’
‘Annie, please, you think you heard a motorbike stopping on Kiltarn Road. What time, d’you reckon, I mean how long after you went up did you hear it?’ Edgeley said, desperately trying to keep Annie on the tracks of her story.
‘Not long after, 10, 15 minutes, I didn’t look at the bedside clock. Didn’t really take too much notice, to tell you the truth, well, you wouldn’t normally, would you? Wish I had done now, of course.’
‘Not to worry, love, you weren’t to know, nobody could have known.’
‘I suppose, but a body can’t help thinking, perhaps if I had looked out…?’
‘You wouldn’t have seen much, not wi’ all them trees down there. Then what?’
‘What?’
‘You heard a motorbike stopping. Leastwise you think so, about quarter to three, give or take. Did you hear owt after?
‘No, can’t say that I did, I must have actually dropped off, though I don’t remember doin’ so.’
‘And how’s your ear now? Better?’
‘Oh that, aye, by morning it were grand. Olive oil, constable. Olive oil and cod liver oil. Don’t thee forget, lad. Now, you’ll ‘ave another cuppa, won’t you, and I’ve got a nice carrot cake, fresh baked…’
Alan declined the offer of more tea; like most coppers, he liked his tea so strong the spoon could stand up straight in the cup, but he did have a piece of cake, and very tasty it was too.
Alan Edgeley’s report was duly noted, and a team dispatched to Bolehill Copse to see if there were tyre tracks, but none were found. If there had been, the fingertip search carried out all the way back from the murder site to the road the day after the murder would have noted them, but nevertheless, it had to be checked again. Just to be sure.