The Cuckoo’s Child

‘Tell Mr Hirst we want to see him, lad,’ said Rawlinson severely. The flap was shut; a minute later it opened again and they were told to come into what was evidently the general office.

In a very small space was a little table with a typewriting machine standing on it and a chair in front, two large cupboards and a shelf on which was ranged a row of books, all of this leaving very little room even for the occupants to move around. At present, the clerks were seated on tall padded stools fitted with backrests at a high, sloping desk that stretched from wall to wall beneath a big window offering a view of a road winding up on the opposite hill towards the moors. It was a pleasantly wooded prospect in which several largish villas could be discerned; it was obviously the best side of the town, where many of the mill masters and other notables presumably lived, with the view of it unimpeded from this vantage point by any mill chimneys. It appealed to Womersley’s sardonic sense of humour to think its own view would necessarily overlook the town itself and the grimy Neller valley, though perhaps the satisfaction of knowing it was all theirs made up for this.

In the office, an elderly man seated at one end of the desk was rolling an old-fashioned, round ebony ruler, rather like a piece of broomstick handle, down the columns in a ledger, then ruling them off in red ink, and didn’t bother to raise his head. The boy stood in the middle of the room, staring at them. The third occupant, a rotund man with curly black hair, probably in his forties, wearing a navy-blue serge suit, shiny at the seat and elbows, was busying himself at one of the cupboards. ‘Mr Hirst?’ said Womersley, extending a hand before he saw the man was grasping a hefty ledger marked ‘Daybook’ and was unable to respond.

‘This is Mr Porteous, the chief clerk,’ said Rawlinson hastily.

Edwin Porteous had a heavy, doughy face, and curranty eyes. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to wait for Mr Hirst. He has somebody with him at the moment.’ A heated interchange issuing from behind the closed door he indicated with a fat white hand confirmed this. ‘Sounds like they’ll be done in a minute, though,’ he added as there came the rattle of someone’s hand on the knob.

Placing the book he had extracted from the safe on the desk, he nimbly eased himself into the seat that was comfortably hollowed out by his ample posterior. ‘And you can get back on your buffet and stop gawping, Arnold,’ he said sharply to the boy. Arnold went back to his own stool in the corner, picked up his pen, nibbled the end and stared out of the window. Porteous opened the ledger, and paid them no more attention. The elderly man went on adding up his columns. The voices from the next office continued, and Womersley and Rawlinson waited.

A row such as Porteous claimed he had previously overheard coming from the room next door would clearly have been audible; even now, with voices raised but nobody actually shouting, it was still possible to distinguish an angry word here and there. Presently the door flew open and from it emerged a short, middle-aged man, swarthily-complexioned and with thick, heavy dark eyebrows drawn together. His aggression was bigger than he was – the very pencils in the top pocket of his brown smock seemed to bristle. ‘Aye, then, we’ll have to see who comes out on it best, won’t we?’

‘Cool off a bit, afore tha’ does owt tha’ll regret, that’s my advice,’ replied the man who had followed him out. ‘Tha’s picked a fair time for all this and right, what with all we have on just now.’

‘I’m sorry about Maister Beaumont, but that’s got nowt to do with it.’

‘It has for us. So think on!’

The man left abruptly, banging the outer door behind him, and Whiteley Hirst said apologetically, dropping the Yorkshire, ‘I’m sorry about all that. Come in, will you?’

The bookkeeper and office manager was a very big man; his height matched Rawlinson’s, and he could have given Womersley, who was no lightweight, several pounds, but for all that he was soft-looking, with a doleful face and bags under his eyes, giving him the appearance of a sorrowing bloodhound. An old, furrowed scar running deeply across his forehead added to the impression. The handshake he offered was surprisingly firm.

‘Who was that?’ Womersley asked.

‘Apart from being a natural troublemaker, you mean? Name of Quarmby, George Quarmby – warehouse overlooker, a trades union man. Strong Labour supporter. Not to say a right pain in the arse, to be frank. Does all he can to encourage women to join the union, what’s more.’

‘That’s bad,’ Rawlinson said.

Womersley shot him a warning glance, but Hirst had not noticed. ‘He’s a good worker, though, I’ll say that for him. Only reason I’ve seen he’s kept on.’

‘Office manager’ seemed to be a loose term. The way he spoke suggested Hirst enjoyed authority beyond that, one extending over the workers in the mill. ‘Just now, he’s agitating with these other hotheads from Huddersfield about a concerted strike for more pay all along the valley. Strike? Ainsley would turn in his grave.’ He paused. ‘Aye, well.’ Slightly embarrassed at his inept choice of words, he waved them to a seat.

The bookkeeper’s office was just as sparse and utilitarian as the other. There were two desks which, being lower than the long one in the outer office, offered no pleasant distractions by way of a view from outside. Two or three wooden chairs stood by a large table marked with what looked like dye stains. On the table were piled long tufts of wool samples, twists of yarn, a pair of delicate scales and swatches of cloth, an open order book, and – startlingly incongruous in that office – a modern telephone. It was a dark little room, lit by gas. So dark that even at this time of an admittedly overcast day, two mantles were lit on one of the brackets, their yellowish light not contributing to the cheerfulness of the place.

When they were seated, Hirst himself sat down heavily in the swivel chair at his desk. ‘Well, who could have thought it, all this? A bad do and no mistake, a right bad do. How can I help you?’

‘Tell me about the day Mr Beaumont died,’ Womersley said. ‘Was he expected in?’

‘He was, and it was a surprise to me when I came in at half past seven – I’m always here before the rest of the office staff – and found he wasn’t already here.’

Apparently, it had been Ainsley Beaumont’s custom all his working life, to walk down Syke Beck Lane from Farr Clough House, taking the short cut halfway down to bring him out by the dam, which he would walk alongside to arrive at the mill well before the engine started. He took care always to be in the vicinity of the mill yard where his workers could see him as they clocked on at half past six. Everybody at Cross Ings must have been aware of this routine, which only varied if he had made other business arrangements for that day. ‘Nobody could say he didn’t set a good example!’ Hirst said. ‘When he hadn’t turned up by nine o’clock I sent up to Farr Clough to enquire, but they said he’d had his breakfast and left, only a fair bit later than usual. It did make me uneasy, but there’d been a lot of that lately, him acting funny like. And then, they came to tell us they’d found him, in the dam.’ For a moment, he looked quite overcome.

Rawlinson said, ‘We shall need to look into his papers, his books and stuff, Mr Hirst. Where’s his private office?’

‘Private office? The only private office at Cross Ings, lad, is over yonder.’ He indicated the second desk, at right angles to his own. ‘I know when to make myself scarce if there’s anything I’m not expected to hear – though there’s never been much of that, it’s my job to know all that goes on,’ he added, his pride obvious. ‘To tell the truth, though, it’s not a very satisfactory arrangement, place needs modernizing and we’re all on top of one another, you don’t need me to tell you that. It’s served well enough up to now but if we go on expanding as much as young Gideon reckons we should . . . there’s talk of pulling down my sister’s house next door to build more offices . . . Any road, you’ll find the books in that safe, if that’s what you want – and all in order.’

‘Did anybody owe him money?’ Womersley asked.

‘There’s always money owing for pieces that have been bought, till the end of the month, that is.’

‘I don’t mean that sort of money. Bad debts.’

Whiteley Hirst raised a sardonic smile. ‘Nobody that doesn’t pay on time gets credit at Cross Ings. I can guarantee his business affairs here were in good nick, it’s what I’m here for, and you’re welcome to see the books at any time. If it’s anything of a private nature, well, that’ll be up at Farr Clough, where he lived.’

‘Or did he owe anybody else?’

‘Not as I know of.’ His eyes went from one to the other. ‘There’s summat you’re not saying. He didn’t do away with himself, if that’s what you’re thinking, I can tell you that. Anybody that knew Ainsley would tell you the same.’

Womersley said nothing and Hirst threw him another penetrating look and said bluntly, ‘And he didn’t tummle into the dam, neither, did he?’

‘No, Mr Hirst, it’s looking very much as if he might have died as the result of a fight, after which he was thrown into the dam.’

The silence that followed was suddenly overlaid by a deeper silence, the cessation of sound as the machinery in the mill was switched off. Almost simultaneously, the loud hoot of the mill buzzer sounded, accompanied by a dozen more across the town, signalling half past twelve, followed by the scrape and clatter of boots and clogs on the cobbles in the mill yard as the millhands rushed for home like greyhounds out of a trap, panting to leave the muck and toil of the mill behind, if only for a day and a half. Sounds from the outer office suggested the clerks there were packing up, likewise.

There was a knock and Porteous poked his big face round the door. ‘I’m off then, now, if there’s nothing else?’

Whiteley Hirst blinked and came to life. ‘No, that’s all right. You get off, Edwin. See you Monday.’ Porteous’s little black eyes darted from one to the other, then he nodded and left.

‘What are you talking about?’ Hirst said at last when the outer office door had banged behind him. ‘Nobody would have done such a thing as that to Ainsley.’ He might as well have said nobody would have dared.

‘Well, it seems he was killed by a blow on the back of his head. And no, it’s unlikely to have been a fall,’ Womersley said, forestalling the comment he saw might be coming. ‘It looks like somebody had a grudge against him, a score to settle, something like that. Any trouble of that sort lately?’

It was the first, obvious question and often brought an immediate answer. Murder rarely happened out of the blue, something had to have led up to it and usually friends, family, neighbours or workmates, somebody or other, would be well aware what it was all about, and have a good idea who was likely to have been responsible.

But the manager shook his head.

‘Come on, Mr Hirst, you had some words with him yourself a couple of weeks back? You – and young Mr Beaumont . . . that’s Mr Gideon, right? Angry words, a right old row in fact.’

‘How did you come to know that? No, don’t answer. I suppose it must have been all over t’shop in half an hour, it were loud enough.’ His speech was becoming broader, slipping into its native accents as he became more agitated. ‘Everybody knows we were always fratching, Ainsley and me, but it didn’t mean owt, I’ve worked here ever since I left school and there’s not much I don’t know about the business, it’s just how we were. We never fell out for more than five minutes. I’ll admit this was a bit different, though. There was Gideon and young Tom Illingworth – he’s my nephew – in it this time . . .’ He paused to rub a hand down his face, pulling its lugubrious folds even further down.

‘Go on, Mr Hirst.’

‘Ainsley had some sort of idea to bring Tom into the business, which were the daftest idea he’d ever had and I told him so to his face. Tom is my sister’s lad, he’s a qualified engineer and he knows and cares nowt about the wool trade. But Ainsley always had a taking for the lad, helped him with his education and that. Tom just laughed when he heard what Ainsley wanted.’

‘And that was all?’

‘Not by a long chalk, it weren’t. Ainsley told him he were an ungrateful young pup, after all he’d done for him, and that made Tom get his rag out – not easy, but when he does . . . I didn’t like it myself. Ainsley had never needed anybody else in the business before . . . and why should he now, especially when he had Gideon coming up? Then the lad himself had to go and chip in, and ask where he came in on all that.’

‘And what did Mr Beaumont say to that?’

‘He told him right sharp to hold his tongue. That fair set t’cat among t’pigeons, and Gideon shouted some more at his granddad and then stamped out. He can have a rare temper on him an’ all, sometimes, he isn’t a Beaumont for nowt, but it’s soon over, just like it was with his granddad, bearing no ill will. He’s a bit impetuous at times, that lad, but he has his head screwed on. He’s right, Ainsley should have given him more rope. He forgot he were running this place on his own when he were Gideon’s age.’ He sighed again. ‘Well, choose how, it were all over summat and nowt and if you’re thinking one of us held a grudge about it and then took it out on Ainsley, you’ve another think coming.’

It seemed eerily quiet without the noise of the machinery rumbling in the background. ‘What would you say, Mr Hirst, if I told you Mr Beaumont knew he was a dying man?’

‘Dying?’

‘According to the doctors, he’d been diagnosed some time since with a tumour on his brain that meant he couldn’t have lived for much longer, anyway.’

If the information about the way Ainsley Beaumont had died had been a shock, this had shaken Hirst to the core. He was again left speechless, the blood draining from his heavy face. ‘A tumour?’ he repeated at last. ‘Diagnosed? You mean he knew?’ After a moment, he added, ‘Well, that accounts for it, that and a lot more.’

‘Accounts for what, Mr Hirst?’

‘When we were having that set-to, he shouted at Gideon, “You can do what you like when I’m dead and gone, but till then, I’m still here, think on!” It’s what folks say, I know, but I tell you, without the word of a lie, it fair gave me a turn, coming from Ainsley. He was never one to think that road, never mind say it.’

He gazed, upset, at the scratches and stains on the bare surface of the wooden table. ‘Killed? Oh God, I don’t know what they’re going to make of that, up at Farr Clough.’

‘Mr Hirst, I’d be obliged if you’d keep all this to yourself for the time being.’

‘What? Not tell the family?’

‘I suggest you let them remain in happy ignorance for the time being. I’ll see them myself tomorrow.’ This afternoon he would need to go back to Huddersfield to report to his superintendent. ‘It’ll come better officially, and there’s no point in upsetting them before we have to’

‘Well,’ Hirst began indecisively. ‘I don’t know. They’ll want to know. She’ll—’

‘I’m not asking you, Mr Hirst, I’m telling you. Just keep it under your hat for now, right?’

‘All right, if that’s what you say.’