Seventeen

Jack Rawlinson had legged it down Syke Beck Lane into Wainthorpe after leaving Laura Harcourt. It was an odd impulse that took him down there, but there was no one waiting for him at home in his lodgings, and he was hungry. He might just find something to eat, even on a Sunday evening. A pint of Tetley’s wouldn’t come amiss, either. A chat with the locals, maybe with a chance of picking up something useful.

It was tea time and the streets were relatively empty, a good time to have a wander around first and see what this one-horse town had to offer. Too much to hope there’d be any girls about – nice girls like Laura Harcourt, anyway.

He wondered how she really felt about what had come to light about her birth. Brought up as a young lady – and then to find you were the illegitimate daughter of a nursery maid. She seemed to be open enough about what little she knew, but he still felt he had told her more than she had told him. It was odd about Theo, her father. The fact that he’d fathered an illegitimate child, however shameful, hardly accounted for his name never being spoken. Dammit, the man was a hero. He had given his life to save his babies from a terrible death. How could a tragedy like that provide a motive for his father’s murder twenty years later? Maybe it hadn’t. Womersley was probably right: he had too much imagination.

He passed the police station with its blue lamp, the imposing edifice of the Liberal Club and two or three chapels, lights on ready for evening service. Already having the geography of this part of the town in his mind, he cut off a corner by taking the path through the municipal park on the hillside to that part of the town as yet unfamiliar to him.

This, then, was what they called ‘Bottom End’, where the streets and alleys were uncobbled and most of the houses were old and stone-slated, crammed into dirt yards and squares approached by steps down from the road. The town’s pervading smell of raw wool was overlaid by something worse – there was a tannery somewhere nearby. It was noisier, too. Despite the Sabbath, and the hour, children played outside underneath the gas lamps, boys shinning up the posts and some, for devilment, chasing the screaming girls from their skipping. Outside an open door, two beefy women were having a fierce and noisy argument.

Eventually, he found an ancient looking pub called the Tyas Arms. Hunger getting the better of him, he pushed open the door. It didn’t look up to much, but he was thirsty and he could see pies on the counter.

The landlord was surly but at least served a fair pint, and the pork pie was excellent, the crust crisp with no thick layer of uncooked pastry inside, the meat juicy and peppery. No one took much notice of him after the first few suspicious glances. The place wasn’t exactly humming with trade. A few younger men created a bit of noise round the dartboard, but the older element, men in flat caps and collarless shirts, smoked and paid attention to their beer, conversed in monosyllables or kept themselves to themselves. He should have known better than to hope to glean a few juicy bits of gossip. A pound to a dried pea they would have guessed what he, a stranger in Wainthorpe, was doing here. Nobody was going to open up to the police. It wasn’t that sort of place. He sat for a while, drank up and left. He might as well have gone straight home.

Having decided the way back through the park was the quickest route to his tram stop, he was approaching the steps that led up to its little iron gate when suddenly both his arms were grabbed from behind and he was thrown to the ground. He saw nothing before his face hit the flags, but he smelled beer and strong cigarette smoke, the taint of wool grease on working clothes; he was conscious of ripe body odour and the rank smell of poverty. Then he tasted blood and spat out a tooth. By which time his assailant had gone, along with his wallet.

He was trying to scramble to his feet, and feeling distinctly woozy, when his arm was taken again; this time it was a woman, a fat, middle-aged woman in a crossover pinny. ‘Eh, lad, are you all right?’

‘You see who it was?’ Rawlinson mumbled, as distinctly as he could with his mouth still full of blood.

‘Nay, he were off afore I could make out what were happening. I were just pulling t’draw-ons upstairs when I heard. You’d best see t’doctor, lad.’

Rawlinson put his hand to his cheekbone which he could actually feel swelling up beneath his hand. The tooth (not a front one, thank the Lord!) had not come out whole but broken off, leaving a jagged edge. It hurt his tongue. ‘I’ll be all right, thanks, missis.’

‘That you won’t. I’m off to fetch Dr Widdop. I reckon I know where he’ll be.’

She nipped back into the house and came back, her head wrapped in a shawl. ‘You stop here and don’t move. Shan’t be but a minute.’

He was still too dizzy to do anything else but remain where he was, slumped on the pavement with his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and minutes later opened them to hear Dr Widdop saying, ‘Now then, now then, let’s have a look at you. Good God, it’s Sergeant Rawlinson, isn’t it? What’s happened?’

‘It’s nothing, Doctor. Hope I haven’t brought you away from something important.’

He thought he heard the woman laugh, but it was only a cough, and Widdop said, ‘No, not at all. Can we get this young feller inside, Mrs Brocklehurst?’ He looked slightly flustered and the buttons of his waistcoat were done up awry.

‘You’ll live,’ he remarked after the injuries had been examined and he had cleaned up the blood with warm water supplied by the helpful Mrs Brocklehurst. There seemed to be an awful lot of it, most of it coming from the cut above his brow that the doctor was dabbing. ‘Nasty, but not enough to need stitches. Scalp wounds like that bleed a lot – and you’ve a thick skull, young man!’ He administered iodine and a plaster, then examined Rawlinson’s cheekbone. ‘No bones broken – but you’re going to have one heck of a shiner, I’m afraid.’

After thanking the kindly woman they left together. Widdop was concerned. ‘May I offer you a bed for the night, Sergeant?’ Rawlinson shook his head. ‘No? How are you going to get home, then? By tram?’ He cast a professional eye over the injured man. ‘Very well, if you must. I think you’ll be all right, but I’ll walk with you to the stop. Sorry I can’t give you a lift in my car. I usually walk when I come down this end of the town. The streets are too narrow to turn, and it’s not worth the trouble finding somewhere to leave it. Got your fare?’

The thief had not rifled Rawlinson’s trouser pockets and he found he had enough small change to get him home. ‘That was a nice woman,’ he said as they walked along.

‘Oh, I daresay she was glad to do what she could. She’s a widow, bit of a gossip but she’s all right.’

Rawlinson still wondered how she had known where to get hold of Widdop. He’d had his doctor’s bag with him, but it didn’t look as though he had been brought from an important case. He grinned to himself, remembering Mrs Brocklehurst’s laugh.

By now his head had cleared somewhat and he was beginning to feel more of a fool than anything else. The encounter hadn’t done a lot of good to a suit he was proud of and his shirt gave the impression he’d had a suicidal encounter with his razor, but they were the least of his worries. When this got out it would do his reputation no good. He reached his lodgings without mishap and took the pills Widdop had given him, and his advice to go straight to bed, but he spent a restless night, tossing and turning and thinking about the theft of his wallet. The thief had been lucky – or more likely had his eye on Rawlinson while he’d paid for his pie and pint with a pound and pushed the ten-shilling note of the change into his wallet. He cursed the loss of that, ten bob was ten bob, and he was slowly trying to put a bit by so that one day he might move out of digs and have a little place of his own – but he was more concerned to have lost the other things: the precious photograph of Tilly, his diary – and how, how was he going to explain the loss of his warrant card, plus – oh God! – his police pocketbook, all of which he kept tucked inside his wallet?

The next morning, after leaving a message for Womersley, he paid an emergency visit to the dentist to have the broken tooth attended to, and made a call on Mrs Brocklehurst to leave a bunch of flowers, much to her delight and embarrassment, and finally presented himself at the Wainthorpe police station.

‘Don’t say anything,’ he warned as he entered, bracing himself for the jokes – and for the rollicking which was to come. The black eye Widdop had predicted had certainly materialized. He looked like a gargoyle fallen off a church roof and it was probably destined to get worse, but much more than that he felt a right muff for having lost what a policeman should guard with his life – his warrant card and his notebook.

‘Good afternoon,’ Womersley remarked. Rawlinson let the sarcasm slide over him, and Womersley wisely resisted any further comment, other than a raised eyebrow at the sight of his sergeant’s picturesque face, watching with interest as Binns held out his hand towards the young man. In it was Rawlinson’s wallet.

‘What—?’

The photograph, the card and the notebook were still inside, although the ten-shilling note had gone.

‘Found chucked over a garden wall. The money was the only thing he was after. Either he didn’t look at owt else – or more likely couldn’t read what it was, any road.’

He still had to run the gauntlet of laughs and ribald calls about his spectacular black eye thrown out by the overalled women and girl machine minders as, early next morning, he and Womersley walked through from the ferociously noisy carding room and into the relatively less clamorous combing department at Cross Ings Mill. Trying to ignore the women’s jeers and keep his dignity, he nearly made things worse by almost measuring his length on a floor that was inches thick in grease. You could have scraped it up with a spoon, the smell of sheep was overpowering. He only righted himself in time by grabbing on to a skep full of huge bobbins of wool, which unfortunately was on wheels and began a slow slide away from him. But Womersley, pan-faced, was there to save him from disaster with a strong hand. Trying to ignore the laughter, his ears glowing, he followed in the inspector’s wake.

By contrast, the warehouse on the second storey, busy as it was when they arrived, was a haven of quiet. Heavy bales of raw wool were being loaded through the hoist door from a wagon which stood in the yard below. Swinging through the air and into the big opening, they were grabbed by men ready to unhook and manhandle them on to trolleys, before wheeling them to the giant weigh-scales and then stacking them in their designated places.

George Quarmby was easily spotted. He was the one with the brown smock, the flat cap and the battery of pencils in his top pocket, noting into a small, thick, greasy book the weights as they were called out in hundredweights, quarters and pounds. He still looked dour, his black brows drawn together, but less furious than he had appeared when he had stormed out of Whiteley Hirst’s office on Saturday morning. When he spotted the two policemen, he gave a short nod. ‘With you in a minute or two.’ Almost as he spoke, the mill engine was shut off. It was time for breakfast.

In the sudden quiet a lad arrived, staggering under the weight of a trayful of steaming pint pots of tea; men began to look around for a place to perch and Quarmby licked his pencil and wrote the last figures in his book. By this time Arnold, the lad from the office, he of the ginger hair, had also appeared and was standing aimlessly by, waiting for the books. Quarmby said sharply as he handed them over, ‘We’re running a bit late, but tell Edwin Porteous I want ‘em back here by nine sharp, think on! Go on, frame thissen!’

The boy escaped, presumably for the figures to be transferred into office ledgers, and Quarmby beckoned Womersley and Rawlinson to follow him into his tiny, glassed-in cubicle, containing a high stool and a shelf, a big clock on the wall behind, and nothing else. Quarmby perched on the stool and unwrapped a bacon sandwich from a red-spotted handkerchief, shook some sugar from a small tin into his tea and stirred it with the pencil from behind his ear. ‘All right. Twenty-five minutes afore we start up again. What is it you’re after?’

‘A few questions about the day Mr Beaumont died, that’s all, Mr Quarmby.’

‘Oh, and why me?’

‘Why not? We’ll be talking to a lot more before we’ve done.’ Likely everybody in the mill, even the town, Womersley thought gloomily, seeing the unhappy task stretching before them.

‘Seeing as how he’s been murdered, you mean?’

‘Who told you that?’ Rawlinson asked.

‘No need to look so capped. Word gets round. But don’t come looking at me.’

‘You were having a bit of an argument with Mr Hirst when we saw you last,’ Womersley reminded him.

‘It’s my job to have arguments with the bosses. It weren’t the first and I doubt it’ll be the last.’ It looked as though he’d lost his taste for his sandwich. He threw them a sardonic look and folded up what was left of it into the red handkerchief.

‘You’re strong in the Trades Union, shop steward, they tell me, Mr Quarmby.’

‘Do they? They’ll have been telling you I’m a Labour councillor an’ all, I don’t doubt.’

‘Very commendable.’

Quarmby gave him a sardonic look. ‘I’ve had seven bairns with bellies to fill on subsistence wages. They’re all grown up now, but I haven’t forgotten what it were like. Bad old days, and not over yet by a long chalk. Them as owns the mills reckon they have their own troubles, but it’s all relative.’ He drained the pint pot in one long swallow. ‘Look, as far as it goes, Ainsley Beaumont weren’t so bad. But they’re all tarred with t’same brush, t’bosses. They’re not in it for love, they’re in it for what they can get out on it . . . more brass and t’biggest mill in t’Neller valley. Young ‘un up yonder,’ he added, jerking his head in the direction of Farr Clough, high above the mill, ‘he’ll be just as bad, now he’s got some clout.’

Womersley took most of this with a large pinch of salt. Though it was an undeniable fact that there were millowners in the Neller valley – as elsewhere – who were regular tyrants, it would be ridiculous to believe that every one of them ground the faces of the poor – Womersley hadn’t forgotten the plans for the row of houses in Ainsley Beaumont’s desk, the deeds to the small tobacconist which provided Walter Thwaite with employment and income. He knew that most of the owners genuinely believed they treated their workers fairly, while they themselves acted within their own lights and worked hard, finding work to keep the mill going, often risking considerable amounts of their own money. They paid statutory wages, and did not lay workers off unnecessarily, but they one and all abhorred strikes and those who instigated them. They were wary, and with good cause, of the Trades Unions and men like Quarmby, with a chip the size of a tree trunk on his shoulder.

‘What time do you start work, Mr Quarmby?’

‘Half six, same as everybody else.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Hanson’s Fold, Bottom End, but I don’t come in anent the dam, so I didn’t see owt, if that’s what you mean. You can look at my time sheet if you don’t believe me, but any road, young Gideon’ll tell you what time I came in. He got here same time as I did. His granddad were as keen on him keeping time as the rest on us. Lad only just made it afore th’engine started.’

‘It was Mr Beaumont’s habit to stand in the yard as everybody arrived, wasn’t it?’

‘Aye, to notice latecomers and see t’gate locked. After that you don’t get in till after breakfast and lose a couple of hours. Once late and he had you in his sights.’

‘But not that morning?’

‘I don’t reckon so.’

Womersley did not dismiss the idea that if Quarmby had believed anything warranted killing his employer, he would not have hesitated. On the other hand, although he swore he had not come to work via the path beside the dam that day, a lie cost nothing. A dour little man, small as a bantam cock, with bitter brown eyes, he was wiry and muscular, despite his small size. He was a warehouseman, accustomed all his life to manhandling heavy wool bales. He would have the strength to heave a man bigger than he over a wall and into the water, easily. But Womersley was inclined to believe what the man said about his relations with the management. He might have unresolved grudges, but killing his boss would have gained him nothing.

Quarmby was looking at them from under his beetling brows as if deciding whether to say more. At last he said, ‘Any road, I owed Ainsley Beaumont summat, never mind what differences we had. One of my lasses, my youngest, our Alice, were taken bad here, about six months since. Collapsed in front of her machine. He happened to be there and if it hadn’t been for him getting her into the office right sharp – he carried her in hisself, and used his telephone to get the doctor – I reckon she wouldn’t be here now.’ His hand, where it rested on the scarred shelf, was bunched into a tight fist.

‘Go on, Mr Quarmby.”

‘He even helped one of the women tend her, and it were all over bar t’shouting by the time Dr Widdop got there. Doctors! You’d like to think they’d be used to a drop of blood, but he weren’t. It right sickened him.’

He wasn’t sickened over mine, Rawlinson thought, and it was more than a drop.

‘Well, right enough, but even doctors can be upset.’ Womersley recalled the nervous rash on Widdop’s hands. ‘Was it an accident with one of the machines?’

The engine started again. Quarmby slid from his stool and picked up his empty pint pot. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She were pregnant. She were sixteen, and the lad responsible had tekken his hook and buggered off, so it were just as well she lost the bairn, weren’t it?’

‘Well, Jack, what do you make of that?’ They were standing in the mill yard, at the point where the path that ran alongside the dam joined the canal towpath.

Rawlinson had no time to answer. ‘Inspector!’

They turned to see Porteous, the clerk from the office, puffing towards them. For a fat man, he moved fast. Even so, he was not one made for exertion and by the time he reached them he was panting hard. ‘They’re saying Mr Beaumont was murdered. Attacked. Is that true?’ he said when he could manage it.

‘It looks as though he was attacked, yes.’

Porteous nodded sagely. Womersley waited. ‘Mr Porteous, is there something you want to tell us?’

Breathing more easily now, he said, ‘Aye, there is something you might like to know. That morning, the morning he was killed, I nipped out for a smoke. All right, I shouldn’t have done, but we’re not allowed to smoke anywhere in the mill, it’s too dangerous with all that grease – careless match or fag-end and it’d go up like Bonfire Night. As a matter of fact, we’re not supposed to smoke anywhere on the premises, but Mr Hirst had gone across to the bank, so I, well . . . I just nipped out to snatch a minute or two, like.’

‘And?’

‘I walked down here, towards the canal, where we are now, and I saw him.’

‘Who?’

‘The boss.’

‘Mr Hirst?’

‘No, no, the master, Mr Beaumont.’

He had their attention now. ‘Half past ten? He was dead by then,’ Rawlinson said.

Porteous shook his head. ‘You’re wrong there. He was still very much alive, on the far side, over yonder, in the park.’ He pointed across the river. ‘With somebody else.’

‘Are you sure of this? At half past ten?’

‘Near enough.’ Porteous began to pat his pockets, looking as though he was about to produce an illicit cigarette now. He restrained himself and added that yes, he was absolutely sure, even at that distance, that it was Mr Beaumont he had seen.

A man of keen sight, Edwin Porteous. Womersley and Rawlinson had both turned towards the municipal park, where it sloped upwards from the valley, the same park Rawlinson had walked through the previous night. The distance was not all that far, but Womersley doubted whether you would be able to distinguish anyone’s features clearly enough to swear who it was from here. But Porteous was adamant that it was Ainsley Beaumont he had seen.

‘And the person with him?’

He was more evasive on that point. It had been a man, that was all he could say, a big man though, somewhere about the build of . . . Mr Hirst, say.

Womersley looked at him. ‘Are you saying it was Mr Hirst?’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t be sure of that. Anyway, he was at the bank, wasn’t he? He didn’t get back until well after eleven.’

‘Well, thank you, Mr Porteous.’

Porteous’s big doughy face was full of spite as he turned to go. ‘I’m right, you know.’

Womersley watched him waddle away. He did not take to Edwin Porteous. He did not like the heavy-handed hints about Whiteley Hirst. If the man had been so sure it was Ainsley Beaumont he’d seen, why hadn’t he been as certain about the person he was with? But if his statement was true, about Ainsley at least, then it meant that the master of Cross Ings had not, after all, died shortly after leaving Walter Thwaite’s shop. So where had he been between then and the time when Porteous claimed to have seen him? The park was not an inviting place to hang around in on a bleak and workaday morning. Unless you had an appointment with someone that you didn’t wish to make too public.

‘If this is right, we shall have to start looking at things in reverse. We’ve been concentrating on who could have followed him from the Syke Beck Lane end – or met him coming the other way. Now we have to think t’other way round. Seems more likely now that it’s him that would have come in at the far end, the Moortop Road end.’

‘And the person he was talking to in the park followed him.’

Womersley considered. ‘Get yourself to the bank, Jack, and see if you can get them to confirm what time Hirst reached and left there. When you’ve finished, go and have a word with Binns. We’re going to need his constables to make some concentrated enquiries at the bottom end of the town to see if we can stir up anybody’s memories – about Beaumont, or any stranger that might fit the bill. And while you’re at it, it might be as well to try and get hold of Dr Pike again, to see if it’s possible he’d only been dead a couple of hours.’

‘Owt else?’ Rawlinson asked.

‘That’ll do for now. I’m going to have a word with Walter Thwaite.’

He retraced his tracks, heading for the newsagent’s shop. Presently, the dam came in sight. It was a raw, dark morning with a sneaky wind that ruffled the leaden surface of the murky water. It looked viscous and evil. As he approached he saw a woman standing beside the dam wall, staring out over the expanse of water; a small woman, hunched into a heavy coat. She had turned to walk away but when she saw him she stopped. He raised his hat, gave her good morning and was about to pass when she spoke to him. ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you one of the policemen?’

She was Sarah Illingworth, who lived in the house attached to the mill, a few yards away. ‘Won’t you come inside for a cup of tea?’

He hesitated only momentarily. Despite his turned up coat collar and the knitted muffler Kate had insisted he wore that day, he felt chilled, and he was never averse to tea. Talking to Walter Thwaite could come later. ‘I will, thanks. I’ve been wanting a word with you, Mrs Illingworth.’

He followed her into the house and the bright, warm kitchen, where she invited him to take off his coat, made a strong brew of tea and poured it into sensibly large-sized white mugs. Pushing the sugar towards him, she said, ‘Are you sure, then, that it was murder?’

‘Pretty certain. Why do you ask?’

For a while she said nothing, looking into the heart of the leaping fire and nursing her tea with hands that were work-worn, strong and capable, but well-shaped. It was very peaceful, the humming of machinery an almost mesmeric background. She had not put on the light, despite the darkness of the morning, but the flames from the fire made a little oasis of brightness around them. He liked the look of Mrs Illingworth. A quiet woman, with soft dark eyes that just now were sad. ‘It might be – well, nearly wicked, you know – to say such a thing, but in some ways it’s a relief to hear you say that. Not that I’m glad he died the way he did, of course – how could I be? You know, he was in a right funny mood last time I saw him, and when they said it was suicide, I tell you I was shocked, of course. But I wasn’t exactly surprised.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘The morning he died.’

‘Oh? What time would that have been?’

She widened her eyes at the urgency in his voice. ‘Around half past eight, I think. Yes, it was, breakfast time, the engine had just switched off. He just popped in – he used to do that a lot, you know. We were friends from a long way back and he liked to stop and have a chat.’ She smiled slightly. ‘He even used to ask me for a bit of advice now and then! I thought he looked really poorly and I made him sit down and have some tea. Then he said he had something to tell me.’ She coloured a little. ‘He said he was very glad I’d had a happy life and then he said no matter what, I’d be all right after he’d gone, and so would Tom – my son. It was the last thing I expected to hear, but before I could answer him, he was taking some pills out of his pocket. He emptied the box and swallowed the lot. He said he had a headache and . . . I’m sorry for it now, but that made me speak to him right sharp. I looked him in the eye and told him what I’d been thinking for a long time – that anybody with a bit of gumption could see it was more than any headache and that it was high time he got himself seen to, he’d been looking like death warmed up for weeks.’

‘And what did he say to that?’

Her eyes filled with tears but she blinked them away. ‘He didn’t deny it. He just laughed it off and tried to make a joke out of it, and said he wasn’t ready to go just yet. And anyway he had things to do before he died.’

Almost the same words he had used to Widdop, Womersley recalled. Things to do. Reparation to his granddaughter, Laura Harcourt, but what else? Womersley thought of that money he had drawn out. A debt to pay, or had it been blackmail money as Rawlinson had suggested?

‘And then,’ Mrs Illingworth went on, gazing into the fire, ‘a few hours later, he was dead, poor Ainsley. I hear tell he had a tumour, and I wouldn’t have blamed him if . . . All the same, I’m glad he didn’t do it himself,’ she finished sadly.

‘One of the things he did before he died, Mrs Illingworth, was to make provision in his will for his granddaughter, Laura Harcourt.’

Her eyes took on a watchful quality. ‘Yes, I know. That was like him. Whatever else, he was always fair.’

Womersley wasn’t altogether sure whether it had been fair to Laura to keep her in the dark all her life about her true parentage, but that aspect of it hardly concerned him.

‘You looked after her when she was a baby, I believe?’

‘Her poor mother died soon after she was born, not much more than a child herself, and Laura stayed with us for eighteen months.’

The hot tea was doing its usual job of temporarily easing the ever-present burn in his chest, the warmth of the room made him feel relaxed and comfortable, and Womersley didn’t feel like moving, but he could not legitimately stay much longer. ‘How long did Mr Beaumont stay with you?’

‘Over an hour, I suppose, altogether. I told him not to move until he felt better, but he kept looking at the clock and in the end he said he’d have to go, he had to meet somebody at ten o’clock. And he did look a bit better by then,’ she added defensively.

‘He didn’t say who it was he was meeting?’

‘No, a business meeting, I suppose it was.’

He thanked Mrs Illingworth for the tea, shrugged on his coat and made his way towards the shop on Syke Beck Lane.