A Death Left Hanging (27 page)

There had once been any number of houses like this in Whitebridge, Woodend thought as he walked up to the front door. But now that cotton was no longer king, this was the last one remaining.

He rang the bell. The door was answered by a round little woman in her early sixties. She looked up at him suspiciously.

‘Yes?' she said.

‘I'd like to see Mr Earnshaw, please.'

‘Mr Earnshaw doesn't see people himself, these days. I'm his housekeeper. Anything you have to say, you can say to me.'

‘It's in the nature of a personal matter,' Woodend explained.

‘A personal matter?' the guardian to the gate repeated sceptically.

‘I'm an old friend.'

‘All Mr Earnshaw's old friends are dead. And even if they weren't, you're too young to have been one of them.'

It would have been easy enough to produce his warrant card but, if possible, Woodend wished to avoid putting the whole matter on an official footing.

‘Will you ask Mr Earnshaw if he'll see Charlie Woodend?' he said.

The housekeeper sniffed. ‘I'll ask. But it won't do you any good. Like I said, he never sees anybody.'

The housekeeper returned two minutes later. If he would follow her, Mr Earnshaw would be delighted to see him, she informed Woodend, with a touch of annoyance in her voice.

She led him into a hallway that would have swallowed the entire ground floor of his cottage, and from there up a wide staircase that could easily have been the setting for one of the Douglas Fairbanks' swashbuckler films that Woodend had revelled in as a child.

The housekeeper knocked on a door just to the left of the head of the staircase, opened it without waiting for an answer, and gestured to the Chief Inspector that he should go inside.

The room he entered was a large one, but then all the rooms in this house – with the exception of the servants' quarters – were probably large. Against one of the walls was a double bed, and lying propped up in the bed was Seth Earnshaw. He had been a big man in his time, but his time had gone, and now he looked so frail and wispy that Woodend was almost surprised his trunk made even the slightest dent in the pillows that were supporting him.

‘You've given Mrs Green the hump, in no uncertain manner,' the old man said. ‘She doesn't like visitors. They make too much work for her. We used to have eight servants running this house. People who took a pride in their jobs – and a pride in the place they were looking after. Now it's all down to Mrs Green and a weekly contract cleaning firm.' Earnshaw sniffed. ‘The contract cleaning firm!' he repeated. ‘It has such a large staff turnover that we rarely see the same face in this house twice.'

‘That's the way of the world,' Woodend said philosophically.

‘Pride in their work?' the old man said. ‘These young lads don't know the meaning of the words. And the only reason Dolly Green stays with me is because she expects me to leave her something in my will.' He paused for a second. ‘It's been a long time, Charlie.'

‘Must be twenty-five years,' Woodend agreed. ‘My dad's funeral.'

‘Now there was a man who took pride in what he did,' Earnshaw said with enthusiasm. ‘And he'd have been proud if he could have seen you now. Chief Inspector Woodend! Who would have thought it?'

‘You shouldn't be so surprised,' Woodend said. ‘You always told me I had more imagination an' drive than most of the folk round here.'

‘So I did.'

‘That's why I was the one you sent to stand outside Strangeways Prison while Margaret Dodds was hung.'

‘Yes, I thought you were the best man for the job, and I was right. Listening to you describe it, it was almost like being there myself.'

‘What kind of car did you drive in those days?' Woodend asked.

A flash of anger appeared in the old man's watery eyes. ‘Don't insult me, Charlie. I'm not quite a basket case yet – and I still read the papers. I know why you're here.'

‘So what kind of car
were
you drivin'?'

‘It was a 1931 Morris Isis.'

‘An' on the night of Fredrick Dodds murder, you made a visit to the Doddses' house.'

‘Wrong!' the old man said, perhaps just a little triumphantly. ‘I made
two
visits to the house.'

‘Two?'

Earnshaw smiled. ‘You're a clever lad, Charlie, and no doubt you'd eventually get the truth out of me with all your questions. But wouldn't it be quicker if I just
told
you what you wanted to know, in my own words?'

‘All right,' Woodend agreed.

‘Margaret started working for me about a year after Jane was born. I was attracted to her from the start, but I never planned it that we should become lovers. Nor would we have been, if that first husband of hers had been anything of a man. But he wasn't. He was weak, and he was useless. I wanted to give him that promotion he'd put in for, Charlie. I wanted to do it for Margaret's sake – but I just couldn't.'

‘Why not?'

‘One of my responsibilities to my employees was to run the mill as well as I could – because that way they all stayed in work. And that meant putting the right people in the right jobs. Rob Hartley could never have handled that promotion. I knew it. He knew it. I don't think he even wanted the job, if the truth be told. It was much easier to stay where he was – and he'd always been a man for following the easiest course.'

‘Don't marry a man already set in his ways,'
Margaret's mother had told her, all those years ago.
‘Find yourself a husband you can mould – a husband you can make something out of.'
And hadn't that just worked out a treat? Woodend thought.

‘Anyway, he didn't get the promotion, his wife was almost crushed with disappointment, Rob started drinking – and Margaret and I became lovers,' Earnshaw said.

‘Both before
an'
after her first husband's death?'

‘She broke it off for a while when Robert died. Guilt, I expect. But a few months later we were back in each other's arms again.'

‘Did you promise to marry her?'

Earnshaw gave the frailest shake of his head. ‘No, that was never on – and she knew it. I'd made it plain right from the start. I loved her more than I'd ever loved my wife, but I could never have divorced Edith. She needed me, you see, whereas Margaret only
wanted
me. Edith would have gone completely to pieces without me, but Margaret had this amazing inner strength.'

Why were men always such fools? Woodend wondered. How could Earnshaw say that Margaret had wanted him but never
needed
him? Had it not, at some point, occurred to him to ask himself why a very pretty young woman should wish to start an affair with a not-particularly attractive older man? Couldn't he see that perhaps his main appeal to her had been more to do with him being a substitute for the father she'd adored?

‘Did you continue seein' Margaret until her second husband was killed?' the Chief Inspector asked.

‘It wasn't anything like as simple as that,' Earnshaw told him. ‘When Margaret began getting serious about Fred Dodds, she broke our affair off for a second time.'

But why did she ever even
begin
to get serious about Fred Dodds? Woodend asked himself.

Because, he thought, answering his own question, she had made the wrong choice with her first marriage and wanted to ensure that it did not happen again. Fred Dodds would not disappoint her as Rob Hartley had done. Dodds had already proved that he could be successful.

And so it was that, in order not to make the same mistake twice, Margaret had made the biggest mistake of all – by not asking herself what it was that Dodds wanted from her.

‘If you want to keep on doin' that sort of thing, why don't you get married?'
Marcus Dodds, another child abuser, had advised his son. And for once the son had followed the father's advice.

‘Are you still with me, Charlie?' Seth Earnshaw asked. ‘You look miles away.'

Years
away would be closer to the mark, Woodend thought. But aloud he said, ‘Yes, I'm still with you. You were tellin' me about your on-off affair with Margaret.'

‘That's just what it was,' Earnshaw said. ‘An on-off affair. Because when her marriage to Dodds turned sour, she came back to me for a third time.'

‘Did you ever ask her what it was that made her marriage to Fred Dodds turn so sour?'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Weren't you even curious?'

‘I was just so grateful that she'd come back to me. She was the love of my life.'

Love without responsibility, Woodend thought. It was probably most men's dream – but he knew it would never have suited him.

‘Shall we get on to the night of the murder?' he suggested.

‘Why not? We were out together that night.'

‘Somewhere in Whitebridge?'

‘No. We were always very careful about where we were seen together. We used to drive to country pubs, where we wouldn't be recognized. And when we got back to town, I'd always drop her off on the outskirts and she'd get a bus home. Anyway, we were in a pub that night and she said, “I'll just ring my sister-in-law, to make sure that Jane's all right.” Jane was staying with her father's sister, you understand.'

‘Aye, I know about that.'

‘When she came back from using the phone, she was as white as a sheet and her hands were trembling. “Helen's taken Jane home!” she said. I asked her what she meant. “Jane was supposed to be staying with Helen all week, but Helen's had a last-minute invitation to a dinner-dance, and she's taken Jane home.” I know it doesn't sound very dramatic when I say it like that, Charlie, but believe me, it was. Margaret was on the verge of hysterics.'

‘Understood,' Woodend said. ‘What happened next?'

‘Margaret insisted that I drive her home immediately. Not to the edge of town as usual, you understand, but straight up to her front door. I pointed out that her husband might see us through the window, and she said that she didn't care. In fact, she said that she didn't
bloody
care. And Margaret was never one for swearing.'

‘You did as she'd asked you to?'

‘Yes. I didn't want to – I had my marriage, and reputation in the community to consider – but given the state she was in, I didn't see I had any choice.'

‘Still, you didn't drive her
straight
home, did you? You stopped once on the way.'

‘How in God's name did you know?'

‘That doesn't matter. Just tell me
where
you stopped. An' why.'

‘We were crossing town. The Isis started to misfire, then stalled. I told Margaret I'd have to look under the bonnet. She'd been upset before. Now she became even worse. Still, there was nothing for it but to take a look at the engine. It was a minor problem – dirty points – but by the time I'd fixed it Margaret had disappeared. Then she came running back. “I've just phoned Fred!” she said. “He won't answer! The swine won't even pick up the phone!” I told her that really didn't matter, since I'd have her home in a few minutes.'

‘Where did this breakdown of yours happen?' Woodend asked. ‘Near St Mary's Church?'

‘Yes, I . . . I can't imagine how you've found all this out.'

‘That particular piece of information came from a reformed burglar named Harold Brunskill,' Woodend explained. ‘He told the police he'd seen Margaret near the church. But that wasn't something that the man in charge of the investigation particularly wanted to hear, so he decided to ignore it. But that's neither here nor there at the moment. What happened after you'd got the car started again?'

‘I drove Margaret to Hebden Brow. The second I'd stopped the car, she was out of the door and running up the path to her front door. She didn't even say goodnight.'

‘So what did you do then?'

‘I came back here.'

‘Weren't you worried that your wife would be suspicious if you got home earlier than you'd said you would?'

‘Edith was away. She was staying with her mother.'

‘How long had you been back at home when you got the phone call from Margaret?'

Earnshaw shook his head in wonder. ‘Talking to you is like talking to a mind reader, Charlie,' he said. ‘How do you do it?'

‘No trick,' Woodend assured him. ‘You've already told me you went back to the Doddses' house. The only thing that could have made you do that was a phone call. When did that call come?'

‘The phone was ringing as I walked through the front door.'

‘How did Margaret sound?'

‘Calmer than she'd sounded earlier. Too calm, now I think about it. Almost as if she was holding her real feelings in – but only by a tremendous effort of will.'

‘When you got back to Margaret's house, she brought her daughter out and handed her over to you. What state was Jane in?'

‘Very quiet. Docile. Almost as if she'd been drugged.'

‘Do you think she
had
been?'

‘No. Drugged was a bad choice of word. She seemed dazed. Perhaps even shocked. But then so would any child who'd just seen her mother batter her stepfather to death with a hammer.'

‘You think that's what happened, do you?'

‘Of course that's what happened! What other explanation could there possibly be?'

‘What did Margaret ask you to do with Jane?'

‘She asked me to keep her with me until eleven o'clock. By then, the dinner-dance would be over, and I was to take Jane to her Aunt Helen's house. And that's just what I did. I brought Jane here, put her on the sofa and covered her with a blanket. I asked her if she wanted a glass of warm milk or some biscuits, but she didn't seem to hear me.'