Dying in the Wool (13 page)

‘You been looking at school picture books. They stopped using the Thiess barrels around 1900.’

Suddenly steam rolled towards us, coming in waves from the far end of the building. The place was full of steam. Wafted with it came a smell like rotten fish and decaying flesh.

‘Dyehouse fog, we call it.’ Kellett replaced the cap on his head. ‘Hear that high boiling noise?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a vortex as the steam hits cold. Listen for the low rumble. When it stops – goes quiet like – you have to turn the steam off quick or it boils over.’

‘What happens if it boils over?’

‘You run.’ He laughed. ‘And you better not stand too close to that barrel, missis.’

I hadn’t realised I was leaning against the barrel. I moved away. ‘Why’s that?’

‘It’s full of piss, begging your pardon. We use it to soften’t wool.’

‘Thanks for telling me.’

Only when he took his leave and turned back to face the fog did I realise what it was about his speech that marked him out. He didn’t thee and thou as his wife did, as if deliberately bringing his talk into an idiom that would suit mine.

Stoddard came to the doorway, followed by the redhaired youth and two other men.

‘I’ve twisted their arms into having a photograph taken,’ he said, winking at me, determined to keep up the fiction that I was here solely because of my interest in photography. ‘Where would you like them to stand?’

This time I used the tripod, lodging it in the cracks between the cobbles. As I focused the Reflex, Stoddard called for Kellett to come back and take his place for the group photograph. The men joshed each other and awkwardly pretended to jostle over pride of place in the line. In the end, they formed themselves around Kellett who was not the tallest but managed to make himself look the most important.

Usually I enjoy taking a photograph, but suddenly the light felt wrong. Aware that I was keeping them from their work, and that they had been coerced, I nevertheless decided to make the most of the opportunity and asked them to move further into the yard, away from the shadow cast by the dyehouse.

Picture taken, I thanked them and walked back across the yard where Stoddard waited for me. From the vantage point of crossing the yard, I could see the usefulness of the hoist that transported materials from one floor to another up and down the four storeys of the building. There was a sense of danger about the door openings. An unwary person could easily step to their death. The thought made me shudder. The heavy chain with its huge hook clanked as it lowered a swaying cart from the fourth floor to the ground.

If Joshua Braithwaite had wanted to commit suicide, he
could have done it here, when the mill was closed. Or way off on the moors somewhere out of sight. It did not make sense to me that he would have tried to drown himself in a shallow beck within a few feet of a cottage and where boy scouts camped in nearby woods.

Stoddard was talking to me again, about the deliveries of yarn. I’m here to find out about Joshua Braithwaite, I reminded myself, not to become an expert on mills or even to find the perfect subject for the All British Photographic Competition.

‘How do things work administratively, Mr Stoddard? Do you have meetings and so on?’

‘Evelyn and Tabitha are on the board. We meet once a month. I have meetings with my managers, from each department, once a week.’

‘I’d like to see the board minutes, please.’

‘Why?’

‘Perhaps I’ll pick up something that’s been missed. I still don’t feel I know enough about Mr Braithwaite’s state of mind.’

‘I’ve already told you his state of mind. Saddened by the loss of his son. And I’m sure you’ve spoken to Evelyn. There’s nothing to be gained by reading our commercially confidential information.’

‘But …’

‘Really, it would go against the grain for me to do that. We mill owners are very secretive. And don’t forget, as far as our employees are concerned, you’re here because of your interest in the mill, and photography.’

There was no more to be said as we walked back to his office.

The impressions jumbled together in my mind. I could hold on to only a vague notion of what I had seen, the noise and the smells overriding any sense of what process followed what. A bent old woman creaked into the office, her arthritic hands shakily clutching a tray of tea and biscuits.

He pulled a face. ‘You haven’t stirred my tea!’ he called.

She grumbled a reply. I had a feeling this was a regular exchange between them. It made me warm towards Stoddard.

When the tea lady had gone, I said, ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it but …’

‘Digestive?’ he offered me the plate.

I took a biscuit.

‘I have a routine, and a good workforce. Mrs Braithwaite has a shrewd business head. Between us we have steered through some difficult times. It’s fortunate that Joshua wasn’t a man to hold power tight to his chest or we wouldn’t have had the authority to carry on.’

Under his attempt at modesty, I sensed a pride in his own achievements.

‘Tabitha did tell me that she and her mother are on the board and that the three of you continue the business. It does puzzle me that Mrs Braithwaite has not sought to have her husband declared dead.’

‘I believe she’ll wait the full seven years.’

That magic word seven, seven leagues, seven seas, seventh heaven and seven sins.

‘And are Mrs Braithwaite and Tabitha … I mean do they know the business well enough to be of help?’

He paused, and smiled. ‘Ask me another question.’

‘Do you think Mr Braithwaite tried to commit suicide?’

He picked up his fidget bobbin, holding it in both hands, turning it, sighing.

‘Did you do sports at school, Mrs Shackleton, or were you one of these young ladies educated at home?’

‘I play tennis. I ride.’

‘As I mentioned, when we were boys, Joshua and I were both keen runners. Lots of people round here take it up. You test yourself, against the elements. You run, and when you feel you can run no more, you keep on running.’

‘Are you saying he was not a man to give up?’

‘I think that day, when he was found, he’d been out running and taken a tumble. That’s my guess. When he said he wasn’t trying to top himself, he meant it. It’s just that he was unfortunate enough to be found by people who wanted to believe differently and he didn’t have enough strength – or perhaps the will – to persuade them otherwise.’

‘Your theory about a new life – in a good climate – where do you think he may have gone? And what would he have used for money?’

‘Joshua provided for Evelyn and Tabitha. He left the company in good heart, and the workforce secure.’

‘But he had other money?’

‘Is it likely Joshua Braithwaite stashed away money?! Does the sun rise in the morning? If he is dead, there’s probably money in accounts that will go unclaimed forever, money that should rightly go to Evelyn.’

‘What do you believe? Is he dead, or alive?’

‘Tabitha’s clutching at straws, but what young woman wouldn’t on the eve of her wedding?’

‘There is just one other thing, Mr Stoddard. It seems such a coincidence that he disappeared on the day of the Low Moor explosion, when so many people were killed. Is there any possibility that he would have gone in that direction?’

He lay his fidget bobbin down and rolled it back and forth on the desk. The fidgeting had begun to disconcert me. I wondered whether he had one of those slight stammers where movement acts as a distraction.

He seemed not to want to begin. ‘I’ve wondered that too. There’s nothing I haven’t imagined, nothing I haven’t thought about. But I can think of no reason he would have gone there.’

‘Did Mr Braithwaite leave a note?’

‘What kind of note?’

‘An explanation? A suicide note?’

‘Good heavens no. Joshua sometimes left notes about this or that to be done, or something to be added to the minutes for the next meeting, but there was no note of the sort you have in mind.’

I decided not to mention that Evelyn Braithwaite had said that there was.

‘Perhaps his stumbling into the beck was a cry for help.’

Mr Stoddard gave up on his bobbin. He placed the backs of his hands on the desk in a gesture of surrender. ‘That’s a bit deep for me. If you said that he came over queer, took a dizzy turn, that might make sense.’

‘Why did no one send for you when Mr Braithwaite was found in the beck?’

‘Out of consideration I expect. My wife was dying.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. You’re right. They should have come for me. I would have seen to it that Joshua was taken home. The local scout troop had been camping out in the woods. There was a lot of that sort of activity then, perhaps you’ll remember something of it yourself – self-sufficiency, training lads up to take their place in the front line. They went to their scoutmaster. He’s dead now, poor man, but he was the brother of a rival of ours. That’s how the whole thing became public so quickly, and such a scandal. That’s why I started to say what I did, about warmer climes.’

‘But surely even a rival would baulk at accusing a man of suicide. He would have understood the necessity to keep up morale in wartime.’

‘The scoutmaster understood we’d almost put his brother out of business.’

The telephone rang. Mr Stoddard called through to his secretary in the next office, ‘Not now, Dorothy!’

‘Not many more questions, Mr Stoddard. But what do you believe happened after Mr Braithwaite was taken to the hospital at Milton House?’

‘I’m really and truly not sure. I’ve come up with all sorts of ideas during the intervening years, and none of them seem satisfactory. Some say – I don’t listen but I know what they say – he was overcome with shame at being accused of attempting suicide, and went somewhere to finish what he started. If so, why didn’t we find a body? Did he somehow find his way to a new life? I can’t see it. He would have been in touch. He would be here for Tabitha’s wedding. Now is there anything else that I can do for you?’

‘Yes. I’d like a souvenir of my visit – a bobbin like yours.’

‘Easy!’ He handed his bobbin across the desk. ‘They’re ten a penny.’

He insisted on escorting me from the building, through the yard, past the house within the grounds where he lived, and out as far as the gate.

The mill hooter sounded the dinner hour. My stomach rumbled, but I had to develop my photographs, and keep my appointment with Sykes. I hoped he would have been more successful than I had been so far. One advantage of working alone is that you are not measuring yourself against anyone else. Now that Sykes had come to work for me, that changed. Which of us would find out that useful little fact that would act as a key to the Braithwaite mystery? And who would get to it first?

Twisting-in: joining the threads of an old warp to a new warp.

The Ramshead Arms is a market tavern some hundred or so years old, built to replace a much older coaching house. I parked a little way off in case any inhabitant of Bridgestead might be conducting business in the town and spot my car outside.

Sykes must have been looking out. He came to meet me. We exchanged a brief greeting then entered the Ramshead Arms by a side door and turned into a small function room.

There was something almost awkward and boyish in the way he had thoughtfully arranged for plates of sandwiches and glasses of cider to be set out on a large oak table at one end of the room.

At the other end of the table was an open valise containing bathing suits.

‘My cover story,’ he said. ‘As far as the staff and customers here are concerned, I’m a traveller in bathing attire.’

Having missed lunch while developing and printing my photographs, I tucked into a ham and mustard sandwich. He took a striped plain navy and a two-tone bathing suit and placed each one carefully on the table, betraying great enjoyment in his play-acting. ‘Just in case we’re interrupted.’

It struck me that my five pounds payment to him on
account had gone a very long way. As if he read my thoughts, he said, ‘I have the bathing suits on sale or return.’

It was time to pool our information.

I brought out my gallery of characters, suggesting that I go first. Sykes studied the Braithwaites’ wedding photograph, alongside a photograph of Joshua Braithwaite at a Wool Exchange function, and by the sea with Tabitha and Edmund, shading his eyes.

We looked at the photographs intently, as though the man himself might speak.

‘Joshua Braithwaite is or was about five feet five inches tall,’ I said. ‘Spare, energetic. He and his cousin Neville Stoddard were great fell runners in their youth. He’s teetotal, pillar of the chapel, a womaniser, and a good businessman. His son was killed in July 1916, on the Somme. According to the cousin, who runs the mill, Braithwaite was brought exceedingly low by Edmund’s death, as you might expect.’

Sykes swallowed a mouthful of his best Yorkshire ham sandwich. ‘Low enough to try and top himself?’