Dying in the Wool (31 page)

‘How does she know?’

‘Jane wasn’t supposed to know that Braithwaite taped the key to the underside of his desk. But she’d spotted him scrabbling about there once or twice and worked it out. She’s a sharp lass and doesn’t miss much. Anyhow, it wasn’t there after he went missing. She checked.’

‘So did Braithwaite get his hands on the safe deposit box key, or did someone else?’

Sykes shook his head. ‘Jane didn’t tell anyone at the time, not even the police. She’s someone who takes the “secret” in the word secretary a little too seriously. She finally confided in her sister last month, when they were talking about Tabitha’s wedding.’

For the first time, I felt some hope on Tabitha’s behalf. With a motorbike, with money from his safe deposit box, Braithwaite might well at this very moment be standing on a cliff, by his easel, looking out to the horizon, paintbrush in hand.

I tried to remember who else had mentioned a safe deposit box key, and then it came back. Tipsy Marjorie. I shut my eyes and tried to remember the disjointed conversation we’d had on the ride between the
Gawthorpes’ and her stone terrace house on the cobbled street in Bridgestead. ‘Marjorie Wilson said that it would help to know who got to the safe deposit box, and that if it was Joshua Braithwaite, then … what were her words? “If he got to that, then the bird could have flown.”’

‘But he didn’t find his way to freedom on the Clyno motorbike. That’s still in the outhouse at the mill, looking very sorry for itself. I took the opportunity to have a good look round.’

I had also been in that outhouse, and now that he mentioned it I remembered seeing a motorbike. I had tucked my camera bag away there on the day Tabitha and I walked across the moors.

‘When did you look round?’ I asked, amazed at how many places Sykes found his way to.

‘On the ill-fated night we went to look at the books. Because a lot of threads lead back to that mill, and to Stoddard and his size nine boots.’

‘Size nine? You mean like the boot prints on the bank outside Lizzie’s house?’

‘Yes.’

Moments ago, I had mentally congratulated Dad on finding Sykes for me. Now I decided he was utterly mad, and way off course.

‘Half the men in the village probably wear size nines. You’re wrong about Stoddard. He wouldn’t hit a defenceless woman over the head with a cricket bat. And he doesn’t need a box of guineas from under a widow’s bed.’

Is this what policemen did, I wondered, picked on a name and found reasons for that person to be guilty? Stoddard was the one who had kept the business going, cared for his dying wife, thought of Joshua as a brother, behaved entirely admirably as far as I could see – apart from his lapse of judgement in proposing marriage to Evelyn Braithwaite. Of course I couldn’t expect him to think kindly of me, not since he had caught me in the
office in the middle of the night.

I had a brainwave. ‘If there are fingerprints on that cricket bat, I can give you something that will eliminate Stoddard.’

I went to the room under the stairs that I use as a darkroom. The bobbin Stoddard had given me was still in the camera bag. I carried the bag into the dining room.

‘This bobbin has Stoddard’s fingerprints all over it. Take it. If you’re right, and there are fingerprints on the cricket bat, he can be eliminated.’

Of course that gave me one other thing to do. As well as giving my statement to the chaps from Scotland Yard, I would now have to be fingerprinted to eliminate my own prints from the bobbin.

We had talked for over an hour, agreeing that Kellett probably knew more than was good for him. I began to gather up the photographs from the table.

‘If Kellett did help Braithwaite to fly free, he may have known Braithwaite’s whereabouts.’

Sykes nodded.

It followed that if Kellett knew, so did his wife. Once Kellett was silenced, the next step would be to put Mrs Kellett out of harm’s way. One killing was made to look like a works accident, the second a burglary gone wrong. But what if that was just a cover story for both murders and the true motive was to silence the Kelletts? It seemed too preposterous that Braithwaite might come back, as it were from the dead, in order to keep his new life secret.

‘What?’ said Sykes, reading my face.

I told him the outlandish idea.

He smiled. ‘Why not? We ought to keep an open mind. Anything is possible.’

I showed him the pencil dots on the Ordnance Survey map. ‘These are the caves and potholes that have been explored since Braithwaite’s disappearance. No one has found so much as a shoelace.’

Before putting away the photographs, I lingered over Evelyn’s photograph. ‘What do you think to her?’

‘She’s an attractive woman.’

‘Yes. With two beaus.’

‘Two?’

It pleased me that I was the one with the information. ‘On the night of the party, Neville proposed to Evelyn. I didn’t intentionally eavesdrop …’

‘Pity.’

‘I was on the terrace and heard him.’

‘And?’

‘She turned him down. She’s having an affair with Dr Grainger. My guess is it’s being going on for a long while.’

Sykes perked up. ‘Before Braithwaite disappeared?’

‘That I don’t know. Evelyn knows that I know. I could tell by her manner after I came back from seeing Grainger.’

‘Do you have a photograph of this Grainger chap?’

‘No. This is going to sound silly. I usually don’t mind asking people if I can take their photograph for my rogues’ gallery, but I didn’t like to ask him. Perhaps because I thought he might misconstrue the request.’

Sykes burst out laughing, which annoyed me.

‘Sorry,’ he stifled his laughter. ‘Excuse the mirth, but I can imagine it. If this chap has made a conquest of Evelyn Braithwaite, he probably thinks he’s God’s gift, does he?’

‘I suspect that conquesting was the other way round.’

‘Going back to Stoddard, his proposal to the widow gives him an added reason to tidy loose ends. When he caught you in the offices, he told you it was his mill.’

‘He’s already a director. He has nothing to gain. When Kellett died, Stoddard was at the Gawthorpes’ party. We’d all been together since early evening.’

‘Passion,’ Sykes said flatly, the word sounding foreign to his lips. ‘What part does passion play?’

It was a good question. But it was not Evelyn’s passions
that interested me, except on a personal level. Braithwaite was a ladies’ man. Everyone knew it. ‘I have an idea, Mr Sykes. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to try and see Braithwaite’s solicitor. Professional men always confide in their solicitors, to make provision for a mistress or a wrong side of the blanket child.’ I knew this from reading novels but liked the sound of my own voice saying it as if I had been born with the knowledge.

Sykes looked impressed.

‘I got his name from Tabitha and made a telephone call to his secretary a couple of days ago. Come with me tomorrow on the train. I’ll talk to him, and then you and I can meet afterwards and I’ll give you chapter and verse.’

‘Where does he have his office?’ Sykes asked.

‘Bradford.’

‘Worstedopolis,’ Sykes said. ‘Where else?’

On that blustery Monday morning, Mr Sykes and I met by the tram stop and rattled our way to town, heading for the railway station.

‘Good luck,’ he wished me as we stepped out among the throng at Forster Square station in Bradford.

He had an errand at the main post office, and we agreed to meet in half an hour at the nearby tea rooms.

Mentioning the Braithwaite name –Yorkshire’s equivalent of Ali Baba’s Open Sesame – had netted me an eleven a.m. appointment with the legal beagle to Bradford’s mill-owning millionaire set.

A well-turned out chap whose mohair suit did nothing to improve his appearance, he had the look of a cherubic baker of pork pies, his plump-cheeked face topped with wispy white hair. Watery blue eyes, narrowing in an attempt to look canny, gave him a peevish air. Folds of flesh cascaded in layers onto the stiff shirt collar that cut into his neck. He enlivened the usual dark three-piece suit with a maroon tie and gold pin that matched his cuff links. His white podgy hands looked as if they’d knead dough with great patience. If he were descended from a baker, I reckoned it must have been the chap from Pudding Lane who in 1666 made London burn like rotten sticks. Once we were seated on either side of his document-piled desk he fingered a heavy gold fountain pen, big enough to count as an offensive weapon.

A small smile curved his plump lips as he looked at me
and saw money. ‘My secretary tells me you wish to make a will. And that you’re a friend of Miss Braithwaite’s.’

‘I should make my will, that’s true, but not today.’

He laced his fingers together, resting them on a clean white blotter edged in a stiff green leather frame. ‘A will is an important undertaking. We could discuss the generalities and make a future appointment at your convenience.’

‘There’s another matter, also, another reason for my being here.’

His listened without comment as I repeated the story of Tabitha Braithwaite’s desire to find her father, and her hope that Joshua Braithwaite would walk her down the aisle.

On cue, the telephone rang. As I paused in my story, his secretary put her head around the communicating door.

He gave a cluck of annoyance, telling Miss Conway he did not wish to be disturbed.

‘But it’s Miss Braithwiate, Mr Murgatroyd, on a pertinent matter, she says.’

Guessing he would demur at passing on information, I had asked Tabitha to telephone.

He picked up the receiver. I could hear Tabitha’s excited and eager explanation and request.

‘This is most irregular, Miss Braithwaite and without Mrs Braithwaite’s permission …’

A pause.

‘Good morning, Mrs Braithwaite and how …’

Well done, Tabitha. She had persuaded her mother to back me up. Perhaps it was my thank you from Evelyn Braithwaite for keeping quiet about her liaison with Dr Grainger.

When he replaced the telephone in its cradle, Mr Murgatroyd called to his secretary to bring in the Braithwaite files.

Miss Conway came from poverty’s doorstep. Her black
skirt shone brown with age, the neat blouse was frayed at the collar. Dark hair folded in old-fashioned pleats showed a touch of grey. Bringing with her a powerful waft of body odour, she placed an armful of files on his desk. He doesn’t pay her enough. Mean sod. Or perhaps she looked after a sick mother, her wages swallowed by nourishing soups, leaving nothing for a bar of soap.

There were manila folders tied with red legal tape faded to pink, sturdy brown envelopes and dusty parchments. Like the disembodied head of a zephyr in the corner of a renaissance painting, Mr Murgatroyd puffed out his cheeks and blew a small cloud of dust in my direction.

‘Despite Mrs Braithwaite’s permission, I can only give you the broadest outline of the nature of the work we did, and do, for Mr Braithwaite and for the mill. Confidential commercial information, you understand.’

He frowned at Miss Conway as she emerged with a second armful of files. Was she on my side? Had she deliberately misunderstood his coded command to bring only what was of no consequence? The files fell from her arms.

Quickly, I came to the rescue, darting to the floor, pretending not to scan the front of every document I retrieved.

‘Sorry,’ Miss Conway murmured.

She slid away.

Mr Murgatroyd sifted through dusty files. ‘As you see, there’s far too much to enter into, and nothing here has any bearing on the events of August 1916.’

I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and prevented a sneeze. ‘Mr Murgatroyd, is there anything, among the papers or in your memory of Joshua Braithwaite, that would offer a clue to his state of mind, or to his disappearance?’

He sighed and fumbled with a loose knot of legal tape, as though it would tap some chord in his memory. ‘Let me see now. My most recent instruction before that date …
Yes, here we are. I dealt with the purchase of two fields – land that adjoined the mill and the house. Mr Braithwaite had been eager to acquire it for some time. I also dealt with the transfer of money from the trust, when Miss Braithwaite came of age, and of course the change in his will shortly after his son died.’

‘Wasn’t it rather soon for him to be dealing with those matters? He was still in mourning.’

‘It’s never too soon for a person of property to put their affairs in order.’

He let a pause hang in the air, perhaps hoping I would forget all about my mission for Tabitha and suddenly see the good sense in entrusting him with my own last will and testament. I would appoint him my executor. The train to London would crash. I would die. Mr Murgatroyd would be up to his baker’s elbows in all the dough that once belonged to me and Gerald. I would rather give the job to his unfortunate, impoverished secretary.

Among the documents retrieved from the floor, one bore the heading Application for a Patent. I wanted to know more. How much money had Wilson’s invention earned for the Braithwaites?