The Cuckoo's Child Page 24

  ‘I expect you’d like some tea,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, we would, lass.’

  ‘Don’t know about tea, hot water bottles wouldn’t come amiss,’ Rawlinson observed when she’d closed the door behind her. ‘Keep your overcoat on, sir, I should, unless you want to freeze to death.’

  Previously the study had been a comfortable and restful sort of place. You could feel the difference now. Already it had a melancholy, abandoned air, not helped by the absence of any fire. The ashes had been cleared but no new fire laid, just a fan of pleated paper placed in the grate. Womersley wasn’t given to fancies, but the room was not only cold, it was soulless, no heart in it, as though something, and not only its master, had stopped breathing.

  It was Laura Harcourt who brought in their tea, and a roll of ribbon-tied papers. ‘Here’s Ben Kindersley’s story – Mr Empson’s, I should maybe say. I’ll leave it with you, but he would like it returned when you’ve finished with it.’ She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. ‘Is there any chance I can go back to London now?’

  He thought she looked strained, her pretty hair carelessly gathered up, her eyes shadowed. ‘Yes, but leave an address where we can get in touch with you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Womersley unrolled and read the manuscript. She was right. There was nothing in it to throw light on the present situation, except for the revealing sentence at the end which showed Kindersley had been aware that something was going on between Lucie and Theo Beaumont.

  He passed it over to Rawlinson and held his teacup in both hands for warmth. A room without a fire was like a clock without a tick. Well, of course! That’s what it was! Not only the lack of a fire that made the room so unwelcoming, but also the absence of that slow, regular tick-tock in the background. The long case clock had stopped, and likely not of itself: they must have neglected to wind it. In all probability that was a job the master had seen to – and Womersley, who liked clocks and had formed a particular admiration for this one, clucked and went over to set things right. He couldn’t see that anyone would object to him performing this domestic duty. It did a clock no good to be left unwound and run down.

  Opening its door, he bent to retrieve the weights at the extent of their long chains, now almost touching something that had been placed below them, a box of some sort. He lifted it out and put it to one side while he wound the clock, supporting each heavy weight in his hand as he pulled its chain, adjusted the time and set the pendulum swinging. Only when the clock had resumed its regular tick did he nod, satisfied. Ridiculously, the room seemed warmer.

  Now he turned his attention to the box. It wasn’t large, just a dull, metal cash box that he might have missed but for the glint of the brass handle on the lid. It was locked. So the old man might not have been so very certain about his family’s lack of inquisitiveness into his private affairs as they had thought. A cash box left around might have excited some curiosity. Funny place to hide it, though – but effective.

  ‘Where did you put the key you found in that folder, Jack?’

  The little brass key had become mixed up with all the other unidentified ones in the desk drawer and Rawlinson offered up three likely looking candidates before they found the right one. Inside, however, there was nothing more exciting than a cheap penny notebook with shiny, soft red covers and, secured to it by a rubber band, an envelope, personally addressed to Ainsley Beaumont at Farr Clough, marked strictly confidential, originally sealed with wax and registered.

  The envelope had been opened, the seal broken, and the letter inside was headed with the name of the Beckinsale private detective agency, with an address in Leeds, just off the Headrow. A report was clipped to the letter, also a bill, which was hefty. Mr Everard C. Beckinsale, who signed his name in flowing script, wrote a somewhat rambling letter, consisting mostly of assurances that the ‘subject’ had no suspicions that enquiries had been made about him and his affairs. Womersley skimmed through the report with a quick stab of excitement, and tossed it over to the sergeant.

  ‘Well,’ he said when Rawlinson, too, had finished reading. ‘Well. What d’you think of that?’

  ‘Whiteley Hirst! Who would have thought it?’ Rawlinson grinned but he was clearly as flabbergasted as Womersley.

  If the facts of Mr Beckinsale’s report were verifiable, as no doubt they would be, then Whiteley Hirst was in deep trouble. To the tune of seven hundred and fifty pounds, plus interest, owing to a moneylender who was threatening to take proceedings to recover his dues. ‘I have not yet been able to ascertain,’ wrote Mr Beckinsale, ‘why the subject needed to borrow this money, but in the event that you wish me to continue further with the enquiries, I look forward to hearing from you.’

  Womersley sat back and sucked on a mint. ‘Hirst,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He has a lot of authority down there at Cross Ings, more than you’d expect from his position. Beaumont evidently trusted him – so what the heck prompted him to have him investigated?’

  Rawlinson shrugged. ‘Who knows? But if he owed that amount of money, Beaumont’s death couldn’t have come at a better time for him. He knew there was something for him in the will, admitted as much, didn’t he?’

  What had Hirst been up to? Obviously, Ainsley Beaumont had had reason not to trust him. Yet he had left money to him in his will. Womersley shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense.’

  His first excitement subsided. He reached out for the little red exercise book, and saw when he opened it that it wasn’t going to offer any clarification, either. Only the first page had been used, where a list of names had been written, each with a date beside it. Women’s names. It was meaningless – unless Beaumont had found out that Hirst had been a secret womanizer, and the money had been borrowed to support this? Someone putting pressure on him over it, for instance? Maybe one of the women themselves?

  His eyes rested on the last name on the list.

  For a while, it didn’t register, then with a rush of adrenaline, all the vague suspicions present at the back of his mind, the unrelated facts and the half-remembered conversations began to come together. It was as if a candle had been lit, illuminating the dark corners of a room, as if the clock had started ticking again. Charlie Womersley was not normally an intuitive man, but this time he knew with absolute conviction that this was why Ainsley Beaumont had been killed, this notebook was what the killer had been looking for when he had attacked the old man, ripping the inside pocket of his jacket in his haste. All for nothing, since the notebook had been here all the time, locked in the cash box.

  His death still amounted to murder.

  Womersley should have been exultant, but he felt strangely saddened, without any satisfaction that the case was coming to a close, a job well done, the perpetrator responsible being brought to justice. This was different. There had been many years of friendship, however it had been expressed, between the victim and his killer. Murder born of desperation was a sorry affair, yet just about comprehensible, but for a man to murder his friend was, in Womersley’s book, loathsome beyond the pale.

  ‘So, we were on the wrong tack with a random killing,’ Rawlinson said, wanting to justify himself.

  For a long time, Womersley didn’t answer. ‘It looks as though we’ve been on the wrong tack about a lot of things, Jack,’ he said heavily at last.

  ‘Such as what, for instance?’

  Hitched on to the edge of the desk, tapping his foot, Rawlinson waited for an explanation, but Womersley sat lost in thought, until at last he stood up, batting his cold hands together. He felt very tired. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you when we get going. We’d best get ourselves moving, get down into Wainthorpe and see our friend Hirst.’

  ‘He’ll have some talking to do.’

  ‘He will that.’

  ‘What about Mrs Beaumont, then?’

  ‘It’s getting too late to wait for her. I want a word with Jessie Thwaite, though, before we leave. And before we talk to Hirst, the
re’ll be a few things to tie up. For one thing, we’ll need to call in at the police station where there’s a telephone. I want to make one or two calls, to the Super for one. And then – a visit to Dr Widdop, I fancy. If anybody can fill us in on the details, it’s him.’

  Nathan Widdop sat before a roaring fire in his comfortable study, stroking a fat black cat on his knee, a lighted lamp and a glass of single malt at his side. Grizelda’s rhythmic purr indicated pure pleasure, something of a rarity from her these days. She was getting old and bad-tempered. Older, as we all are, thought Widdop. He was fifty-nine, and not by any means ready to be sent out to pasture; all the same, he tired more easily these days, his joints were stiffer, he looked forward increasingly to the rare quiet evening at home with a glass of whisky. The time for retirement might be coming sooner than he had anticipated and he didn’t welcome it, now there was no Margaret – the nurse he’d met and married thirty years ago – to share it with him.

  His hand moving over the rippling fur, he noticed the rash on the back had completely gone. Matthew Pike had suggested Grizelda might be the cause of it, that it might be due to a cat-induced allergy, but Widdop knew better. He had always kept a cat, she was the last of a long line. The rash was simple urticaria; he was unfortunately one of those who suffered a more than normal reaction to insect bites, stings or nervous stress. Pike was an acute young man, but he wasn’t always right.

  His new assistant was turning out to be a disappointment, perhaps worse. A threat, perhaps, to the status quo. A bright young fellow, a hard worker, he had at first been a welcome addition to the practice, but lately he had hinted he might be having thoughts of moving on. Just qualified, hard up, the young fellow couldn’t be unaware that he had landed on his feet here, so why was he thinking of leaving?

  He was young and enthusiastic and didn’t always agree with Widdop’s ideas, in particular, the subject of family planning. Despite what he thought, however, Pike wasn’t the only one who tried to change his patients’ attitude to that. Widdop had been urging it on his patients for years, though without conspicuous success. But one couldn’t force it on them, as Pike tried to do, not seeing – or refusing to admit – that to many, including some doctors, it was distasteful, unthinkable, irreligious or downright sinful. To others – well, the women were mostly all for it, but it required some degree of cooperation from the men, and mostly they just shut their ears and said that was women’s business.

  He stirred restlessly, dislodging Grizelda from her comfortable position; affronted, she leapt off his knee and retired to the other side of the fireplace, where she sat watching him through slitted eyes. He took a sip of whisky.

  He had lost yet another patient today, following soon after Walter Thwaite, and he felt sad, but not overwhelmed. He hadn’t been able to prevent either, but he rarely felt guilt over a death. If you were a doctor, that way lay madness. Nor did he allow himself to grieve when a patient died. His duty was to the living, to alleviate suffering in whatever way he could. The Thurlough lad had been young, tubercular, with no future, and Walter Thwaite – what sort of life had it been for him, coughing his lungs up?

  The sound of the doorbell pealed through the house but he didn’t stir. If it was an emergency, Pike was there. In a moment, however, Ada Crawshaw was announcing the arrival of the police. She could send them away if he didn’t want to see them.

  Widdop sighed. He was philosophical about having his leisure hours disturbed but that inspector and his sharp-eyed, restless sergeant were not welcome tonight. One had one’s duty, however.

  ‘No, it’s all right. Show them in.’

  The two men seemed to fill the room with their bulky presence, bringing a whiff of frosty air in with them. ‘Take their overcoats, Ada.’

  ‘Thank you, it is warm in here.’

  ‘Please sit down, gentlemen. Drink?’

  ‘No, I don’t think we will, thank you.’

  ‘Well then, what can I do for you, Inspector?’

  Widdop did himself well, thought Womersley. This room, unlike his shabby consulting room, was comfortable, even luxurious, with a thick turkey carpet and deep armchairs, large, glass-fronted bookcases in the fireplace alcoves. Nice pictures on the walls and a cut glass decanter and whisky glass on the table beside him. Widdop looking at ease and relaxed in leather slippers and a velvet smoking jacket. He pushed to the back of his mind the thought of Kate and his own warm fireside on this cold night.

  ‘For a start, Doctor, I was hoping you could tell us something about Whiteley Hirst.’

  ‘Whiteley?’ Surprise flickered in those wise, worldly eyes. ‘Well, I dare say I can. I’ve known him for many years.’ He stretched his legs out towards the fire and sat back, prepared for a bit of gossip once more. ‘What is it you want to know?’

  By reason of his profession, Widdop must be privy to many secrets, and used to keeping his own counsel, and Womersley said, ‘This is confidential, you understand, but I won’t beat about the bush. It’s come to our knowledge that Mr Hirst has recently become in difficulties – in debt to moneylenders for a large sum of money.’

  ‘Has he, by Jove? Horses, I expect. It’s not much of a secret that he likes a flutter. But who are we to judge? Every man should be allowed some indulgence.’ He raised his glass and took a sip of the whisky. Firelight winked on the cut glass, lent planes of shadow to his face. He was a man, if rumour and his outward circumstances were true, who had money enough to live a life of ease and leisure, yet he had chosen this hard-working existence. Underneath his bluff bonhomie must lie a private, sensitive man the world was not allowed to see. A man of ideals. A man who had decided on his own path and walked it alone. He sighed as he said, ‘I wasn’t aware it had such a hold on him, however, and I’m surprised.’

  ‘You’ve played card games with him for years, did his gambling streak never show?’

  ‘We’ve never played for money.’

  Womersley produced the scrap of paper found in Beaumont’s waistcoat pocket and held it out. Widdop read it and laughed. ‘Real money, I meant. This was about the upper limit.’

  ‘Turn it over, Doctor.’

  When Widdop read the London doctor’s name written on the back, he was silent for some time, then he said, ‘So he did take my advice, after all, or at least he was thinking about it.’

  Womersley didn’t answer this as he took the scrap of paper back. He returned to the subject of the card playing. ‘Mr Hirst was always content, then, to play for such low stakes?’

  ‘He didn’t have much choice. It was Ainsley who set the limits.’

  ‘We’ve been given to understand he was playing with you on the night of that fire at Farr Clough. Do you remember anything happening during the game that had any bearing on what happened?’

  The doctor considered before saying quietly, ‘Whiteley Hirst has many good qualities. What do you know about the fire?’

  ‘We’ve been told you and others were there, playing cards, Mrs Beaumont went out to bring refreshments, the fire started while she was out, and her husband lost his life saving his children.’

  ‘That’s true, but Theo wasn’t the only hero that night. Amelia foolishly tried to follow him when he went back inside to rescue the children – she was hysterical – but Whiteley Hirst ran in after her and dragged her out. He saved her life and was lucky to get out himself, with only that scar on his forehead – which you’ve doubtless noticed – to remind him. A piece of burning timber or some such set his hair alight – and burnt his hands, too.’

  He reached out one of his own long, well-cared-for hands on which a gold signet ring gleamed, an onyx cuff-link, and poured another inch of whisky into his glass.

  ‘I see your rash has gone, Doctor,’ Rawlinson remarked.

  ‘That? Oh, yes. It comes and goes.’

  ‘Going back to that IOU,’ Womersley said, ‘That doctor’s name I showed you, on the back. I have to tell you that I spoke to him myself, over the telephone, not an hour back.’ He was n
ot yet at ease with the telephone as a means of communication, its crackling lines and distorted speech seemed to him hardly worth the struggle, but he had persevered. ‘Dr Leeming is not a brain surgeon, never has been. He’s retired, in fact – from practice, that is. But he is still a member of the General Medical Council.’

  ‘What did Ainsley want with him, then?’

  ‘They never spoke. Dr Leeming has never heard of Mr Beaumont. I had to apologize for disturbing him with my call.’

  The shade of anxiety that had crossed Widdop’s face left it. He eased his bulk back into his chair. ‘So?’

  Womersley said quietly, ‘Do you know who Alice Quarmby is?’

  ‘Quarmby? I know several Quarmbys, the name’s not uncommon in Wainthorpe. Alice – let me think. Alice. Yes, of course, the young woman who was . . . taken ill at Cross Ings. What about her?

  ‘And Annie Wood, Lucy Pickersgill, Amy Helliwell, a dozen others whose names I can’t quite recall, what do you know about them?’

  Another silence fell, and lengthened, then Widdop said, ‘Perhaps you’d be so good as to explain what you are talking about?’

  ‘They were the reason Mr Beaumont had Dr Leeming’s address – he was threatening to report you for unprofessional conduct.’

  Widdop raised incredulous eyebrows. ‘He would have had no cause to do that, I assure you. Any . . . associations . . . I might have are never with any of my patients.’ His eyes met Rawlinson’s. They both knew he was remembering that night when Rawlinson had been attacked, and Mrs Brocklehurst had known where to find him, but Rawlinson kept silent.

  ‘I’m not talking about that kind of association, Doctor.’ Womersley produced the little red notebook and placed it on his knee. Widdop’s eyes fastened on it. He swallowed.

  After a while he said, ‘Before we go any further, it’s important that you understand something – I like women. I respect them – and I know what I’m doing. No woman has ever suffered any adverse effects because of me.’