The Murder Book Page 15

  ‘And you’re discounting the other two.’

  ‘In as much as I discount anyone, yes.’

  Henry told him what he’d read in the letters and that there was another possible name that should be investigated, but that it would mean trawling all the hotels and pubs in the area to find a man possibly called Williams.

  ‘Of course, local knowledge would be of use here but I suspect your Constable Parkin might be better suited for that task than anyone that Carrington might recommend.’

  ‘You really don’t like that man, do you?’ Mickey said.

  ‘There is nothing to like about some people.’

  They walked in silence for a little while, then Henry said, ‘And so George Fields is doing his own investigation after all. I don’t imagine he’ll be dissuaded.’

  ‘Would you be?’

  ‘I think the man feels he has nothing left to lose. In such a mind, reason does not come into it. It would have been right to have locked him up for breach of the peace if only for his own safety. I can see this ending badly.’

  ‘Well, it started that way, so why not?’

  Henry nodded. Why not indeed.

  THIRTY-TWO

  It was as though all colour had been bled from the day, Frank thought. He tramped back down the hill towards the village, feet reluctant and yet seeming to be possessed of their own will, one in front of the other, placed square and deliberate like, taking him down to Helen.

  Frank tried to get events in order. He’d taken Mrs Hanson into the field and stood back, watching as she examined her son, turning his face with gentle hands, crooning over him like a new mother with her babe. He and Jenny, the kitchen maid, had stood away, standing close enough that he could feel the hairs rising on Jenny’s arms as she grew cold in the heat of the afternoon.

  Frank had lost track of time.

  Later, Mrs Hanson had sent Jenny back to the house for a sheet but she’d kept Frank close by. Not that she’d told him to stay, Frank remembered, just given him that look. That look, so like his mother’s ‘look’ that said, Don’t you move from there, Frank Church. You just stay where I’ve put you till I tell you different. And so Frank had stayed and watched and had been relieved when Jenny came back with the freshly laundered sheet and they had laid it over the dead man, covered his ruined face and his bloody hair and his pale, bloodless hands.

  Only then had Frank gone to catch Robert’s horse. It was standing, quiet enough, close by the gate Robert had tried to make it jump. It whickered in welcome as Frank took hold of the reins and led it to the stables. Frank fed it and rubbed the sweat from its body with an old sack, then covered it with a stable blanket, sensing that the animal felt as chilled and iced up inside as did Frank himself. It was as though the heat of the day could no longer touch any of them. It was deflected, bounced back like rain on a roof.

  Frank felt he might be chilled to the bone like this all his life through.

  Then Miss Elizabeth had arrived with some men from the top field with the doctor in his car following a few minutes behind and then … Dar and Hanson senior and Ted, Robert’s brother. Someone had been sent to find the constable and Frank had been taken into the parlour – a place Frank had never done more than glimpse at through the open door until today – and Hanson had questioned him over and over again. And Frank had constructed his story and he’d stuck to it. Stuck so close he no longer doubted the truth. He had seen Robert fall and the horse had been between Frank and Ethan, blocking his view.

  He erased from his conscious mind that image, which he knew, despite his efforts, would still surface in his dreams, of Ethan’s rage, blind and utterly bent on destruction as he had beaten Robert’s face so hard with the crop that it broke in Ethan’s grasp and then he’d started in with his fists, hitting and hitting until his hands were bloody and Robert’s features all but obliterated.

  Had Frank moved to stop him?

  No.

  Frank closed his eyes, remembering.

  Too shocked at first to move, Frank had watched, slack-jawed and horrified and then … and then he’d just watched. Watched until slowly it dawned on him, as though the thought came from another place, that he really ought to stop this before it was too late.

  Then, as that thought had struck, so had the realization that it was already too late. Much too late. Only then had the panic set in. The shock and the fear. Fear that he was implicated if he didn’t at least try to control Ethan now.

  Frank groaned. What was he to tell Helen? She’d hate Frank for being the bearer of such news.

  Why had he offered to go and speak with her?

  The truth dawned; Helen would have hated him even more if he’d left it to Hanson or his son.

  Frank shivered. He looked up into the blue sky and watched as it darkened to grey. Even though there was not a cloud to be seen, something hid the sun and blocked the warmth of it. Frank clutched his jacket close about his wiry body and stumbled on, feet still with a mind of their own, one before the other, until he found himself rapping hard on the Lees’ door.

  Helen’s mother opened it. Frank saw the question rise to her lips and then the horror in her eyes.

  The blood on his shirt, Frank realized. He still had blood on his shirt.

  She stood back and Frank passed by her and sat down, uninvited, at the kitchen table.

  ‘Helen!’ he heard the mother calling. ‘Helen, come quick.’

  And Helen came. She hurried through the door, a basket of clean washing tucked beneath her arm. One look at Frank’s face and she dropped it to the floor.

  ‘It’s Ethan, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Oh, God, what’s happened to him?’

  Frank had rehearsed and rehearsed but now, faced with Helen Lee, his words came out all wrong.

  ‘Ethan’s gone,’ he whispered. ‘Helen, Ethan’s had to go. He killed Robert Hanson and now he’s gone.’

  Questions, more questions, and now he was back on track, on familiar ground, it was so easy to lie. He repeated what he’d told the Hansons. Repeated it again when Helen screamed at him that it could not be true. Told it once more when her mother sat down, calm as she could manage and questioned him more closely, clinging on his every word as though a simple change of phrase could undo what he was saying.

  Then he told it again as Helen’s dad burst through the door. It was news all around the village now and he’d heard, then come back to tell his wife and child before another got to them.

  ‘He had to go,’ Frank said at last. ‘Helen, they’d have hanged him ifn he’d stayed. I telled him, “Go. She don’t want to see you hanged.”

  Helen stared at him. Betrayed. Frank tried to meet her gaze but there was so much misery in it, so much pain, he had to look away.

  ‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘Mister Hanson’s called for the constable. He said I’d best get back to the farm to talk to him.’

  He stood. Hanson had told him no such thing but it was the sensible thing to do and Frank was grateful of another half lie to hide behind.

  The Lees said nothing. Did not move as Frank crossed to the door and let himself out. Only Helen’s mother pulled herself back, as though she didn’t want to risk being touched by the man who brought such contamination into their house.

  He closed the door softly and replaced his cap, tugged the jacket tight across his shoulders and turned back towards the farm. He glanced down the street towards Red Row and the Samuels’ cottage, wondering if Ethan’s family knew by now. If Dar had come back and told them.

  Frank shivered like a man with fever and once the shivering began found he couldn’t stop. His body shook and his feet felt loose and unsteady beneath him. With the greatest effort, he directed them back on to the track that led to Hanson’s farm and wondered, his gut twisting with the fear of it as he struggled up the hill, how far Ethan would get before they caught him and if, when they did, it would come out that Frank had lied.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Ted remembered what had been said in the p
apers about the inspector and his sergeant coming up from London. He told his father.

  ‘Get back in the car, get yourself to Louth and bring him back here. I don’t want no one else. I want the murder detective.’

  Ted nodded and, moments later, was turning the car in the yard and on his way again.

  Still later, Dar Samuels returned. There had been no sign of Ethan. He stood in the yard, hesitating until Elizabeth spotted him and came out to greet him. She laid a hand on his arm. ‘Come along in, Dar. No one would blame you, not ever. We all know you are a good man. And we don’t know the whole story yet.’

  Dar looked down at the child who seemed suddenly to have grown up and be standing on the verge of womanhood. ‘Thank you, Miss Elizabeth,’ he said and allowed her to lead him into the kitchen. It felt as though his legs were about to give way and he felt sick to his stomach. He knew that there had always been enmity between Ethan and Robert but what had happened that had transformed enmity into intent to kill?

  Inside the kitchen he looked around and noticed an absence. ‘Where’s Frank?’ he asked.

  ‘Gone to tell Helen Lee what’s gone on,’ Elizabeth told him. ‘He volunteered for it so we let him go.’

  Dar Samuels nodded. Somehow that didn’t sound right, that Frank should have offered. There was something here that he did not yet understand, but whatever it was it would make little difference. His Ethan had killed his boss’s son and whatever the provocation, there was no remedy for that.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The burning in his lungs and the acid ache in his legs eventually felled Ethan. He lay down in a dry ditch, crawled to a place that was overshadowed by long grass and an overgrowth of bramble and then allowed himself to relax.

  His mind was numb. Numb and empty. His thoughts refused to form themselves into neat, sense-making lines. Instead they fragmented like worms chopped by a spade, continuing to wriggle and writhe and reach out, one part for the other, but unable to rejoin.

  How far had he come?

  Ethan was not sure. The position of the sun told him it was now late afternoon. The cheerful brightness of the light and blueness of the sky mocked him.

  The police would be at Hanson’s farm, Ethan thought. Fat constable Jenkins, who oversaw the everyday troubles of their small community and the villages round about, would have been called.

  Ethan tried to imagine Jenkins handling this. Jenkins, whose major challenge to date had been a spot of chicken rustling, now faced with a killing.

  Ethan groaned and turned on his side. He braced his back against one side of the ditch and drew his knees tight against the other. Maybe he could just stay here, lie here until the life leached out of him or the ditch filled with winter rain and drowned him.

  He lay, listening to the quiet, the buzz of insects and the wind in the tall grass, the call of crows overhead and the sweet, repetitive song of the hedgerow birds, the blackbird always louder and more insistent than the rest.

  He thought of that day with Helen, lying in the field, at risk of discovery and yet not caring. Too wrapped up in the moment and in the revelation of Helen’s smooth-skinned body to care.

  Ethan groaned and the groan brought tears. The tears fell, disregarded, and soaked into the grassy floor of the ditch. Slowly, grief gave way to sleep and Ethan fell into oblivion, hoping that he might never wake.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Constable Jenkins had arrived in the village and felt he ought to make a start on his investigation, even though he’d been told that the murder detective from London was being sent for. He now stood by the farmhouse fireplace, feet apart, shoulders squared, drawn to his full height and authority. But despite his repeated questions he wasn’t getting very far.

  ‘You say you’ve not seen him?’

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ Helen was angry now. ‘I ain’t lying. I saw Ethan late yesterday when we came back home from the fields. I stayed back today to help Ma with the laundry. She takes in extra this time of year – you know that. I’ve been back and forth all day carrying water from Peter’s spout spring to fill the copper and scrubbing shirts and sheets.’

  Constable Jenkins nodded. Being a bachelor he was one of those glad to use Mrs Lee’s services. ‘But you’ve not seen him today?’

  ‘I’m telling you, not today. Though if I had I’d have told him to run and to keep on running. Come to that, I might have gone with him too.’

  ‘Helen!’ Her mother’s reproach, sharp as a slap, silenced Helen.

  They’d all been summoned to the Hanson place. The Lees, the Samuels, the Churches. They all crushed into the parlour together with the Hansons and were asked the same things over and over again though it was clear from the outset, so far as Helen was concerned, that no one could add anything useful to Frank’s statement, the story he had told Helen now formalized and written down by Constable Jenkins in his tight, cramped hand. This was just Jenkins covering his back, making sure he was seen to be doing his job.

  ‘Well, you can tell that again to the inspector when he arrives,’ Elijah Hanson told her sternly. ‘This is not a trivial matter, girl. It’s murder.’

  Murder. Helen swallowed hard but continued to look defiant, though she suspected she probably just looked sulky like her mam was always telling her. Her brain buzzed like a hive of bees, buzzed and hummed and tore at the problem but it didn’t get any better any way she looked at it.

  She found it hard to believe that Ethan could have done this. Ethan, who had always been so gentle with her. Sure, he’d fought with Frank, but they had good reason and no one thought the worse of either of them for it. He’d been known to be a bit handy with his fists and a bit quick with his temper before he’d gone away to sea but no one thought there was anything uncommon in that. It was the way most boys were and the way all men became.

  Elijah Hanson had insisted that she view the body, that she look at the face of his son and see what Ethan had done. Even so, her mind rebelled; she could not equate the Ethan she knew with such terrible violence.

  ‘When will this inspector arrive?’ Dar asked quietly.

  Helen shot him a look. Dar had stood by the door since they’d all arrived. He’d been out looking for his son, Helen had been told, but not found him. It occurred to her that Dar might not have looked very hard and then she dismissed the thought at once. Dar would have looked and looked again. Dar would have moved mountains to find Ethan and bring him back because that was the honest thing to do and Dar was as honest as the day.

  Helen stared down at her feet, at the expensive red and blue woven carpet that covered the parlour floor, not wanting to catch the man’s eye. Not wanting to see the pain-induced grey pallor which seemed to have blanched the sun-browned face.

  ‘He’ll be here tonight,’ Elijah Hanson said. ‘Be here tonight and be staying for as long as it takes.’

  He spoke with the confidence of one who knew what service his money could buy, even from a public official.

  ‘He and his team.’ Hanson put emphasis on the word, letting all know that the inspector would not be alone. That this was far too important a task for even an inspector to tackle by himself. ‘He and his team will be stopping here until Ethan Samuels is found and justice is seen to be done.’

  Helen sneaked another look at Dar. She saw him nod sharply and then jerk his head towards his wife.

  ‘You know where I’ll be,’ he said to Elijah. ‘I’m off home. We’ve left the young un’s longer than we should. I’ll be out first light after Ethan. Tell the inspector that when he gets here. If he wants to talk to me he’d best be up early.’

  Elijah nodded curtly and then dismissed the rest of them. Helen’s parents held her back at the door, waiting for the Samuels to get some distance ahead. ‘You keep away from them,’ her mother said. ‘I knew he was a wrong ’un from the moment he came back and turned your head. You’ve brought enough trouble to our door, lass, now you just keep away.’

  Helen could think of nothing to say. Miserably, she
followed her parents back down to the village, aware that the Churches trailed along behind them and that they too kept their distance as though Helen herself, by association, was now a threat to them all.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Ted had driven as fast as he dared along the winding, hilly route to Louth. The road was not good and was overshadowed by trees and characterized by blind bends and sudden dips. Finally reaching Louth, nestled in the bowl of hills, he parked close by the police station and ran inside, demanding to see the inspector that had come up from London. The desk sergeant finally calmed him down enough to find out what had been going on. He’d been making so much noise that Inspector Carrington came out to find out what the fuss was all about.

  Ted gave him the details and explained who he was and who his father was. Elijah Hanson owned a lot of land and was known to be an influential, well-connected man. Inspector Carrington sent a constable to the King’s Head with a message for Henry and Sergeant Hitchens to come at once and told Ted to sit down and calm himself.

  ‘Chief Inspector Johnstone will be here presently,’ he said.

  Looking at him, Ted suspected that there was no love lost between Carrington and the inspector he had named. Carrington seemed to chew on Johnstone’s name as though it was a distasteful piece of gristle he had found in a pie.

  ‘I have the car; I could take him straight back there.’

  ‘And I will make sure he goes with you immediately,’ Carrington assured him. He seemed pleased with the idea.

  Chief Inspector Carrington then withdrew to his office, leaving Ted to wait alone.

  It was perhaps half an hour before Inspector Johnstone and Sergeant Hitchens arrived but Ted felt that it had been an eternity and another eternity. Before the London police detectives could question him, Carrington had reappeared. He explained what Ted was doing there.

  ‘You both need to leave at once,’ he said. ‘Mr Hanson is an important and well-respected man. We wish to extend him every courtesy and concern.’