The Murder Book Read online

  ‘Sounds a far cry from where they ended up.’

  ‘Oh, it was. I visited the house. It’s a largish place up on the Crowtree Lane, set well back and with an old coach house off to one side. The Fields lived above what had been the stables. The car was parked in the loosebox beneath.’

  ‘And how did this idyll end?’

  ‘Badly. About two years ago, when the old lady died, her family decided that the Fields would have to go and so off they went. It seems that Mrs Fry had left them a small bequest but the family contested it. The family solicitor persuaded them that it was not in their best interests to pursue the matter when George Fields threatened to talk to the local newspapers.’

  ‘Blackmail?’

  ‘Or simply looking for justice.’

  Mickey nodded. ‘How did you find out about Mrs Fry?’

  ‘One of the neighbours, Mrs Brenda Simpson, had a daughter, Mable, who was a friend of Ruby’s, and the children apparently talked about the big house where Ruby used to live. Mrs Simpson was curious, asked the child about it and then talked to Mary. She said that Mary was very bitter about the situation.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It must have seemed like a complete injustice. So, did you speak to the family?’

  ‘No. The family were unavailable but I have an appointment with the son in the morning. He is a solicitor, apparently. But this probably has no bearing at all on the murders.’

  ‘The death of Mrs Fry led to circumstances that put the family on another road – one that led to their vulnerability and eventually their murder,’ Mickey said.

  ‘I doubt the family could have foreseen that.’ Henry shrugged. ‘Anyway, we’ll speak to the son tomorrow and get a better picture of what went on, I hope. I have a couple of names – possible clients of Mrs Fields. One is a councillor and another is an estate agent. Both “respectable men”. You’re seeing both tomorrow afternoon while I go back to London. The Symington case. My evidence is due. Oh, and George Fields comes up before the magistrate in the morning.’

  Mickey nodded. ‘Drink up,’ he said. It seems that we’re making progress.’

  Henry nodded. ‘I discovered something else,’ he said. ‘Mary sometimes went off overnight when George was away. She left Ruby with a neighbour, telling her she’d been offered a bit of work in a hotel but she was always cagey with the details. Eventually the neighbour got suspicious of what was really going on and said she’d not be a party to it. It seems that Mary Fields was a good enough mother that she was fussy who she’d leave Ruby with and she seems to have stopped her overnight trips.’

  ‘And started meeting her men in her own home instead. I’m not sure that’s an improvement.’

  No, Henry thought as Mickey went off to get another beer. It probably wasn’t at that.

  SEVENTEEN

  People would talk, people always had, and Ethan knew to expect it, even if he and Helen tried to keep their interest in one another as quiet as they could. In a small community such as theirs, though, there was no such thing as secrecy. Everyone, man, woman and small child, knew that Ethan Samuels was sweet on Helen Lee – sweet enough that it should become a worry among the old folks. Ethan’s father tried again to convince his son to let this go and his mother added her voice to his concern. Helen’s parents would have forbidden her from leaving the house of an evening had there been a way, but Helen Lee had been a headstrong child and was now a determined woman. Had her mother locked the door, she would have climbed from the window. Had she barred the way against her returning home, she would have slept out in a neighbour’s barn. Such, her parents knew, was Helen.

  The village held its collective breath and waited on Frank Church to come to his senses and challenge the unruly pair. After all, the Churches and the Lees had agreed, hadn’t they, that their two should wed?

  Frank should be a man about it. Show the girl he cared enough to fight for her, or was it, some asked in whispers, that he feared Ethan’s fists – the boy known from youth as one always ready for a scrap. The man he had become, they all assumed, no different.

  ‘Come to church with me,’ Ethan pleaded.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ Helen told him. ‘Me mam’s been chapel all her life. She can’t be doing with all that wordy stuff.’

  ‘But if you come to church … we can walk out after. Our mam’ll follow us, keep it right.’

  Helen laughed, astounded. ‘Ethan Samuels, we’ve been meeting without a chaperone these past days and you’ve not minded. In fact,’ she poked him playfully in the ribs, ‘it seemed to me you’d go to any lengths to snatch a bit of time alone.’

  ‘And so I would, but Helen … I want to make this proper. To walk out with you like I’m meant to. Meeting in holes and corners – it’s not enough.’

  ‘You speaking for me?’

  He circled his arm about her waist. ‘I thought I did that the night we danced together.’

  ‘Oh, did you now?’ Half-heartedly, she tried to push him away.

  ‘So, come to church with me. This Sunday.’

  ‘Ethan, I can’t. Mam’d go spare – you know what she thinks about the vicar and his kind.’

  ‘And what kind’s that then?’ Ethan was amused, knowing already what she’d say.

  ‘Have you got no shame, Ethan, lad? Making me say? Me mam reckons if he and his like wore their trousers the same way round as their collars there’d be a lot less bastards thrown on the parish care.’

  Ethan laughed, delighted. ‘Oh, such language, Helen Lee. What would your mam say about that? Anyway, I reckon she don’t think too highly of the minister either. You know, they reckon he has a woman in Louth. A widow, so they say.’

  ‘Oh, you!’ She wriggled from his grasp and then leaned back against him, her head resting on his chest.

  Ethan held his breath, hardly believing what life had blessed him with. He stroked her dark hair – soft waves shot through with fiery red. ‘I love you, Helen. I want you always to be with me, and if Frank Church isn’t man enough to put up a fight then it’s right he should be the loser.’

  Helen pulled away again, not just putting a physical space between them but, this time, something more than that. Ethan felt bereft. He sensed he had crossed some boundary.

  ‘Frank is a good man,’ she told him softly. ‘And Ethan, I feel bad about what we’re doing.’

  ‘But you don’t love him.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you? Now, Helen, you tell me you do and I’ll not believe you. I’ll know you’re telling me lies.’

  Slowly, she shook her head. ‘I don’t love him,’ she said. ‘Ethan, I love you.’

  If the village had been holding its breath waiting for Frank Church to act, then his mother had almost run out of air. He had left home that morning with her words burning his ears. They were still burning when he reached the farm, so he knew that he’d remained the major topic of conversation, even if the only one to hear had been the pots and kettles.

  ‘You’ll wait till she disgraces you before you do aught?’

  ‘Mam, leave it be. Helen won’t do anything she shouldn’t.’

  ‘You believe that? I never thought I’d bred fools for sons.’

  ‘Mam, let it go.’ Did he believe that? Or did he lay awake at night wondering what Ethan and Helen had got up to? Helen, the woman he was supposed to marry and who, as yet, he’d not even kissed. Truth was Frank was at a loss as to what to do. Had it been a simple matter of knocking Ethan flat on his back, Frank would have given it his best – though he was wise enough to know that he’d never beaten Ethan in a fight when they were both kids and he was unlikely to do so now.

  But no. Frank had seen the light in Helen’s eyes. Light that faded when she looked at him. Light he had never kindled in anyone’s gaze, not once, not ever. How the hell do you knock that flat? That look, that light?

  Frank didn’t have a clue. But he knew he was going to be forced into doing something. It wasn’t just his mam and dad that talked about
the goings-on between Ethan Samuels and Helen Lee. The whole village was talking and Frank was being taken for a blind fool.

  It was seven days since Mother Jo had died, ten days since Ethan had come home – less than two short weeks to turn Frank’s ordered world upside down. Truth was Frank had done nothing because he didn’t have a notion what to do. Had he made their union official, had it been agreed that he was walking out with Helen already and that a date had been set for their wedding, he might have felt easier about challenging any man. As it was, it had been his family and hers that had the understanding. Frank had just taken it for granted that it would be as they said. Sure, he’d been friendly enough with Helen, treated her nice, and they’d got along well enough since their school days. His mam and dad had been joined as the result of a similar understanding and their parents before that. Helen’s too, for that matter. You could go back generations and barely had there been a false step, a miss in such a tradition of ‘understandings’; agreement often reached almost as soon as the children involved came into the world. And it had worked, Frank thought. Folk wed that had known one another their whole lives. They knew what was expected and what to expect and Frank had, somehow, just come to assume it would be the same for him and Helen Lee.

  Nothing had prepared him for Ethan or that light in Helen’s eyes.

  That both Ethan and Frank now worked for Elijah Hanson was not that strange. Hanson was the biggest landowner and therefore the major employer thereabouts. Frank understood this but it made it all the harder for him that he should be brought into daily contact with Ethan. Harder still that Ethan was just the same as he had always been, friendly and seemingly open. The fact that he was attempting to hide his relations with Frank’s woman made this feel all the worse.

  Frank wished, fervently, that he’d just clear off back to sea.

  He almost wished that Ethan would take Helen with him.

  Today, when he arrived, Ethan was already working in the yard. Dar Samuels was busy with the doctoring of Robert Hanson’s brute of a horse. Ethan was holding its bridle, one hand on its back, trying to keep the beast calm enough to accept his father’s ministrations.

  Despite himself, Frank was drawn to see what they were doing. Dar Samuels’ skills with horseflesh were legendary and Ethan, following his dad about from the moment he could toddle, was not so far behind himself.

  ‘God alive, how did he do that!’ Frank stared, horrified at the four-inch gash on the horse’s flank. It gaped wide, laid open like someone had sliced it.

  ‘You should have seen it an hour ago,’ Dar Samuels told him. ‘Bleeding like some quack had set a leech to it. As to how, you’d have to ask his master that one.’

  ‘It took Dar till now to staunch it,’ Ethan added. His jaw, Frank noted, was set tight, his anger held in but barely controlled. ‘The missus tells us Master Robert rode into the yard and fell from the saddle. Blocker, he was. Blind drunk and so mazzled he couldn’t tell them where he’d been all night. Mister Hanson kicked him off the bed and sent for Dar to come quick.’

  Frank nodded. He recognized the poultice that Dar was packing into the wound. Honey and fresh spider web with a mix of mould, scraped from the wooden dividers in the horse boxes. Workers often used that on cuts that wouldn’t heal; sometimes a smear of honey too, when they could get it.

  Breakfast would be on the table. He could smell the bacon through the open door. ‘I’ll tell the missus to keep yours by,’ he said as he went on his way And it occurred to him, even as he said it, that much as he resented Ethan, the thought that he might miss out on this one guaranteed meal of the day somehow came out above the anger he might be keeping stored up against him. No one should inflict hunger upon another.

  His dad, Frank thought, would have understood the sense of that. His mother, made as she was of sterner stuff, would have clipped his ear for being a muddle-headed lumx.

  But, Frank thought, glancing back over his shoulder at the two men working with such care to sooth the temperamental beast, she was in the right in the main. He made up his mind then and there that he would wait on Ethan Samuels when evening came and that he’d have it out with him once and for all. Then, at least, he might get some little peace at home.

  EIGHTEEN

  Even if the husband was not guilty of murder, he had certainly been guilty of assault, and Henry sat quietly at the back of the magistrate’s court as George Fields was presented before them. Somewhat to his surprise, young Constable Parkin, eye more purple than black now, spoke up in favour of clemency.

  ‘He was drunk, sir, but he was also distressed. He’d just returned from time at sea and come home to a murdered wife and child. And a cousin, sir. He weren’t thinking clear when he thumped me.’

  The magistrates conferred and George Fields, it was decided, would be let off with a fine.

  ‘You are a fortunate man,’ the magistrate in charge told him.

  An interesting definition of being fortunate, Henry thought.

  George Fields paid his fine and found Inspector Johnstone waiting for him outside.

  ‘There’s a cafe in the market square; sells a good breakfast if you’ll allow me to buy you one.’

  George Fields eyed him warily. ‘In return for what?’

  ‘A little of your time and a few questions. I could have both easily enough at the police station but I thought breakfast and teas would make it a more civilized interview.’

  George Fields nodded and they walked on together.

  ‘The fine will hurt,’ Henry said.

  ‘I’m beyond hurting. I’ve no one to spend it on now, have I?’

  ‘You still have to live.’

  ‘Do I?’ He shook his head before Henry could respond. ‘Don’t fret, Inspector. I thought of that the night I thumped that young constable. I stood beside the water and I thought what it would be like just to go under. But I passed it by. I’ve still things that must be done before I go and meet my maker.’

  ‘What things?’ Henry asked. ‘Mr Fields, I have to warn you against …’

  ‘Against finding the ba— bugger that did this to them and doing the same to him?’

  ‘Against that, yes.’

  George Fields laughed softly. ‘And what would you do in my place, Inspector?’

  ‘I would trust to the law to deal with it.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool.’

  Henry let it pass. They had reached the cafe and he ordered for both of them. George had chosen a table in the shadows, his back to the wall so he could watch the door, leaving Henry to sit with his back to it. Looking at George Fields, Henry understood that this had been deliberate, that he knew how uncomfortable this would make him. It seemed at once spiteful and perceptive and Henry considered the man anew.

  ‘You knew that your wife would never change,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Sometimes we all hope for a miracle,’ George Fields said. ‘Sometimes we believe we’ve already been in receipt of one and for a while that closes our eyes to the rest.’

  ‘And your miracle was?’

  ‘A woman who loved me and gave me a child.’

  ‘And the rest.’

  ‘As I said, the rest I ignored. Tried to, anyway. I didn’t kill her, Inspector. I was nowhere near on the night she died and even if temper had got the better of me and I’d … I’d done something, I’d never have hurt our Ruby. Never.’

  Breakfast arrived and George seized his knife and fork and dug in with enthusiasm. Henry, debating whether or not he was actually hungry, thought he should at least make an effort – Mickey’s voice was in his head telling him that his body needed fuel if his brain was to work. For a few minutes the two men ate in silence and then, as George paused to take a slurp of tea, Henry asked, ‘Your cousin – you said you asked him to keep an eye on her. Did that include taking note of who came to visit her?’

  George glared but then nodded.

  ‘And how did he know when she might be … entertaining?’

  George went ba
ck to shovelling food and Henry waited. Patience, he thought, would be the key to getting this man to tell him what he knew. Push him and he’d clam up, storm out and tell Henry nothing more.

  George devoured his food long before Henry and Henry, taking a final bite of sausage, pushed his plate across. ‘Finish it,’ he said.

  ‘No wonder you’re so bloody thin.’ George pushed his own plate away and started on what was left of Henry’s breakfast.

  ‘And how did your cousin know when …’

  George Fields gave him a look that caused Henry to pause. He drank his tea and waited again.

  ‘Because,’ George said finally, ‘she was so bloody predictable. Tuesday nights and Thursdays, those were her work nights. She kept it to two nights a week, said it made her more exclusive. Exclusive! Like she was anything more than a bloody tart. Then it moved to Tuesday and Thursday and Friday, that’s what Walter was telling me. I mean, fucking hell, Inspector – she told me she’d stopped doing all that and here she is, doing it, with Ruby in the house. Doing … that.’

  ‘You must have been very angry.’

  ‘Angry doesn’t even come close. I told Walter I was going to have it out with her good and proper when I got home this time. I told him.’

  ‘How did you tell him? You’ve been away at sea?’

  ‘We put into port, all along the coast – land the catch at whatever port is closest. These days we follow the fish and the trade – can’t be waiting for it to come to us. Other times we haul a bit of cargo. Three weeks ago we was down London way, your neck of the woods. Last week, up at Bridlington. We headed back down this way after that. I can send letters. Walter sends me messages at the Seamens’ Missions or the Sally Army. I tell him where we plan to be next and he sends … sent them there.’

  Henry nodded. ‘And the last letter you received?’

  ‘At Bridlington. I got a letter there and sent him word from there for when I’d be coming home.’