Henrietta Who? Read online

  “I liked your mother, you know,” he said, “in spite of everything.”

  “I know you did, Bill,” Henrietta said quickly.

  “She was probably right to make us wait. First I was away at the Agricultural College and then with her being so keen on your going away too.”

  Henrietta nodded. “She really minded about that, didn’t she?”

  “Some people just feel that way about education,” said Bill Thorpe seriously. “My father’s the same. He couldn’t go to college himself but he made me. He’s right, I suppose. You learn—well, it’s not exactly how much you learn but the reasons behind things.”

  “And it wasn’t very long, was it?”

  He smiled wanly. “It seemed a long time.”

  “You never wrote.”

  “Neither did you,” returned Bill.

  “We promised not to. I thought it might make things easier.”

  “Did it?”

  Henrietta shook her head. “No.”

  “Nor for me.” He looked at her for a minute, then, “Mother said to come to the farm to sleep if you wanted.”

  “Will you say thank you? There’s nothing I’d like more but,” she grimaced, “I think if I once didn’t stay here on my own I’d never get back to doing it again. She’ll understand, I know.”

  Thorpe nodded. “We’re a bit out of the way, too, at the farm. There’ll be a lot to be done here, I expect.”

  “It’s not that, but,” she pushed her hair back vaguely, “there seem to be people coming all the time. The rector’s coming down to talk to me about the funeral and Mr. Hepple said he’d be back again about the inquest.” She gave a shaky half-laugh. “I’d no idea dying was such a—well—complicated business.”

  “No,” agreed Thorpe soberly. He allowed a decent interval to elapse before he said, “Any news of the car?”

  “What car—oh, that car? No, Bill, they haven’t said anything to me about it yet.”

  Henrietta thought that Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby had come from the Berebury C.I.D. solely to examine her mother’s bureau for fingerprints.

  “It’s in the front room,” she said, leading the way. “I haven’t touched it.”

  Sloan obligingly directed Crosby to perform this routine procedure while he talked to Henrietta.

  “Nothing missing from the rest of the house, miss?”

  “Not that I know of, Inspector. It all looks all right to me.” She paused. “It’s such an odd thing to happen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Sloan simply.

  “I mean, why should someone want to break in here?”

  “Not break in, miss. P.C. Hepple said all the doors and windows were intact. He found the place quite well locked up really. Whoever got in here came in by the door. The front door.”

  (“The back one’s bolted as well as the Tower of London,” was what Hepple had said.)

  “The front door,” he repeated.

  “That’s worse,” said Henrietta.

  “Your mother, miss, would she have left a key with anyone?”

  “No.” Henrietta considered this. “I’m sure she wouldn’t. Besides there were only two keys. There was one in her handbag and one hanging on a hook in the kitchen. That’s the one I use when I’m at home.”

  “I see.”

  Henrietta shivered suddenly. “I don’t like to think of someone coming in here.”

  “No, miss.”

  “With a key.”

  Sloan wasn’t exactly enamored of the idea either. It left the girl in the state the insurance companies called being “at risk.”

  “Now, miss, I think we can open the bureau.”

  Crosby had finished his dusting operations. He stood back and said briefly, “Gloves.”

  Sloan was not surprised.

  “Was it usually kept locked?” he asked Henrietta.

  “Always.”

  “Are you familiar with its contents?”

  “Not really. My mother kept her papers there. I couldn’t say if they are all there or not.”

  Sloan eased back the flap. Everything was neatly pigeonholed. Either no one had been through the bureau or they had done it conscious that they would be undisturbed. Sloan pulled out the first bundle of papers.

  “Housekeeping accounts,” he said, glancing rapidly through them. Grace Jenkins and her alleged daughter had lived modestly enough.

  “That’s right,” said Henrietta. “You’ll find her checkbook there too.”

  Sloan took a quick look at the bank’s name for future reference. It was at a Berebury branch. He put the tidily docketed receipts back and took out the next bundle. It brought an immediate flush to Henrietta’s cheeks.

  “I’d no idea she kept those.”

  Sloan looked down at a schoolgirl’s writing.

  “My letters to her,” she said in a choked voice, “and my school reports.”

  If this was acting, thought Sloan, it was good acting.

  “Mothers do.” He chose his words carefully. “Part of the treasury of parenthood, you might say. By the way, where did you go to school?”

  “Here in the village first, then Berebury High.”

  Sloan put the infant Henrietta’s literary efforts back in their place and took out the next bundle.

  “These seem to be about the cottage.” He turned over a number of letters. “Fire insurance, rating assessment and so forth.”

  Sloan put them back but not before noting that all were quite definitely in the name of Mrs. G.E. Jenkins.

  “Boundary Cottage,” he said. “Did it belong to your mo—to Mrs. Jenkins?”

  “No,” Henrietta shook her head. “To Mr. Hibbs at The Hall. It’s the last of the cottages on his estate. That’s why it’s called Boundary Cottage.”

  “Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to break in here?”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t think she kept anything valuable there. That’s why I can’t understand anyone wanting to go through it. There wasn’t anything to steal.”

  “It doesn’t look,” he said cautiously, “as if, in fact, anything has been stolen.”

  She reached over and pointed out a little drawer. “If you would just look inside that, Inspector. Thank you. Ah, they’re all right. My father’s medals.”

  It was the opening Sloan was looking for.

  “I’ll need a note of his full name, miss, for the inquest.”

  “Sergeant Cyril Edgar Jenkins.”

  “And your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Wright,” said Henrietta unhesitatingly.

  “Thank you. That’s his photograph, I take it?”

  “It is.” Henrietta handed it down from the mantelpiece and gave it to Sloan. “He was in the East Calleshires.”

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it, miss? I mean, they’re mostly West Calleshires in these parts.”

  “He came from East Calleshire,” she said.

  “I see.” Sloan studied the picture of a fair-haired man in soldier’s uniform and glanced back at Henrietta’s darker coloring.

  “I was more like my mother to look at,” she said, correctly interpreting his glance. “The same color hair.”

  But Mrs. Jenkins was not her mother. Dr. Dabbe had said so.

  “Really, miss?” said Sloan aloud. “Now, you wouldn’t have a photograph of her by any chance?”

  “In my bedroom. I’ll fetch it.”

  “A pretty kettle of fish,” observed Sloan morbidly to Crosby the minute she was out of earshot.

  “Someone’s been through that bureau with a toothcomb, sir,” said Crosby. “Glove prints everywhere.”

  “Wonder what they wanted?”

  “Search me.” Crosby ran his fingers in behind pigeonholes, pressing here and pulling there. “Nothing to suggest a secret drawer.”

  “That’s something to be thankful for anyway. Ah, there you are, miss, thank you.”

  Henrietta handed him a snapshot in a leather frame—quite a different mat
ter from the studio portrait that had stood on the mantelpiece.

  “It’s not a very good one but it’s the only one I’ve got.”

  Sloan held the snap in front of him. It was of an ordinary middle-aged woman, taken standing outside the back door of the cottage. She had on a simple cotton frock and had obviously been prevailed upon to come out of the kitchen to be photographed. She was smiling in a protesting sort of way at the camera.

  “I was lucky to have one of her to show you,” said Henrietta. The sight of the picture had brought a quaver into her voice which she strove to conceal from the two policemen. “She didn’t like having her photograph taken.”

  “Didn’t she indeed?”

  “But I had a college friend to stay for a few days the summer before last and she had a camera with her.”

  “Do you mean to say, miss, that this is the only photograph of your mother extant?”

  She frowned. “I think so. Angela—that was her name—sent it to us when she got home.”

  Inspector Sloan stood the two photographs side by side, the formal silver-framed studio study and the quick amateur snapshot.

  “On my left, a sergeant in the East Calleshire Regiment called Cyril Edgar Jenkins.”

  “My father,” said Henrietta.

  “Aged about—what would you say?”

  “He was thirty-one,” supplied Henrietta. “Is it important?”

  “And on my right a middle-aged woman called Grace Edith Jenkins.”

  “My mother,” said Henrietta.

  There was a short silence. Henrietta looked first at one policeman and then at the other.

  Sloan avoided her clear gaze and said, “Can you remember anything before Larking?”

  “No, I can’t.” She looked at him curiously but she answered his question. “I’ve lived here ever since I can remember. In Boundary Cottage. With my mother.”

  “And you don’t remember your father at all?”

  “No. He was killed soon after I was born.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Him?”

  “Yes, miss. I’ll explain in a minute.”

  She hesitated. She had an image of her father in her mind, always had had and it was compounded of many things: the words of her mother, the photograph in the drawing room, the conception of any soldier, of all soldiers, killed in battle—but it wasn’t something easily put into words.

  “He wasn’t afraid,” she said awkwardly.

  “I realize that.” They didn’t award medals for cowardice. “But what do you know about him as a person? What was his occupation, for instance?”

  “He worked on a farm.”

  “Did he own it?” Property owners as a class of person were easy to trace, popular with the police.

  “I don’t think so. He was the farm bailiff for someone.” She frowned. “His father had a small farm though. It wasn’t really big enough for my father to work as well—that’s why he worked for someone else.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Somewhere on the other side of Calleshire. I’m not sure exactly where.”

  “So that is where your mother came from to Larking?”

  “From that direction somewhere, I suppose. I don’t know exactly. She said he—my father, that is—had moved about a bit getting experience. He would have had to run his father’s farm one day on his own and he needed to learn.”

  “I see.” He gave her a quick grin. “So on Saturday nights, miss, you—er—support the East Callies?”

  She responded with a faint smile. The regimental rivalry between the East and West Calleshires was famous. “They get on very well without my help. The West Callies have lost their mascot twice already this year.”

  “Have they indeed? Vulnerable things, mascots. Now this farm of your—er—grandfather’s—do you know where that was?”

  “It was called Holly Tree Farm, I know,” said Henrietta promptly, “because I remember my mother telling me there was a very old holly tree there that my grandfather wouldn’t have cut down even though it was just in front of the house and made the rooms very dark. He used to say you can’t have a Holly Tree Farm without a holly tree.”

  “A very proper attitude,” agreed Sloan stoutly. “Did you ever go there?”

  “Not that I can remember. I think he died when I was quite young.”

  “But your mother used to talk about the farm?”

  “Oh, yes, a lot. She grew up near there too.”

  “And so she had known your father all her life?”

  Henrietta nodded. “Certainly since they were children. She used to tell me a lot about him when he was a little boy. But, Inspector, I don’t see what this has got to do with my mother’s death.”

  “No, miss, I don’t suppose you do.” Sloan paused judiciously. “It’s not easy to say this, miss, and if it weren’t a matter of you having to give formal evidence of identification at the inquest it might not even be something we need to take cognizance of.”

  “What might not be?” Henrietta looked quite mystified.

  “This Cyril Jenkins.”

  “My father?”

  “Had he been married twice by any chance?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Or Grace Jenkins? Had she been married to anyone else besides Cyril Jenkins?”

  A slow flush mounted Henrietta’s cheeks. “No, Inspector, not to my knowledge.”

  Like a cat picking its way over a wet path Sloan said delicately, “There is a possibility that your name may not be Jenkins.”

  “Not Jenkins?”

  “Not Jenkins.”

  “I may be being very stupid,” said Henrietta, “but I don’t see why not.”

  “It was Dr. Dabbe.”

  “Dr. Dabbe?”

  “The pathologist, miss, from the hospital. He conducted a post-mortem examination on the body of the woman who was knocked down.”

  “That’s right.” She nodded. “My mother.”

  “No, miss.”

  Henrietta sat down suddenly. “I came into the Police Station on Wednesday—yesterday, that was—when I got back. They asked me to look at her. I signed something. There was a sergeant there—he’ll tell you.” She screwed up her face at the recollection. “There wasn’t any doubt. I wish there had been. It was her. Her face, her clothes, her handbag. I’ve never seen anyone dead before but I was absolutely certain …”

  Sloan put up a hand to stem the memory. “It’s not quite that, miss …” He couldn’t tell if she knew nothing at all or if she knew a great deal more than he did. It was impossible to know.

  She pushed a strand of hair away from her face and said very quietly, “Well, what exactly is it, then?”

  “This woman who you identified yesterday as Mrs. Grace Edith Jenkins …”

  “Yes?”

  Sloan didn’t hurry to go on. He felt oddly embarrassed. This wasn’t the sort of subject you discussed with young girls. He didn’t often wish work onto the women members of the Force but perhaps this might have been one of the times when …

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you, miss, that the pathologist says she’s never had any children.”

  A blush flamed up Henrietta’s pale face. She tried to speak but for a moment no sound came. Then she managed a shaky little laugh. “I’m afraid there must have been some terrible mistake, Inspector.”

  Sloan shook his head.

  “A mix-up at the hospital, perhaps,” she went on, heedless of his denial. “It happens with babies sometimes, doesn’t it? Perhaps it’s the same sometimes in—in other places …”

  “No, miss.”

  She took a deep breath. “That was my mother I saw yesterday. Beyond any doubt.”

  The doubt in Sloan’s mind, because he was a policeman paid to doubt, was whether the girl was party to this knowledge about Grace Jenkins. He didn’t let it alter his behavior.

  “I fear,” gently, “that the pathologist is equally adamant that the subject of his examinatio
n had never borne children.”

  He saw the blush on the face of the girl in front of him fade away to nothing as she suddenly went very very pale.

  “But …” Henrietta’s world seemed suddenly to have no fixed points at all. She struggled to think and to speak logically. “But who am I then?”

  FOUR

  “Where do we go from here, sir?”

  “That you may well ask, Crosby.” Sloan was irritable and preoccupied as they walked away from Boundary Cottage. “All we’ve got so far is a girl who isn’t who she thinks she is, the body of a woman who probably wasn’t what she said she was and two photographs.”

  “Yes, sir.” Crosby closed the gate behind them.

  “Added to which we’re leaving an unprotected girl, who has just been subjected to a great emotional shock, alone in a relatively isolated house to which we strongly suspect someone has already gained admittance with a key.”

  “She could go to friends. There must be someone near who would have her.”

  “I don’t doubt that but it would be most unwise of her to go to them.”

  “Unwise, sir?”

  “Unwise, Crosby. If we advise it and she goes she might have difficulty in regaining possession of her mother’s—of Mrs. Jenkins’s—belongings.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, sir.” There was a distinct pause while Crosby did think about it, then, “From whom, sir?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I see, sir.” He didn’t, in fact, see anything at all but thought it prudent not to say so.

  “Have you thought that after this she may well not be in a position to prove her title to the cottage tenancy?”

  “No, sir.” Crosby digested this in silence. Then, “A sort of Tichborne Claimant in reverse, you might say, sir.”

  “That’s it,” agreed Sloan. Crosby, who was ambitious for promotion, had recently taken to looking up old cases. He stood for a moment beside the police car and then said, “A landlord usually knows a tenant as well as anyone after a while. Drive to The Hall, Crosby.”

  It lay between the village and Boundary Cottage, to the south of the church. Whereas the rectory was Georgian, The Hall was older. It was quite small but perfectly proportioned.

  “That’s it,” observed Sloan with satisfaction. “They had a bit about it in one of those magazines last year. My wife showed it to me. Late Tudor.”