A Woman Unknown Read online

  ‘Does your wife make her own clothes?’

  ‘She does.’ He picked up a perfume bottle from the dressing table. ‘I bought her this.’

  I nodded, feeling mean, hating the thought that she might arrive home at any moment and find me snooping. She and her brother. They would not be so easily taken in as Fitzpatrick.

  ‘What is it you expect to find?’ he asked.

  He had left the wardrobe door open.

  I looked quickly at the dresses. Every one was handmade, with carefully sewn seams. One had a quickly-stitched careless hem, like the dress left behind in the wardrobe at the hotel. If some skilful seamstress examined the outfits, she might come up with a clever conclusion regarding stitches. I saw only a superficial similarity. I closed the wardrobe door.

  ‘There’s another room, across the landing.’

  The second room had a single bed, with the same white candlewick counterpane as the first. Fitzpatrick’s brown overcoat hung behind the door. His hairbrushes and hair oil stood on the washstand, next to a male plaster saint dressed in brown robes and carrying a lily.

  ‘There’s nothing belonging to Deirdre in here. Have you seen enough?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry to have troubled you. I’m glad that you and Deirdre have made up.’

  ‘Oh yes. It came from her. I’d prayed about it, said special prayers, and it was like a miracle, and so sudden. Friday night, she was to stay with her mother. But she came back, after I’d gone to bed.’

  He led the way back downstairs.

  ‘What time did she get home?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was asleep. But on Saturday morning, there she was. She had the kettle on the gas ring, and made my sandwich to take to work.’

  Still behind him, as he stepped into the kitchen, I asked, ‘What time do you go to work on Saturday morning?’

  ‘I’m up at seven. I leave to catch the half past seven tram.’ He forced a smile, but his suspicions were well and truly aroused.

  I thought about the timings. The chambermaid had knocked on the hotel door at six. If I were right, and it was Deirdre in the room, there was time for her to make her escape from the hotel, jump on a tram, and be home in time to put a match to the gas ring and boil the kettle.

  Fitzpatrick’s shoulders stiffened.

  He suddenly clutched his stomach. ‘I’m going to be sick.’ He hurried across the room, pulling back the concealing curtain, grabbing for an enamel bucket beneath the sink.

  He vomited. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Fitzpatrick. It’s an emotional time for you, with your worries about your mother-in-law, and a visitor coming.’

  I ran water into a cup and held it out to him.

  Fitzpatrick took a sip. He rinsed his mouth, and spat into the sink. His face was pale. ‘What is it you’re not telling me, about Deirdre?’

  ‘Sit down.’

  Fitzpatrick slumped into a kitchen chair.

  ‘Take some deep breaths.’

  He folded his arms around his chest.

  ‘Can I get you anything? Do you need a doctor?’

  ‘You could pass me the milk of magnesia. It’s in the cupboard.’

  I opened the door above the sink, took down the bottle and handed it to Fitzpatrick.

  He took a swig. ‘I’ll be all right. Please go. I don’t want you to be here when Deirdre comes back. She’ll guess. She’ll think I’ve been spying on her.’

  ‘And have you?’ Were his the hands that squeezed life from Everett Runcie? ‘Did you follow her on Friday night?’

  ‘No of course not. I knew where she was. She was staying at the nursing home with her mother.’

  The clock chimed, quarter to six. If Deirdre was to be here for tea, she would be getting off the tram any moment now.

  ‘I’d better go, before Deirdre returns and your guest arrives.’

  ‘But what is it? Why did you come?’

  ‘Try not to worry. I hope it will turn out to be nothing. Goodbye, Mr Fitzpatrick.’

  He followed me to the gate, carrying the bucket of vomit.

  I waved, and he waved back, probably for the benefit of the neighbours.

  I needed to meet Sykes and see what, if anything, he had learned at the Adelphi Hotel.

  Fortunately, the Sunday evening streets were quiet. I put my foot down and urged the Jowett to hurry.

  When I reached King Street, I saw Sykes waiting in the alley, near the tobacconist’s doorway.

  He looked a little out of sorts.

  I parked by the alley and got out. ‘Well, Mr Sykes?’

  Close up, I saw how glum he looked, as he returned the Fitzpatricks’ photograph to me.

  He said, ‘I was right. The linen napkin did come from the Adelphi. And I showed the photograph to a waiter I know there.’

  Sykes’s contacts across the city never fail to surprise me. Had he once given the waiter a pair of stockings for his wife, or sat next to him at some long-ago cricket match and ended up doing the man a favour? I was not to know. He avoided background explanations.

  ‘The waiter recognised her photograph. Mrs Fitzpatrick spent the weekend of 24th August at the Adelphi Hotel, with a singer from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Joseph Barnard, professionally known as Giuseppe Barnardini.’

  ‘We saw him in The Mikado. The Fitzpatricks were in the audience.’

  ‘Yes.’

  So Deirdre Fitzpatrick had hidden depths, and secrets. I felt a sneaking admiration that she had the nerve to drag her husband to the stalls of the Grand to see her lover cut his capers and sing his heart out. I played devil’s advocate. ‘The waiter could have been mistaken.’

  ‘He was quite certain. Apparently Barnard treated the bar staff, and he was a generous tipper, so they all remembered him. A lot of theatre people splash money about. They want to be liked, that’s why they’re up there, strutting for the rest of us. The most insecure profession and most of them spit in the eye of the future and never put anything by for a rainy day.’ There he was again, judging everyone, although often he was spot on in his judgements. Sykes continued, ‘The waiter said what a lovely couple they were, and so taken with each other. He felt sure they weren’t married.’ He pricked up his ears, and then looked round the corner into King Street. ‘That’s Hartigan getting into the Rolls. Better dash.’

  ‘You’ll be following him to Kirkstall, for tea with his brother-in-law and sister.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve worked that out. I feel sorry for Fitzpatrick.’

  ‘Don’t feel so sorry for him that you forget to tell Marcus Deirdre is Hartigan’s sister.’

  Sykes sighed. ‘I don’t “tell Marcus” anything. I write my findings in Sergeant Wilson’s log book, and I can’t do that now because I’m on my bike!’

  With that he jumped on the motorbike, kicked it into action and veered dangerously out of the alley, to follow Hartigan’s car.

  I went back into the hotel and took the lift to the third floor where the investigating officers took up two and a half rooms of Mr Naylor’s precious space.

  Marcus was in one of them, talking to a freckled chap, introduced to me as Sergeant Wilson. I wondered if this was the man who fried eggs in the middle of the night.

  ‘Did you get the cutting, Mr Charles?’ I asked, keeping our exchange formal because of Sergeant Wilson.

  He frowned absent-mindedly before saying, somewhat dismissively, ‘Oh, the newspaper article about the shooting incident? Yes, I did, Mrs Shackleton. Thank you for your interest.’

  Pompous prig! He was trying to dismiss me. They had both stood up as I entered, but I had not been offered a seat.

  ‘There is something else you might like to know.’

  They looked at me, indulgently.

  ‘Mr Hartigan has a sister, Mrs Cyril Fitzpatrick, Deirdre, who lives in Kirkstall. It may be worth asking her where she was on Friday night and early Saturday morning. It’s possible that she was Mr Runcie’s companion.’

  Marcus kept his composure
, but the sergeant’s jaw dropped ever so slightly. ‘How do you know about the sister?’

  ‘Mr Wilson, I am a private investigator. I know things. That is my job.’

  Marcus attempted graciousness. ‘Mrs Shackleton has helped me before in enquiries.’

  This gave me the opening to ask, ‘Who will interview Mrs Fitzpatrick?’ I wondered whether the solitary woman police constable who had not been available to interview the chambermaid might be recruited.

  To give Marcus credit, he showed just the slightest discomfort. ‘The sergeant is organising interviews.’

  Sergeant Wilson gave a satisfied smile. ‘Mr Charles usually entrusts the interviewing of the fair sex to me. He believes I do it well.’

  I turned to go. ‘Well then, good luck.’

  Part of me hoped that Deirdre Fitzpatrick would run rings around him. Her story to Fitzpatrick that she had spent the night at the nursing home was a lot of hot air, and would soon be disproved.

  ‘I’ll take a few more details from you if I may, Mrs Shackleton,’ Wilson said.

  I rattled off the two addresses: Deirdre’s mother’s on Cotton Street, and the house on Norman View, made my excuses, and left.

  Not that I felt peeved about being left out of the investigation. Not much.

  Deirdre sat by her mother’s bed. Rays of evening sun pierced the window and streamed onto her mammy’s face. She should draw the curtains. But Deirdre could not bring herself to shut out the light that would soon turn itself inside out forever.

  The pale eyes flickered. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Earlier? Fitz was here.’

  ‘The others, at the foot of the bed.’

  Deirdre stroked her mother’s hand. ‘Your son Anthony came, and Father Daley.’

  ‘At the foot of the bed. A baker, a butcher, a woman with a basket.’

  ‘I didn’t see them, Mam. Was her basket full?’

  She closed her eyes.

  Her mother spoke just twice more. The first time, she did not open her eyes. She said, ‘What if he’s there? What if he’s waiting?’

  Deirdre knew who she meant. ‘St Peter will deal with him. Don’t worry your head.’

  The last time she spoke, her voice was light as air and deep as a gravel pit. She opened her eyes sufficiently to catch a flicker of blue, the blue of Deirdre’s cardigan.

  ‘Am I still in this world?’

  Her mam thought she was catching sight of Our Lady’s robes.

  ‘You’re still here.’

  And then she slept, and slipped so quietly from this world to the next that Deirdre was not sure of the moment of going, or for how long afterwards she sat.

  After a long time, someone came into the room, a nurse. She led Deirdre out and said something that she did not hear, and asked her to sit a moment, and wait. But Deirdre went outside.

  The garden of the nursing home mocked her with its summer beauty. Mam, you should have seen more of this. You should have come here sooner, to sit outside, to see grass, trees, flowers, a sky with some blue and white, not leaden and laden with fumes of factories and foundries. You lived all your life in a miasma, and here, just to the edge of it, was something else. Now it’s too late. You wouldn’t have wanted me to do what I did, to earn the money to bring you here. In your heart did you want to die where you lived, not pass your last few days with starched strangers.

  The matron came to find her. The doctor must come. They were waiting for the doctor. Deirdre turned back and looked at the window. It felt so cruel to leave her mammy alone at the last.

  ‘How will you get home?’ the matron asked. ‘I could arrange for you to be taken.’

  A pounds, shillings and pence sign flashed in the matron’s eyes. It would be added to the bill.

  Deirdre did not know what the word meant. Home. She had said goodbye to home the night she lay on the bed in the old room, on her mother’s bed, a room full of memories, and struggles not spoken of, just faced, just won or lost, all the tiny battles to hold your head high, not be overcome by the inability to make a shilling stretch, to be always surrounded by want and sickness and small defeats and people who put on a brave face. Cut out the cardboard insoles for your shoes and never heed the holes. Go to the market as it closed to see what was to be had. Pick up a cabbage that had fallen from a cart. But everyone was in the same boat. Then along came the big brown bear, Cyril Fitzpatrick, courting her in the boating lake café with fancy cakes.

  The matron looked at her, waiting for an answer. ‘I don’t need a ride,’ Deirdre said.

  That would be too strange, and not her at all, to ride in a motor car when her mother would never again feel the air on her skin or see her own shadow on the wall by candlelight. ‘I’ll take the tram.’

  The matron touched her arm with long thin fingers. ‘I will walk you to the tram stop.’

  ‘No. Thank you.’ She would walk herself.

  The matron kept her fingers so lightly on Deirdre’s arm. Deirdre felt light-headed, and unreal, as if she might float away.

  ‘Your husband and brother should come tomorrow, to make the arrangements.’

  The arrangements.

  Deirdre nodded.

  Arrangements. Such a strange word and what it meant was, we will begin the long, slow goodbye to your mam.

  Who will remember the way you combed your hair?

  Deirdre walked.

  There was the tram and people getting on, as if nothing had happened.

  She turned into the park through the big gates. As others left the park, she went deeper, against the flow, as usual.

  At the boating lake, the man in charge called across the water, ‘Come in, your time is up.’

  She walked back to the nursing home. She hesitated, seeing a big car by the gates. But there was only the driver, waiting, smoking a cigarette.

  She passed the motor on the other side of the street, making herself invisible, then crossed and entered the ginnel that ran alongside the nursing home grounds. Overhanging branches formed a shady tent.

  She saw Fitz, the man she called husband, the lumbering stranger she had coaxed to more than kiss her but who did not like to be too close, or to touch her breasts or her thighs or any part of her. When she had enticed him, he had acted as if she burned his fingertips, as if to touch her was to feel the flames of hell.

  With the man she had called husband was the one who called himself her brother, who had appeared out of nowhere, demanding to be paid attention, frightened her mother to death by his likeness to their dad, and expected to be praised for it.

  The resentment rose. Tiny knots of fury made her skin feel too tight to contain her feelings. All those years when Anthony was an ocean away, Mam carried him in her heart, his name on her lips and in her prayers. And he never bothered, never cared. If he did care now, it was in that showy way, all mouth and trousers, and too late. Well let him get on with it.

  When Fitz and Anthony finally left, Deirdre opened the nursing home’s side gate, a creaking gate, and stepped into the grounds, keeping out of sight behind the trees.

  She followed a winding path to the rear of the garden, to a greenhouse, and opened its door.

  After the evening chill, it was like entering an oven, but this oven smelled of the jungle, of vines and sharp, sweet vegetation. Potted plants stood on shelves. At the back, on sacking, lay uprooted flowers that had come to the end of their days.

  Deirdre carefully folded a rough sack, took off her shoes, and knelt in the centre aisle of the greenhouse. She whispered the ‘De profundis’, for her mother.

  She would spend the night here.

  She slept, and dreamed of men: of a husband who was no husband at all; of her brother, who arrived too late; of a dad she did not know but who would drink and hit out. When he tumbled down the cellar steps, it was a blessing, and in answer to a prayer made by her mother to St Rita.

  In her dream, the three men perched on clouds, posing as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  H
er mammy’s voice echoed through the greenhouse. Am I still on this earth?

  Deirdre slept soundly in the nursing home greenhouse, on the sacking that smelled of earth, mould and eternity, quite unaware of how many people very much wanted to talk with her.

  After my brief meeting with Marcus and Sergeant Wilson, I drove home rather fast, and somewhat recklessly, which is not like me at all. Perhaps Marcus did not need my help. Perhaps Wilson really was very good at interviewing women, and I should not have let his attitude annoy me.

  I had found out so much, and yet so little. The collusion of Archie the waiter in the matter of Runcie’s proof of adultery for the purpose of his divorce; the reasons for Anthony Hartigan’s first visit home; the connection between Deirdre and Anthony; Philippa’s suspicions of Caroline Windham; Caroline’s suspicions of Philippa and her secretary, Gideon King; the nagging feeling I had about the incident at the shoot – the near-miss. And that person who seemed to pop up everywhere, Len Diamond, with his camera on Leeds Bridge; whispering insinuations to Cyril Fitzpatrick; showing off his insider knowledge to me at the racecourse; being jostled by Gideon King, in the grandstand after Diamond attempted to photograph the Runcies and Caroline.

  In not asking for my help on the case, Marcus must have uncovered so much more. I wished I knew what.

  When I turned into my street, I caught sight of an upright, slender figure wearing stout shoes and a gabardine raincoat. As I drew level, I saw that it was Philippa Runcie, and waved. She waved back and called, ‘I’ll catch you up.’

  I would normally have gone up to the garage, but stopped at my gate and got out, waiting for Philippa.

  As she drew level, she looked behind her. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Gideon to follow me. But I don’t think he saw me leave.’

  ‘Why would Gideon follow you?’

  ‘I told you. He’s so protective. I had to come out for air. I feel I’m going mad in that house.’

  ‘Would you like to come in?’

  ‘I’d rather walk, if you don’t mind coming with me. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘I could do with a walk myself. I’ll just put my satchel in the house and change my shoes.’

  Five minutes later, we were walking up my road, past the big house whose stable I use as a garage. The wood beyond was quiet at this time of evening, with only the distant bark of a dog. Some leaves had fallen early and crunched underfoot.