Murder in the Afternoon: A Kate Shackleton Mystery Read online

  ‘Ethan helps on the farm a lot does he?’

  ‘He does, when he’s not out and about changing the world. And afore you ask, he’s said nowt to me about slinging his hook and I’ve no notion where he might have gone. I only hope Harriet was mistaken.’

  ‘Did he come here last week to help?’

  ‘He did come, but not to help. He took it hard when Bob told him he’s sold out to the colonel. Ethan was disgusted that Bob’d given up the farm after all these years.’

  Something else that Mary Jane had not thought to mention. I acted as if I knew.

  ‘When did Ethan find out that Bob had sold the farm?’

  Mistake. He clammed up and turned his attention to the dregs of tea in a tin mug, letting on not to have heard me. But I guessed the sale to be recent. Arthur had not yet taken it in. Some new owner may not want the services of an old man.

  ‘I’m not being nosey, Arthur. It’s just that I want to help Mary Jane find Ethan, if he’s still alive.’

  ‘I know that, missus.’ He tossed the tea leaves from his mug across the dirty hay.

  ‘Then let me ask one more question. You said Ethan was here last week, but not to help. Was he here for some other reason?’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘He went in the house with yon. Don’t ask me what that was about. Nowt to do with me.’

  ‘Thank you. I hope things work out for you. Perhaps you’ll stay on when the farm changes hands.’

  His mouth turned down at the corners as he gave something like a laugh. ‘The colonel won’t keep it as a farm. We all know what he’ll do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  If he had heard, he did not answer.

  He walked to the cowshed as I approached the house. Last week was a bad time for Ethan Armstrong. His friend sold out to the colonel, no doubt in Ethan’s view a bloated capitalist; he lost a strike vote, and he fell out with Mary Jane. Ostensibly about summat and nowt, as she said. But did she keep a secret from him – such as her bank deposit? If so, perhaps the row was more serious than she claimed.

  I knocked on the farmhouse door. It took a minute or so before the door opened. A woman with a friendly smile greeted me warmly. I introduced myself, saying my piece about investigating Ethan’s disappearance.

  She stood back for me to step inside. ‘I was expecting you.’

  I stepped onto the doormat, trying to wipe my shoes and then deciding that it would be best to take them off altogether.

  ‘Nay lass, leave thah shoes on. We don’t stand on ceremony here. We’re used to a bit of muck. Come and sit down. I’m Georgina Conroy.’

  She was attractive, but not in a conventional way. The attractiveness came more from her liveliness and her energy, her ready smile. With capable hands jutting from dark sleeves, she reached for a bottle that had a teat attached. ‘Come and sit by the fire and be warm. You can talk to me while I keep yon creature this side of paradise.’

  The lamb curled in a box by the fire. Bobbing down, she put the teat to the lamb’s mouth. ‘I can listen and faff at the same time, and I’ll make us a pot of tea in a minute. Eh, it’s a bad business, Ethan going missing. I went down there with eggs this morning, hoping Mary Jane would have news.’

  Her attention went to the lamb and for a moment we sat in silence.

  Sitting in the comfortable room with its blazing fire, I relaxed for the first time that day. I forgot for a moment that I was supposed to be working. Though the farmyard had a run-down look, this house could not have been a greater contrast. It smelled of freshly baked bread. The black lead fireplace and hearth shone from serious polishing. Gleaming brass pots and warmers hung from hooks on the wall. A blackened kettle sang on the hob.

  The flagged floor had been treated with something red, perhaps a bright lead paint, and was strewn with peg rugs of different ages, sizes and colours. The furniture comprised a heavy old oak dresser displaying gleaming crockery, a solid table covered in a practical oil cloth, sturdy dining chairs, and a couple of rockers by the hearth. A smaller scrubbed table stood by the large flat sink.

  ‘Sorry about this. I’ll give you a cup of tea in a shake.’

  ‘Not to worry about that. You have your hands full.’

  ‘Not so full that I don’t mind my manners. But you’re right. Work on a farm is never done. That’s why neither me nor Bob was here Saturday when Harriet come by.’

  ‘If it’s such hard work, perhaps you won’t be sorry to move on.’

  She sighed and looked so full of regret that I felt tactless to have mentioned it.

  ‘I’ll be right sorry to leave this farm, but it’s been hand to mouth for years, and worse since the tragedy of last year.’

  ‘That quarry seems an unlucky place.’

  ‘Aye. Bob were that upset that he wasn’t here for the lass, and just as upset that …’ She paused.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh nothing. I shouldn’t say. Me and my big mouth.’

  Who could be more welcome to a detective than a person with a big mouth? ‘Mrs Conroy, I’m trying to find out what happened on Saturday. If you can help in any way, I’d be most grateful.’

  ‘Well, Ethan took it badly when Bob told him he was selling up. This farm has been Ethan’s bolt hole when he and Mary Jane didn’t see eye to eye. They fell out about it, and Bob felt right bad. So Bob was dead upset not to have been here for Harriet, as if he’d let Ethan down twice.’

  ‘Where was Bob that afternoon?’

  ‘In the far field, clearing a ditch. With the size of this place, it’s all hands to the deck most of the time and we’re coming to the end of the lambing so it’s twenty-four hours some days. I’d gone to check the ewes while Arthur was milking.’ She patted the lamb and stood up. ‘I’ll make that tea now. Arthur will be ready for a cup.’

  Through the window, I saw a girl sweeping the yard. She looked as if she ought to be at school.

  ‘Is that your daughter?’

  ‘Oh no. I have no children. She’s just a kid that does for me.’

  ‘She’s very young.’

  ‘She’s gone thirteen. I keep her out of charity really. I’m sure there’s older lassies in the village would do better, but I can’t turn her out.’ Mrs Conroy tapped on the window. ‘She can have a cup of tea and take some to the men.’

  The girl turned quickly. She looked a sullen little thing. A moment later she dropped the broom and came through the door, wiping her feet. She ignored the two of us but went to the lamb, stroked its head and spoke a word or two.

  Mrs Conroy called to her. ‘Take out this tray to Arthur, and if you see Mr Conroy let him know we’ve a visitor.’

  The girl went out, leaving the two of us at the table. Georgina Conroy returned to the topic of the missing Ethan.

  ‘I made Mary Jane and the bairns stop here for their dinner on Sunday.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Not that she had much appetite.’

  ‘That was good of you.’

  ‘That’s what neighbours are for.’

  ‘It must have been a hard choice for your husband to sell up.’

  ‘He’d come to a fork in the road.’ She turned her head, so that I would not see the tears in her eyes. From her apron pocket she drew a hanky and blew her nose. ‘He’s a fine fellow, Ethan Armstrong. A man of principle, even if wrong-headed at times. Bob tried to persuade him to stand for member of parliament, did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ethan came to talk to me last week. It was as though him and Bob had both come to the end of something. Mary Jane and Ethan, they were like oil and fire.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to repeat it. But he told me he just had to get out of the house. Mary Jane never let up with her dissatisfactions. But then, all these meetings he goes to. If I were Mary Jane, I’d be suspicious.’

  Her words gave me an opening. I brought out the newspaper cutting. ‘Does this mean anything to you?’ I passed her the cutting, hating to do it
because it was an intrusion into Ethan and Mary Jane’s privacy. If Mrs Conroy talked freely to me, perhaps she would tell all to others. Yet she seemed a decent woman, fond of Ethan, Mary Jane and the children.

  A well provided and pleasant lady seeks well provided amiable gentleman with a view to joining lives and fortunes.

  Box No. 49

  She looked at the cutting. ‘Where did this come from?’

  ‘Ethan’s suit pocket.’

  ‘Did you show it to Bob?’

  ‘I haven’t met your husband yet.’

  ‘Well, if anyone would know, Bob would, but he’s said nowt to me. I know Ethan has been unhappy, but I shouldn’t think he would answer an advertisement in the press. Besides, it’d be bigamy wouldn’t it? He’s a law-abiding chap, for a revolutionary.’

  ‘Mrs Conroy, if there’s anything at all – even if it seems insignificant – that you can tell me, that might help solve this puzzle, please do.’

  She sighed. ‘I just can’t fathom it. I wonder now if his head hasn’t been turned by some firebrand socialist female who preaches free love. But it’s no more than a feeling.’

  I persisted. ‘I’m talking to everyone who may be able to help. It could be that some little thing you tell me will fit with something else, and make sense.’

  She thought for a moment, and seemed reluctant to speak. I waited.

  Mrs Conroy blew her nose. ‘Don’t mistake me. I wouldn’t say this to anyone in the village. I’m telling you candidly and between these four walls because you’ve taken on to help Mary Jane. And I hope you can, and I hope I’m wrong. I feel for her because she was an incomer, like me, and people round here will take a quarter of a century before they’ll say to your face that you never will fit in. But they talk about her in the village in a way they don’t talk about me because I don’t give them anything to go on.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘Oh it’s nonsense. Gossip and tittle tattle. It doesn’t amount to enough currants to throw at a bun from t’other end of kitchen.’

  ‘It won’t go any further. I want to help if I can.’

  ‘I don’t know what they say about her. When they see me, the whispering stops. I just hear her name, that’s all.’

  ‘Linked to any other name?’ I prompted.

  ‘Aye. Linked to the names of who she used to work for.’

  ‘The doctor?’ I remembered Miss Trimble telling me that Mary Jane was in service there.

  ‘No. Not the doctor. After she left off working for the doctor and his wife, she went to the big house for several years, with the the Ledgers. Ethan reckoned that’s where her grand ideas came from. The cottage wasn’t good enough for her, once the novelty wore off. But I don’t blame the lass, and I don’t blame Ethan.’ Her voice softened when she mentioned Ethan’s name. ‘Ethan was very kind to me.’ Mrs Conroy hesitated. ‘There is just one thing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I feel terrible betraying a confidence …’ She pushed her hands into the pockets of her pinafore. ‘Ethan came to talk to me one night last week, when Bob was in the Fleece. Him and Bob weren’t speaking by then. Ethan asked my advice.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About himself and Mary Jane. They’d had a big row, he wouldn’t say what about. He said it wouldn’t be so bad if she would at least be more sympathetic to The Cause, as he calls it.’

  ‘Then he must think you are sympathetic to … the cause.’

  ‘Me? I haven’t a political bone in my body, but I make a point of never contradicting, and that lets men think you agree, which is always the best policy.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  ‘Please don’t let on to Mary Jane. He shouldn’t have come. I’d be mortified if she knew. Their troubles were between the two of them.’

  She stood at the door to see me out. As I left the farmyard, the girl was sweeping the yard, and teasing the dog as it darted for the sweeping brush, wagging its tail, wanting to play.

  ‘Clever boy. Who found his own way back from them bad children, bad, bad, bad, bad.’

  ‘Where did the dog go?’ I asked. ‘Did someone take it?’

  The girl pretended not to hear me.

  It seemed she was happy to talk to an animal, but not to a human being. I followed her lead and spoke to the dog, patting his head. ‘You brought me here didn’t you? What’s your name?’

  When the dog didn’t answer, the girl spoke for him.

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘And what children whisked you away, Billy?’

  ‘Harriet and Austin took you,’ the girl told the dog. ‘But you come back.’

  Eight

  Bright sheets and pillowcases billowed in the breeze in the Armstrongs’ back garden. Clearly Mary Jane did not let a possible tragedy interfere with domestic activities. She stood by the door, beating a rag rug, stopping as I came within earshot. ‘Would you believe what those kids of mine have done?’

  ‘They’re at school aren’t they?’

  ‘Huh! Set off to school nice as ninepence and never arrived. I had a child bringing me a note from the teacher about their absence. Where do you think they went?’

  I hate it when people pose questions when what they mean to do is tell you something, but I played the game. ‘I don’t know where they went, Mary Jane.’

  I followed her into the house where she lay the beaten rug down carefully. ‘Up to the farm they went, sneaky as you like, grabbed the farm dog, tied it on a piece of string and let it sniff Ethan’s cap. They’ve been haunting fields and ditches. It makes me look such a fool with the teachers.’

  That explained the wandering sheepdog. It must have grown tired of being pressed into service and escaped. ‘Poor kids.’

  ‘Aye, poor kids indeed.’ She stared at my muddy shoes as I sat myself down in the one good chair. ‘But at least they’re trying.’

  In other words, I wasn’t trying. ‘Look, Mary Jane, you haven’t been straightforward with me. You led me to believe that you’d be out of this house, with its well and its hard work, and out of this village where you claim no one likes you, that you’d be out like greased lightning given half a chance. And then I find out that Ethan could have found work in York. And you didn’t tell me he was being encouraged to stand for parliament.’

  She gave a dismissive gesture. ‘Oh that.’

  ‘You say Miss Trimble doesn’t like you, but you don’t say why. Sergeant Sharp doesn’t like you, but you don’t say why. You told me you came to Great Applewick to work for the doctor …’

  ‘I did at first.’

  ‘… and now I discover that you worked for Colonel Ledger …’

  ‘For Mrs Ledger …’

  ‘Mrs Ledger then. So will you go to the Hall and ask a simple question? Did Colonel Ledger go to the quarry on Saturday?’

  The house was spotless, but Mary Jane pounced at a smudge on the fender, rubbing at it with a rag. ‘I don’t have to ask because working there I know all too well that the Colonel wouldn’t have gone to the quarry. As for Sergeant Sharp not liking me, well it’s no mystery. If you want to know, I once laughed at him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know any better and I couldn’t help it.’

  ‘What was funny?’

  ‘Whenever there’s a village do, he stands up and gives a recitation. If Ethan had warned me that it wasn’t a comic turn I wouldn’t have showed myself up. I couldn’t stop laughing. When I realised he was in earnest, I tried to pretend it was a cough from a tickle in my throat.’

  ‘He won’t remember, or hold that against you.’

  ‘Oh he will. He was spouting Horatius.’ She threw out her chest, took a deep breath and began to recite, ‘“Lars Porsena of Closium, by the Nine Gods he swore, that the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more.” It was all his dramatic actions got me going. “East and West and South and North,” flinging out his arms hither and thither.’

  In spite of my annoyance with her,
she made me laugh. I could picture the solemn moment and Mary Jane getting the giggles.

  ‘What about Miss Trimble? Did you laugh at her too?’

  Mary Jane heaved a sigh. ‘Do you do this to everyone you investigate for? Demand a life story? I mean, say I’d robbed a bank, what would that have to do with Ethan going missing and whether you could find him?’ She picked up a teacloth from the oven door and hung it on a hook. The missal sent by Miss Trimble still lay on the table. She picked it up. ‘I might as well tell you or someone else will. When the girls in her friendship group marry, Miss Trimble gives them a missal bound in white calfskin. She keeps an eye on the calendar and if the date of the first confinement is less than nine months after the wedding, she takes the missal back.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘That tells you what kind of a place Great Applewick is. I should have gone when Ethan had the chance.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know why. I can’t remember.’ Mary Jane made fists of her hands and growled her frustration.

  ‘There must be a reason you wouldn’t leave. It was only as far as York, not the other side of the world.’

  ‘The children,’ she said quietly. ‘I was thinking of the children, if you must know.’ It was not a good answer, but would have to do. For now. She changed tack, becoming exasperated – with me. ‘And I told you Sergeant Sharp would be no help. He thinks I smashed the sundial and drove Ethan away. In his book, Ethan’s a revolutionary and I’m no better than I ought to be.’

  We were getting nowhere. Time to move. ‘Come on, Mary Jane. You’re going to show me the way to the Hall. We need to ask Colonel Ledger whether he went to the quarry, or if Ethan went to see him.’

  ‘Can’t you go on your own?’

  ‘I need you to show me the way.’ I guessed that the Ledgers may be more willing to answer questions if I turned up with Mary Jane, their former employee, now a damsel in distress.

  White clouds scudded across a blue sky. A man with a cart rattled past us across the cobbles. A woman came from the bakery, basket over her arm.