A Medal For Murder (24 page)

‘I’m sure when you go home Mrs Gould will look after you.’

‘I’m wondering about Alison,’ he said. ‘And I’m surprised that Lucy hasn’t been round to see me. I mean if the captain knew, she must.’

‘I happen to know she hasn’t been home yet.’ I hated to do it, but I was here to find Lucy. ‘Alison stayed at the Geerts’s last night. Lucy didn’t.’

‘Really? That’s where we left her last night, me and a chum of mine who was at the play.’ The surprise looked genuine, but then he had spent several weeks
under Meriel’s theatrical tutelage.

‘Do you know where else she might be?’

He shook his head. ‘No. Some other friend perhaps. I hope she’s all right.’

‘I’m sure she will be.’ On an impulse, I said, ‘Why don’t you go find Alison, at the Geerts’s? I saw her earlier, and to tell you the truth she looked a little under the weather. Go there, and drive her home. Her mother’s at a church fete his afternoon, you’ll be able to have a good chat.’

And it would be better for her to be out of the Geerts’s house before the police came asking questions of Madam Geerts, if they had not already called.

He climbed from the shiny Wolseley. ‘Do you know, I think I will.’ The resolve changed his appearance. He looked more like the young man I had photographed a few weeks earlier.

‘What about you, Mrs Shackleton, may I drop you somewhere?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to chauffeur me about. You have enough on.’

‘Could Owen take you somewhere? We keep a couple of motors on stand-by for visitors to hire. I’d be glad to help. I was completely at a loss before you came today.’

‘Well yes, since you mention it. That would be good.’

‘Owen!’

And so I found myself on the way to Pannal, hoping that I should have more luck in locating Miss Vanessa Weston, who had pawned a watch chain, than I had in failing to find Mrs deVries, owner of the diamond ring.

Owen drew up outside a newsagent’s before we left
Harrogate, for me to buy a couple of boxes of chocolates, which always come in handy. At least I was not now drawing entirely on my own income. I had the cheque from Mr Moony to cover this particular extravagance. If I solved the case, which was looking unlikely, I might eat the other box myself. It irked me to be acting as a messenger for Mr Moony, rather than an investigator, but there was so little to go on.

The ride to Pannal along the quiet road was pleasant. I wore the spare motoring goggles, which were too big and kept slipping down my nose.

‘It’s Church Lane,’ I said, lifting the goggles to check the house number in my notebook.

‘Well then, that’ll be near the church I presume,’ Owen said cheerily. It is surprising how sitting in the driving seat can change a personality, for better or worse. In the showroom, Owen had seemed quite downtrodden, at least until Rodney had assured him that he would keep his job.

The elegant stone house looked too grand for someone who would visit a pawn shop. A slender, faded woman looked at me suspiciously as I approached the gate. She snipped the dead head from a rose. I apologised for disturbing her and asked for Miss Vanessa Weston.

‘I’m her mother,’ she said. ‘Miss Weston is indoors.’ Her look asked me my name and business.

It is always best to get in quickly, with an introduction, and a story. If you say something with sufficient authority, it comes out with a ring of truth. With as much verve as I could muster, I brandished a box of chocolates. ‘I’m Mrs Baker, from the Beckwithshaw ladies’ friendship committee. Miss Weston bought a raffle ticket from one of our members and has won third prize.’

‘Ah, thank you.’ Mrs Weston prepared to take the chocolates.

‘Would you mind very much if I deliver them personally? I said I would.’

Mrs Weston frowned. She placed her secateurs in the trug.

‘Oh please don’t trouble,’ I said hastily. ‘I hate to be interrupted in my gardening. It will take me a moment and I can report back to my ladies that I have hand-delivered the prize.’

I could see someone in a shady spot at the front of the house, reading. As luck would have it, it was Miss Weston. Unsurprisingly, she had no recollection of buying a raffle ticket. She looked at the chocolates with suspicion, as though I might be a mad poisoner. Briefly, I told her the real reason for my visit, adding, ‘And Mr Moony would like you to go to the shop on the day the watch chain is due to be redeemed. If the stolen items have not been recovered, he will make restitution.’

She glared at me. ‘I must have the same watch chain. It was my uncle’s, my mother’s brother’s. She doesn’t know I pawned it.’

‘I’ll tell Mr Moony. He’ll do his best to find something similar.’

‘Dash it all. How could the stupid man let himself be robbed?’ She ripped violently at the chocolate box lid. ‘If dressmakers didn’t charge the earth I would not be in this pickle.’

Mrs Weston was approaching at a grand pace. I escaped, leaving Miss Weston to think of her own explanations about the winning raffle ticket.

 
 

Owen dropped me off on Leeds Road, at the end of St Clement’s Road, which was now becoming more familiar than I could have wished. I was no nearer finding Lucy than when I started my search. To put off the moment of reporting to Captain Wolfendale, I strolled slowly past each immaculate dwelling, from number one to number twenty-nine. With its unkempt garden and peeling paint, the Wolfendale house stuck out like a sore thumb on a well-manicured hand. It felt fanciful to think this, but it gave off an air that I could not fathom. Captain Wolfendale and Miss Fell were relics of an earlier age. Meriel was immensely talented, a liar and a thief, clawing her way up. Beautiful and ruthless Lucy held those around her in thrall. And then there was Dan Root.

It still niggled with me that 29 was the reverse of 92, Mrs deVries’s address. Let the captain wait. I would speak to Mr Root, and get another look at the coin on his watch chain. He was a good actor, quite capable of becoming the stooped clerk who had robbed Mr Moony.

Something else felt odd. Lucy could have asked Dan, the captain’s favourite tenant, to pass on the message that she would stay with Alison. By not asking him, she had kept him out of the picture. It crossed my mind that he might be hiding Lucy, and that the ransom notes had been posted in the pillar box on the corner.

It was time for me to have a chat with Mr Root. The previous afternoon when my feet hurt and I was tired out from looking for the elusive and probably non-existent Mrs deVries, he had all but snubbed me. This time, he would not shrug me off so easily.

I caught a glimpse of him through his window. He stood at his worktable, head bowed as he gently replaced the back on a fob watch. Several clocks and watches stood at one end of the long table.

The door to his flat stood open, to let in air I guessed.

I tapped as I stepped inside.

For a moment, he looked surprised at my boldness, then he smiled. ‘I needed a little break. Shall we sit on the wall and have a cigarette?’ He removed his eyeglass, and took off his apron.

Why did he not want me to be inside? Perhaps he was a very private person, or did not want me in his work place. His anxiety to go out increased my determination to stay in.

‘I’ve always wanted to see how a watchmaker does his work,’ I said, with what I hoped was a charming smile. Moving further into his room, I examined the eyeglass he had just removed. ‘How on earth do you keep this in place, Mr Root?’

As he picked up the eyeglass to demonstrate, I quickly looked round the tidy room.

He held the eyeglass between finger and thumb. ‘You
place it on the lower lid, like so. It rests under the bone of the eyebrow.’

‘It suits you very well. May I try it?’ He passed me the eyeglass. I wedged it in place. The small screwdrivers and tweezers looked suddenly larger when seen through the glass. So did the gold rand on his watch chain.

Averting my gaze to the bench, I asked, ‘What are these little wooden cups for?’

‘Oh they’re to sit the movements on, keep them steady while I work. And this little vice is to hold things in place.’

He half turned to show me the vice, and as he did I swept a wooden cup into my satchel. He had half a dozen, and would not miss one. If he had helped Lucy write her ransom note, I might find his fingerprint.

He had also moved something out of view, a book of some description.

Concentrating on the workbench, I said, ‘It’s such precise work. It must have been hard to learn.’ I removed the eyeglass and placed it on a mat.

The mat was part of an ingeniously arranged wooden box with small drawers which slid out, and one of them unfolded as a mat. A man whose tools could be carried in such a compact fashion could flit from one town to another with ease.

‘What age did you begin this work?’

‘Twelve. I was apprenticed to an old watchmaker in Covent Garden,’ he said.

‘Then you must be a master of your craft by now, and enjoy it I should think.’

‘A man is never out of work if he can repair watches and clocks. Every job is the same, yet every one is different. Take this clock, for instance . . .’

While he explained about a balance mechanism, I glanced around the room. He must have been a handy person altogether. A length of metal pipe leaned against the wall, parts of a crystal set and a listening trumpet lay on a table. Had Dan Root not looked so very English, he would have been suspected of being a spy during the Great War.

‘Isn’t this an odd lodging for you, Mr Root? Surely a watch mender needs light. Yet here you are, halfway below ground. Have you lived here long?’

‘Long enough. And there’s enough light for my purposes.’

What are your purposes, I wondered. There was something in his tone of voice that belied the lightness of his words.

‘The captain says you’re his best tenant.’

‘Because I’m the only one who pays rent. And the only chap. He prefers his own sex.’

I looked at him quickly to see what meaning lay behind his words, but he concentrated on his cigarette, drawing deeply.

The house door above opened and slammed shut. Miss Fell going out, or the captain returning?

‘The play must have been a great diversion for you, Mr Root.’

He smiled. ‘Have you tried resisting Miss Jamieson once she gets an idea in her head? She was short of males. Living next door to her, I had no chance of avoiding conscription.’

The captain’s footsteps thumped the ceiling, then came to a stop. I pictured him standing by the tigerskin rug. A moment later a tap-tap sounded down the chimney as the captain emptied the ash from his pipe, and coughed.

‘It must have brought you closer, three of you from this one house taking part in the play, you, Meriel and Lucy.’

‘I was very useful to escort the ladies home, mostly Lucy because Meriel would stay behind to write her director’s notes.’

So he had walked Lucy home from rehearsals. They must have got to know each other very well.

He moved towards the door. ‘Let’s sit outside. I spend far too much time in here as it is.’

That left me no choice but to follow him. Yet if he had been hiding Lucy, I would have heard or seen some sign. There was only one door, apart from the cupboard, which I guessed led to a kind of keeping pantry.

We sat on the low garden wall. ‘It must be a solitary business, working alone down there.’

He shrugged. ‘The watch and clock business in Harrogate is all tied up by the jewellers in the centre. People take their timepieces there, not knowing that they’re sent to me. I don’t complain. My living is reasonable.’

‘Have you been in Harrogate long?’

‘I’ve travelled about,’ he said. ‘Harrogate suits me. Plenty of watches and clocks here, plenty of work, and the air is pleasant. Do you know, the humidity here is lower than anywhere else in the country?’

‘For a man who is conscious of health benefits, I’m surprised you work in a basement. It must put a strain on your eyes.’

‘I’m by the window, and I have gas light.’ He stubbed his cigarette. Turning the subject away from himself, he asked, ‘Will you be taking the waters while you’re in Harrogate?’

‘I have booked into a hotel, so I may just do that.’