Dying in the Wool (3 page)

‘True enough,’ granted the porter. He lost his slouch and sat upright.

‘I expect you’re regarded by your friends and family as something of an expert on current affairs?’

‘There’s summat in what you say,’ he said in a wistful voice that made me think there was no truth whatever in what I said. ‘No one but the editor and the printers see the headlines afore I do.’

‘And you’re the gatekeeper for this great newspaper. In medieval times, you’d have worked the portcullis.’

I’m sorry to say that resorting to smarmy flattery is not a new skill. A detective’s card might eliminate such a requirement.

A light went on in his eyes. ‘I know who might be able to help you.’

‘I thought you might.’

‘Our Mr Duffield.’

Five minutes later, the porter returned with a courtly gentleman, aged about sixty, wearing a well-boiled white shirt, a dark-green silk bow tie that would not look out of place on a stage magician, a worn tweed jacket and baggy flannel trousers. Corpse-white of skin, he had a mane of suspiciously black hair that swept his forehead like the rush of an incoming tide.

He extended a hand in greeting. ‘Eric Duffield, newspaper librarian.’

‘How do you do, Mr Duffield. Kate Shackleton.’

‘I remember you from a benefit do at the Infirmary. Dr Shackleton’s widow. Superintendent Hood’s daughter.’

I felt myself blush, with both pleasure and annoyance. For once, couldn’t I simply be Mrs Kate Shackleton?

Mr Duffield smiled, showing a tombstone row of yellow fangs. ‘Well then, Mrs Shackleton, if you’ll come this way we shall see whether the
Herald
may be of service to the daughter of the West Riding Constabulary. You’re researching for a playwright I understand?’

Did I detect disbelief? Possibly. I muttered something that sounded like agreement.

Mr Duffield escorted me without further words along a corridor with offices to our left, and on to a still narrower corridor leading to a lift. On the second floor, the lift creaked to a stop. We stepped onto the landing.

‘Have you worked here long, Mr Duffield?’ I asked as he led the way to a pair of heavy double doors.

‘Thirty-five years, starting out as office boy.’

‘You were not attracted to reporting?’

‘Far too frenetic an activity for me, Mrs Shackleton. I prefer to dwell with the ghosts of yesterday’s stories.’

The large room was full of shelves stacked with binders, along the walls and across the centre of the room. Under the high windows were a couple of old oak tables and straight-backed chairs. The librarian took pride in explaining his index system, then turned to me with a penetrating glance. ‘What precisely interests you?’

I wanted to ask him did he remember the case of Mr Joshua Braithwaite of Bridgestead. It would save me time but I did not want to risk bringing the Braithwaite case to public attention.

‘Really, it’s more background than specifics. I’d like to see copies of the paper for July and August, 1916, please.’

I chose a spot at the woodworm-eaten table under the high window. After a couple of moments, Mr Duffield
returned, bearing a heavy binder, and placed it with a thud on the oak surface.

I opened the binder and began to look at the newspapers, reading of Bradford City Council’s debate on the government’s appeal to postpone the August Bank Holiday, which did not meet with approval from the people of Bradford. I read of war honours, air raids, the Wesleyan conference, wages in the dyeing trade and the death toll in the Canadian forest fires.

The story appeared on Monday, 21 August. It bore no relation to the information in Tabitha’s letter.

Under the heading “Mill Owner Saved by Boy Scouts”, the article read:

Mr Joshua Braithwaite, 50, respected mill owner of Bridgestead, was saved from drowning on the evening of Saturday, 19 August by intrepid boy scouts. A first-rate troop under the leadership of Mr Wardle was camping out in Calverton Woods.

At about five p.m., three bold lads strode to Bridgestead Beck to fill their billy-cans. They were surprised to see Mr Braithwaite, a teetotaller and stalwart of Bridgestead Chapel, lying unconscious in the water. It is thought that Mr Braithwaite suffered a dizzy turn while out walking.

The younger of the scouts ran to raise the alarm. Two older boys showed great presence of mind in pulling Mr Braithwaite to dry land. Thanks to the speedy intervention of the resourceful young chaps, Mr Braithwaite was brought to himself. In a weakened state, he was carried on a makeshift stretcher to the home of the local doctor who insisted that he remain there overnight, under close observation. Mrs Braithwaite was sent for and hastened to be at her husband’s side where she remained through a night-long vigil.

I made notes, not wanting to ask for a copy of the paper and reveal my true interest. There was nothing in the following day’s paper. My hands were now black with printer’s ink. I turned to 23 August. There was the piece about the explosion “at a munitions factory in Yorkshire” that had so annoyed Mrs Sugden because of its lack of detail and failure to mention her cousin. It was issued by the Press Bureau, authorised by the Ministry of Munitions, and seemed to me a fair account. 24 August. Still nothing more about Braithwaite. To keep up my pretence of being generally interested in the whole of summer 1916, I made random notes about the King’s surprise visit to soldiers in France, the extension of government control over the wool and textile trade, and why there is no substitute for Horlick’s malted milk.

Immersed in his index cards, Mr Duffield looked up as a young messenger boy brought in more papers, placed them on the counter and beat a hasty retreat. I wondered whether the librarian ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer weight of cataloguing everything that ever happened.

‘Find what you wanted, Mrs Shackleton?’

‘May I see September please?’

For the whole month of September, there was no reference to Mr Joshua Braithwaite. I closed the binder.

‘You look puzzled,’ Mr Duffield said as I stood up to go.

‘Strange what counts as news,’ I said, ‘and how some stories don’t appear at all and others peter out. I suppose editors were so very preoccupied with the progress of the war, and sensitive about what not to say.’

‘You’re thinking of the munitions explosion,’ he said gravely.

I was not, but chose to agree with him. ‘Yes, a big explosion like that in which so many people lost their lives.’ Mrs Sugden would be glad to hear herself quoted as if she were scripture. ‘All those firemen dead in the
course of their duty, and not a pip of acknowledgement.’

‘We did have one reporter who picked up on the Low Moor story. He wrote a good account as I remember, but it was spiked. The editor could only use official sources. The reporter gave me a copy. If you leave me your address I’ll look it out and send it on to you.’ Mr Duffield looked entirely satisfied with himself having, as he thought, sniffed out the true subject of my interest.

It suited me to let him think that he was right. ‘The reporter won’t mind?’

‘He’d be delighted. Poor chap died in 1917 – apoplexy if you ask me, fury at wartime censorship and not being allowed to do his job as he saw fit. He covered that area around Bradford and Keighley.’

‘Thank you. I’d like that.’ I took a deep breath and put on my most throwaway voice, with only a touch of interest. ‘I expect he wrote up that strange story about the mill owner, dragged from Bridgestead beck by boy scouts.’

He frowned, as though trying to remember. ‘Ah yes. That was a rum do. That was August too – and usually such a quiet month on the domestic front.’

We stood by the table. He turned to the article about Joshua Braithwaite and scanned the piece, running fingers through his black hair. If the dye came off, it would blend with printing ink. He struck me as a complex man. The dramatic green silk bow tie indicated a devil-may-care chap who did not mind what others thought of him. The dyed hair suggested something contrary, vanity or a desire to fit, not to be thought too old for the job.

He looked up from the article. ‘Will this stay within these four walls, Mrs Shackleton?’

‘Of course.’

‘We didn’t hear any more about Mr Joshua Braithwaite because it wouldn’t have been very good for morale to report that someone of his standing hadn’t the spunk to face up to losing his son.’

‘Are you saying he was trying to drown himself? That it was an attempted suicide?’

‘Same reporter, rest his soul, Harold Buckley. Used to complain that if a story wasn’t spiked it was in danger of being “smoothed out” by the editor. Bit of an old die-hard radical, anything political, anything to challenge the bosses and Harold was there. He covered the founding of the Independent Labour Party, that’s how far back he went. It was just up his street to spill the beans on a Bradford millionaire, a bloated capitalist.’

‘How was his story “smoothed out” as you put it?’ I asked, as Mr Duffield escorted me back to the lift.

He looked round quickly to ensure we were not overheard. ‘Apparently, and this was according to old Harold, our millionaire mill owner wanted to be left to die. There was talk of a prosecution for attempted suicide. Then Braithwaite disappeared into thin air. The man must have had enemies or Harold wouldn’t have heard about him.’

The lift clanked me down to the ground floor. Why hadn’t Tabitha mentioned the beck, the boy scouts and the stories of suicide? She must be saving that treat.

I cycled home from the newspaper library, leaving the smog of the city behind. April sunshine streamed through the trees on Woodhouse Moor, creating a pattern of branching shadows. I wondered who, back in August 1916, had gone to the newspapers with the Braithwaite story.

A familiar car sat outside my gate – one of the sleek black Alvis saloons favoured by West Riding Constabulary HQ. It could mean only one thing. Dad had decided to pay me a visit. Either he had psychic powers, which would not in the least surprise me, or Mother had telephoned and winkled my fledgling plans from Mrs Sugden.

I wheeled my bike into the garden with a sudden dread that something might be wrong. Dad didn’t usually visit
me during the day, not when on duty.

‘Dad!’ I called as I opened the front door.

He emerged from my tiny drawing room, lowering his head so as not to bump it on the door frame. He smiled. ‘Hello, love.’ He was wearing his smart superintendent’s uniform with gleaming buttons. His easy manner quelled my anxieties. ‘My sergeant’s in the kitchen, having a cup of tea with Mrs Sugden. We’ve been at the Town Hall for a meeting. Just did a bit of a detour to speak to a chap at the cricket ground regarding an inter-force match.’

As a young chap, Dad played rugby and cricket and still picked up a bat now and again.

We looked at each other. He raised an eyebrow in answer to my unspoken question. The cricket ground detour had provided his excuse to call and see me. I knew that Mother had spoken to Mrs Sugden, and then managed to get word to Dad.

‘How’s Mother?’ I tried to keep the suspicion from my voice.

‘She’s very well. Would be even better if you’d agree to go shopping with her on Monday, but I understand you may have other plans.’

The annoyance started somewhere around my toes and eased its way up. Mrs Sugden may be the soul of discretion, but not where my mother is concerned.

‘Dad! I’m a big girl now.’

‘I know, I know, love. And I suppose I’m to blame for the sleuthing.’

‘Yes. I suppose you are.’

‘Inherited, eh?’ He winked at me.

I laughed. ‘Almost certainly.’

The truth is, I am adopted and so any aptitude I have for investigation is not an inheritance of the blood. Perhaps it arose from a fascination with polishing Dad’s silver buttons, or having a failed police bloodhound as a pet.

I was adopted as a baby, when Mother thought she
would not have children. When I was almost seven, she had my twin brothers. By then I must have passed the trial period because I was not returned to sender as surplus to requirements.

I call the little wood at the back of my house Batswing Wood because a glossy dark green ivy grows there whose leaf forms the shape of a bat’s wing. There are maples, sycamores, elms, beech trees, a bracken fern and toad-stools. A pregnant-looking oak, massive growth protruding from the middle of its trunk, takes centrestage in a flat raised area of the wood where local children sometimes perform their magical plays on summer afternoons.

In a clearing, Dad and I sat on a bench hewn from a fallen beech tree by some long-ago gardener. I told him about Tabitha’s letter and my visit to the newspaper library.

Dad entered into the spirit of the case straight away. ‘How have Mrs and Miss Braithwaite coped in the past six years? Until it’s established to a court’s satisfaction that a man has died, the financial assets are frozen. And who’s been running the mill?’

‘I don’t know.’

He stretched his legs. The bench is too low for a tall man. ‘Sounds as if there could be a lot of practical difficulties. I’m surprised the widow hasn’t applied for presumption of death before now.’

‘From Tabitha’s letter she’s obviously hoping he’ll be found alive. Missing doesn’t mean dead.’