Dying in the Wool (6 page)

‘I’m listening.’

She fidgeted with her engagement ring. For a moment, it distracted both of us. I stared at a sizeable rose-cut diamond flanked by rows of glowing single-cut diamonds and with shoulder-mounted square-cut rubies, glinting in the afternoon sunlight. ‘I have to try to find Father before the wedding. It’s the right thing to do, whatever anyone else says.’

‘What does everyone else say?’

‘That everything was done at the time. The police searched. Mother offered a reward for information. She assured me that everything would be done to find him. I wasn’t able to do much, going wherever the VAD sent me. Oddly enough, it was on the day we met that he went missing. Do you remember? On that ward full of poor men with shell shock.’

We were silent for a few moments. The foal lost interest in us and tottered after its mare. In the far corner of the field, a crow swooped.

‘I read a newspaper account. It said that your father was found by boy scouts, and saved from drowning. Do you believe there was any reason why he may have wanted to take his own life?’

She shuddered. ‘That’s not it. That’s not it at all. He didn’t try to take his life.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I just know it.’

‘We have to look at every possibility. I believe your brother was killed just weeks before your father was found by the beck.’

‘Yes.’ She clasped her hands, twirling her thumbs.

It felt cruel, making her talk about her brother.

‘Poor Edmund. There were just the two of us. Edmund volunteered, but then everyone did, didn’t they?’

‘What happened?’

‘He was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. But Dad was stoical, as we all were. He wouldn’t have attempted to take his life. He wasn’t a despairing kind of man.’

‘Can you tell me about the last time you saw him?’

For a moment, she looked as if she would cry. ‘I’m afraid my mind’s gone a bit of a blank.’

‘Try.’

A blackbird trilled in the hedge, as if nothing in the world could ever be out of kilter.

‘It would have been a Sunday dinner, sometime that month. August. There were just the two of us. Mother claimed a headache. Truth to tell she could hardly bear to be in the same room with Dad, not since Edmund was killed.’

‘Why was that do you think?’

She shrugged and shook her head. ‘I don’t know all the ins and outs. She thought Edmund shouldn’t have joined up, at least not so soon, and that he only did it to get away from Dad, and from having to stay in the mill. We were busy producing khaki, so Edmund could have avoided the army.’

For the moment she seemed to have run out of words.

I restarted the car.

Following Tabitha’s directions I drove up a steep cobbled street of densely packed two-storey cottages, past a school with high windows.

‘If you look over to your left, you can see the mill chimney. We’ll continue up the main street. You’ll soon find your bearings.’

The row of houses gave way to a solid stone building with sturdy pillars and portico. ‘That’s the Mechanics’ Institute. The lecturer comes from Keighley. Just up ahead you’ll see the chapel. Dad was on the committee. Uncle Neville takes an active interest.’

‘Is your family very religious?’

‘Not in an out of the ordinary way. Mother and I are Church of England thank goodness. Gives you a much better class wedding. A chapel do would be so ordinary and plain. But all mill masters have to make a show in some chapel direction, and encourage their hands. It’s what keeps the mills in motion, Dad always says.’

‘Is Uncle Neville your mother’s or your father’s brother?’

‘Dad’s cousin, so I suppose not a fully-fledged uncle, but the nearest we’ve got. Head towards the mill and keep going.’

I caught sight of a humpback bridge and heard the sound of running water. ‘Is that the beck?’

‘Yes. Dad was found by the stepping stones, where we used to play.’

We stopped to take a look.

Standing on the solid old sandstone bridge, we watched water play over rocks, murmuring and rushing as if to keep an important appointment.

‘He was a smashing dad, Kate. I love him. I want him back. See just there, by the stones, that’s where Edmund and I used to play, trying to make a dam, fishing, that sort of thing. Dad painted a picture of us once.’

‘So he didn’t entirely lock himself away in his work, if he found time to paint?’

‘Mills can be monsters – eating up lives – but he did sometimes paint.’

In as neutral a tone as possible so as not to seem critical, I asked Tabitha why she had left it so long before deciding to search for her father.

‘Mother said everything that could be done at the time was done. But you see, I didn’t do anything, being off in the VAD. And I must do something, otherwise it’ll haunt me forever that I didn’t try.’

‘Have you made any enquiries?’

‘People are so close-mouthed, or they say what they think I want to hear. I’m hoping you’ll be better at getting the truth than I’ve been. Someone must know what happened to him.’ She turned to me. ‘Here I am rabbiting on and I haven’t even asked how you are yourself. You had a telegram too, just as we had for Edmund.’

‘Not quite the same.’ I kept my voice steady, feeling foolish to let hope betray me. ‘Mine was a missing telegram. I tried to find someone who saw Gerald on that last day. The nearest I got was a sighting in the late morning, before the big bombardment, a sighting of Gerald walking along a road.’

I didn’t say all those mad things about waking in the night and imagining that he walked to safety; that he lost his memory; that he works as a peasant in a remote spot, not knowing who he is and that one day …

The Braithwaites’ elegant stone villa was of an unusual design. The centre comprised four storeys. Adjoining either side were extensions of two storeys, giving an impression for all the world like a person resting on her elbows. Shutters, the same dark green as the front door, framed latticed windows.

‘Grandma had it built around 1900,’ Tabitha said. ‘It was terribly modern at the time.’

To the right and left of the house stood outbuildings, stables and garages. Neatly planted flowerbeds and a bare-looking rose garden flanked the drive. A fountain in the Italian style played in the centre of the beds.

‘We’ve a tennis court round the back, if you’re brave
enough to bear the April breezes.’

‘Where shall I park?’

‘Oh just any old where. Briggs will see to your car.’

I brought the car to a stop and stepped out. Tabitha followed, pausing on the running board.

‘I wasn’t entirely truthful when I told you Mother knew you were coming.’

‘I’m not expected?’

‘I didn’t know if you’d come.’

‘But I said I would.’

‘I know. I’m so … I’m such a big baby about some things. I can’t explain it.’

‘Do you think she won’t want me here?’

‘It’s not her. It’s me. I thought you might change your mind, or have an accident, or find something better to do and then I’d look a fool and she’d say, “Oh that’s Tabitha all over, makes a plan and nothing happens.”’

‘I wouldn’t just not turn up.’

Tabitha suddenly looked like what my mother would call a bag of nerves.

‘I know, I know. I want my head examining. I always expect something terrible to happen. I so much wanted you to come, but was afraid to count my chickens. This is going to sound mad, and like wedding nerves, but I don’t believe anything good will ever happen if I don’t find Dad. My life will just unravel.’

I’d seen this sort of response before. In 1919 I was maid of honour for a girl I was at school with, and it was touch and go in the end. She and her childhood sweetheart had come through the most terrible times with great strength. Then, when life promised happiness – a wedding for heaven’s sake – she went to pieces, saying that she knew for certain that nothing in life would ever go right again and to pretend otherwise was tempting fate.

I touched Tabitha’s arm lightly. ‘Better tell your mother about me.’

‘At least your room is ready. Becky knows you’re coming. She’s very reliable and will look after you. Leave your bags.’

I picked up my canvas bag. ‘I’ll keep this with me. It’s my photographic equipment.’

‘Right.’ She hesitated at the steps of the house, turning to me. ‘Thank you for coming. I’m sorry I’m such a drip. Hector knows you’re coming, but not
why
. Whatever you do, don’t mention to him that you’re investigating Dad’s disappearance. He’s so sensitive. Perhaps he thinks Dad might turn up and put the brakes on the marriage.’

‘Why would he do that?’

She blushed. ‘Because Hector’s ten years my junior, and everyone expects that he’ll find some useful occupation on the board of the mill. Well, why shouldn’t he?’

Was this her way of telling me that Hector was marrying her for money? If that ring was anything to go by, he was no pauper. ‘It’s a family business and your husband will be family … That’s how it works, isn’t it?’

Privately I wondered whether Hector knew something about Joshua Braithwaite’s disappearance that Tabitha didn’t.

A soft wool shawl in rich shades of purple and mauve lay folded on the cushioned window seat. The walnut bureau held an inkstand, pen and paper. A vase of daffodils stood on an occasional table. Someone had thought of everything.

The latticed window looked on to open moorland. The sun had moved almost out of view, causing the dry-stone wall to cast a long shadow onto the rockery.

The floor of the dressing room provided a suitable place for my cameras and equipment. Bringing my photographic stuff served a dual purpose. After talking to Sykes, I realised that an investigator needs cunning and reserve. If I drew attention to myself around Bridgestead, it would
be as an amateur photographer and thus I would allay suspicions. That was my theory at any rate.

In truth my desire not to be parted from my cameras may have been more to do with attachment to my gentle hobby. It is a pastime that changes a person’s outlook. I remembered my excursion to Whitby when I first made really good use of the camera. A school friend was recovering from a bout of fever and the doctor ordered sea air. All these years on, I can remember quite clearly the fishing vessels bobbing on the bay, the austere outline of ruined Whitby Abbey, casting its shadow at dusk, the limping pie and peas seller pushing his cart. Even when my photographs did not do justice to the scene, which was most of the time, simply framing the views developed a photographing habit that changed my way of seeing. A photographer’s eye sharpens memory from a vague or hazy recollection to a clear image of an everlasting moment. Owning a camera gave me a new interest in people and landscapes, in markets and busy streets. It is a way of looking outside yourself and at the same time gathering up mental albums of memories.

It was in Whitby I met Gerald. He and a friend were there for a weekend fishing trip, staying in the same hotel as my friend and I. He gave up one of his fishing trips to introduce me to Frank Meadows Sutcliffe, that wonderful photographer of local people and scenes. After seeing his work it was a toss-up whether I would throw away my camera or reach for perfection. He set me on the path of photographing people going about their business, getting on with their work and lives, pausing for the camera, and for eternity, or for as long as photographic chemicals will allow eternity to last.

Mr Sutcliffe took our photograph and when Gerald and I left his studio, even though we had known each other for only hours, something was settled between us without the need for words.

As I closed the closet door on my photographic equipment, there was a knock on the door. Becky the maid scooted in a young houseboy who deposited my portmanteau. At the same time, I heard horse hooves on the flagged courtyard below.

Tabitha had said her mother was out riding. I went to the window in time to see Mrs Braithwaite sitting upright on her horse, its head tossed slightly to one side.

She dismounted quickly and gracefully. Before her riding boots touched the flags, a groom appeared to take charge of the chestnut bay mare. She patted the horse’s neck and spoke briefly to the groom before turning towards the house. Her dark bobbed hair gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. She seemed to glide up the steps to the house in such a slow deliberate way that I expected her to leave an impression on the air after she sailed through it.

Slowly, I changed from my motoring outfit into an afternoon dress. It occurred to me that Mrs Braithwaite looked like the kind of woman who could browbeat the entire West Riding police force and hire a small army of private detectives. The task ahead seemed suddenly more daunting. If no one else had traced Joshua Braithwaite, what on earth made me think I would?

Tabitha tapped on the door. ‘Are you ready to come and meet Mother? It won’t take her long to change out of her riding togs. I’ve told her you’re here.’

Tabitha now wore an exotic Chinese silk smoking suit decorated with bridges, nightingales and bashful lovers. A long ivory cigarette holder peeped from the top pocket.

I sat down on the window seat. ‘Just one more thing, Tabitha. You and your mother know everyone. All the questions I’m going to ask, she probably already has. From my brief glimpse of the way your mother dismounts, I’d say she’s a very capable woman.’