Dying in the Wool (9 page)

She had gone inside by the time I opened a low, rickety gate and stepped onto a crazy-paving path. Neat trenches lay ready for onions or potatoes. In this cool, shady spot a few brave snowdrops still survived by the fence along with purple and yellow crocuses. By the door, a sawn-off upturned barrel provided a pair of garden seats. From its perch on the scoured windowsill, a black cat glowered at me, its marmalade eyes catching the glow of the evening sun. When the door opened, the cat bounded down and strolled inside.

It was hard to judge the age of the woman who answered my knock. I guessed somewhere in her forties. She wore a long black skirt, grey-blue blouse and grey cardigan. Through the open door, I saw that a floral pinafore had been discarded on the chair-back – perhaps not fitting the dress requirements for a teller of fortunes.

I introduced myself, told her I was staying with the Braithwaites, and asked was she Lizzie Luck, and if so would she be willing to tell my fortune.

The smile set her eyes twinkling. ‘It’s not me calls meself luck. That’s other folks’ name for me. I’m Lizzie Kellett.’ She waved me inside, with a quick glance across to the humpback bridge, to check whether we were observed.

I stepped into a cold room with a flagged floor. A black leaded range gave home to a struggling fire. An enamel bowl stood on a low cupboard by the window. Next to the bowl lay a bunch of cuttings from the garden and a sharp knife. A square deal table, a small rocker and a larger bentwood chair, a couple of buffets and a dresser completed the room’s furnishings.

She assessed me as I peeled off my gloves and took a seat by the table. ‘Will you take some refreshment?’

‘No thank you. Becky at the Braithwaites thought you’d be at the mill until half past six, Mrs Kellett. I’m glad to find you home.’

‘Loom’s down,’ she said glumly. ‘There’ll be no more weavin’ today.’ She took the buffet beside me. ‘Please speak to my face, so I can see your lips. I’m half-deaf from the weaving.’

In a businesslike fashion, she gave me the price of reading my palm, and the somewhat higher price of a tarot reading.

She brought a dark-red chenille cloth from the dresser, disturbing the dust in the air as she spread it across the table with a flourish. A faint odour of cedar came from a carved box as she opened it, and took out a pack of cards.

She placed her hands flat on the table and closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I don’t need to look at cards to know thah’s lost someone. There is a parting of the ways.’

There is also a mourning brooch and wedding ring, I thought. I swear these people can smell a widow a mile off. Oh here’s a sad soul, good for a guinea or two. Psychic robbery.

As if sensing my disbelief, she said, ‘It’s not just the outward signs. I see loss in the form of an aura.’

And you hear it in the tinkling of coins, I wanted to add.

She examined my palm. As we both leaned forward, I caught the whiff of cheese and onions on her breath.

My life would be long, she told me. I had been well-placed,
and lived a leisured life, though it had not always seemed as if I would. She saw some disruption in my earlier life. My childhood road had two forks, and mine was the fortunate path.

Goose bumps shivered along my spine. These people, I swear they pick up on something – though who knows what. I didn’t even remember my adoption. But that was her art, I guessed. In spite of my rationality, I was filling in the gaps she left.

The cards revealed that I would be going on a journey. I encouraged her, confirming that this was so, and soon. If I did not catch the train to King’s Cross next week, seats reserved by dear Mother, the prediction for my long life might prove mistaken.

What she said next jarred with her previous pronouncements.

‘Sometimes to be still is the best course.’ She looked at me, waiting for a response.

Perhaps she had some inkling of my mission to find Joshua Braithwaite and was warning me not to waste my time.

Undaunted by my failure to respond, she began to lay out cards, with encouraging remarks about my future.

‘At Miss Braithwaite’s wedding, catch the bouquet,’ she instructed. ‘There’ll be a stranger, an older man, who’ll change the course of the future for thee. Only don’t judge off first appearances.’

‘I’ll be sure not to.’

I found it difficult to believe that I would find true love outside the church in Bingley, in spite of Tabitha’s assurance that the C. of E. delivers a high class wedding.

I tentatively voiced my reason for being there, feeling sure that a proper detective would not have gone through this charade. ‘The one person Miss Braithwaite hopes will turn up at her wedding – besides the groom – is her father.’

She did not respond to the bait but instead said, ‘Have you seen Miss Braithwaite’s wedding gown?’

‘Not yet. She had a fitting today.’

‘It’s crêpe-de-chine. Mr Stoddard had a special loom set up. He asked me to weave it. It’s as fine a piece as you’ll see in England if I do say so meself.’

She went to a drawer and took out a sample piece of shimmering ivory. ‘Feel that.’

The silky fabric slid across my fingers. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘That’s the end piece. I asked if I could cut it off for a keepsake.’

‘You must be very proud to be the one weaver chosen to do this.’

She smiled, pride in her work transforming her into a glowing subject for a photograph.

What kind of detective will suddenly forget all about the questions she needs to ask and see the potential for an album entry?

Weaver, broad face, tight mouth, eyes deep set under arched brows, sloping shoulders, sinewy hands, perched on the upturned barrel by her door, woven fabric in her hands. Still just sufficient light outside, and with a bit of luck and careful timing I might have my winning picture for the photographic competition.

I forced myself back into detective mode.

‘Are you able to say whether a man exists in this world or the next, Mrs Kellett? Will Tabitha get her wish to see her father? She’s sure he’s still alive.’

With that mixture of guile, mockery and outspokenness familiar in Yorkshire, she said, ‘If you’d said sooner, I could have asked the cards.’

‘I don’t think you need to do that – not after all this time. A woman of your sensitivities must have a view on the matter.’

There was a slight stiffening of her shoulders. ‘He will be there in spirit. Miss Braithwaite is by way of being what
we call a sensitive herself. Perhaps the feeling she has comes from the spirit world. Her brother Edmund came through to her, you know, in this very room.’

She seemed as proud of her ability to summon spirits as of her weaving.

‘The bairns used to play out there, Tabitha and Edmund, paddling and fishing by the bridge. Edmund’s spirit found its way home. He come into this very kitchen.’

If I were Edmund’s spirit I would have preferred my own room at the villa. But then, I’m a mere know-nothing mortal.

‘Did Mr Braithwaite ever find his way here, in body or spirit?’

She watched my face more carefully than lip-reading warranted. Her own lips stayed tight shut for a moment as she gave me a questioning look.

‘Tabitha would love to find him,’ I said again. ‘If anything comes back to you about where he may have ended up, or what may have happened, we might set her mind at rest.’ I produced my card and handed it to her. ‘In case you have any thoughts. I’d like to help my friend if I can.’

She opened the table drawer. ‘I’ll keep it safe. If I come up with a communication from the spirit world, I’ll send word.’

She replaced her tarot cards in the cedar wood box.

‘May I ask you something else?’

‘Go on, though I’m not forced to answer.’

‘Was Mr Braithwaite something of a ladies’ man?’

She looked at me quizzically.

‘I’m only guessing,’ I said. A sober man found cut and bruised in the beck. A jealous husband might be an explanation.

‘Mr Joshua Braithwaite,’ she said, giving the name more syllables than it deserved. ‘When he was younger – and don’t say this to Miss Braithwaite – he’d chase after anything in a skirt, in spite of being a bigwig in chapel.’

‘Did Mrs Braithwaite know?’

‘She’d be a fool not to. A woman always knows.’

‘He must have had enemies.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ She got up and placed a log on the fire, turning her back to me so I had to wait to ask my next question.

‘Have you been in touch with him?’

She looked at me sharply. ‘How could I be?’

‘You said just now that if you come up with a communication from the spirit world, you’ll send me a message. So you must believe he’s dead.’

‘Let’s just say I know what I know. He’s dead. I haven’t told Miss Braithwaite. I didn’t have the heart, not after her being so upset over her brother.’

She picked up the money I had paid her and slid it into a Rington’s tea caddy on the mantelpiece.

Beside the tea jar was a postal order stub for ten shillings. I wondered who she sent money to. She quickly slipped the stub in the caddy.

Being a fully-fledged investigator was turning out to be a little unnerving. She was wary of me, although I tried to be sympathetic and encouraging. What did she have to hide?

The cat had heard the log go on the fire. It came to sit on the rag hearth rug. The larger bentwood chair was covered in a piece of army blanket with patchy stains in green, blue and black.

‘Does your husband work in the mill?’

‘Aye. He’ll be in presently.’

My signal to go. ‘Thank you for the fortune. May I take your photograph holding your woven piece?’

She looked at me in horror. ‘Why ever would you want to do that?’

‘Because I’m trying to become as good at taking photographs as you are at weaving. I’ll let you have a copy to stand on the dresser.’

She agreed, reluctantly, more for the sake of her crêpede-chine than for herself, I thought.

While she damped and combed her hair, I paced out the distance from the barrel seat and I set up my camera and tripod on the path. In the pale evening light, I reckoned I would need an exposure of two seconds.

She sat stiffly at first, until I chatted to her about the garden. ‘Do you use much horse manure?’

‘Aye. Among other stuff,’ she added mysteriously, stroking her woven piece as if it were a cat.

I clicked the shutter on a woman who would keep her own counsel as close as the weave in her cloth.

I thanked her for posing, then folded down my tripod.

‘What does your husband do in the mill?’

‘He’s in the dyehouse.’

The beck ran noisily across the stones yards away. I tried to make my words sound casual, like an afterthought. ‘Where was Mr Braithwaite found, by the boy scouts?’

‘Over there – by’t waterfall.’

‘You’re so close by. Did you see or hear anything that day?’

‘My hearing was better then, but I heard nowt. I knew the boy scouts was out and about. I kept my door shut.’

‘Did your husband hear anything?’

‘It were Saturday night. He were off having a pint and a game of dominoes.’

I thanked her for her time, and cut up the bank, towards the humpback bridge. Not an auspicious start to my enquiries. That old Yorkshire saying seemed appropriate. See all, hear all, say nowt. Eat all, sup all, pay nowt.

Tabitha had told me that the Bridgestead police house accommodated the village constable, his wife, the younger portion of their family, a border collie cross dog and an elderly canary. This hub of law and order for the village
and surrounding areas occupied a position close to the post office. It announced itself by the cast iron black and white Yorkshire Constabulary house plate. I rang the bell.

Constable Mitchell was a big man, well into middle age, with intelligent eyes and a quickness and grace that belied his size.

He pulled out a buffet for me. ‘If you’ll give me just a moment, you’ll have my full attention. Only I promised the wife I’d finish this. It’s her father’s eightieth birthday tomorrow and I’ve the ship to put in yet.’

An antique whisky bottle about eighteen inches long lay on a piece of linoleum in the centre of the big oak desk. Notebooks, report books, inkstand and pencil holder had been pushed aside to make way for the delicate work of creating a ship in a bottle.

‘I’ve always wanted to know how a ship goes in a bottle.’ I perched on the tall buffet and watched.

When you are watching someone work expertly, time stands still. I forgot why I had come. There was an ‘ocean’ in the bottle already, with an indentation where the ship would lie.

‘How do you get the sails in? That’s what puzzles me.’

‘You have a tiny hinge on the masts. Look.’ With his little finger, he indicated the place.

He lowered a sail. At its base, a scrap of silk formed a hinge. ‘I’ll attach a thread. That allows me to bring the mast back on its hinge, into a vertical position. Once it’s in the bottle, I release the thread, and cut it.’