Henrietta Who Part 14

"The photograph is a fact," agreed Bill Thorpe with un-diminished amiability.

"And so is the name of Jenkins not being on this memorial."

"The evidence is before our very eyes, as the conjurors say."

"And the police say Grace Jenkins wasn't my mother."

Bill Thorpe looked down at her affectionately. "I reckon that makes you utterly orphan, don't you?"

She nodded.

"Quite a good thing, really," said Thorpe easily.

Henrietta's head came up with a jerk. "Why?"

"I don't have to ask anyone's permission to marry you."

She didn't respond. "I'm worse than just orphan. I don't even know who I am or who my parents were."

"Does it matter?"

"Matter?" Henrietta opened her eyes very wide.

"Well, I can see it's important with-say-Shire Oak Majestic. A bull's got to have a good pedigree to be worth anything."

"I fail to see any connection," said Henrietta icily.

"I'm not in love with your ancestors..."

The verger ambled up behind them. "Found what you were looking for, sir, on that memorial?"

"What's that? Oh, yes, thank you, verger," said Thorpe. "We found what we were looking for all right."

"That's good, sir. Good afternoon to you both."

Not unexpectedly, Mr. Felix Arbican or Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind, Solicitors, shared Henrietta's view rather than Bill Thorpe's on the importance of parentage. He heard her story out and then said, "Tricky."

"Yes," agreed Henrietta politely. She regarded that as a gross understatement.

"It raises several-er-legal points."

"Not only legal ones," said Henrietta.

"What's that? Oh, yes, quite so. The accident, for instance." Arbican made a gesture of sympathy. "I'm sorry. There are so many cars on the road these days." He brought his hands up to form a pyramid under his chin. "She was walking, you say..."

"She was."

"Then there should be less question of liability."

"There is no question of where the blame for the accident lies," said Henrietta slowly. "Only the driver still has to be found."

"He didn't stop?"

She shook her head.

"Nor report it to the police?"

"Not that I've heard."

"That's a great pity. If he had done, there would have been little more to do-little more from a professional point of view, that is, than to settle the question of responsibility with the insurance company, and agree damages."

Henrietta inclined her head in silence.

"And they usually settle out of court."

Henrietta moistened her lips. "There is to be an inquest... on Sat.u.r.day morning."

"Naturally."

"Is Berebury too far for you to come?"

"You want me to represent you? If your-er-mother was a client of mine at one time-and it seems very much as if she must have been, then I will certainly do that."

"The Inspector told me she came to you once..."

"A long time ago."

"You don't recall her?"

Arbican shook his head.

Henrietta lapsed back in her chair in disappointment "I was so hoping you would. I need someone who knew her before very badly..."

"Quite so." The solicitor coughed. "I think in these-er- somewhat unusual circ.u.mstances my advice would be that you should first establish if a legal adoption has taken place. That would put a different complexion on the whole affair. You say there are no papers in the house whatsoever?"

"None. There was this burglary, you see..."

Arbican nodded. "It doesn't make matters easier."

"No."

"In the absence of any written evidence we could begin a search of the court adoption registers..." Henrietta looked up eagerly.

"But it will necessarily be a slow business. There are about forty County Courts, you see, and-er-several hundred Magistrates' Courts."

"I see."

"A will," said Arbican cautiously, "might clarify matters."

"In what way?"

"It would perhaps refer to the relationship between you and Grace Jenkins. Whilst not being her-er-child of the body you could still stand in a legal relationship to her."

"I don't see how."

"Have you thought that you could be a child of an earlier marriage of one of the two parties?"

She sighed. "I don't know what to think."

"If that were so then you must have been the child of one of them..."

"Not Grace Jenkins," reiterated Henrietta.

"If you aren't," went on the solicitor, "and the fact of this in each case can be proved, then you could be a child of a marriage, the surviving partner of which subsequently married one of the two persons whom you had hitherto considered your parents..."

She put her hands up to her head. "You're going too quickly."

"That would entail a third marriage on someone's part- but three marriages are not out of the place these days."

"It-it's very complicated, isn't it?"

"The law," said Arbican cheerfully, "is."

She hesitated. "Mr. Arbican, if I were illegitimate?"

The fingers came up under his chin again while the solicitor pontificated. "The law is much kinder than it used to be, and if your-the person whom you thought to be your mother has made a will in your favour it is of little consequence."

"It isn't that," said Henrietta quickly. "Besides we-she had no money. I know that."

Arbican looked as if he was about to say that that was of no consequence either.

"In any case," went on Henrietta, "I wouldn't want to claim anything I wasn't ent.i.tled to, and if she wasrft my mother, I don't see how I can be."

"A will," began Arbican, "would..."

"She may not have made one," countered Henrietta, "She wasn't expecting to die."

"Everyone should make a will," said the solicitor senten-tiously.

While farmers lunch early, and clergy at exactly one fifteen, policemen on duty lunch not at all. Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby found themselves back in the Berebury Police Station after two thirty with the canteen offering nothing more substantial than tea and sandwiches. Crosby laid the tray on Sloan's desk.

"It's all they had left," he said briefly.

"Somerset House didn't have anything either," Sloan told him, pushing a message pad across the desk. "No record of any Grace Edith Wright marrying any Cyril Edgar Jenkins within five years of either side of when the girl thought they did."

Crosby took another sandwich and thought about this for the length of it. Then "Grace Jenkins must have had a birth certificate."

"Wright," said Sloan automatically.

Crosby, who thought Sloan had said "Right,"looked pleased and took another sandwich.

"Though," continued Sloan, "if she's Wright, why bring Jenkins in at all, especially if she's not married to him." Crosby offered no opinion on this. "Moreover, where do you begin to look?"

"Where, sir?" he echoed.

"Where in time," explained Sloan kindly. "Not where in s.p.a.ce. It'll all be in Somerset House. It's a question of knowwhere to look. The girl tells us Grace Jenkins was fdrty-five years old. The pathologist says she was fifty-five or thereabouts."

"Yes," agreed Crosby helpfully.

"And that's not the only thing. The girl says she was married to one Jenkins, deceased, and her maiden name was Wright. Somerset House can't trace the marriage and Dr. Dabbe thinks she was both unmarried and childless."

"More tea?" suggested Crosby constructively. "Thank you." Sloan reached for his notebook. "We can't very well expect the General Register Officer to give us the birth certificate of someone whose age we don't know and whose name we aren't sure about. So, instead ;.."

"Yes, sir?"

"You will start looking for a family called-what was it?-ah, yes: a family called Hocklington-Garwell. And a farm."

"A farm, sir?"

"A Holly Tree Farm, Crosby."

"Somewhere in England, sir?"

"Somewhere in Calleshire," snapped Sloan.

Crosby swallowed. "Yes, sir."

Sloan read through the notes of the interview with Mrs. Callows. "Then there's the bus station. Grace Jenkins arrived there on Tuesday morning and left there on the seven five in the evening. See if you can find any lead on where she went in between."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you remember what it was that was unusual about her on Tuesday?"

"She was killed?"

"Try again, Constable..." dangerously.

Crosby frowned. "She was dressed in her best..."

"Anything else?"

"It wasn't her day for shopping in Berebury."

"Exactly."

"You could just say it wasn't her day," murmured Crosby, but fortunately Inspector Sloan didn't hear him.

Henrietta came out of the office of Waind, Arbican & Waind, and stood on the Calleford pavement. Bill Thorpe was a little way down the road and she waved. He turned and came towards her asking, "Any luck?"