Henrietta Who Part 23

"Where did they go after you came here?" It was the question which counted and for a moment Sloan thought she was going to say she didn't know.

Instead she frowned. "Cullingoak way, I think it was."

"Just one more question, Mrs. Walsh..."

She looked at him, inured to official questions.

"This old man, Jenkins..."

"Yes?"

"Did he just have the one son?"

She shook her head. "I did hear there was a daughter too but I never met her myself."

The Rector and Mrs. Meyton had taken Henrietta out to luncheon in Berebury after the inquest. Bill Thorpe had declined the invitation on the grounds that there were cows to be milked and other work to be done. It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, he explained awkwardly, and the men would have gone home. Whether this was so, or whether it was because of the silence which had followed his mention of marriage, n.o.body knew. He had made his apologies and gone before they left the Town Hall.

Arbican had arranged for Henrietta to come to see him on Tuesday afternoon following the funeral in the morning. He had also enquired tactfully about her present finances.

There had been a lonely dignity about her reply, and Arbican had shaken hands all round and gone back to Calleford.

The mention of money, though, had provoked a memory on the Rector's part.

"This little matter of the medals," he began over coffee. "Yes," she said politely. It wasn't a little matter but if Mr. Meyton cared to put it like that...

"It solves one point which often puzzled me." He took some sugar. "Your mother..."

She wasn't her mother but Henrietta let that pa.s.s, too. She was beginning to be very tired now.

"Your mother was a very independent woman."

"Yes." That was absolutely true.

"Commendable, of course. Very. But not always the easiest sort of parishioner to help."

"She didn't like being beholden to anyone."

"Exactly." He sipped his coffee. "I well remember on one occasion I suggested that we approach the Calleshire Regimental Welfare a.s.sociation..."

"Oh?"

"Yes. For a grant towards what is now, I believe, called 'further education.' In my day they called it..."

"After all," put in Mrs. Meyton kindly, "that's what their funds are for, isn't it, dear?"

"Yes," said Henrietta.

"But, of course," went on Mrs. Meyton, "it was before you got the scholarship, and though they always thought you would get one, you can never be sure with scholarships, can you, dear?"

"Never," said Henrietta fervently. She had never been cerherself, however often people had rea.s.sured her.

"Mrs. Jenkins was quite sharp with me," remembered the Rector ruefully. "Polite, of course. She was always very polite, but firm. Scholarship or no scholarship she didn't want anything to do with it."

Mrs. Meyton said some people always did feel that way about grants.

The Rector set his cup down. "But, of course, it all makes sense now we know that Cyril Jenkins wasn't killed in the war."

"No, it doesn't," said Henrietta.

"No?" The Rector looked mildly enquiring.

"You see," said Henrietta, "she told me that the Regimental Welfare people did help."

"How very curious."

"I know," she said quickly, "that the scholarship is the main thing but it's not really enough to-well-do more than manage."

The Rector nodded. "Quite so."

"Money," concluded Henrietta bleakly, "came from somewhere for me when I got there."

"You mean literally while you were there?"

"Yes. The Bursar saw that I had some at the beginning of each term." She flushed. "I was told it was from the Calleshire Regiment otherwise..."

"Otherwise," interposed Mrs. Meyton tactfully, "I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted it any more than your mother would have done."

"No."

The Rector coughed. "I think this may well be pertinent to Inspector Sloan's inquiry. Tell me, did the Bursar himself tell you where it came from?"

Henrietta frowned. "Just that it was from the Regiment Welfare a.s.sociation."

"How very odd," said the Rector of Larking.

This information was one more small piece which, when fitted exactly together with dozens of other small pieces of truth (and lies), detail, immutable fact, routine enquiry, known evidence, witnesses' stories and a detective's deductions, would, one day, produce a picture instead of a jigsaw.

This particular segment was relayed to Inspector Sloan when he made a routine telephone call to Berebury Police Station after leaving Rooden Parva. He and Crosby had called in at the Calleshire County Constabulary Headquarters to ascertain that the Calleford search for one Cyril Jenkins, wanted by the Berebury Division, had not yet widened as far as the villages.

"Have a heart," said Calleford's Inspector on duty. He was an old friend of Sloan's called Blake. Rejecting-very vigorously-the obvious nickname of s.e.xton, he was known instead throughout the county as "Digger."

"There's dozens of small villages round here."

Sloan nodded. "Each with its own separate small register, I suppose?"

"That's right." Blake pushed some tea in Sloan's direction. "Your Superintendent as horrible as ever?"

"He doesn't change," said Sloan.

"What with him and Happy Harry,"condoled Blake, "I don't know how you manage, I really don't."

For better or worse, Superintendent Leeyes was on duty for this weekend.

"Well, Sloan," he barked down the telephone, "how are you getting on?"

"Not too badly, sir. I've got a couple of promising lines of enquiry at the moment."

"Hrrmph." The Superintendent didn't like optimism in anyone, least of all in his subordinates. "How promising?"

"Once upon a time, sir..."

"Is this a fairy story, Sloan?"

"A romance," said Sloan shortly.

Leeyes grunted. "Go on."

"Once upon a time a certain Lady Garwell seems to have had an affair with a Major Hocklington."

"Did she, by Jove?" mockingly.

"Yes, sir."

"Got her name mentioned-fn the Mess?"

"I fear so, sir."

"Things aren't what they were in my day, Sloan."

"No, sir, except that this was all a long time ago."

"That makes it worse," retorted Leeyes promptly. "Much worse. Morals were morals then. I don't know what they are now, I'm sure."

"No, sir." The Superintendent's views on vice were a byword in the Division.

"This Lady Garwell..."

"Yes, sir?"

"Are you trying to tell me that this girl who's the cause of all the trouble..."

That was a bit unfair. "Henrietta, sir?" he said, putting as much injury into his tone as he dared.

"Henrietta." He paused. "d.a.m.n silly name for a girl, isnt it?"

"Old fashioned," said Sloan. "Almost historical, you might say."

Leeyes grunted. "You think she's the-er-natural outcome of this affair?"

"I shouldn't like to say, sir. Not without further investigation. The General's practically gaga."

"Doesn't mean a thing," replied Leeyes swiftly. "Or rather, it helps the case."

"In what way, sir?"

Leeyes gave a chuckle that could only be described as salacious. "Suppose he's married to some young thing..."

"Well?"

"Then she's much more likely to dilly-dally with this young Major Somebody or Other."

"Hocklington, sir."

"Much more likely," repeated the Superintendent, who was by now getting to like the theory.

"Yes, sir. I see what you're driving at." That was an understatement. "But we don't know for certain that she was young."

"Then find out."

"Yes, sir." He swallowed. "Any more than we know that Major Hocklington was young..."

"It stands to reason, Sloan, that they weren't old. Not if they had an affair."

"No, sir." Sloan didn't know Mrs. Leeyes. Only that she was a little woman who bred cats. He wondered what it was like, being married to the Superintendent. He said inconse"She's dead. Lady Garwell, I mean."

"That doesn't stop her being Henrietta's mother," snapped Leeyes.

"No, sir."

"What about Major Hocklington?"

"Hirst-that's the General's man-didn't know."

"Then find that out, Sloan, while you're about it."

"Yes, sir."

"After all, she could have been in early middle age twenty-two years ago." The Superintendent himself had been in early middle age for as long as Sloan could remember. "And then died herself comparatively early."

"Dead and never called her mother, in fact," misquoted Sloan, who had once seen the Berebury Amateur Dramatic Society play East Lynne-and never forgotten the searing experience.

Literary allusions were lost upon the Superintendent who only said, "And get Somerset House to turn up Hocklington-Garwell in the Births for twenty-one years ago. Or just plain Hocklington, if it comes to that."

"Or Garwell," pointed out Sloan. "An illegitimate child takes the mother's surname, doesn't it?"

Leeyes grunted. "At least it's not Smith. That's something to be thankful for."

"You don't suppose," asked Sloan hopefully, "that her ladyship-if she was, in fact, Henrietta's mother-would have taken out an affiliation order against the father?"