Henrietta Who Part 26

"Yes, sir," promised Sloan, "and then we're going to Camford to see the bursar of her college."

He and Crosby got up to go but Sloan turned short of the door.

"That AB Blood Group, sir..."

"What about it?"

"It's the same as Grace Jenkins's."

"Well?"

"If the girl hadn't said the woman's maiden name was Wright, I could make out quite a good case for Grace Jenkins and Cyril Jenkins being brother and sister."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"Dead?" said Henrietta dully.

"I'm afraid so." Sloan wished her reaction could have been more like the Superintendent's. It couldn't be doing her any good sitting here in Boundary Cottage, hanging on to her self-control with an effort that was painful to watch.

"Inspector," she whispered, "I killed him, didn't I?"

"I don't think so, miss," responded Sloan, surprised.

"I don't mean actually." She twisted her hands together in her lap. "But as good as..."

"I don't see quite how, miss, if you'll forgive my saying so..." It occurred to Sloan for the first time that this was what people meant by wringing their hands.

"By seeing him." She swallowed. "Don't you understand? If I hadn't seen him yesterday and recognised him, then he wouldn't be dead today."

This, thought Sloan, might well be true.

"Perhaps, miss," he said quietly, "but that doesn't make it your fault."

"I haven't got the Evil Eye, or anything like that, I know, but"-she sounded utterly shaken-"but if he was my father and rve been the means of killing him... I don't think I could bear that."

Sloan coughed. She had given him the opening he wanted. "That's one of the reasons why we've come, miss. About the question of this Cyril Jenkins being your father."

"Do you know then?" directly.

"No, miss. We don't think he was but we can't prove it either way... yet."

"Yet?" she asked quickly.

"Dr. Dabbe-he's the hospital pathologist, miss-he says a blood test can prove something but not everything."

"Anything," she said fervently, "would be better than this not knowing."

"If you agreed to it," he said carefully, "and I must make it clear you don't have to, it might just prove Cyril Jenkins wasn't your father and never could have been."

"Then," said Henrietta in a perplexed way, "who was he and what had he got to do with us?"

"We don't know..."

"Just that he's dead."

"That's right, miss."

She looked at him. "How soon can you do this blood thing?"

"If you would come with me to the telephone and ring Mr. Arbican-he's ent.i.tled to advise you against it, if he thinks fit-then I could ring Dr. Dabbe now." He grinned. "It won't take him long to get here."

It didn't.

A stranger would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary should he have chanced to visit the village of Larking the next morning. Not, of course, that there were any strangers there. Larking was not that sort of village. A Sunday calm had descended upon the place and the inhabitants were going about their usual avocations. About a quarter of them were in church. At Matins.

Henrietta was there.

She was staying at the Rectory now. She had been in that pleasant house on the green since late last night. Just before he had left, Inspector Sloan had said he would be greatly obliged if Miss Jenkins would take herself to the Rectory for the night.

"Otherwise, miss," he had gone on, "I shall have to spare a man to stay here and keep an eye on you."

Mrs. Meyton, bless her, had been only too happy to have her under the Rectory wing and Henrietta had been popped between clean sheets in the spare bed without fuss or botheration. The Rector presumably had been wrestling with his sermon because she hadn't seen him at all last night nor this morning when he had breakfasted alone between early service and Matins.

James Heber Hibbs read the First Lesson.

Henrietta was devoutly thankful that today was one of the Sundays in Lent, which meant that she didn't have to listen while he fought his way through the genealogical tree of Abraham who begat Isaac who begat Jacob who begat...

She could listen to the Book of Numbers (Chapter 14, verse 26) with equanimity but she didn't think she could bear to hear that unconscionable list of who begat whom when she was still no nearer knowing the father who had begat her. She sat, hands folded in front of her, while James Hibbs's neat unaccented voice retailed what the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron.

She felt curiously detached. No doubt the events of the past week would fade into proportion in time just as those of the Old Testament had done but at the moment she wasn't sure.

"... save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun," said James Hibbs in those English upper middle cla.s.s tones considered suitable for readings in church which would have greatly surprised both Caleb and Joshua, son of Nun, had they heard them.

That had been how a man was known in those far off days, of course. It mattered very much whose son you were, which tribe you belonged to... One day, perhaps, she, Henrietta, would be able once again to look into a mirror without wondering who it was she saw there, but not yet... definitely not yet.

A fragment of an almost forgotten newspaper article came back to her while she was sitting quietly in the pew. Somewhere she had read once that to undermine the resistance of prisoners in a concentration camp their captors first took away every single thing the poor unfortunates could call their own-papers, watches, rings, gla.s.ses, false teeth even. It was the first step towards the deliberate destruction of personality. After that the prisoners, utterly demoralised, began to doubt their very ident.i.ty. Lacking rea.s.surance in the matter, then surely existence itself would seem pointless, resistance became more meaningless still.

"... Here endeth the First Lesson," declared James Hibbs, leaving the lectern and going back to his wife in the pew which, abolition of pew rents or not, inalienably belonged to The Hall. He still walked like a soldier.

It didn't seem possible that last Sunday Henrietta had been at college in Camford, finals the biggest landmark in her immediate future, Bill Thorpe more nebulously beyond... her mother always in the background. Only she wasn't her mother.

And the background had changed as suddenly as a theatre backdrop. The man in the photograph on the mantlepiece had come briefly alive-and mysteriously was now dead again.

Uncomforted by the Rector's blessing at the end of the service, she waited in her seat until the church emptied. That, at least, saved her from all but the most bare-faced of the curious. Mrs. Meyton insisted upon her lunching at the Rectory. Henrietta demurred.

"When, my dear child, have you had time to buy food?" Mrs. Meyton asked.

Henrietta spoke vaguely of some cheese but was overruled by an indignant Mrs. Meyton.

"Certainly not," said that lady roundly.

It wasn't the happiest of meals. Henrietta ate her way through roast beef and Yorkshire pudding without appet.i.te, one thing uppermost in her mind.

"They don't say very much in the newspapers," she murmured. "And the Inspector didn't tell me anything. Just that he was found dead..."

This was only partly true. The Sunday newspapers not available at the Rectory had covered the death of Cyril Jenkins fairly graphically (WIDOWER DIES... GUNSHOT DEATH... BLOOD-STAINED ROOM) but neither the Meytons nor Henrietta knew this.

The Rector nodded. "I fear there is little doubt that his death is significant."

"What I want to know," demanded Henrietta almost angrily, "is if he was my father or not."

She didn't know yet if the little red bottle borne away last night by the pathologist-after a few mild, stock jokes about vampires-was going to tell her that or not.

Mr. Meyton nodded again. "Quite so."

And in an anguished whisper: "And who killed him."

"My dear," began Mrs. Meyton, "should you concern yourself with..."

"Yes," intervened the Rector firmly, "she should."

"I must know," said Henrietta firmly, a tremulous note coming into her voice in spite of all her efforts to suppress it, "whether I am misbegotten or not."

Dr. Dabbe could have told her something.

He telephoned the Berebury Police Station. "That you, Sloan? I've done a grouping."

"Yes, doctor?"

"The girl's Group O."

Sloan wrote it down. "Jenkins was AB, wasn't he?"

"That's right."

"That means, Doctor, that..."

"That he is not the girl's father," said Dr. Dabbe dogmatically. "And that's conclusive and irrespective of the mother's blood group. A man with an AB Group blood cannot have a child with O Group blood."

"Thank you, Doctor. Thank you very much. That's a great help..."

"It's an indisputable fact," said Dr. Dabbe tartly, "which is more to the point."

Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby reached the university town of Camford just before noon on the Sunday morning and drove straight to the centre of that many tower'd Camelot. A friendly colleague directed them to Boleyn College.

"Funny person to call a ladies' college after," muttered Constable Crosby, putting the car into gear again. "Wasn't she one of Henry the Eighth's..."

"Yes," said Sloan shortly, "she was."

They found the decorous brick building on the outskirts of the town and waited while the porter set about finding the Bursar, Miss Wotherspoon. She did not keep them long. A pet.i.te bird-like figure came tripping down the corridor. Sloan explained that he had come about Henrietta Jenkins.

"Jenkins?" said Miss Wotherspoon. "Nice girl."

"Yes."

"Not a First..."

"Oh?" said Sloan, who hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about but wasn't prepared to say so.

"Perhaps a Second but I shouldn't count on it."

"No..."

"And," Miss Wotherspoon sighed, "there'll be some young man waiting to marry her who doesn't care either way."

"There is."

Miss Wotherspoon shook her head. "No use trying to stop them," she said briskly. "Take my advice about that. They hold it against you for ever afterwards."

On that point Sloan was agreed with the Bursar, but before he could say anything further she went on.

"But I've just remembered, Henrietta Jenkins hasn't got a father."

"That's right," agreed Sloan.

"Then you must be..." began Miss Wotherspoon-and stopped.

"Who?" prompted Sloan gently. But he wasn't catching the Bursar out that way.

"No," she said. "I think you must tell me."

"The police," admitted Sloan regretfully.

"You had better come to my study."

She listened to Sloan's tale without interruption, waited until he was quite finished and then announced that she would have to take him to the Princ.i.p.al. He and Crosby tramped off after her and soon found themselves in a very gracious room indeed.

The Princ.i.p.al was an impressive woman by any standard save that of fashion. She had a calm, still authority, responsive yet unsurprised. Sloan and Crosby were invited to settle into chintz armchairs and to repeat their story.

"I see," said the Princ.i.p.al when he had done-and not before. Both women exhibited a rare facility for listening. If this was the result of the education of women, then Sloan- for one-was all in favour.

"You will be able to see our difficulty, too," said Sloan. "You have this girl whom we have reason to believe is being maintained here beyond such scholarships and grants as she may have been awarded."