A Woman Unknown (30 page)

I thought for a moment. ‘If he is being bled for money, then that would explain why he took the risk of providing a co-respondent to meet Mr Sykes in Scarborough.’

‘I can’t force the man to talk, but I may have to offer him a way out of his predicament, if he’ll tell me the truth.’

‘He must know how serious this is.’

In both directions, people were wending their way home. By the light of the streetlamp, an old man searched the gutter for tab ends.

‘Have you had confirmation of Mr Fitzpatrick’s cause of death?’

Marcus said, ‘It was a deeply unfortunate accident. The pathologist found no indication of foul play. Mr Fitzpatrick tripped and hit his head.’

‘I feel so sad about the poor man. It’s somehow worse because I found him irritating, and that leaves one feeling guilty about not being kind.’

‘I’m sure you were kind.’

‘Don’t be so sure.’

‘Kate, you got to know Fitzpatrick.’

‘A little.’

‘Did he believe that the photographer, Leonard Diamond, was having an affair with his wife?’

His words made me slow my steps. ‘I did not get that impression. Mr Fitzpatrick thought Len Diamond may have known something about Deirdre, where she went, whom she saw. Why do you ask?’

He sighed. ‘This morning, I had a second pathology report on Diamond. He did not take his own life.’

‘I knew it!’

‘Yes you did, and you were right. The first examination of Diamond’s body was too cursory, assumptions were made because of the way he was found. The local men interpreted the disarray in his rooms as his own doing while drunk. The first report seemed to bear that out. With hanging, the rope marks angle towards the knot, which was true in Mr Diamond’s case. But the second pathologist noted horizontal marks, consistent with ligature strangulation.’

‘That’s horrible. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

‘Sorry. I don’t want to give you nightmares. And I didn’t want to tell you before we went in the Chemic. I know you liked the chap.’

‘I admired him, or his work that is. He was an odd man, always a little reserved about himself, but a gossip about other people.’

A knot of drinkers, reluctant to go home, stood outside the Hyde Park. We manoeuvred our way around them.

‘You think the perpetrator was looking for something?’

‘I do. Kate, you knew Diamond. Can you think of anything he could have had that someone would go to such lengths to find? Did find, for all we know.’

‘Not money. He gambled, and drank, which I didn’t know until my friend Mr Duffield told me.’

‘Duffield?’

‘He’s the librarian on the local paper.’

We turned into my road. ‘I’ll gladly help if I can. I’m desperately sorry about Everett Runcie, naturally, having known him. But in a different way I find Diamond’s death a small tragedy, a loss. He was talented. It seems such a waste.’

‘There is a strong possibility that the same man killed both Runcie and Diamond. But what did those two victims have in common, that’s what I need to know.’

‘They were in the same place at the same time twice this month, once at the shoot, and again on Ebor Day.’

‘And they have Deirdre Fitzpatrick in common, one taking her photograph and the other taking her to his bed.’

‘Yes. With Fitzpatrick dead, the other man most closely connected to her is Hartigan. He is ruthless, Marcus. He ignored his mother and sister for years, and then used a visit to them as a cover to come here and buy liquor.’

Marcus sighed. ‘He’s a man I don’t want let loose on our streets. If I thought he was involved in murder, I’d see him hang. But Hartigan turns out to have an impeccable alibi. After he had a drink with Runcie in the hotel bar, on Friday night, after the lovely Deirdre had retired, he extricated himself and embarked on an all-night card
game with two other guests, respectable professional men. We have to rule him out.’

I thought about the incident in New York, when Hartigan had allegedly shot a man on a street car and there were no witnesses. ‘Can you be absolutely sure?’

‘Yes. The waiter, Archie Heppelthwaite, would lie under oath for a half crown, but there were other diners who saw the woman go to her room before Hartigan joined Runcie for a drink. I’ve given Hartigan the all clear to leave for Southampton. The sooner he’s back in the arms of the Statue of Liberty, the better I’ll feel.’

We had reached my gate. Like some young courting couple, we lingered, but not for reasons of courtship.

Marcus said, ‘I’m glad to be able to report to our American cousins that Anthony Hartigan visited his terminally ill mother, arranged her funeral, and returned in mourning to Southampton.’

‘You won’t report his dealings with the Scottish distiller?’

Marcus smiled. ‘Last time I looked on our statute book, we had no laws against dealing in spirits. I have no intention of giving US immigration an excuse to deport him back here as an undesirable alien. New York made him, New York can have him back.’

I had rarely heard Marcus sound so downhearted. ‘You don’t think he’ll try and take his sister back with him?’

‘I’d say there’s no love lost between them, and that she could be a nuisance to him, but I just don’t know. I’m concerned that she knows something and could have come to harm. The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to get to the truth.’

I glanced down the street. Marcus’s driver had turned the corner and was parked under the street lamp.

We said goodnight. Marcus insisted on waiting until I had gone inside, as though some monster might leap from the shadows.

After the noise and smoke of the pub, and the busy streets, the empty house felt peaceful. Sookie came to greet me, asking to go out. I opened the back door. She spotted something and made a dash for it, perhaps a field mouse or a pipistrelle bat. I could not make out what she saw.

And then it came to me that Fitzpatrick had seen something, or more likely someone, when he parted from me in such haste at the cemetery yesterday.

The deckchair was still in the back garden. I sat down and stared into the darkness, remembering the scene at the funeral, and my conversation with Fitzpatrick. He had been telling me about Deirdre, and how she helped him after his mother’s death.

I closed my eyes, to help me recall the scene. He had looked across at the nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and said how good they had been to the people of the Bank. Speech suddenly deserted him, and he left me quickly, which was surprising given that I was the only person at the funeral who spoke to him. Then he had stumbled. Eddie, Deirdre’s childhood sweetheart, had grabbed him, to keep him from falling. But now that I pictured the scene again, I wondered, was Eddie catching him, or stopping him? Where or who would Fitzpatrick have got to if Eddie had not intervened?

Had he swung himself on his crutches in the direction of the family, the neighbours, or the nuns?

Fitzpatrick had been looking at the nuns. All wore black, except one. One nun had worn a brown habit. The lenses of her spectacles had caught the sunlight. She must be some novitiate, I thought.

Across the wall, Sookie prowled. She gave one of her giveaway small meows of frustration. Some prey had eluded her.

And then the wild thought came, and those are always the best thoughts though sometimes far too wild to be true. The nun in brown was Deirdre, with a pair of spectacles to aid her disguise. Eddie had recognised her, and so had Fitzpatrick: the two men who loved her.

Eddie had prevented Fitzpatrick from betraying Deirdre. But Fitzpatrick had hoped she would come to him, to his parents’ grave by the wall where they had once stood together. Perhaps he caught her eye and sent a pleading glance before turning in that direction.

Once more, I went over the scenes from the funeral. There was the long walk from the church, all the way up York Road to the cemetery, the hearse, followed by carriages carrying family, including Fitzpatrick and his crutches, priests and nuns. None of the nuns in the carriages wore brown. Some of the younger ones walked, all wearing black.

The figure in brown had appeared only at the cemetery. The more I thought about it, the surer I felt.

Cold night air made me shudder. I went inside.

Back in the house, I tapped on my housekeeper’s door. Mrs Sugden emerged, spectacles on the end of her nose. She held her thumb in a book to mark her place.

‘Sorry to disturb you so late. I saw the light under your door.’

‘I heard you come in. I hope you didn’t walk home on your own among all them drunks.’

‘No, and they’re a harmless bunch.’

She gave one of her doubting snorts. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve just had an idea. I’ve a question concerning nuns’ habits.’

She looked blank. ‘Don’t ask me.’

‘I wasn’t going to. Miss Merton, will she still be up?’

Miss Merton lives across the street. She and Mrs Sugden exchange books and recipes.

‘Oh no. Early to bed, early to rise, that’s her motto.’ She frowned. ‘What kind of nuns’ habits do you want to know about? I know the ones up the road by sight. They teach at the school and walk in twos.’

‘I mean what sort of apparel do they wear? Which order of nuns wear brown, with a cord belt, and sandals?’

‘Isn’t that just like them.’ Mrs Sugden shook her head in disbelief. ‘They’ll swelter in summer from the robes and be martyred to chilblains in winter from the sandals.’

‘About Miss Merton, how early is early?’

‘Rising or retiring?’

‘Both.’

‘Bed at half past nine, up at five.’

‘But she’ll know, about habits?’

‘Most likely. Converts always take their religion over-seriously. There are certain novels she refuses point blank to read.’

‘Well thanks. Goodnight.’

She shook her head. ‘I might as well make some cocoa.’

‘I’ll go across and have a word with her in the morning. And I’ll make the cocoa, for disturbing you.’

‘Did you see the message by the telephone?’

‘No.’

‘Mrs Runcie wants you to telephone to her, no matter what time.’ She put down her book. ‘I’ll make the cocoa.’

Philippa must have been waiting downstairs, near the telephone. She answered herself.

‘Kate, hello. I’m sorry I wasn’t well when you called.’

‘How are you now?’

‘Much better thank you. Do you have any news for me yet?’

‘I hope to have, soon. If my hunch is right, I could find the woman we need to speak to by tomorrow.’

When I knocked on her door at quarter past five the next morning, Miss Merton was already spooning chutney into jars. She showed no surprise at seeing me, but explained that these were windfall apples and we must waste not want not.

She listened as I describe the nun, and how I had seen her at the cemetery, alone and apart from the Little Sisters.

‘And she wore sandals?’

‘Yes.’

‘They’re called the sandalled sisters. Their full title is Sisters of the Sacred Candle of St Genevieve. They gather used up candle wax from all the churches across Yorkshire. They melt it down and make new.’

‘Where is their convent?’

‘It’s in York. I forget the name of the little lane, but it’s off Bishopsgate.’

I thanked her but she did not straightaway let me go. ‘Wait.’ She screwed a lid on a jar. ‘You might as well take this across with you. I promised Mrs Sugden a jar of chutney.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And take one for the sandalled sisters while you’re at it.’ She reached for another lid. ‘You say this nun was alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well that’s not right. They never travel singly. It’s not allowed. They’re always in pairs.’

From York railway station, I turned right into Queen Street, along Nunnery Lane and into Bishopsgate. It was with some misgivings that I wended my way through the narrow lane that led to the convent of the sandalled sisters. As a visitor, I should clang the bell on the iron gate, and wait for someone to come, but the bell, with its chain pull, looked powerful enough to wake the Roman and the Viking dead who lay beneath my feet. The gate opened noiselessly. I stepped into a meticulously kept walled garden blooming with flowers, herbs and vegetables.