Dying in the Wool (2 page)

‘I think I shall enter this photographic contest, Mrs Sugden.’

She peered over my shoulder as she picked up the teapot. ‘Why shouldn’t you? You’re at it often enough. Just don’t ask me to pose.’

She made a dash for the kitchen door, as though I might whip out a camera there and then and tie her to a chair.

With almost three months to the closing date, I would have plenty of time to choose a really good print of one of my old photographs, or to find a new subject. Most of all I like taking photographs of people, people absorbed in doing something, or just being themselves.

Through the window I watched Mrs Sugden empty the teapot. She does not tip tea leaves on her dung heap; that must remain pure. What a challenge it would be to photograph a pile of manure danced on by flies and bluebottles and to do it so vividly and with such art that viewers of that picture would pinch their nostrils. Perhaps not.

I left the fattest letter until last.

Tabitha Braithwaite has a neat, sloping hand like a schoolgirl’s. She gives letter Ls a generous loop. An amateur analyser of handwriting might say she was a generous person, and that would be true.

Her missive covered several sheets, the handwriting becoming larger with each page. As I read it, I forgot to breathe. Our paths had crossed twice during the war, when we were with the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Since then we had met at the opening of the Cavendish Club in Queen Anne House. We were both huge supporters of a club for VAD women in London. Since then we had exchanged letters at Christmas. It must have been in one of my letters that I told her about my sleuthing and the success I have had in finding missing persons.

I had no idea Tabitha had carried such a burden all this time. Not once had she breathed a word about her own personal anxieties and her loss. The gist of her letter was this: her father went missing in August, 1916, a month after her brother was killed on the Somme. Now she is about to marry, and has this great desire that is sending her half-mad. She has a picture in her mind of her father, walking her down the aisle. The wedding will be on Saturday, 6 May at a church in Bingley.

I read the letter again, searching for an explanation as to why she had waited over six and a half years before deciding to instigate a search for her absent parent. Of course, that word came up, that little three-letter word that speared us all. War. But Mr Joshua Braithwaite was a civilian, master of a mill.

The war slowed down normal life. In peacetime if a man went missing, boulders would be rolled back to find him. In wartime, men without uniform seemed less important. Mr Joshua Braithwaite should have been an exception. Between the lines of her letter, I sensed a feeling of shame attaching to the situation. This would explain her reluctance to talk about it.

Mrs Sugden came back into the kitchen and rinsed the teapot under the tap. ‘Anything interesting, madam?’

She calls me madam when she is being nosy. I swear she senses when I have a new case about to begin. She can be a great help and is the soul of discretion.

I heard myself sigh. The letter troubled me. ‘It’s a request for help,’ I said quietly. ‘Sounds like an impossible situation.’

Mrs Sugden pulled out the chair and sat down opposite me. She leaned forward, folding her hands.

‘It’s from a Miss Braithwaite. We first met at a hospital in Leeds during the war, then again in France.’

I couldn’t call Tabitha Braithwaite a great chum as we didn’t know each other all that well, but what we’d been
through gave us a special bond. ‘It’s about her father, a mill owner who disappeared in 1916.’

For once, Mrs Sugden didn’t try to read the letter upside down but gazed at me with that look of piercing sympathy that makes me wonder who she lost as a young woman. I have never asked.

Mrs Sugden’s eyebrows lifted the high forehead into a thoughtful crease. ‘And after all this time she wants you to find him?’

I looked again at the last Page of Tabitha’s letter. ‘Yes. But that’s not all. She wants to engage me in a professional capacity. To reimburse me for expenses incurred she says, and to pay above my usual rate because of the short notice.’

For a moment, Mrs Sugden and I sat in stunned silence. I have helped relatives search out missing persons as a kindness, not a paid service. I could not decide whether to be thrilled, terrified or insulted by the offer of money.

To save Mrs Sugden the strain of upside-down reading, I turned the letter towards her. Frowning, spectacles perched low on her nose, she read. Her thin work-worn fingers, nails ridged with age, turned the pages slowly. She is a fast reader as a rule, devouring novels and exchanging sensational paperbacks with a vast network of female book lovers across Headingley and Woodhouse.

When she had turned over the last sheet, she bit her lower lip as if to aid thought. ‘Well then, at last someone’s doing the right thing.’

‘Searching for her father?’

She pushed the letter back to me across the table. ‘That an’ all. But it’s her offering to pay you for your trouble that impresses me. You’re recognised. You’re making a name for yourself.’

‘It’s only because she knows me.’

‘And knows how you come up trumps.’

What bad timing. I would love to help Tabitha
Braithwaite, but with Mother’s shopping expedition, and the following week off to London, it just couldn’t be done.

‘I read something of this case at the time.’ Mrs Sugden’s memory never fails to impress. She mops up newspaper stories like a blotter dabs ink. ‘Wasn’t he one of them Bradford millionaires?’

‘Not exactly Bradford is it? The Braithwaite mill is in Bridgestead, between Bingley and Keighley.’

She made a dismissive gesture. ‘Same difference. It’s all out in that direction.’

‘What do you remember about the case, Mrs Sugden?’

‘It’s a long time back. A lot’s happened in the last six years.’ She took off her spectacles and polished the lenses on her apron. ‘I do recall my surprise that a man such as Mr Braithwaite should get hisself in bother.’

‘What kind of bother?’

‘You couldn’t get a proper tale out of it. Just the feeling that there was more to it than met the eye. I do recall it was around the time of the tragic explosion at Low Moor. A cousin of mine was one of the firemen who lost his life.’

She picked up the morning paper and slapped it down in annoyance. ‘Look at that. Just look at that.’

Her bony finger accused an item headed “The Varsity Boat Race Name the Crews”. ‘Typical,’ she said. ‘They can name a bunch of young rowers, but did they name my cousin and the other firemen who lost their lives? They did not. Didn’t even say where the explosion happened.’

‘We had censorship. You couldn’t read a weather report, in case it helped the enemy.’

‘Dozens of working people lose their lives, no names no pack drill. One toff goes off the rails and we hear about that all right.’

If Mrs Sugden could edit
The Times
, she would make it very clear what was news and what was not.

She opened the kitchen drawer. ‘But if the lass wants
you to find her dad …’ Rooting among the bottle openers, string, tape, sealing wax and tape measures, she found a jotter and a stub of pencil. ‘I better scratch out details of where you’re going. Just to be on’t safe side. No doubt your mam’ll be turning that telephone red hot.’

‘I don’t see how I can help Tabitha, at least not before her wedding. She’s getting married in …’ I consulted the letter. ‘Five weeks.’ I watched Mrs Sugden copy down Tabitha Braithwaite’s address and telephone number. ‘Obviously I’d like to help her. But people must have looked for him at the time. The trail will be stone cold.’

What I didn’t add was that it terrified me to be thought of as a professional sleuth, accepting payment and expenses. Now I half regretted boasting to Tabitha that I traced the errant officer to the Kent bank when a professional investigator had failed.

It would be fraudulent to take money from Tabitha. I’m not a proper investigator, just stubborn, and sometimes lucky. My usual contacts for tracing missing soldiers were through the regiments. Officers and men were always willing to help. This was different. Yet the challenge of Tabitha’s request pleased me. If I could find out what happened to Joshua Braithwaite, a civilian with no regimental links to exploit, a trail gone cold, it would be a real achievement. It might change me in some way. I’d have an entitlement, would earn respect. As it is, I’m a sort of lady bountiful of the dead end. The person a wife or mother turns to when she does not know how to find something out for herself, or when all lines of enquiry turn cold.

So why shouldn’t I take on a difficult task and accept money?

It might at least excuse me from short-notice dress-shopping trips.

Mrs Sugden raised her high forehead, creating a perfect set of horizontal lines. ‘You’ve said yes already.’

‘No I haven’t.’

‘I can see it in your eyes. You can’t resist.’

I tucked Tabitha’s letter into the inside pocket of my jacket. ‘It won’t hurt to look into it. Since you remember reading about Joshua Braithwaite in the newspaper, I’ll go to the
Herald
and see whether I can unearth that article you mentioned.’

And any others that there may have been, I thought to myself. I would grab a notebook, and cycle to the newspaper offices. Touch of swift pedalling and I could be there in twenty minutes.

Mrs Sugden brightened. She likes me to be out of the way for an hour or two. It leaves her free to lavish attention on the dung heap, which receives the contents of her chamber pot.

‘What do I say if your mam rings?’ she asked.

I cycled onto Headingley Lane. No one had told the month of March to skedaddle and give way to April. A chilly gust blew against the back of my neck, so cold it tickled. Sails on a bicycle would be a good idea, to be hoisted in a favourable breeze, providing extra power.

On Woodhouse Lane, by the edge of the moor, a telegram boy took it into his bonce to race me. For a while we were neck and neck, earning a curse from the rag and bone man we overtook. That curse slowed me down, but not the boy. He streaked ahead before pulling in front of me, daring me to brake or swerve. He turned his head, raising his too-small cap and grinning at me like a gargoyle. I waved defeat.

Go on, spotty lad. Something has to cheer your day before you end up under a tram.

I slowed down at the top of Albion Street. Sandwich boards on the kerb, and posters in the window proclaimed the day’s headline news. “Irish Bill Becomes Law – Mr Churchill and the New Agreement.”

All of a sudden, I had misgivings. The folly of my mission seeped through me, like when you have sat too long on a damp stone during the break in a walk and not realised until you arise that your skirt is wet. I would need to be discreet about my enquiries. Tabitha would not thank me if some reporter guessed my task and her father’s story found its way back into print.

The doorman suggested that I park my bicycle round the
back of the building. I wheeled the bike through an alley to a flagged yard where men in shirtsleeves and waistcoats were heaving tied bundles of the second edition onto a bogie to be pushed through the alley, ready for loading and delivery to the sellers and newsagents throughout the city.

I leaned my bike against the railings and made my way to the front office. A florid-faced porter chewed his pencil over a diamond-shaped crossword puzzle. He didn’t look up, having that air of regarding the general public as too much trouble altogether.

If I were a bona fide investigator, I would have a card and some justification for poking my snitch in.

‘Hello. I’d like to see copies of the newspaper from the summer of 1916 please.’

‘Public library, madam.’ He did not look up.

‘I want to buy some back copies.’

He chewed on the pencil, as he raised his eyes and gave me a cool glance. ‘If you want to buy a back copy, you have to know the date.’

‘I’ll know the date when I’ve looked for what I want.’

‘Public library. Our library here, it’s the company’s archive, for access by the reporters.’

I knew very well that I could consult papers in the public library, but hoped that somewhere during the course of my visit I might be able to dig out that extra revealing titbit of information about Joshua Braithwaite.

I did a Mrs Sugden and read one of the porter’s crossword clues upside down. ‘Are you stuck on 4 across?’

His eyes met mine, with a hostile glare.

What was the matter with him? Perhaps he’d got out of the wrong side of bed, or didn’t like women. I pressed on regardless, saying somewhat apologetically, ‘I’m a bit of a crossword fan myself.’

We had to solve four clues together before he melted a little. I took advantage of the crack in the ice to push him a little further.

‘I’m researching for a friend who’s writing a play set in the summer of 1916. I need to get some local flavour of what was going on, just for background, and to take him some newspapers to have handy.’

The lie sounded reasonable enough to me, and also to the porter. He put down his pencil.

Pushing my advantage, I smiled sweetly. ‘My playwright friend says how the press is our country’s fifth estate, neglected at our peril.’