Dying in the Wool (35 page)

‘Such as?’

‘Question for question. But because you already interrogated me at Milton House, I must have two questions for every one that you ask.’

It made me smile to think he was as wary of me as I of him.

‘There! You smiled. We don’t have to interrogate. We could just sit and chat and see what comes out.’

‘Very well. But can we get one thing out of the way first, Dr Grainger?’

‘That’s a question, so I’m due two. Answer: yes.’

‘My aunt tries to matchmake for me. I don’t encourage it and I don’t wish it.’

He gave a short breathy whistle. ‘That puts me in my place. And it does clear the air. Thank you.’

The look that crossed his face as he whistled was so fleeting that I could not tell whether he was genuinely disappointed or simply pretending to be disappointed out of politeness.

My telephone call came through. I apologised and walked to the hall.

Mrs Sugden put the picture restorer on the line to speak to me. I listened to what he had to say.

‘I see. Yes. Would you describe the figure please, age, appearance? … I see. Thank you. Yes, do please continue the work.’

I asked to speak again to Mrs Sugden. ‘Would you please get in touch with Mr Sykes, and tell him what the picture restorer has just told me?’

I returned to the lounge, feeling dazed.

‘Are you all right?’ Dr Grainger asked.

‘Yes – just had a bit of a surprise about something that’s all. Shall we go up to lunch?’

We both plumped for onion soup. He chose the pork chop, I decided on steak and kidney pudding.

I was glad he suggested a good wine. It was brought quickly and after one or two sips we both began to relax. He told me more about his work preparing for the opening of the Maudsley Hospital, how glad he was to be back in London.

‘I’m glad it’s working out well for you.’

Suddenly he looked guilty.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to harp on about myself so much. You were married to a doctor I believe?’

‘Yes. A surgeon.’

He nodded.

For a moment we were silent. There is so little one can say when one contemplates the great waste we have all come through, that we stumble through still, gathering up the broken threads of our lives.

Over the soup, I talked about Gerald, how we met by chance in the summer of 1913. Gerald had a post at Leeds General Infirmary and would come over to Wakefield where I lived with my parents. We knew the train timetable by heart.

‘And will you stay in Leeds, or perhaps come to London?’ He cut into his pork chop, looking rather enviously at my steak and kidney pud.

I shrugged. ‘I’ve no particular reason to come to London.’

A week ago I would have had no particular reason not to. Now I was a private detective with an employee in Leeds, and a case to solve.

The dining room was filling up. I recognised one or two women by sight from the grand opening of the club two years ago.

‘You like it here, don’t you?’ Grainger asked.

‘I do.’

‘Good choice. There aren’t many clubs in London where you’ll get such a good value lunch.’

That’s because so many former VADs are damned hard up, idiot.

We finished the main course. I wondered when he would find his way to saying what he had failed to tell me last night.

He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with the serviette.
‘Before the war, I got to know Josephine Tuffnell. Did you ever meet her?’

‘Yes.’ She was one of the 1912 debutantes, a great beauty, with a title in the family that went back almost as far as my mother’s and aunt’s. ‘I heard her play and sing once. She’s very good and seemed charming.’

They were all charming. Who knows what had happened to her since?

‘We were close, but … I wasn’t approved of by the family. Last night, or in the early hours, when I left the others, I walked along the Embankment, and I thought of her and wondered what she was doing now.’

‘Why don’t you find out?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, that I‘m asking you this. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all.’ I didn’t say that it was a great relief to me, nor that there was a touch of disappointment in that relief. ‘Why didn’t the Tuffnells approve of you?’

‘Her family decided that a mere medical man of no fortune was quite unsuitable.’

‘I don’t think the family has a great fortune?’

‘No – only the title and there’s a tumbling family pile that will go to her brother. But I believe there’s a great need for ready cash and I don’t answer that need.’

‘How sad.’

‘I caught sight of her a few weeks ago, when I came to town for a Maudsley meeting …’

Liars should have good memories. He had told me only last week that he was still considering his options.

‘… I was on an omnibus and she was walking along the pavement. I got off at the next stop, but she’d disappeared. I’d like to see her again, but I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea, after everything that’s happened. We’ve all changed … and I’ve had all that time in Yorkshire …’

Now we were at the crux of the matter. He might satisfy my curiosity about his affair with Evelyn. I wanted to know, but dreaded that he would be a man who kisses and tells.

‘Will you be keeping up any of the Yorkshire connections?’ I asked in what I hoped was a tactful tone.

‘Don’t think so. That’s a closed chapter.’ He shut his lips tightly and concentrated on spearing a potato. So he was not going to prattle about Evelyn, thank goodness.

‘Everything’s different now, Dr Grainger. For most girls, no prince is going to come along. Even the dimmest of parents realise that. If Yorkshire’s a closed chapter, try and see Josephine again. Besides, she’ll be of an age to make up her own mind now.’

He leaned forward, a puzzled frown on his face. ‘But how? What should I do after all this time?’

I stifled a laugh. Here he was, a widower, having had an affair of who knew how long with Evelyn Braithwaite, a psychiatrist at the helm of the soon-to-be major psychiatric hospital, and he was asking me for advice on his love life. A bit bloody rich!

‘You could write her a letter.’

‘I’m not sure she would get it. My letters were intercepted before.’

‘Then wait outside her house, preferably in the rain, a bouquet of flowers in your hand.’

‘You’re right! I shall.’

He raised his glass to clink mine.

‘Is this why you wanted to meet for lunch? For advice on your love life?’

Because if so you should have offered to take me to the Ritz, Tightwad.

‘No. No, sorry. I shouldn’t have even brought that up.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘The truth is … well, it’s this … the thing is, when we talked before, I wasn’t entirely candid.’

‘Really?’ I exaggerated my surprise. Which of the not-candids
did you have in mind, I wanted to ask. There were several. ‘You did put me off by saying you had yet to finish preparing a talk about the dreams of the men you’d been treating. In fact, you must have given that speech at least half a dozen times.’

His jaw tensed. He tugged at his collar. Either he was very poor at covering his emotions or he was deliberately acting ill-at-ease. ‘I’m sorry. It was an untruth. I didn’t know what you wanted. I felt uneasy about Braithwaite’s disappearance. Culpable you might say. I needed time before being able to address the matter.’

We waited until the waitress had taken our plates.

Although our puddings had not arrived, he toyed with his spoon. ‘May I tell you something in absolute confidence?’

‘Please do.’

‘Evelyn Braithwaite wasn’t my patient. She did now and then read for the patients, or write a letter, or sit and talk. But she came to Milton House primarily for reasons that I can’t divulge.’

‘You don’t have to, but in saying that you already have! I had worked it out.’

‘You know?’

‘I saw you together.’

Our apple crumble arrived.

I waited, spoon poised for his next admission.

‘Tell me, Mrs Shackleton, if I may ask, when you embark on these investigations of yours, it’s clearly a great and diverting challenge.’

‘That’s your question?’

‘Not quite. When you conclude the investigations, do you feel an immense satisfaction?’

‘Not always. Arriving at the truth can be uncomfortable.’

‘Then it’s the chase you like, the search?’

I smiled. ‘I’m very glad that the object of your desires
is Josephine Tuffnell and not Kate Shackleton.’

‘And the answer?’

‘I haven’t stood back to think about that. It’s just something I started to do almost accidentally.’

‘When?’

He wanted me to say that I had begun after Gerald went missing. He expected that I did this work out of a great sense of loss, to find some meaning in the absence of the man I loved.

‘Too many questions, Dr Grainger. Eat your apple crumble while it’s still hot.’

He made a gesture of surrender and took a spoonful of apple crumble and custard. ‘This reminds me of boarding school.’

‘You must have gone to a good boarding school, Dr Grainger. Our custard had far more lumps.’

‘If we’re going to compare childhood custard, I think you should call me Gregory.’

‘Agreed. It’s Kate.’

‘I know. It’s a lovely name.’

It was one of those impossible to control teapots. However carefully you pour, something drips onto the table cloth. He watched me make a mess of pouring, and sighed.

‘Take over yourself if you can do any better,’ I offered.

‘It’s not that. There’s something I’m going to have to tell you now, that I should have said before. This is very difficult. I don’t know how to own up.’

‘Is this why you rang me, what you couldn’t say last night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then just say it.’

‘That Monday, the day Joshua Braithwaite went missing, I saw him.’

‘In the hospital?’

He nodded, spooning sugar into his tea and stirring very
slowly. ‘But also – outside of the hospital, on the hills. Evelyn was with me, in the consulting room. He’d tried to telephone his solicitor, on both days, and got nowhere. He’d asked about Tabitha, who was away, and asked about his wife. Well, Evelyn had said she didn’t want to see him. The next morning, he was due before the magistrates. Anyway, after we’d … talked, Evelyn thought perhaps she ought to see him.’

‘This was before you spotted him on the hills?’

‘That’s right. I can’t remember now whether it was her idea to see him, or my idea. Mr Braithwaite had asked for her. I called an orderly to fetch Mr Braithwaite to the consulting room. The orderly came back to tell me Mr Braithwaite was nowhere to be found. He’d gone.’

‘What time would that have been?’

‘About four o’clock.’

‘Did Evelyn seem surprised?’

‘Yes, very. I must admit it crossed my mind that she may have been manipulating me in order to give her husband time to vamoose, but later I realised that wasn’t the situation. I went upstairs, to his room, and sure enough he was gone.’

‘What would he have been wearing?’

‘The hospital blues. His own clothing had been taken away, as a precaution. I told the orderly to search, search the building and the grounds. You know the size of that place.’

‘The orderly, was it Kellett by any chance?’

‘No. He was off duty, it was the other chap, Stafford. Anyway, I looked out of the window. From the upstairs windows you get an excellent view across the moors.’

‘Yes, I know that area. Tabitha and I walked there one day and we saw Milton House. It seemed much nearer to the road from there. It’s actually a fair way off.’

‘That may be, but that’s where he was. I’m sure it was he – running across the fells, a small figure in blue. I went
to fetch binoculars to make sure.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I went downstairs and told Evelyn. She said that sounded like him. He was a great runner as a younger chap, took part in fell races and so on.’

‘And then?’

‘I was all for ringing Constable Mitchell. He was the one who’d given me responsibility, though it was the last thing I’d wanted. Evelyn asked would I wait. She didn’t want any more of a hoo-ha and scandal than there’d been already.’

‘That’s a bit rich, given that she could have probably put the hat on things much earlier.’ I could have bit my tongue. Not only because of the indiscretion but because he may think me jealous of his affair with Evelyn.

He showed no sign of reacting to my remark, except to say, ‘Be that as it may, I agreed. I said I’d get a search going round the grounds and roundabout, and only then call the constable.’

‘So what was Evelyn’s plan?’

‘She was on horseback. She would intercept him. In the event, she couldn’t find him.’