Friendship's Bond (38 page)

‘I was some distance on towards the houses at Monway Sidings but still averse to leaving Sarah standing alone. I looked back determined to return to wait with her, but I saw someone had joined her so I went on my way.’

‘I see, and was the someone you seen with her a man?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could you see who it was? Did you recognise him, was it someone you know?’

Who would know him better! ‘You must understand, I was a distance away, it was dusk . . . I can’t be sure.’

‘But you ’ave some idea, you’ve seen the man afore.’

Not a question this time. Thorpe gloated at the way he had led the interview to this point, exactly where he wanted it.

‘
. . . should I fail to get what is owed by one then I simply take it from the other, male or female, woman or boy, either is acceptable.
’

His threat made to Ann Spencer sang in his brain, in addition to a joyous chorus in his soul.

‘
. . . but taking from both at the same time is infinitely more acceptable
.’

This was the way heaven wanted it; Thomas Thorpe was merely the Lord’s instrument.

‘I . . .’ He swallowed his satisfaction, replacing it with marked disinclination. ‘This can’t be taken as positive identification but . . . but it looked to be the young man living in the house of Leah Marshall.’

Chapter 34

‘You ’ave to be mekin’ of a mistake!’ Leah frowned at the two men in her tiny living room.

One of the men answered, polite but firm. ‘Possibly, Mrs Marshall, but we have to follow up all information.’

‘Information!’ Leah snapped. ‘An’ who be it give that information?’

‘I’m sorry.’ The man shook his head briefly. ‘I am not at liberty to say.’

‘But y’be at liberty to question folk, to accuse a young lad.’

The woman was angry, the constable had warned of the likelihood. Detective Inspector John Allingham brushed a finger over the bowler hat held in his hands. ‘Nobody is being accused, Mrs Marshall, we simply wish to speak with the young man. Is he here?’

‘He be in the stable.’ Leah’s reply rattled like stones against a roof.

‘I’ll fetch him,’ Ann answered from the other side of the room.

With a brief nod at the uniformed man accompanying him the inspector glanced at Ann. ‘Thank you Miss Spencer, the constable here’ll go along with you.’

‘Her ain’t like to tell him to run off!’

A policeman at the door was not the most welcome sight at any time and now with a local murder it had to be more disagreeable.

‘I didn’t expect she would,’ the inspector said patiently, ‘but rules are rules, Mrs Marshall, and it is the constable who must request that the lad come for questioning.’

‘He’ll be like to tell you the same as y’ve ’eard already from the wench and me.’ Leah wasn’t going to be overridden easily. ‘Don’t know what else you expects, that lad wouldn’t harm so much as a fly, but I won’t go sayin’ the same for meself should I find who the one be a tryin’ to blacken of his name.’

This woman had lost her own three children. She had taken the young woman and the younger lad into her home after they could no longer pay the rental of chapel property; two young people unrelated by blood. The boy also was not British. Waiting in silence the inspector made a mental review of his research.

‘You wish to speak with me.’

The faintest trace of an accent, finely chiselled features, fair almost blond hair, blue-grey eyes: all fitted with the description he had been given; but he had not bargained for the open honesty in that face, the genuineness of the smile. The inspector accepted the chair along with the tea brusquely offered by Leah, smiling to himself as he laid aside his bowler hat. There was many a wealthy home he’d had cause to visit could learn a lesson or two in hospitality from these people; worried as they were at a police visit, it did not permit the teapot to rest on the hob.

‘Your name is Alec Romney, is that correct?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘It is all right to call you Alec?’

Smiling at the ready ‘of course, sir’, the inspector stirred milk into the hot liquid, sipping from time to time while listening quietly to Alec’s account of leaving Russia to arrive eventually in Wednesbury. It accorded perfectly with the account heard earlier from the girl.

‘The night before last,’ he asked as Alec finished speaking, ‘can you tell me where you were let us say between the hours of six and nine in the evening?’

‘Yes sir.’ Alec’s grin was rueful. ‘I was at Hill Rise. I stayed later than I should . . . it worried Grandmother Leah.’

‘Hill Rise be Edward Langley’s farm over towards King’s Hill.’

‘Thank you,’ Allingham acknowledged the constable, then to Alec, ‘What time did you leave?’

‘Mr Langley’s clock showed a few minutes past six.’

‘Did Mr Langley accompany you back to this house?’

‘No sir, I . . . I rushed off without saying goodnight, it was rude of me.’

‘Was time your only reason for leaving so suddenly?’

Alec answered after a brief pause. ‘No sir. Not entirely, it . . . it was something I read in Mr Langley’s newspaper.’

‘A newspaper report?’ The inspector echoed.

‘Be ’ere . . .’ Leah passed a folded newspaper, her finger tapping the relevant section.

‘ ‘‘The Russian Tsar and his family to be put on trial.’’ ’ The inspector looked up from reading. ‘Why would that have you leave the Langley place without a word?’

‘The lad be worried,’ Leah came in quickly. ‘His folks be back there, with all that be goin’ on in that country he be feared there’ll be neither folk nor home left for him to go back to. Ain’t you never took y’self off when it seemed worry were all too much, d’ain’t you never fear when you was a lad!’

‘War is a bad time when it’s nation against nation but civil strife, friend fighting friend, would I imagine be even more dreadful, and news such as what be reported there be bound to set folk at one another’s throat. So I understand you being worried for your family. I hope you hear soon that they are safe.’

Leah took back the newspaper, her eyes flashing anger the policeman’s words had not appeased. ‘Be that all – be you done wi’ your questionin’?’

‘Not quite.’ Inspector Allingham glanced again at the boy. ‘Alec, you said you left Hill Rise a few minutes after six, is that correct?’ At Alec’s nod he went on, ‘And you arrived here at this house at what time?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. I didn’t think to look at the clock.’

Evasion? The inspector wondered.

‘It were goin’ on twenty past eight, least that were the time showed on that there clock and it don’t never be more’n a minute or two out. But y’can ask of Edward Langley, the chimes of St Bartholomew’s clock can be ’eard clean across the town, and with his bein’ out on the heath he couldn’t help but hear the quarter-hour soundin’.’

Collusion? They could have worked all of this out between them. When the constable finished writing Allingham said, ‘Hill Rise Farm, Constable, how long do you estimate it would take me to walk from there to this house?’

‘Hmm!’ The constable pondered a minute. ‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Well sir, I means whether y’be walkin’ by way of the town or else across the ’eath. Comin’ along of the town I would say a man should do it in ’alf an hour, bit longer for a woman her not p’raps ’avin’ the stride of y’self.’

‘And if I . . . or a woman . . . chose the way of the heath?’

‘Then I’d advise against—’

At the other man’s irritated, ‘Constable!’ the uniformed policeman cleared his throat with an embarrassed cough, going on to say, ‘The ’eath be riddled with spent coal mines, the shafts covered wi’ bracken, that is the ones as be knowed of an’ there be many as ain’t. That bein’ the way of it a body would need watch every step; I’d reckon on puttin’ another fifteen minutes on that ’alf-hour.’

‘And if the journey is made in the evening?’

Behind the chair occupied by his superior the constable looked across at Leah. He’d grown up with the woman’s sons, sat with them in the classroom, shared their horseplay in long summer evenings.

It be all right, I knows you have your duty
.

The constable read Leah’s silent message. ‘By way of the ’eath be a much shorter route but crossin’ in the dark . . . I’d say ’alf-hour if you wishes to get across safe.’

‘Half an hour.’ The inspector echoed.

Leah recognised the tone, the calculation behind it. ‘I knows what you be a thinkin’, so why did the lad tek so long? You’ll get to answer if you does for y’self what he done . . . you be a stranger to these parts same as ’im, you knows as little about the pits an’ open shafts as the lad, but like ’im y’knows they be many and every one a waitin’ to drag a body deep into the bowels of the earth; to my way of thinkin’ that meks the pair of you equal so why not you go y’self now while it be dark, you cross that heath alone and see the time it teks.’

The woman had a point and all power to her elbow for making it, but he still had a job to do. Looking at Leah, at the challenge sharp in her eyes, John Allingham nodded.

‘I take your point, a man would indeed need take his time.’

‘As would a lad!’

‘As would a lad.’ He acknowledged the quick retort then reached for his bowler hat, saying as he ran his finger over the domed crown, ‘That is a pretty necklace you have, Mrs Marshall.’

Leah smiled at the boy beside Ann. ‘It were a present from Alec.’

‘He bought—’

‘Please,’ the inspector held up a restraining hand, ‘if you don’t mind, Miss Spencer, I would rather Alec answer himself.’

‘I got them from a gypsy,’ Alec answered at once. ‘Their caravans were parked on ground along . . .’ He looked at Ann.

‘Dale Street.’

‘Dale . . . Street.’ The constable wrote laboriously, his superior waiting until he finished before nodding to Alec to proceed.

‘The caravans were so beautifully painted, I was telling Ann I had never seen the like in Russia when a young woman came across to us asking we buy a trinket. I had money Mr Langley insisted I take for helping with the milk floats. What better to spend it on than a present for a loved one?’

‘Them.’ Allingham cradled the bowler. ‘You said you bought “them”; that implies you purchased more than one.’

Alec smiled a little sheepishly. ‘Two,’ he said, ‘I bought two, one for Grandmother Leah and one for Ann.’

‘But you do not wear your gift, Miss Spencer?’

‘That is my fault, I draped the necklace over the ears of the horse telling Ann how my sister and I would place strings of beads over the ears of Vanka, my donkey, and how Vanka would trot proudly about the grounds as though he were still in the circus ring.’ Alec paused. ‘Sorry . . . I should have known.’

‘So this second necklace, where is it now?’

‘I do not know, sir,’ Alec replied quietly. ‘Rosie, the horse, must have flicked it off. I did not notice until I brought her into the stable; the necklace could have been anywhere along any one of those streets leading here.’

‘Mmm.’ The inspector mused a moment then, ‘This second necklace, the one which was lost, did it have the same colour of stone as Mrs Marshall’s has?’

‘No. I chose colours I thought to complement their eyes; Grandmother Leah’s eyes are the colour of ripe chestnuts so for her I chose amber while for Ann I took azure because her eyes are that lovely gentian blue of perfect summer sky.’

The scratch of the constable’s pencil fell silent. Inspector John Allingham rose to his feet.

‘Alec Romney,’ he looked up from smoothing the crown of the bowler hat, ‘I must ask you to accompany me to the station there to give a formal statement.’

‘Why?’

‘What for, the lad ain’t done nothin’!’

Leah’s hot protest joined Ann’s question.

Allingham was sober-faced as he replied. ‘We have a witness placing Alec Romney at the scene of a murder. We have the body of a girl who was strangled with a necklace, a necklace such as that Alec Romney states he purchased from a gypsy, but subsequently lost: a necklace with a blue glass bead.’

‘So your young friend has been arrested.’

Ann’s breath caught as a figure stepped from the shadows to bar her way.

‘Alec is not arrested, he is simply giving the police a statement.’

‘Statement you say.’ A thick chuckle erupted in the darkness. ‘So if it is only a statement they want why is he not returning home with you? How come they haven’t released him?’

Thomas Thorpe! She did not need to see the face of the man blocking her path; the sound of the voice was something she would forever remember. She sidestepped but on the instant a hand fastened on her arm, the fingers biting with savage pressure.

‘Let me tell you why he is being kept locked up. He is a murderer, he strangled Sarah Clews.’

‘No!’ Ann screamed, trying at the same time to shake off the hand.

‘Oh but yes.’ It slid smooth as a serpent. ‘There was a witness, a witness who will swear on oath to seeing him with her on the heath.’