The Cuckoo's Child (18 page)

Gideon Beaumont, however, was still proving to be elusive. The request to see him elicited the answer from the buxom young woman in a starched apron who answered the door that he had gone out some time since.

‘When will he be back?'

‘Dinner's on the table at half past twelve.' As if it were unthinkable that even the young master would dare to miss the appointed time for meals.

‘That's not long to wait, then.'

‘That motor of his allowing.' She had a strong, handsome face and a no nonsense air. ‘Miss Una's in, though, and Mrs Beaumont.'

‘I'd rather wait to see Mr Beaumont, first.' Womersley wanted to talk to them both, and to the servants, too, but rich aromas of roast meat were wafting through to where they stood on the step. He'd get no cooperation from anyone in the run up to serving the Sunday dinner. ‘Is there anywhere we can wait, Miss—?'

‘Jessie. Jessie Thwaite. You'd best come in.'

She showed them into what was evidently a library, though not Womersley's idea of what a library ought to be – they should have leather chairs drawn up to roaring fires, shaded lamps. This was a miserable room that wouldn't encourage anyone to stay there and read. It looked as if there was some sort of clearing up job in progress. On most of the shelves the spines of the books were neatly lined up and seemed as though they might have received a recent polish, but more lay in dusty, untidy piles. Writing implements and folders containing papers were spread on the big table.

He decided to give the heavy, uninviting armchair in front of the empty grate a miss. The other chairs were straight-backed, upholstered in some stiff, shiny black stuff with the horsehair emerging in places, and they looked hard, as he found they were indeed when he had drawn one to the window and lowered his comfortable frame. He popped in a mint and sat back, while Rawlinson, hands in pockets, bobbed about examining the books, grimacing. Apparently not to his taste. Womersley closed his eyes.

Rawlinson found himself a chair at last, sat back with his legs stretched out, his hands stuck in his pockets. His position offered him a glimpse of that part of the house that was the ruined wing. There was a story there, about that fire, he was sure, a story behind the bare facts Doctor Widdop had been unwilling to go beyond. It had been a tragedy which was part of the background to Ainsley Beaumont's life, and Rawlinson was determined to find out more about it. What he was, how he had acted, and why, must have contributed to the reason he was now dead by another's hand. The old man's death hadn't come about arbitrarily, whatever Womersley might wish to think. The inspector professed himself not at all interested in the newfangled scientific tools which were being developed and used to solve crimes – he was barely convinced about fingerprints as evidence, for God's sake! – much less in the psychology of criminology, the twists and turns of the human mind that caused one person to take the life of another. He was more at home with the sort of crime common in this neck of the woods: a fight between man and wife when one or other of them was hit with the poker or stabbed with the bread knife; or someone killed in a drunken brawl after a Saturday night booze-up, when bottles were thrown across the streets and anyone might get caught in the crossfire. Rough-houses like that were common enough, especially amongst the hard drinking Neller valley descendants of those fighting Irish who had come over the sea and provided labour to build the canals. All the same, he'd been a good copper in his day.

The inspector sighed gustily, his chin sunk on his chest, his eyes closed. Rawlinson grinned affectionately and let him doze.

Womersley, however, wasn't asleep. He had the enviable facility of being able to close his eyes to his surroundings while sifting through his thoughts, without dropping off. Besides, the temperature of the room prevented any inclination to doze, not to mention the horsehair pricking him right through his trousers. After a while, some slight sound outside caused him to open his eyes just in time to see a young man, handsome in knickerbockers, tweed jacket and windblown hair, his cap in his hand, arriving by means of an agile leap over the garden wall. So it looked as though Gideon Beaumont hadn't taken his car to get to wherever he'd been, after all. A strong, slim young man, his cheeks flushed with exercise, he came into the room a minute later.

For a moment, out there in the hall, when Jessie had told him who was waiting to see him, Gideon had debated whether to go into the library immediately or not. He was hungry, dinner was in the offing and the prospect of talking to the police was not one he welcomed, after the last humiliating hour he'd just spent.

He'd walked down into Wainthorpe to catch Emmie Broomhead as she came out of morning service at St Mary's, the Anglican church where her father was a churchwarden. Propping himself up on the wall opposite the church, he waited, holding on to his patience while the last hymn was sung, the organ voluntary was played, and the congregation had filed out and shaken hands with the vicar. Broomhead had come out at last, followed by Emmie, on the arm of Stanley Priestley, the smarmy fellow who was articled to her father.

‘Morning, Mr Broomhead, morning Emmie. Stan.'

Broomhead nodded shortly and Emmie gave him a cool smile. Stanley smirked. When Richard Broomhead then made as if to pass on and Emmie, without much hesitation, followed suit, it needed nothing more to tell Gideon that the Beaumonts – himself in particular – were no longer on the Broomhead social register. The solicitor had evidently taken serious offence at Gideon's incautious remarks when the will had been read, and the aspersions against his professional character (though they were damned well true! It was hardly a secret in Wainthorpe that Dick Broomhead could sometimes be less than discreet after dining with his cronies down at the Liberal Club – it was certainly why Grandpa had that new will drawn up by someone else.) That Broomhead was the sort to hold on to a grudge was no surprise either, but Gideon had thought better of high-spirited Emmie, being so easily swayed by her father's opinions, taking her cue from him and worse, buttering up to soapy Stanley, whom she'd hitherto professed to despise.

He had been well and truly snubbed. Well, to the devil with that! thought Gideon, hurt and affronted.

He'd come down here this morning meaning to thank Emmie for the pretty little note of sympathy she'd sent him when she'd heard that his grandfather had died, surprising him as well as touching him, for he was not unaware that Emmie liked to receive rather than to give, and wasn't renowned for her scholarship, either. She'd clearly made an effort, her handwriting had been childishly painstaking, and there had only been two spelling mistakes. He knew she had thought him a good catch. Now, after his thoughtless, though unintended, insult to her father, she'd been encouraged to have second thoughts. At any rate it was evident she wanted to punish him.

Then let her! There were other fish in the sea. Gideon didn't bother to prolong the agony, said a curt goodbye and stormed off up the hill back to Farr Clough at a punishing pace. And on the way there he recovered his temper surprisingly quickly.

His attachment to Emmie had been another thing of which his grandpa had not entirely approved. He'd pooh-poohed it as puppy love, and told Gideon he could do better for himself than a spoilt little ninny like Emmie Broomhead; he could more profitably seek to ally himself with one of the richer families in the Neller valley. Gideon now found himself admitting that Ainsley had probably been right, in that as in many other things. He was sore, his pride was hurt, he felt bitterly humiliated, but he didn't think his heart was broken.

When he reached the top of the lane he paused and looked back at the mill and the spread of the buildings below, idle today, not running.

For as long as he could remember, Cross Ings Mill had been part of his life. He had known from a child every dark, greasy corner – where the cockroaches scuttled of a morning when you put on a light, and where the wool-dust blew and clung tenaciously to every greasy pipe and window frame; where the dirty fleeces were sorted at the top of the building by men wearing blue and white checked ‘brats', which covered them from head to toe in an endeavour to keep them protected from the deadly woolsorters' disease, anthrax. From the noisy engine house where the boiler that powered the mill's machinery was stoked with coal, to the grease-works where the lanolin was extracted from the waste water after the sheep's wool had been scoured. From the stinking wash-house, through the noisy carding and combing, and the spinning, to the weaving sheds where the shuttles flew across the power looms and the deafening noise was like a thousand devils.

Never mind Emmie, this was more important. Ainsley had been a young man once, as young as he was, and he had become master of Cross Ings. And yes, by Heaven, so would he.

Thirteen

‘You've come to tell us we can go ahead with the funeral,' he said directly to Womersley when he entered the library, after Womersley had introduced himself and his sergeant. He could otherwise see no reason for the police to be here.

‘Before we come to that, will you ask the rest of your family to join us, sir? They'll want to hear what I have to say.'

For a moment it looked as though he were about to demand further explanation, this youthful heir to the Beaumont tradition. He was young, very young to be burdened with what recent events had thrust upon him, but Womersley recalled that both the doctor and Whiteley Hirst had spoken well of him; there was intelligence and a firm set to his jaw that spoke of his ability to cope when he had overcome the initial shock his grandfather's death had brought, thought Womersley, himself a good judge of young men's potential. Gideon left the room and came back, accompanied by his mother.

An imposing woman, Amelia Beaumont, plainly dressed in severe but well-cut mourning, a jet brooch at her neck. Womersley tried, not very successfully, to reconcile what he saw with the picture Widdop had painted of the light-minded young woman Theo Beaumont had married. Flightiness was not a quality he would have associated with this guarded, unsmiling and outwardly utterly respectable woman. He rose from where he was sitting and moved to offer the tabby-covered chair when she entered, but she obviously preferred to subject herself to the torment of the unyielding horsehair, and he stepped back, rebuffed.

She was followed into the room by her daughter, a tall, slender young woman, also in black, accompanied by a fierce-looking and somewhat malodorous cross-breed Airedale, who fortunately sat obediently when commanded and put his square nose on her feet. Gideon stood with his hand on the back of her chair. There was no point in beating about the bush, no way in which he could lessen the impact of what they were about to hear. Womersley gave it to them straight, translating the medical language of the report of their grandfather's death, in so far as he understood it, into plain English, and indicating what this might mean.

An appalled silence fell when he had finished.

During the last melancholy few days they had all been trying their best to accept the unacceptable manner of the head of the family's death as an unfortunate accident. Some sort of freak accident perhaps, but an accident nonetheless. The idea of Ainsley committing suicide had obviously never been considered as a serious possibility by any of them. But now, there was this staggering revelation, which they were prepared to believe even less. Una sat with her eyes fastened on him, her very silence a refutation.

Gideon, too, was speechless. He had gone very white. For all his outward self-confidence, the lad needs to grow a thicker skin, Womersley thought.

Before they came in, he had asked for water to be brought. Rawlinson, ever alert, saw this was the moment to pour out a tumblerful. Mrs Beaumont shook her head, so he handed it to Una. She took it from him automatically and he watched her, a little smitten, as she held it without drinking, as though she didn't know what to do with it. With her fragile looks and smooth, honey-blonde hair she might have been beautiful, had she not been spoiled by her disdainful manner; her eyes were fine and clear, but when she looked at you so directly, Rawlinson saw condemnation in them. Don't shoot the messenger, he wanted to say. He thought she might well be capable of it.

Mrs Beaumont had received the news with nothing more than a deep indrawn breath, yet Womersley's professional antennae told him that it had shaken her badly. Her lips were pressed together in a tight line and he saw in those dark, opaque eyes a hint of passion, the stirrings of anger. Her brows were drawn together, as if with the beginnings of a headache.

‘I can't take this in,' Gideon burst out at last. ‘First we are expected to believe it wasn't an accident, but suicide, and now you're trying to make out Grandfather was . . . deliberately killed.' He patently couldn't bring himself to say the word ‘murder'. ‘What are you trying to do?'

‘I'm sorry.' Womersley understood the lad's bewilderment. He explained again, patiently, what the autopsy was certain to reveal, with its unavoidable conclusion that Ainsley Beaumont had met his death by the hand of another.

Gideon was not given to real anger as a rule, yet he felt the heat rushing into his face, a pulse beating in his head, finding in himself a belligerence he had not known he possessed. He had an irresistible urge to smash his fist into the face of the mild mannered inspector who was telling them this thing. ‘I can only say I hope you find who it was before I come across him,' he said violently. ‘If I do, I swear I'll kill him!'

‘You're upset, sir.'

Gideon realized he had been shouting. He said, only slightly less calmly, ‘And what did you expect?'

Womersley did not respond. There was a fierceness that ran like a thread through them all – through Ainsley, if everything they had heard about him was true – through Gideon, and even Una. Especially perhaps, the dangerously silent Mrs Beaumont. Even the drooling dog had a malevolent look in its hot eyes. There was nothing he could do to lessen the painfulness of the situation. He said shortly, ‘Well, to practicalities. The first thing we need to do is go through your grandfather's papers.'