Henrietta Who Part 24

"I do not," said Leeyes.

"Pity."

"Those sort of people don't." An eager note crept into the Superintendent's voice. "What they do, Sloan, is to dig up a faithful nanny who knows them well and they park the nanny and the infant in a cottage in the depths of the country."

Sloan had been afraid of that.

"And"-Leeyes was warming to his theme-"they support the child and the nanny from a distance."

In Lady Garwell's case the distance-either way-so to speak-would be considerable, she being dead. Sloan presumed he meant Major Hocklington and said, "Yes, sir, though I still can't see why Grace Jenkins should have to die just before the girl is twenty-one."

"Ask Major Hocklington," suggested Leeyes sepulchrally.

"Or, come to that, sir, why Grace Jenkins went to such enormous lengths to conceal the girl's true name and then talked quite happily about the Hocklington-Garwell's. If Lady Garwell were the mother, it doesn't make sense."

"Someone has been sending the girl money at college," said Leeyes. "She and the clergyman have just been in to say so."

"Maintenance," said Sloan.

"Via the Bursar."

Sloan scribbled a note, his Sunday rest day vanis.h.i.+ng into thin air. "We could leave as soon as we've seen Cyril Jenkins..."

"And," said Superintendent Leeyes nastily, "you could see Cyril Jenkins as soon as you've had your tea and sympathy from Inspector Blake."

Cullingoak was more certainly a village than Rooden Parva. It had all the customary prerequisites thereof-a church standing foursquare in the middle, an old Manor House not very far away, shops, a Post Office, a row of almshouses down by the river, even a cricket ground.

"All we want," observed Crosby, "is a character called Jenkins."

"No," said Sloan, "if the civil register is correct, is called Cyril Edgar and should live at number twelve High Street."

"Dead easy," Crosby swung the car round by the church. "That'll be the road the Post Office is in, for sure."

"Stop short," Sloan told him. "Just in case."

"Sir, do you reckon he's her father?"

"I'll tell you that, Crosby, when I've seen him."

"Likeness?"

"No." Sloan remembered Mrs. Walsh with a shudder. "Something called eugenics."

They found number twelve easily enough. Most of the High Street houses were old. They were small, too, but well cared for. Neither developers nor preservationists seemed to have got their hands on Cullingoak High Street. None of the houses were once 'wrong" ones now "done up" for "right" people. There was, too, a refres.h.i.+ng variety of coloured paint The door of number twelve was a deep green. Sloan knocked on it.

There was no immediate reply.

"Just our luck," said Crosby morosely, "if he's gone to a football match."

It was implied-but not stated-that had Detective Constable Crosby not had the misfortune to be a member of Her Majesty's Constabulary, that that was where he would have been this Sat.u.r.day afternoon in early March.

"Berebury's playing l.u.s.ton."

"Really?"

"At home."

That was the crowning injustice.

Next Sat.u.r.day Crosby would have to spend good money travelling to l.u.s.ton or Calleford or Kinnisport to see some play.

Sloan knocked again.

There was no reply.

He looked up and down the street. There would be a back way in somewhere. The two policemen set off and walked until they found it-a narrow uneven way, leading to back gates. Some as neatly painted as the front doors. Some not. None numbered.

Crosby counted the houses back from the beginning of the row. "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve." He stopped at a gate that was still hanging properly on both hinges. "I reckon this is the one, sir."

"Well done," said Sloan, who had already noticed that that back door was painted the same deep green as they had seen in the front. "Perhaps he's one of those who'll answer the back door but not the front."

They never discovered if this was so.

When they got to the back door it was ever so slightly ajar.

It opened a little further at Sloan's knock, and when there was no reply to this, Sloan opened it a bit more still and put his head round.

"Anyone at home?" he called out.

Cyril Jenkins was at home all right.

There was just one snag. He was dead.

Very.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Superintendent Leeyes was inclined to take the whole thing as a personal insult.

"Dead?" he shouted in affronted tones.

"Dead, sir."

"He can't be..."

"He is."

"Not our Jenkins," he howled. "Not the one we wanted..."

"Cyril Edgar," said Sloan tersely. That much, at least, he had established before leaving number twelve and a pale but resolute Crosby standing guard. "As for him being ours..."

"Yes?"

"I should think the fact that he's had his brains blown out rather clinches it."

Sarcasm was a waste of time with the Superintendent. "Self-inflicted?" he inquired eagerly.

"Impossible to say, sir, at this stage."

"Was there a note?"

"No." Sloan paused. "Just a revolver."

He wasn't sitting in the comfort of Inspector Blake's office now. He was in the cramped public telephone kiosk in Cul-lingoak High Street hoping that the young woman with a pram who was waiting to use it after him, couldn't lip-read. At least she couldn't hear the Superintendent.

Sloan could.

"What sort of revolver?" he was asking.

"Service." Sloan sighed. "Old Army issue."

"Officers, for the use of, I suppose," heavily.

"Yes, sir."

Leeyes grunted. "So it's still there?"

"Yes, sir. Silencer and all."

"Not out of reach, I suppose?"

"No, sir."

"I didn't think it would be."

"By his right hand."

"That's what I thought you were going to say. No hope of him being left handed?"

"None. I checked." Sloan had searched high and low himself for signs which would reveal whether Cyril Edgar Jenkins had taken his own life or if someone had taken it for him.

"I don't like it, Sloan."

"No, sir." Sloan didn't either. There was nothing to like in what he had just seen. The recently shot are seldom an atsight and Cyril Edgar Jenkins was no exception. He had been sitting down when it had happened and the result was indescribably messy. Experienced-and hardened-as he was, Sloan hadn't relished his quick examination. At least there hadn't been the additional burden of breaking the news to anyone. "He lived alone," he told Leeyes. "Mrs. Walsh out at Holly Tree Farm was quite right about his wife. She did die about eight years ago."

"Who says so?"

"The woman next door. Remembers her well."

"Which wife?" demanded Leeyes contentiously.

Sloan paused. "The one he had been living with ever since he came to Cullingoak."

"Ah... that's different." Sloan could almost hear the Superintendent fumbling for the word he wanted. "She might have just been his concubine."

"Yes, sir, except that we couldn't find any record of a marriage between Cyril Edgar Jenkins and Grace Edith Wright in the first place..."

"I hadn't forgotten," said Leeyes coldly. "Now I suppose you're going to set about finding out if he was really married to this second woman..."

What Sloan wanted to do-and that very badly-was to set about finding out who had killed Cyril Jenkins.

"Yes, sir. In the meantime, do you think Dr. Dabbe would come over?"

"I don't see why not," said Leeyes largely. When he himself was working through a weekend he was usually in favour of as many people doing so as possible. "What do you want him for?"

"Inspector Blake is handling the routine side of this, seeing as it's in his Division," said Sloan, "but I want to talk to Dr. Dabbe about blood."

There was no shortage of this vital commodity in the living room of number twelve Cullingoak High Street.

Sloan had vacated the telephone kiosk with a polite apolto the girl with the pram. In the manner of a generation brought up without courtesy, she had favoured him with a blank stare in return. Oddly disconcerted, but without time to wonder what things were coming to, he had hurried back to the house.

His friend, Inspector Blake, had just arrived from Calle-ford and was standing surveying the scene.

"Nasty."

Sloan could only agree. Crosby, who had been surveying the same scene for rather longer and more consistently than either Blake or Sloan, was looking rather green at the gills.

"He got wind that you wanted a little chat, did he then?" asked Digger Blake. He had brought his own photographer and fingerprint man with him and he motioned them now to go ahead with their gruesome work.

"Perhaps," said Sloan slowly. "Perhaps not."

"Not a coincidence anyway," said Blake.

"No. Someone knew."

"Many people realise you wanted this word or two with him?" Digger's questions were usually obliquely phrased.

"Enough." Sloan took a deep breath. "A girl who said she saw him in Calleford yesterday afternoon." Henrietta had probably been right about that, now he came to think of it, but how significant it was he couldn't sort out. Not for the moment. "Her solicitor. He knew, of course. He's called Ar-bican."

"That'll be Waind, Arbican & Waind, in Ox Lane," said Blake. "There's only him left in the firm now."

"And a young man called Bill Thorpe..." He hesitated. "I can't make up my mind about him."