Murder On A Summer's Day Part 15

'You probably have permission to be here. I don't.'

'Did you come to see her?' His voice sounded strange and unreal in the echoing barn.

It took me a few seconds to realise that he was asking me about the doe.

'Yes. She is a beautiful creature.'

He moved closer, staring lovingly at the doe, waving the flies away with the cap that I recognised as belonging to Isaac.

Joel glanced at the door, as though I might prevent his reaching it.

'I ought to be going. Will you walk out with me, Joel, or are you working here today?'

He shook his head. 'I don't want to go home.'

'It must be lonely there, without your dad.'

'Aye.'

'Did you see him yesterday?'

He nodded.

'How is he?'

He gazed at the doe, as though she was the one who had enquired after his father's health.

'Dad's right badly.' He looked towards the barn door.

I did not want him to bolt, as he had yesterday. He may have helpful information. Besides, I felt pity for him. He seemed so puzzled, and alone.

'I'm glad they let you see your dad.'

'He tries to speak but it comes out wrong. His feet are cold.'

'He will be taken good care of there.'

Joel moved closer to the doe.

'She is beautiful, Joel, a fine animal, she would not have suffered. The prince was a good shot.'

He stepped back quickly. 'I saw his ghost. I smelled his ghost. There's two ghosts now, him and Osbert.'

'Perhaps it was a dream.'

'I smelled him. I smelled the Indian.'

'What kind of smell?'

'Sweet, like flowers.'

'When was this?'

'In the night and just now.'

'There was no one here but me. There are no ghosts.' I must keep him talking, keep him by me. What was he afraid of, and what did he know? 'The dead won't hurt you.' He was unconvinced. 'Probably we should go. They are out and about at the farm. Do they know you are here?'

'No.'

'Then we are both trespa.s.sers. Shall we walk a little way together?'

He pulled on the cap.

'You haven't eaten. Let me see if I can get something for breakfast and I will walk back with you. It may not be so bad to go home if someone is with you.' The mention of food seemed to cheer him. 'You stay here. I'll see what I can get.'

'I'll stop by the gate.'

'All right. Be sure you wait for me.'

Knocking on the farmhouse door would be good cover for my trespa.s.sing. And perhaps I might speak to someone who would have helpful information though I hardly knew what questions to ask.

I walked to the farmhouse. The girl who answered the door was about twelve years old. She looked surprised to be asked for milk, bread and eggs, but left me waiting and came back moments later with half a loaf, eggs, not very well wrapped in a bit of old sacking, and a jug of milk. 'Have you fetched a jug, missis?'

'No.'

'Then you mun fetch this one back soon as you've done.'

'Right. I will.'

I paid her, though neither of us was sure what the amount should be. She asked too little, I probably gave too much.

I pictured walking back to Joel's cottage, making tea and frying eggs.

Joel put paid to my thoughts of a rustic breakfast. He cracked two eggs into the jug and offered it to me. When I refused, he drank it down in three or four gulps.

He put the rest of the eggs, and the bread, in his pockets.

'Wait here, Joel. I'll still walk you back to your cottage.'

I returned the jug.

It was gratifying that he had waited. As we walked down the incline towards the road, I put my question to him; or one of my questions.

'I heard that there was an Indian on Bark Lane on Friday. Did you happen to see him, or did you hear that story?'

'No.'

That was simple enough.

'Have you seen any Indian, apart from the prince?'

'Yes.'

Hope leapt.

'When, and where?'

'On Friday. The one who wears white. He carried the prince's gun from the hotel. He is a small man with a scar on his eyebrow.'

'I see.'

'I telled the constable. He asked me all about it and about shooting crows. He said I mun tell, because I saw prince dead. But I am mixed up. They will blame me.'

'No one will blame you for what happened to the prince.'

'My brain is not good. Everyone knows it.'

'No one will ask you a hard question. Let me ask you another question, Joel. Is that all right?'

'My brain is not strong because my head is big and a breeze cools my brain.'

'A cool breeze can be good.'

'Not for the brain.'

'This is my question. Do you have any idea how, when everyone searched the wood for the Indian prince's body on Friday, it was not there?'

'I have to go now.'

I caught his sleeve as he set off to run. 'Wait! It's all right. I won't ask any more questions.'

'No one mun seek me. Tell them not to seek me.'

I had handled our encounter badly. I wondered who or what he was afraid of.

The day looked set fair. Having upset him, it seemed only kind to walk him home. He said the road would be a better way, but I wanted to look again at the Strid.

He hesitated. 'Do you want your eggs back?'

'No. You keep them. But I want to walk through the wood.'

He recognised a bargaining position, and gave way.

I asked no more questions. He volunteered no information. We kept pace, in what I hoped was companionable silence. A squirrel dashed across the path a little way ahead and scaled an elm. We walked into a patch of sunlight. The river murmured gently. The peace of the wood might drive away his bad dreams, though the poor lad might have nightmares for the rest of his life after what he had seen. My own early morning dream came back to me. The image of the dead man rising was vivid enough, but more dramatic still were the words spoken aloud by an unseen presence: 'He is too young.'

Who was too young? My first thought had been of Prince Narayan, a still young and handsome man. Osbert Hannon was too young to drown in the Wharfe at age twenty-one. My husband, Gerald, missing in action in the last year of the Great War, was too young to leave this world. Was it one of them, all of them, or someone else? Isaac Withers was not too young to have suffered a stroke, but here was his son Joel, forever a child in his muddled mind.

The Wharfe grew noisier as we neared the Strid. Joel became agitated. 'It's laughing. The river is laughing.'

The roar of rus.h.i.+ng water filled my ears. I turned to look and moved a little closer, mesmerised by its power. Huge perpendicular ma.s.ses of grey rock hemmed in the torrent that then forced itself through a gap with a great whoos.h.i.+ng force. At the point where a young man might leap, the ledges of rock reached out, as if wanting to be joined once again after their ice-age sundering.

He hung back.

My eyes were drawn to a small, plodding figure on the other side of the river. A young woman eased herself onto a rock, holding tightly to her ap.r.o.n. When seated, she stared into the water. If she noticed me, she did not acknowledge.

Joel called to me again.

I walked back to him. 'Who is that?'

He would not look.

After several minutes, the young woman slid from the rock and took a few unsteady steps towards to the fast-flowing water, still holding her ap.r.o.n. I recognised her. It was young Mrs Hannon, Osbert's widow. My G.o.d, was she about to throw herself into the river? I opened my mouth, ready to call to her, but my voice came out too softly and was drowned by the rus.h.i.+ng current.

Joel came nearer. 'It's Jenny. Osbert's Jenny.'

As she drew closer to the edge, she put her hand in the bunched up ap.r.o.n and drew out flowers, throwing them into the water, repeating the action until the river was strewn with b.u.t.tercups, daisies, rosemary and meadowsweet. She stood and stared into the water. Finally, she turned and stepped away. With the burden of her ap.r.o.n of flowers gone, she walked steadily back up from the rocks to the path. Slowly, she disappeared from view.

After that, we walked on in silence, under a sky now filled with clouds.

Eventually, Joel turned as one path led from another. 'It's round here.'

Moments later we arrived at a stone cottage with a lopsided door and neglected thatched roof.

He hesitated. 'I'll be all on my own.'

'Be brave.'

Sixteen.

Having changed from my boots, I drove to the railway station. What would the stationmaster be like, I wondered. He was a man with a respected position. Osbert had promised to marry his daughter, had married another, and yet still dallied with Rachel. Protection of a daughter's honour was a powerful motive for murder.

More mundanely, I would learn the arrival time of the London train. I could also enquire about any strangers who may have been seen in the area during the week, or whether there had been any unusual activity.

A curious dog barked as I pa.s.sed a neat cottage garden. A curtain twitched. This was not a place where a stranger would go unnoticed. I rounded the bend and there was the station. As I climbed from the car, the powerful stench of paint hit my nostrils. Obviously the station had to look its best for important visitors. A porter, brush in hand, called out to me to be careful of wet paint. I walked through the gate sideways, not having brought sufficient changes of clothing to risk paint smudges.

The railway lines gleamed in the suns.h.i.+ne, as if they knew an important train was expected. Planters filled with begonias, geraniums and lobelias were arranged with military precision along the wall. Stillness reigned, the silence broken only by distant birdsong.

Through the clear circle in the opaque gla.s.s of the stationmaster's office door, I watched as a rotund, florid-faced man stared into a small looking gla.s.s as he clipped his short grey moustache with nail scissors.

I stepped to one side, to be out of his view, and waited several moments, long enough for him to finish attending to his facial hair.