Butchers and Other Stories of Crime

Did You Tell Daddy?

Jonathan Wilding, four years old, his tight curls bleached by the August sun, stepped busily through the village delivering letters. He called at every house. They were his mother Sally’s love letters.

Jonathan had found them at the bottom of the spare-room wardrobe when he had gone to look for a tennis ball to replace the one he had lost over next door’s wall. The moment he had slipped the elastic band off the shoe-box and lifted the lid, he had forgotten about the ball. Those bundles of letters neatly tied with coloured ribbon had seemed provided for him to realise the one ambition of his young life: to be a postman. Mr Halliwell, with his peaked hat, grey uniform, bicycle and above all, the brown bag stuffed with letters and parcels, was Jonathan’s idol, a loud-voiced, bearded man with something to say to everyone he met, including the children. Sometimes he allowed Jonathan to walk along the street with him and guard the bicycle when he propped it against someone’s gatepost.

Jonathan’s status this afternoon was infinitely more important. With his nursery-school satchel slung from one shoulder and filled with letters, he made his way purposefully from door to door making his special delivery. He knew that ideally the envelopes should not have been torn open at the top, but every one had a long letter inside, often running to several pages, so no one ought to feel dissatisfied. By a happy chance, there were just enough letters to go round. He had covered both sides of the street, slipping two or three through the doors of people who were particular friends of the family, and he was home and watching television before the first knock came at the front door.

Sally Wilding was in the kitchen cooking plaice and chips for her husband Bernard, the author of the letters. Bernard was asleep upstairs. He was a sergeant in the police, with responsibility for one small town and seven villages, including their own, and this week he was on nights. He and Sally had lived in the village all their lives. It was often mentioned that they had been childhood sweethearts, but that was sentimental blurring of the truth. They had ignored each other in school and avoided each other outside until a month before Bernard had become a police cadet. That month, April 1969, had made nonsense of all the years before. Out of nowhere, an avalanche of passion had engulfed them. They had been eighteen and in love and facing separation, for Bernard had been due to report to Hendon Police College, two hundred miles away, on May 1st. That last weekend, they had got engaged and promised to send letters to each other every day.

Such letters! Sally still blushed at their frankness and prickled with secret pleasure at the unrestraint of Bernard’s ardour. If she ever needed a testimony to the force of his passion, it was there in his neatly upright handwriting, more candid and more eloquent than he had been before or since. There had been a few times in their marriage — very few — when she had been glad to take out those letters and read them for reassurance. Bernard was almost certainly unaware that she had kept them.

She heard the doorbell.

‘Michael, see who it is, please.’

Michael was her first-born, ten years old and pleased to be the man of the house when Bernard was not available.

‘It’s Mrs Nugent. She wants to speak to you.’

Sally sighed, took the frying pan off the gas, wiped her hands and went to see what the village do-gooder wanted this time. Probably collecting for something. Why was it always when the evening meal was on the go?

‘I rather think that this belongs to you, my dear.’

Sally took the letter and stared at it, unable yet to make the mental leap that linked it with the embarrassed neighbour on her doorstep.

‘Somebody pushed it through my door. I expect they got the numbers mixed. It was already open. I haven’t looked inside, believe me.’

Sally went numb. She couldn’t summon the words to respond to Mrs Nugent. If a chasm had opened between them, she would have jumped into it at once.

Her mind mobilised at last. Which letter was it, for heaven’s sake? What was in it? How could it possibly...?

One of the boys!

Fast as her brain began to race, events outpaced it. Mr Marsh from across the street came up the path with two more letters in his hand.

She took them, managed to blurt out something approximating to thanks, closed the door and dashed upstairs to the spare room to have her worst fears confirmed: the shoe-box empty except for one elastic band and three lengths of ribbon.

‘Michael, Jonathan! Come here this minute!’

‘There’s someone else at the door, Mummy.’

The reckoning would have to wait. And so would Bernard’s dinner.

The front door stood open for the next twenty minutes as Sally’s letters were returned to her by a succession of blushing, grinning or frowning neighbours. Some cheerfully admitted having read the letters. For Sally, the ordeal was worse than a day in the stocks. ‘I expect it was one of the children,’ suggested the vicar’s wife. ‘Little scamps. What will they think of next?’

From upstairs, Bernard called out, ‘Sally, are you there? You didn’t call me. Is anything the matter?’

She nodded to the vicar’s wife, closed the door and called upstairs, ‘Sorry, darling. People at the door. You’d better hurry.’

She scooped up the letters from the hall table, hurried back into the kitchen and thrust them into the drawer with the teacloths just before Bernard came down.

‘Who was it?’

‘Oh, just about everybody. I’ll tell you later. I’m afraid the chips are ruined, but the fish is still all right.’

‘I’ll have some bread with it. One of the boys up to some mischief?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘Want to deal with it yourself?’

Sally nodded.

The doorbell rang again.

‘Oh, no!’

She answered it. Miss Sharp, the doctor’s receptionist, with two more letters.

Sally returned to the kitchen.

‘Letters as late in the day as this?’

She whisked them into the drawer. ‘Old ones. Got to keep the place tidy.’ It was hateful deceiving him, but she couldn’t face the eruption when he found out. He set high standards for himself, and he expected his family to follow.

He picked up his tunic. ‘If there’s trouble, you can bet your life it’s Jonathan. Time we stopped treating him as the baby of the family. He’s got to learn.’

Sally agreed. Bernard had been more strict with Michael than ever he had been with Jonathan. It showed. Michael was dependable, a quiet, self-sufficient lad with a good capacity for concentration. He liked reading, stamps and model-making. If he misbehaved, it was generally because he put a higher priority on his hobbies than cleaning his teeth or tidying his room.

Jonathan was the adventurous one, and naughty with it. He had more than his share of personal charm, which he exploited to the limit.

As soon as Bernard had left for work, Sally questioned Michael. She had always tried to treat the boys evenhandedly, even though they responded differently.

‘Michael, what were you doing this afternoon?’

‘I was at school.’

‘After that.’

‘I came home.’

‘Straight home?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do when you came in?’

‘Looked at my stamps.’

‘You didn’t go to the spare room for anything?’

‘No, Mummy.’

Jonathan, when Sally spoke to him, cheerfully admitted playing postman with her letters. He told her everything. Five minutes later, he was in bed with his bottom smarting.

Downstairs, Sally took out the letters. Two more were returned during the evening. She had decided to destroy them all. She could never read them again without being conscious that the words meant only for her had been looked at by others. First, she needed to be sure that they had all come back. She sorted them into sequence. She had never counted them, but she knew Bernard had written her two a week for the whole of his cadet course.

One was missing: the first in the first week of July.

She soon recalled it, by glancing at the next one. Bernard had been waiting for the mid-course tests to be assessed. Keyed up, perhaps, he had poured out his desire for her in a long letter that was a kind of prose-poem to her physical attractions, a mixture of recollection and speculation that she had found wickedly delightful at the time, but now painfully embarrassing.

Which of her neighbours had got the letter and not returned it?

She mentally reviewed everyone who had called, and then in her mind’s eye went up and down the village street, checking the houses and their inmates. When she came to Primrose Cottage she stopped. Ruby Simmons. Ruby had not returned a letter.

Ruby was Sally’s age. They had gone through school together, but they had never been friends. In those days, Ruby had been an outrageous flirt, the first in their year to appear in eye shadow and a smear of lipstick, and the leader in every other step towards maturity. The boys had fought battles in the playground over her and she had rewarded them with favours in the cycle shed that were whispered about with sly smiles and sniggers. Sally, who could only guess, had disliked everything about her.

Worse, Ruby had been Bernard’s girl for nearly a year before he fell for Sally. This was after they had all left school. Ruby had bleached her carroty-red hair and Bernard had succumbed as if he had never seen a blonde before. She had got a job assisting Mrs Parker in the general store — after leaving school with deplorable grades — and every night at seven when it closed, Bernard would be waiting to escort her up the street to Primrose Cottage, where she lived with her Aunt Lucy.

That was all a dozen years ago. It had turned out to be the high point of Ruby’s life. Events since then had not been kind to her. First, Bernard had abandoned her for Sally. Then she had started going out with the doctor’s son, until she had found out that a girl in the next village was pregnant by him. Soon after, she had lost her job in the store. It had been no fault of hers; simply that trade was falling off and Mrs Parker could no longer pay the wages. Since then, Ruby had lived off social security. When her aunt died in the winter of 1973, Ruby was faced with extra payments for the rent — or moving out of Primrose Cottage. She had found it necessary to take on casual work as a domestic help, occasional mornings that she probably didn’t mention when she collected her unemployment money. Her hair had reverted to its natural red. She rarely spoke to anyone, and never to Sally.

Was Ruby still so bitter about the past that she couldn’t bring herself to return the letter? If she didn’t want to speak, she could easily have pushed it through the door and walked away.

Sally got up and went to see if there was anything on the doormat, but there was not. She opened the door to see if the light was on in Primrose Cottage. It was, but she told herself to be reasonable. Ruby might have come home late. Probably she would return the letter in the morning. If she couldn’t face bringing it herself, she might well give it to George Halliwell, the postman, and George would know where it belonged.

Bernard was home and reading the paper when Sally got up next morning. She put her hand on his shoulder and kissed him.

‘What was that for?’

‘Just for you.’

‘There’s something you want to tell me?’

‘No.’

The post arrived. Sally said, ‘I’ll get it.’ She hurried to the door and found two bills. Nothing else.

‘What were you expecting?’ Bernard asked.

‘Nothing in particular.’

‘Want anything from the store? I think I’ll take a walk presently and pick up a Radio Times.’

Sally said quickly, ‘I can get it.’

Bernard said, ‘I need some fresh air.’

She hated herself for her cowardice. She ought to have told him what had happened. He was entitled to hear it from her. It was practically certain that he would hear it from someone in the village. Even if by some miracle he didn’t, he still had a right to know that the love letters he had written for her alone had been read in every house in the village. She would have to tell him, but she couldn’t face it yet.

She bit her lip as she watched him stroll serenely up the street in his uniform, confident of the respect that was his entitlement. She almost ran after him, but she did not.

She watched him pass Primrose Cottage, and a horrid possibility occurred to her. Had Ruby kept the letter to hand to Bernard himself, out of some embittered notion of revenge? But he went past and on his way. There was no sign of Ruby.

He was back in twenty minutes with the magazine. He smiled at Sally and said, ‘How about a coffee?’

‘Of course. Who did you meet?’

‘Only old George. And Mrs Parker, of course. I want to do a spot of gardening before I have my sleep. The weeds are taking over in the front.’

The morning passed with agonising slowness. Bernard worked steadily in the garden, greeting people as they passed. From the window, Sally saw Ruby emerge from the cottage, but she turned in the other direction, probably to do some cleaning for Miss Seddon, who had the big house by the church.

Jonathan was understandably subdued that morning. He lingered in his room, keeping out of his father’s way.

‘Did you tell Daddy?’ he asked Sally over breakfast.

‘Not yet.’

‘Will he have to know?’

‘I expect so.’ She hesitated. ‘Jonathan, did you post all the letters that you found upstairs? Every single one?’

‘Yes.’ He gave a sniff. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’

‘You went up and down the street posting them in all the houses?’

‘Yes. I thought they were just old letters.’

‘They were, but you had no right to do it.’

At noon, Bernard had lunch and went to get some sleep.

Michael was back from school. ‘Everyone knows about Jon and the letters.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Sally, ‘but as far as we’re concerned, it’s finished. Go and tell your brother lunch is ready.’

Early in the afternoon, she crossed the street and rang the bell at Primrose Cottage.

Ruby Simmons was definitely back. Sally could hear her moving about inside. But she didn’t come to the door.

Sally pressed the bell a second time. And a third. She refused to be ignored. Recovering that letter mattered more to her than some schoolgirlish feud.

She called out, ‘Ruby, this is Sally Wilding. I want to speak to you. It’s important.’

There was no response.

‘I think you have something that belongs to me. I want it back, please.’

She walked around the cottage to the back door. Before she got there, she heard the bolt drawn across. She stared through the kitchen window. Ruby must have run upstairs.

It was a seventeenth-century cottage, and Ruby had not done much to keep it up. Sally could easily have forced a window open and got inside, but that would have been a criminal offence. She came away.

At home, she wrote a note politely asking Ruby to return the letter. She delivered it herself. She heard Ruby come and pick it off the mat. That was all that happened.

That evening, after Bernard had gone back on duty, Sally sat listening for footsteps on the path. Several times, when something in the cottage creaked, she got up to check the letterbox.

She was beginning to feel desperate. She could think of nothing else but recovering that letter. She had tried to shake off the obsession by telling herself that as she planned to destroy the letter anyway, she didn’t care about it. But of course she did. She cared for Bernard’s sake. And hers. And Jonathan’s — that small boy who had given her a lesson in telling the truth.

In bed that night, she thought of a way to get her letter back.

Over breakfast, she said to Bernard, ‘It’s such a lovely morning. Why don’t you take Jonathan fishing? You’ve often promised him, and you said yourself that we should stop treating him as the baby. It will do him good to have an outing with his father.’

She watched from the front-room window as they went, and she remained there, watching Primrose Cottage.

At about the same time as the previous morning, Ruby came out and turned in the direction of Miss Seddon’s.

Sally waited until the street was clear and then crossed to Primrose Cottage and went straight around the side to the back door. It was bolted. She glanced about her. The back windows of the cottage were not overlooked. She took a steel knitting needle from her waistband and pushed it where the wood had warped between one window and the frame.

The catch lifted at the second attempt. She pulled the window open and climbed through.

There were letters on the kitchen table. Hers was not among them. She went into the living room and searched the dresser and the writing bureau. Drawers, bookshelves, window sills. Where had Ruby put it?

She went upstairs. A tidy bedroom. The bed made. She spotted the photo at once: a small, framed portrait of Bernard as he had been at seventeen, before he had cut his hair to join the police. Across it, in his handwriting, the words To Ruby, lots of love, Bernard. Sally wished she had not seen it.

She went to the dressing table and opened the drawers. She was feeling sick inside. This was the first really bad thing she had done in her life. It was despicable. It was a crime. Yet she had to go on with it.

She started on the chest of drawers. Passed her hand between the layers of clothes. Crossed to the bed and lifted the pillow.

‘What are you doing here?’

Sally dropped the pillow and froze.

‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’ Ruby demanded in a measured voice.

Sally turned. Ruby had the knitting needle in her hand, holding it like a knife. She must have found it by the open window. She must have only gone as far as the store when she went out.

Sally answered with an effort to sound calm, ‘Looking for my letter.’

‘It isn’t here.’

‘What have you done with it, then?’

‘I haven’t got your letter.’

‘Ruby, I wish I hadn’t had to do this, but that letter belongs to me. I want it back.’

‘And you think that gives you the right to force your way into my home and search my things? That’s unlawful entry, Sally Wilding, even if you are married to the policeman.’

‘I’m sorry. If you had opened the door to me yesterday—’

‘I didn’t wish to. There’s no law that says I have to speak to you, but there is a law to protect my home from sneak thieves and intruders, and it’s your husband’s duty to enforce it. Does he know you’re here?’

‘No.’

There was a moment’s pause.

Ruby’s mouth twitched. ‘Get you in a nice spot of trouble if I report this to the police, won’t it?’

‘Don’t. Please.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

Sally glanced towards the photograph of Bernard.

Ruby said, ‘You’re scum. What are you?’

‘Scum.’

‘Get downstairs. I’ll be close behind you.’

Sally obeyed. She was humiliated. She didn’t know what to expect.

At the foot of the stairs, Ruby said, ‘Which of your boys was it?’

‘Jonathan.’

‘The little one? How tall is he?’

Sally indicated. ‘About this high.’

‘Look at my front door,’ said Ruby. ‘See where the letterbox is? My Aunt Lucy had it specially made when the new door was fitted. The kids next door were always playing knock down ginger when they were small, so she had the letterbox as high as possible. Your Jonathan couldn’t possibly reach it.’

Sally could see that she was right. She should have seen before. She shook her head. She was close to tears. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

Ruby said, ‘Does he know yet?’

‘Bernard? No.’

There was another pause.

Then Ruby began to laugh. ‘You poor sap! For the first time in twelve years I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.’ She opened the door. ‘Go on, clear off and get what’s coming to you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Better take your knitting needle. You may need it.’

By the time that Bernard came back from the fishing, Sally had braced herself to tell him everything, but he stopped her. He said, ‘If this is about those letters, save your breath. I heard it all from Jonathan this morning. That little lad is growing up. He thought it was up to him to put me in the picture. That’s worth a lot to me.’

‘Did he tell you about the letter that hasn’t come back?’

‘He told me you were still upset. I guessed there had to be a reason.’

‘You’re not too angry?’

‘How can I be? It’s Friday. I’m off nights.’

As they prepared for bed that night, Bernard held up an envelope. ‘Is this what you were looking for?’

She took it from him. ‘Yes! Where did you find it?’

‘Not a million miles from here. I had another chat with Jonathan. Asked him if he stopped at every house.’

‘But so did I. He answered that he did. He really did. It just happened that he couldn’t reach the letterbox at Primrose Cottage.’ Sally caught her breath. ‘He must have pushed it under the door! It was under Ruby’s doormat all the time!’

‘No. Forget about Ruby. Every house, Jon said. That includes this one. He didn’t leave us out.’

‘Here?’ Sally frowned. ‘Jonathan posted one to us? I didn’t find it.’

‘Neither did I.’

Her eyes opened wide. ‘Michael?’

‘Look at the stamp. That, my darling, was posted on July 1st, 1969, the day Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales. The commemorative stamp. It’s gold dust to a stamp collector: a first day cover.’

‘Michael had it all the time?’

‘Picked it off the mat and put it in his album. Most of this time he’s been at school. Didn’t think we’d miss it. I found the letter in his waste bin. I don’t believe he gave it more than a glance.’

She felt herself blush. ‘I hope not. Bernard, you didn’t punish him?’

He shook his head. ‘As a matter of fact, I promised to look through mine for stamps.’

‘Your what?’

‘My love letters from you.’

‘You kept the letters I wrote you?’

Bernard took her hand. ‘But I had the foresight to keep mine on top of the wardrobe.’