In A Dry Season

FOUR

Annie drove up Long Hill the following morning to interview Mrs. Ruby Kettering. It was another scorcher, she noted, rolling her window down. Devil-may-care this morning, she had decided not to bother wearing tights. They were damned uncomfortable in the heat. You’d certainly never catch men wearing anything quite so ridiculous.

Long Hill began at the village green and linked Harkside to the edge of Harksmere Reservoir. Close to the center of the village, it was the busiest shopping street, with a jumbled mix of shops and pubs and most of the public buildings, including the borough council offices, the library, the Women’s Institute and the Mechanics Institute. It was early for tourists, but the shops were open and the locals were doing the rounds, shopping bags hooked over their arms, standing gossiping in little knots along the pavement. The road was narrow and double yellow lines ran along each side. Toward the end, the buildings dwindled and finally gave way to half a mile of open countryside before the T-junction with The Edge.

Annie parked on the grass verge opposite the junction. From there, she could see the ruins of Hobb’s End in the distance. Several tiny figures stood clustered around the outbuilding where the skeleton had been discovered, and Annie realized it must be the SOCO team still searching the area. She wondered if Dr. Williams the skeleton-groper was there, too.

Annie crossed the road and opened the gate. Mrs. Kettering was squatting in the garden spraying her dahlias. She looked up. Annie introduced herself.

“I know who you are,” the old lady said, placing her hands on her thighs and pushing herself to her feet. “I remember you. You’re that nice policewoman who found my Joey.”

Annie accepted the compliment with a brief nod. She hadn’t actually found Joey herself. The budgie had been innocently standing on the village green, accepting the crumbs an old man was scattering, blissfully unaware that it was being watched by a gang of sparrows up in one of the trees and by a ginger tom lurking behind a bush not more than ten yards away. One of the local kids had noticed, though, and remembering the poster offering a five-pound reward for a missing budgie, he had carefully scooped up Joey and carried him to the police station. Annie had simply delivered Joey back safely into Mrs. Kettering’s hands. One of the many exciting jobs she had done since arriving in Harkside. It was, however, through this incident that Annie had received her first on-the-job injury. Joey pecked the base of her thumb and drew blood, but Inspector Harmond wouldn’t accept her injury compensation claim.

Mrs. Kettering was wearing a red baseball cap, a loose yellow smock and baggy white shorts down to her knees. Below them, her legs were pale as lard, mottled red and marbled with varicose veins. On her feet she wore a pair of black plimsolls without laces. Though a little stooped, she looked sturdy enough for her age.

“Oh dear,” she said, wiping the streaks of sweat and soil from her brow with her forearm. “I hope you haven’t come to arrest me. Has someone reported me?”

“Reported you? What for?” Annie asked.

Mrs. Kettering glanced guiltily at the hose coiled near the front door. “I know there’s supposed to be a water shortage, but I can’t just let my garden die. A garden needs a lot of watering when the weather’s like this. I don’t own a car, so I don’t waste any on washing one, and I thought, well, if I used just a little…?”

Annie smiled. She hadn’t washed her car in weeks, either, but that was nothing to do with the water shortage. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Kettering,” she said with a wink, “I won’t report you to Yorkshire Water.”

Mrs. Kettering sighed and put a gnarled, veiny hand to her heart. “Oh, thank you, dear,” she said. “Do you know, I don’t think I could stand going to jail at my age. I’ve heard that the food in there is absolutely terrible. And with my stomach… Anyway, please call me Ruby. What can I do for you?”

“It’s about Hobb’s End.”

“Hobb’s End?”

“Yes. I understand you used to live there.”

Mrs. Kettering nodded. “Seven years Reg and me lived there. From 1933 to 1940. It was our first home together, just after we got married.”

“You didn’t stay there till the end of the war?”

“Oh, no. My Reg went off to fight – he was in the navy – and I went to work at a munitions factory near Sheffield. I lived with my sister in Mexborough during the war. When Reg came back in 1945, we stayed on there for a while, then he got a job on a farm just outside Harkside, so we moved here. We always did like the country. Listen, dear, would you like a cold drink? Lemonade, perhaps?”

“Thank you.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much shelter from the sun,” Mrs. Kettering said, “but we can sit over there.”

She pointed to the side of the garden that abutted Long Hill. A short path led to a flagstone patio where two red-and-green-striped deck chairs sat, half in the sun and half out of it. Various creeping plants coiled around the trellises fixed to the wall, which provided a little shade.

“That’ll be just fine,” Annie said, walking over and taking off her sunglasses.

Mrs. Kettering disappeared inside the house. Annie settled herself into one of the deck chairs, stretched out her legs and luxuriated. She could feel the heat on her bare shins, warm and sensuous as a lover’s caress. The sensation took her back to the beach at St. Ives, where she had grown up and spent many a summer’s day with her father, whose job it had been to rent out deck chairs to the holidaymakers. The memory of those summers took her back to Rob, too: his days off, when they used to go for walks along the cliff tops, sail around the headland in his small boat and make love in secluded coves as the sunset colors emblazoned the horizon and waves crashed on the beach. How romantic it had all been, and how long ago it seemed.

Annie inhaled the sweet scent of the flowers. Bees droned around her, gathering pollen. She opened her eyes again and saw gulls circling over Harksmere.

“Here we are, dear,” said Mrs. Kettering, coming back out with a tray. First she offered a tall glass to Annie, then she took the other for herself, set the tray aside and sat down. The deck chairs faced each other at an angle, so it was easy to talk without straining one’s neck.

“Hobb’s End,” Mrs. Kettering said. “That takes me back. I can’t say I’ve really given the place much thought in years, though I can see it from the bottom of the garden now, of course. What do you want to know?”

“As much as you can tell me,” Annie said. Then she told Mrs. Kettering about the skeleton.

“Yes, I saw something about that on the news. I’d been wondering who all the people were, coming and going.” Mrs. Kettering thought for a moment. Annie watched her and sipped lemonade. A robin lit down on the lawn for a few seconds, cocked an eye at them, shit on the grass and took off again.

“A young woman, about five foot two, with a baby?” Mrs. Kettering repeated, brow knotted in concentration. “Well, there was the McSorley lass, but that was when we arrived. I mean, she’d have been well over thirty by the time we left, and she had three children by then. No, dear, I can’t honestly say anyone comes to mind. The far cottage, you say, the one by the fairy bridge?”

“Fairy bridge?”

“That’s what we used to call it. Because it was so small, only fairies could cross over it.”

“I see. That’s right. Under the outbuilding.”

Mrs. Kettering pulled a face. “Reg and me lived at the far end, just down from the mill. Still, I must have passed the place a hundred times or more. Sorry, love, it’s a blank. I certainly don’t remember any young woman living there.”

“Never mind,” said Annie. “What can you tell me about the village itself?”

“Well, however close to Harkside it was, it had its own distinct identity, I can tell you that for a start. Harksiders looked down on the Hobb’s End people because it was a mill village. Thought they were a cut above us.” She shrugged. “Still, I suppose everyone’s got to have someone to look down on, don’t they?”

“Do you remember any doctors and dentists who used to practice there?”

“Oh, yes. Dr. Granville was the village dentist. Terrible man. He drank. And if I remember correctly there were two doctors. Ours was Dr. Nuttall. Very gentle touch.”

“Do you know what happened to his practice? I’m assuming he’s dead now?”

“Oh, long since, I should imagine. And Granville was probably pushing sixty when the war started, too. You’ll be after medical and dental records, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“I doubt you’ll have much luck there, love, not after all this time.”

“Probably not. What other sorts of people lived in the village?”

“All sorts, really. Let me see. We had shopkeepers, milkmen, publicans – we had three village pubs – farm laborers, drystone wallers, van drivers, traveling salesmen of one sort or another, a number of retired people, colonels and the like. Teachers, of course. We even had our very own famous artist. Well, not exactly Constable or Turner, you understand, and he’s not very fashionable these days. Come with me a minute.”

She struggled out of her deck chair and Annie followed her into the house. It was hot inside and Annie felt the sweat trickle down the tendons at the backs of her ears. It itched. She was glad she wasn’t wearing tights.

Because of the sudden contrast between bright sunlight and dim interior, she couldn’t make out the furnishings at first, except that they seemed old-fashioned: a rocking chair, a grandfather clock, a glass-fronted china cabinet full of crystalware. The room into which Mrs. Kettering led her smelled of lemon-scented furniture polish.

They came to a halt in front of the dark wood mantelpiece, and Mrs. Kettering pointed to the large watercolor that hung over it. “That’s one of his,” she said. “He gave me it as a going-away present. Don’t ask me why, but he took a bit of a shine to me. Maybe because I wasn’t a bad-looking lass in my time. Bit of a rogue, Michael Stanhope, if truth be told. Most artists are. But a fine painter. You can see for yourself.”

Annie’s eyes had adjusted to the light, and she was able to take in Stanhope’s painting. She had a passion for art, inherited from her father. She smiled to herself at Mrs. Kettering’s remark. “Bit of a rogue.” Yes, she supposed that fit her father, too. Annie also painted as a hobby, so she was intrigued to look upon the work of Hobb’s End’s neglected genius.

“Is that Hobb’s End before the war?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Kettering. “Just after war broke out, actually. It was painted from the fairy bridge, looking toward the mill.”

Annie stood back and examined the work carefully. The first thing she noticed was Stanhope’s peculiar use of color. The season was autumn, and he seemed to take the hues and tones hidden deep in stone, fields, hillsides and water and force them out into the open, creating such a pattern of purples, blues, browns and greens as you never saw in a real Yorkshire village. But it made perfect sense to the eye. Nothing seemed to be its true color, yet everything seemed right somehow. It was uncanny, almost surreal in its effect.

Next, she noticed the subtly distorted perspective, probably a result of cubist influences. The mill was there, perched on the rise in the top left corner, and though it looked as if it should dominate the scene, somehow, by some trick of perspective over size, it didn’t. It was just there. The church, just to the right of the river, managed much more prominence through its dark and subtly menacing square tower and the rooks or ravens that seemed to be circling it.

The rest of the composition appeared simple and realistic enough: a village High Street scene whose people reminded her of Brueghel’s. There was a lot of detail; an art teacher might even describe the work as too busy.

The villagers were doing the normal things – shopping, gossiping, pushing prams. Someone was painting a front door; a man straddled a roof repairing a chimney, shirt-sleeves rolled up; a tall girl stood arranging newspapers in a rack outside the newsagent’s shop; a butcher’s boy was cycling down the High Street beside the river with his basket full of brown-paper packages, blood-streaked apron flapping in the wind.

The rows of houses on each side differed in size and design. Some were semis or terraces, front doors opening directly onto the pavement, while some of the larger, detached houses stood back behind low stone walls enclosing well-kept gardens. Here and there, on the High Street side, a row of shops broke up the line of houses. There was also a pub, the Shoulder of Mutton, and its sign looked crooked, as if it were swinging in the wind.

Normal life. But there was something sinister about it. Partly it was the facial expressions. Annie could detect the smug, supercilious smiles of moral rectitude or the malicious grins of sadism on the faces of so many people. And Stanhope had included so much detail that the effect had to be deliberate. How he must have hated them.

If you looked long enough, you could almost believe that the man on the roof was about to drop a flagstone on some passerby, and that the butcher’s boy was wielding a cleaver ready to chop off someone’s head.

The only characters who looked in any way attractive were the children. The River Rowan was neither very wide nor very deep where it ran through the village. Children were playing in the shallows, splashing one another, paddling, the girls with their skirts gathered around their thighs, boys in short trousers. Some of them looked angelic; all of them looked innocent.

The more Annie looked, the more she recognized that there was something religious, ecstatic, in the children’s aspects, and the link with the water also brought to mind baptism. It was a sort of religious symbolism reminiscent of Stanley Spencer, though not quite so blatant. Over it all, the church brooded with its sense of menace and evil. The mill was nothing but a husk.

Annie looked away. When she turned back, the scene appeared more normal, and she noticed the strange colors the most again. It was a powerful work. Why had she not heard of Stanhope before?

In the bottom right, just above the artist’s signature, stood the outbuilding where the skeleton had been found, next to a small, semi-detached cottage. Beside the door, a wooden sign announced the name: BRIDGE COTTAGE.

“What do you think?” Mrs. Kettering asked.

“Have you noticed the way everyone looks? As if-”

“As if they were all either hypocrites or sadists? Yes, I have. That’s Stanhope’s vision. I must say I didn’t see Hobb’s End like that at all. We had our share of unpleasant characters, of course, but I’d hardly say they dominated the place. Michael Stanhope was, in some ways, a very disturbed individual. Would you like to go back out to the garden?”

Annie looked at the painting once more, seeing nothing that she had missed, then she followed Mrs. Kettering outside.

The sunlight came as a shock. Annie shielded her eyes until she got to the chair and sat down again. There was still an inch or so of lemonade in the bottom of her glass. She drank it down in one. Warm and sweet. For some reason, the painting had unsettled her in the same way some of her father’s more disturbed works did; she wanted to know more about it, more about Michael Stanhope’s vision of Hobb’s End.

“How old was Stanhope at that time?”

“He’d be in his late forties when I knew him.”

“What became of him?”

“I think he stayed in the village until the bitter end, and then I heard he moved to a small studio in London. But he didn’t do much after that. Didn’t achieve much, I should say. I saw his name in the papers once or twice, but I think he was like a fish out of water when he left Hobb’s End. I don’t think he managed to find a foothold in the big city art world. I heard he was in and out of mental institutions during the fifties, and the last I saw was his obituary in 1968. He died of lung cancer. The poor man always seemed to have a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. It made him squeeze his eyes almost shut against the drifting smoke when he painted. I was convinced that must have affected his perspective.”

“Probably,” said Annie. “What happened to his paintings?”

“I wouldn’t know, dear. All over the place, I suppose. Private collectors. Small galleries.”

Annie sat quietly for a moment, taking it all in. “Bridge Cottage,” she said, “where we found the skeleton. It looked neglected in the painting.”

“I noticed that, too,” said Mrs. Kettering, “and it made me remember something. Now, I can’t be certain of this, not after so much time, but I think an old lady lived there. Bit of a recluse.”

“An old lady, you said?”

“Yes, I think so. Though I can’t tell you anything about her. I just remembered, looking at the painting, that some of the children thought she was a witch. She had a long, hooked nose. She used to scare them away. I think it was her, anyway. I’m sorry I can’t be of much help.”

Annie leaned forward and touched Mrs. Kettering’s arm. “You have been helpful. Believe me.”

“Is there anything else you want to know?”

Annie stood up. “Not that I can think of. Not right now.”

“Please call again if you do think of anything. It’s so nice to have a visitor.”

Annie smiled. “I will. Thank you.”

Back in her car, Annie sat drumming on the steering wheel and watching the gulls’ reflections on the water’s surface. She had learned that the place was called Bridge Cottage and an old woman may have been living there in the autumn of 1939. Of course, she still had no idea how long the body had lain under the outbuilding floor, so she didn’t know whether this new information helped or not.

Perhaps more important, though, she had got her first real feel for Hobb’s End from the Stanhope painting, and that might come in useful farther down the road. Annie had always thought it important to develop a feel for a case, though she had never expounded her philosophy to any of her male colleagues. Why was it that feminine intuition sounded as insulting to her as hysterical and time of the month?

She turned around and headed back down toward the station, a long day on the telephone looming ahead of her.

When Matthew met Gloria that first time, I could feel their immediate attraction like that eerie electric sensation you get before a storm, when you feel jumpy and ill at ease for no apparent reason. It scared me; I don’t know why.

Something about Gloria changed when a man entered the room. It was as if she were suddenly on, the way I feel when the curtain goes up on one of our amateur dramatic productions and the real audience is there to watch us at last. I don’t mean to indicate that there was anything deliberate about this, just that a change came over her and she moved and spoke in a subtly different way when there was a man around. I even noticed it with Michael Stanhope. He must have sensed something, too, or he wouldn’t have given her those cigarettes.

But with Matthew it was the real thing. From that first April meeting, events progressed quickly between them. That very afternoon, Matthew showed her around the village, what little there was to see. A few days later they went to the pictures in Harkside and then to the Mayday dance at the Mechanics Institute there. I was helping out behind the refreshments counter, and I could see the way they danced so close together, the way they looked at one another.

I wasn’t at all surprised when Matthew announced that he had invited Gloria to tea one Sunday. It was the eleventh of May, and Mother was in one of her states, so the preparation all fell to me. I’m sure I could have got away with a plate of sandwiches, but I was a good cook and, more important, I was good at making the best of what little was available, and I suppose I wanted to show off my skills.

All day we had been hearing disturbing rumors of a terrible air raid on London. Some people claimed that the House of Commons and Westminster Abbey had been completely destroyed and that thousands had been killed. I had already learned to take these things with a pinch of salt. After all, one of the first casualties of war is truth, to paraphrase Hiram Johnson.

I was listening to “The Brains Trust” after putting the rabbit stew on to simmer. Joad and Huxley were arguing about why you can tickle other people but not yourself, when Gloria popped her head around the door, Matthew right behind her. They were a bit early and Mother was still titivating herself in her bedroom.

Gloria’s golden hair, parted on the left, tumbled in long wreaths of sausage curls over her shoulders. She wore very little makeup, just a dab of face powder and a trace of lipstick. She was wearing a blue blouse with padded shoulders and puffed sleeves tucked into a simple black skirt with silver buttons down the side. I must admit that I was surprised at her restraint; I would have expected something far more garish from her. Even so, I felt dowdy in my plain old pinafore dress.

“Look what Gloria’s brought for us,” Matthew said, holding out a pint of milk and half a dozen eggs. I took them and thanked her. As soon as Mother saw the eggs, I knew, her eyes would light up. She would put them in water glass, the way she always did. Suspended in the clear jelly, they would last for months. Seeing them like that always made me uneasy; they looked sinister floating there in the transparent space, like wombs forever on the verge of giving birth, but never quite managing it, trapped there instead, frozen forever in stillborn becoming.

Sinister or not, though, the water glass meant we always had fresh eggs as well as the powdered stuff, which was only good for scrambling.

“Hello, Gwen,” Gloria said, “I should have known you’d be a ‘Brains Trust’ fan. Tell me, who’s your favorite? Joad or Campbell? Surely not Huxley?”

“Joad.”

“Why?”

“He’s the most intelligent, the best-read, the most eloquent.”

“Hmm. Probably,” said Gloria, sitting down on the sofa, carefully arranging her skirt as she crossed her legs. Matthew sat next to her looking like the proud new owner of… well, of something. “I like Campbell myself,” she said. “I think he’s far more entertaining.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you even listened to something like that,” I said, regretting my rudeness almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth. After all, this was the woman my beloved brother clearly adored.

Gloria just shrugged. “I’ve heard it once or twice.” Then her eyes lit up in that way they had. “But you’re right. If I had a wireless, I’d listen to nothing but music all day long.”

“You don’t have a wireless?” I couldn’t believe it. We might have been short of food, but surely everyone had a wireless?

“Mr. Kilnsey won’t have one in the house. He’s rather a strict sort of Methodist, you know. Thinks they’re the devil’s loudspeaker.”

I put my hand to my mouth and giggled, then blushed. “Oh dear. I am sorry.”

“It is rather funny, isn’t it? Anyway, I don’t mind that much. All I do is work and sleep there. It’s sad for Mrs. Kilnsey, though. I don’t think she’d mind a bit of music now and then to cheer her up, but, of course, if the wireless is the devil’s loudspeaker, then music is his voice at its most seductive.”

“Oh, good heavens,” said Matthew, shaking his head.

Gloria nudged him. “It’s true! He really talks like that.”

“I must go see to the food,” I said.

First I put the kettle on to make us all some tea, then I peeled a few potatoes and prepared the carrots and parsnips. If I say so myself, it was a good meal I put together that Sunday. Matthew had caught the rabbit in Rowan Woods on one of his weekend Home Guard exercises, and there was plenty of meat on it to feed the four of us. We also had some onions from the garden, and some rhubarb for a pie. Talk about Dig for Victory!

The kettle boiled. I made tea and carried it through, along with a plate of biscuits. With rationing, you had to be sparing, and the tea was a lot weaker than we were used to. With sugar rationed at only a pound a fortnight, and most of that in the rhubarb pie, the three of us had all stopped taking it. I didn’t know about Gloria, so I offered her some.

“I gave it up,” she said. “Actually, I’ve got a far better use for my sugar ration.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Yes.” She shook her curls. “If you mix it with warm water, you can use it as a setting lotion.”

That was something I had never thought about, my rather fine and mousy hair being short, in the pageboy style, at the time. “It must make your head feel terribly sticky,” I said.

She laughed. “Well, sometimes it’s hard to get my hat off, I can tell you. But that can be quite a blessing in the wind we get up at the farm some days.”

At that moment, Mother made her grand entrance. She walked slowly because of her arthritis and her stick tapped against the bare floorboards, so you could hear her coming long before you saw her. She was wearing one of her old flower-patterned frocks and had taken the trouble to curl her hair, though I doubt she had used sugar and warm water. Mother never wore makeup. She was a small, rather frail-looking figure, a little stooped, with a round, ruddy, pleasant face. It was a kind face, and she was a kind woman. Like me, though, she had a sharp way with words sometimes. Whatever the arthritis had done to the rest of her body, it hadn’t progressed as far as her tongue. I expected fireworks when she met Gloria for the first time, but then I had been wrong about a lot of things lately.

“What a lovely blouse, my dear,” Mother said after the introductions. “Did you make it yourself?”

I almost choked.

“Yes,” said Gloria. “I managed to scrounge a bit of parachute silk, then I dyed it. I’m glad you like it. I can make one for you, if you like. I’ve got a bit more put away up at the farm.”

Mother put her hand to her chest. “Good heavens, my dear, you don’t want to waste your time making fancy clothes for an old crippled woman like me. No, what I’ve got will do to see me out.” Typical Mother that, the world-weary tone, as if we might well “see her out” in the next few minutes.

“The Brains Trust” ended and a special about Jerome Kern came on. Gloria liked that better, all the songs she had heard in her beloved Hollywood musicals. She hummed along with “A Fine Romance,” “You Couldn’t Be Cuter” and “The Way You Look Tonight.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather when Mother and Gloria got talking about how they both loved Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Swing Time. It was time to serve tea and I was feeling really sick by then.

Jerome Kern finished and we turned the wireless off while we ate. “So, my dear,” said Mother when the stew was served, “tell us all about yourself.”

“There’s not much to tell, really,” Gloria said.

“Oh, come, come. Where are you from?”

“London.”

“Oh, you poor girl. What about your parents?”

“They were both killed in the bombing.”

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry.”

“A lot of people have died.”

“When was this?”

“Last year. September. I’m all alone now.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” said Mother. “You’ve got us.”

I almost choked on my rabbit. “It’s not as if we’re adopting her or anything, Mother,” I managed.

“Don’t be so rude, Gwen. It’s wartime, in case you hadn’t noticed. People have to pull together.”

“Anyway,” Matthew said, “Gloria’s away from all that now, aren’t you, darling?”

She looked at him with those big beautiful eyes of hers, adoration just dripping out of them like treacle. “Yes,” she said. “I am. And no matter what happens, I’m never going back.”

“Is there no one left?”

“No one. I was out visiting a friend a few streets away when the air raid came. We had no warning. My friends had an Anderson shelter in their back garden, so we went down there. I wasn’t even worried. I thought my family would go to the underground or the church on the corner like we always did in air raids, but they didn’t make it in time. Our house went up and the ones on either side along with it. My grandparents lived next door, so they were killed, too.”

We were all silent for a few moments, digesting the matter-of-fact horror of what Gloria had just told us. Somehow it made us and our little rationing problems seem insignificant.

“What made you decide on a godforsaken place like Hobb’s End?” Mother asked.

“It wasn’t my choice. That’s where they sent me, the Land Army. I did my training at Askham Bryan, which isn’t far away. Mr. Kilnsey needs a lot of help since his boy joined up, and he’s not getting any younger. I was just glad to get away to the countryside. I just couldn’t stand the idea of working in a dirty, smelly munitions factory.”

“Still,” said Mother, “farming’s not an easy life.”

Gloria laughed. “You can say that again. It’s dirty and smelly, too. But I can cope. I’ve never minded hard work. Actually, I quite enjoy it.” She shot me a sidelong glance. “This stew is delicious, Gwen. I really mean it. It’s the tastiest meal I’ve had in a long time. Thank you very much.”

I felt absurdly pleased and struggled to stop myself from blushing, but you can’t do it, like you can’t tickle yourself. I blushed. “My pleasure,” I said.

After the rhubarb pie, which Gloria once again was kind enough to remark upon, Matthew made more tea and we put the wireless on again for “The Happidrome.”

I just caught the end of a news bulletin which confirmed that Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and the Houses of Parliament had been bombed, but only damaged, not destroyed. Still, you never knew whether to believe newsreaders or not, even though they had to say their names before each bulletin now, so we’d know the Germans hadn’t taken over the BBC. After all, the Germans could listen to the broadcasts, too, and we didn’t want them to think we were badly hurt or demoralized in any way. We had enough with Lord Haw-Haw doing that for us. Just the previous week he had actually said something about the Germans bombing the flax mill in Hobb’s End, which nearly gave our ARP man apoplexy.

Over a cup of tea, Matthew and Gloria lit cigarettes. I knew Mother didn’t approve of women smoking, but she said nothing. Then Matthew cleared his throat and said, “Mother, I invited Gloria here tonight for a specific reason, because, well, we have something to tell you.”

Mother raised her eyebrows; my heart started to thump against my rib cage.

“We want to get married.”

I gaped at Matthew: tall, dashing, handsome, that charming lock of dark brown hair always slipping over his eye, the dimples at each side of his mouth when he smiled, the clear eyes and strong chin. And then I looked at Gloria, saw her radiance.

Somehow, it was all so inevitable.

At that moment, I hated her.

“Ah,” said Mother, after a calming sip of tea. “You do, do you?”

“Yes.”

“And you, young lady?”

“Very much,” said Gloria, leaning over and taking Matthew’s hand. “I know it’s not been long that we’ve known one another, but it’s wartime and-”

Mother waved her down. “Yes, yes, my dear, I know all about that. Have you thought, though, that Matthew might be going far away soon?”

“We’ve thought about that, Mother,” he said. “Even though I passed the medical, I’ll still have my military training to do after the degree, and there’s a good chance I’ll be able to come home every weekend until after Christmas, probably, at least.”

“And the rest of the week?”

“I’ll be working at the farm, as usual,” Gloria said, “and Matt will be at university in Leeds until July, then he’ll go wherever they send him for training. I know it’s not perfect. We’d love nothing more than to be together all the time.” They held hands and she gazed at him. “But we know that’s not realistic. Not yet, anyway.”

I couldn’t believe it; she called him Matt. How could she? He had always been Matthew to Mother and me.

“What about your studies?” Mother asked him.

“I’ll be working just as hard as usual.”

“Hmph. A lot of couples are waiting to marry,” she said. “Until times are less uncertain.”

“But a lot of people are getting married, too,” Matthew argued, “making the best of the time they have. Yes, we know life is very uncertain now. But if anything happens to me in the forces, I’ll die a far happier man for having been married to Gloria. Even if it was only for a day.”

“Don’t talk like that, Matthew,” Mother said, putting her hand to her chest again. Then she glanced at me. “What do you think about all this, Gwen?”

I swallowed. “Me? Well, I suppose if it’s what they really want to do, then there’s nothing we can say to stop them.”

“Good old Gwen,” said Matthew. “I knew I could depend on you.”

“Where will you live?” Mother demanded. “Have you thought about that? It’s not that we wouldn’t have you, but there’s not enough room here, you know, even if you wanted to live with Gwen and me. We don’t even have enough room to take in evacuees. And you certainly can’t both live at the farm.”

“Yes,” said Matthew, “we’ve thought about that, too. That’s why we want to get married as soon as possible.”

Mother frowned. “Oh?”

“We’re going to live in Bridge Cottage.”

“What? That run-down hovel by the fairy bridge?”

“Yes. It’ll be big enough for us. And it’ll be ours. Well, we’ll only be renting it, but you know what I mean. As you know, it’s been used for housing evacuees since old Miss Croft died. Anyway, I’ve talked to Lord Clifford’s agent in Leeds, and he says that the people there now are moving out next week. It’s a woman and her two children, evacuees from Birmingham. Apparently they’re homesick and they’re going home. I know it’ll need a lot of fixing up, but I’m good with my hands. And it’s only five shillings a week.”

“What about children? Have you thought about that, too?”

“I’m not having a baby, Mrs. Shackleton, if that’s what you mean,” said Gloria.

“Of course not, my dear. That’s not what I meant at all. I wouldn’t suggest such a thing. But if you do have a baby after you’re married, the child’s father will most likely be away and you’ll have a lot on your hands.”

That sad look came over Gloria’s face the way it did sometimes, a dark cloud blocking the sun. “We haven’t planned to have children,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. I wouldn’t want to bring a child into the world the way things are now, not after what I’ve been through.” Then the cloud passed and she smiled again. “After the war, though, we’ll see. Things will be different then.”

Mother was silent for a moment, then she grimaced as if in pain, which she probably was, and said, “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”

Matthew beamed. “Everything, Mother. We want to start having the banns called next Sunday. Please say you’ll give us your blessing. Please!”

Mother held her cup out and I poured more tea. Her hand was shaking and the cup rattled on the saucer. She looked at Gloria again. “And you’re an orphan, my dear? You have no living relatives?”

“None. But you did say I’ve got you, didn’t you?”

Mother smiled. Only a little one. That’s all she allowed herself those days. Little ones. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Oh, please, Mrs. Shackleton, please give us your permission.”

“It doesn’t look as if I’ve got much choice, does it? Go on, then, you have my blessing.” Then she sighed and looked at me. “I suppose we’ll have to start saving our coupons up, won’t we, Gwen, love?”

Some mornings, especially when the weather was good, Vivian Elmsley liked to walk up Rosslyn Hill to the High Street, take a table outside one of the cafés and linger over her morning coffee. She walked slowly, finding her breath came with more difficulty these days.

One or two people on the street recognized her from her television and magazine-cover appearances, as usual, but the people of Hampstead took celebrity in their stride, especially the literary kind, so no one pestered her for autographs or “simply had to” tell her how good or how bad her latest book was.

She found an empty table easily enough, bought her coffee and unfolded the Times. Her routine varied. Some days she found herself thinking about the book she was working on as she walked, hardly noticing the people in the street, unaware even of what season it was. On those days, she would sit down with her notebook and scribble a few ideas as she sipped. Today, though, the book was much farther from her mind than she would have liked.

Instead, she opened her newspaper. The brief item she was looking for appeared in a column on one of the inside pages usually reserved for news items from the provinces:

FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED IN RESERVOIR SKELETON CASE In a surprise statement given yesterday evening to local reporters, North Yorkshire Police indicated that the skeletal remains found under Thornfield Reservoir were those of a female murder victim. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, in charge of the case, said that while police have not yet discovered the victim’s identity, they do know that the body is that of a woman in her early twenties. All indications are that she was stabbed to death. How long the body has lain there, DCI Banks added, is much more difficult to determine, but preliminary information indicates that they are dealing with a twentieth-century crime. Thornfield Reservoir was constructed on the site of a village called Hobb’s End, whose remains have now come into view for the first time since 1953. The skeleton was found buried under an outbuilding by a thirteen-year-old boy, Adam Kelly, while he was playing in the area. Anyone with information is asked to get in touch immediately with the North Yorkshire Police.

So they knew that much already. Her hand trembling slightly, Vivian put the newspaper down and sucked some of the frothy milk from the top of her coffee. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the rest of the news now, or attempt the crossword. That little item had quite spoiled her day.

It was funny, she thought, how time played tricks. Over the years she had managed to distance herself from the past: the years with Ronald in Africa, Hong Kong, South America and Malaysia; her early struggles as a writer after his death; the rejections and humiliations; the flush of first publication; the slow rise to success; the television series. Before Ronald, she had thought her life completely blighted by fate. What she discovered instead, over the years, was that while it had been in some ways diminished, it had also been far more fulfilling than she could ever have dreamed. Time might not heal everything, but some things just die, dry up and flake off.

Of course, after Ronald’s death, she had never been involved with another man. (One might say she hadn’t even been involved with Ronald in that way.) But there is always a price to pay, and that was a relatively small one, far less than the nightmares and the deep, gnawing guilt that, while it fueled her imaginative flights of fancy, crippled her in just about every other way and brought on black moods and sleepless nights she sometimes feared would never end.

Now this. She watched the innocent pedestrians passing to and fro on the pavement: a young woman in a smart gray business suit talking into her mobile telephone; a young fair-haired couple carrying rucksacks, Scandinavian tourists by the look of them, holding hands; a man with a gray beard, wearing a paint-smeared smock; two girls with green and orange hair and rings through their noses. Vivian sighed. The streets of Hampstead. “All human life is here,” as the old News of the World used to proclaim about itself. Well, perhaps not all – not in Hampstead, at least – but certainly the more privileged classes.

Were they all so innocent? Perhaps not. No doubt there walked among the crowds of Hampstead a murderer or two.

Vivian gave a little shudder. She remembered how she had felt there was someone following her on and off over the past couple of weeks. She had put it down to an overactive imagination. After all, she made her living from writing about crime, and the same morbid imagination that made her so good at that also sparked off occasional panic attacks and fits of depression. They were two sides of the same coin; she profited from her fears, but she had to live with them, too. So perhaps she had been imagining it all. Who would want to follow her anyway? The police? Surely not. If they wanted to talk to her, they would approach her directly.

Vivian glanced back at her newspaper, folded open at the Hobb’s End item, and sighed. Well, it shouldn’t take them long now, should it? And then what would become of her hard-earned peace?

Banks started with Brian’s university administration office, and ten minutes later, after a few white lies about the importance of the information he was requesting, he had managed to convince the assistant to break her “strict code of privacy.” On the pad in front of him was the London telephone number of one Andrew Jones.

He paused before dialing, unsure of what he was going to say to Brian if he did get through. The only thing he knew was that they had to get beyond the argument, get to some position where they could talk like reasonable human beings. Still, both he and Brian had always been quick to forgive. Whenever they had disagreements in the past, one or the other would make a conciliatory move within minutes, and it was all over. Sandra was the one who kept things on a slow simmer; sometimes it took her a week of cool distance and moody silences before she let you know exactly why she was upset with you in the first place.

Whether Banks could manage reconciliation this time without slipping into the irate-father role, he wasn’t sure. Besides, he had damn good reason to be irate. Brian had cocked up three years of higher education – which hadn’t been easy on Banks and Sandra financially – and then he had bottled out of telling anyone for weeks, practically disappearing off the face of the earth.

As it turned out, Banks needn’t have worried. When he dialed the number, no one picked the phone up, and there was no answering machine.

Next he phoned Annie, who seemed excited about a painting of Hobb’s End done by an artist called Michael Stanhope. Banks couldn’t share her enthusiasm, though he was glad to find out she had discovered the name of the cottage by the outbuilding.

Waiting for John Webb to call with an inventory of the material recovered at the crime scene, he examined the contents of his “in” tray. Designs for new uniforms had been approved at a conference of the Association of Chief Police Officers. Fascinating stuff. Had they nothing better to do? What the hell did the top brass think the police force was, a bloody fashion statement? Soon they’d have PCs and WPCs flouncing down the catwalks in see-through uniforms with feather boas.

Under that was a copy of the latest report from Ms. Millicent Cummings, Assistant Chief Constable, or Director of the Department of Human Resources, as her real title went. North Yorkshire had been under fire lately for its excessive number of sexual-harassment claims – accusations of bullying, sexual assault, discrimination and bizarre initiation ceremonies – and Millie had been brought in as the new broom. On a broomstick, too, so the lads had it. Banks liked Millie, though; she was a bright, fair woman with a tough job to do. As far as he was concerned, the more thugs and yobs kicked off the force, the better all around.

Banks turned to a report on tightening up alcohol sales. It included an incident report about a ten-year-old kid who got pissed on alco-pop and rode his bicycle through a shoe-shop window. Minor cuts and bruises. Lucky bugger. Which was more than could be said than for the poor sales clerk who just happened to be bending over a prospective customer’s feet with a shoehorn at the time. Instant hemorrhoid surgery.

Banks signed off on the reports and memos – including one that informed him CID was having its name changed to Crime Management – then he worked for a while on an article he was writing on policing in the nineties. One of the advantages of his new computer and his desk-bound existence was that he had written two of these over the past couple of months, and he found he enjoyed the process. He had also given a few talks and lectures and discovered he was good at that, too. There had been times when he had thought it might not be a bad idea to try for some sort of police-related teaching career, but the cards were stacked against him in the form of his education – or lack of it. Banks didn’t have a university degree, as Brian had so cruelly reminded him the other day. He had come out of the Poly with a Higher National Diploma in Business Studies. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a pass degree, but only the equivalent. And that had been almost a quarter of a century ago. As far as he knew, such diplomas probably didn’t even exist anymore. A prospective employer would take one look at it and burst out laughing. The thought made Banks flush with shame and anger.

At least Brian had got a third-class honors, which beat a mere pass, or equivalent. Christ, it sounded like a poker game. Was he in competition with his son all of a sudden?

Luckily, the phone rang before he could frame an answer. It was John Webb.

“I’ve just picked up the stuff we dug up with the Hobb’s End skeleton,” he said. “Dr. William’s lads have given it a good clean.”

“What did you find? Not much after all this time, I imagine.”

“Actually, you’d be amazed at some of things that do survive. It’s all very unpredictable. I found a few buttons and some metal clips that look as if they might have come from a brassiere or a suspender belt. I also found some small leather shoes which look as though they might have belonged to the corpse.”

“So you’re saying she was buried in her clothes?”

“Looks like it.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, some other material, black and heavy. Definitely not clothing.”

“Any ideas?”

“Some sort of curtains, perhaps?”

“Did you find a wedding ring, or anything that looked as if it might have been one?” he asked.

“I think so. I wasn’t sure at first because of the corrosion, but that’s what it looks like all right.”

“I don’t suppose there’s a name and date engraved on the inside, is there?”

Webb laughed. “Even if there was, I wouldn’t be able to read it after this long.”

“Thought not. Any sign of the murder weapon? Most likely some sort of knife.”

“Nothing like that.”

“Handbag or a purse? Anything with identification.”

“Sorry, no. Just what I’ve told you. And a locket, no inscription and nothing inside. Nothing that survived the years underground, anyway. If there was a photo or something like that, it probably disintegrated.”

“Okay, thanks a lot, John.”

“No problem. I’ll have it sent over to you later today.”

Banks walked over to the window. The heat was still getting to him; he felt sleepy and woolly-headed, as if he’d had a couple of drinks, which he hadn’t. The cobbled market square was chockablock with tourists, coaches from Leeds, Wigan, and Scunthorpe, cars parked in every available nook and cranny, a riot of primary colors. All summer the tourist hordes had been coming to the Dales. Pubs, hotels, shops and B and Bs had all done record business. Of course, it hadn’t rained in two months, and even before that there had been nothing much more than minor showers since April.

Though the health fascists had finally succeeded in banning smoking from every police station in the country, Banks lit a cigarette. He had been quietly ignoring the no-smoking order for a while now. In the larger open-plan stations, you couldn’t get around it, of course; you simply had to go outside. But here, in the old Tudor-fronted warren, he had his own office. With the door closed and the window open, who would know? What did he care, anyway? What were they going to do, put him in detention?

Watching a couple of pretty young tourists dressed in T-shirts and shorts sitting eating ice lollies on the raised parapet of the market cross, Banks started to drift into pleasurable fantasies involving Annie Cabbot and her red wellies. He had been fantasizing a lot lately, and he didn’t know whether it was a healthy sign or not.

Officially, of course, fellow police officers did not sleep together. Especially DCIs and sergeants. That was a real no-no. From one perspective it could be called sexual harassment, and from the other, sleeping your way to the top.

In reality, it happened all the time. All over the country, coppers were shagging one another like rabbits, fucking away like minks, regardless of rank. Murder scenes in particular got them going: sex and death, the old aphrodisiac combination.

Dream on, he told himself, snapping out of the fantasy. The truth was that Annie Cabbot wouldn’t have him, and he wouldn’t try it anyway. Any facility at chatting up women he may have had as a teenager had deserted him now. How do you start that sort of thing all over again? He was too old to go out on dates and worry about whether a good-night kiss would be welcome. Or a nightcap. Or an invitation to stay the night. Or who should take care of the condoms. The whole idea made him feel nervous and awkward. He wouldn’t know where to begin.

He had had only one sexual encounter since Sandra left, and that had been a complete disaster. In his cups at Susan Gay’s farewell party in the Queen’s Arms, Banks had picked up a woman called Karen something-or-other. Or perhaps Karen had picked him up. Either way, the beer was boosting his confidence, and Karen was tipsy and definitely frisky. Instant lust. Without much preamble, they went back to his place where, after only the briefest of hesitations, they got into a clinch and fell onto the sofa, clothes flying everywhere. Despite the booze, everything worked just fine.

Somehow, later, they must have crawled up into the bed, because Banks awoke around four in the morning with a pounding headache, a naked woman wrapped around him and a burning desire to be alone. He had used Karen – as perhaps she had used him – and now all he wanted to do was discard her. Instead, he lay awake beside her thinking gloomy thoughts until she stirred in the early dawn and said she had to go home. He didn’t object, didn’t show any tenderness on parting, and he never saw her again.

The telephone dragged him out of his depressing memory and back to his desk. It was Geoff Turner, the forensic odontologist. This reminded Banks that he had a dentist’s appointment looming, and he had hated the dentist’s since his school days. Maybe he would have an excuse to cancel if this case went anywhere.

“Alan?”

“Geoff. You’re fast. Any news?”

“Nothing dramatic. Too soon for that. But I was keen to make a start. I’ve always been fascinated by skeletal remains.”

Banks thought of Dr. Williams caressing the skeleton’s pelvic region. “Pervert.”

Turner laughed. “Scientifically, I mean.”

“Go on.”

“I’m calling from the lab. What I wanted to do first of all was confirm Dr. Williams’s estimate of her age at the time of death. He’s right. The third molars are up – that’s wisdom teeth to you laymen – but the apexes haven’t quite closed yet, nor have the medial sides of the incisal sutures. The third molars don’t usually come up until your early twenties, so there’s our first clue. Then the apexes are usually closed by the age of twenty-five and medials by thirty. Which makes her mid-twenties, give or take a year or two.”

“Thanks, Geoff. Any idea how long she’s been down there?”

“Hold your horses. I told you I’ve only managed a quick look so far. What few fillings there are seem to indicate fairly recent dental work, if that’s of any interest to you. And by recent, I mean twentieth-century.”

“Any closer? A rough guess?”

“By the look of the material and techniques, probably not later than the fifties, if that’s any help.”

“Are you sure it’s not more recent? Like nineties?”

“No way. You might not believe it when you’re sitting in the chair, but dentistry’s come a hell of a long way in the past thirty years or so, and this mouth shows no signs of that. No modern techniques or materials. And there are several missing teeth.

“Could that have happened after death?”

“You mean could the killer have pulled her teeth out?”

“Could he?”

“Possible, but unlikely. They look like pretty clean extractions to me.”

“She can’t have been buried between 1953 and this summer, if that’s any help.”

“Then I’d say definitely before 1953.”

“Are you sure it couldn’t just be someone who neglected her teeth?”

“It’s not a matter of neglect, Alan, though I’ll get back to that in a moment. It’s materials and procedures.”

“Go on.”

“There’s not much more to tell, really. Just a couple of vague ideas.”

“Where would we be in our business without vague ideas?”

Turner laughed. “You shouldn’t say that to a scientist. It’s heresy. Anyway, I can’t be certain until the X rays, but we’re not talking top-quality dental work here and we’re also not talking regular visits. If I had to guess, I’d say this lass only went to the dentist’s when she had a problem.”

“What do you mean?” asked Banks, who was beginning to feel even more empathy with the victim. He felt exactly the same way about dentists.

“The fillings might have lasted a few years longer, had she lived, but in one case the decay wasn’t quite eradicated. That sort of thing. A bit sloppy. Also, as I said, there are signs of neglect, which may indicate we’re dealing with someone from a poor background, someone who couldn’t afford the best treatment. Quite often, you know, girls had all their teeth pulled out in their twenties and wore dentures for the rest of their lives.”

“Right. Thanks, Geoff.” Banks had always thought that the idea of paying for so much pain was the quintessence of masochism.

“Another possibility is wartime.”

“Really? Why do you say that?”

“Think about it. Most of the good young dentists and doctors were in the forces, and there were only old dodderers left. Poor equipment. Repairs were hard to get done. Military got priority over everything.”

“Right. I didn’t think of that.”

“And there’s another thing.”

“There is?”

“We didn’t get the National Health Service until 1948. Before that you had to pay for dental work. Naturally, the working class had the hardest time of it.”

“Didn’t they always,” said Banks, remembering his father coming home silent and exhausted after long shifts at the steel factory and his mother falling asleep in the evenings after spending her day cleaning other people’s houses. “So possibly wartime, possibly poor?”

“Right.”

“Thanks again. I owe you, Geoff.”

“It’ll be my pleasure to collect. Of course, if you could track down her actual dentist, if there are still records…”

“We’re trying,” said Banks. “But it happened a long time ago. How long is a dentist likely to hang on to old records, even if he is still alive?”

“True enough. Best of luck, Alan. Talk to you later.”

Banks put down the receiver and leaned back in his chair to think about what he had just heard. Both Ioan Williams and Geoff Turner agreed that the skeleton had not been put there after Thornfield Reservoir dried up earlier in the summer, and Dr. Williams had estimated the late thirties at the earliest. So the skeleton wasn’t a hundred years old or more; it was more like fifty or sixty. Which meant that if the victim had been between twenty-two and twenty-eight when she was killed, she would probably have been between seventy or eighty had she lived. Not only might she still be alive, then, but so might her killer, and so might a witness, or at least someone who remembered her.

This was quickly turning into a real case. What had been dug up from Thornfield Reservoir was no longer just a collection of filthy old bones; in Banks’s mind, the woman was slowly assuming flesh. He had no idea what she had really looked like, but in his mind’s eye he could already see a sort of amalgam of the wartime film stars in the fashions of the period: Greer Garson, Deanna Durbin, Merle Oberon. What he needed to know next was her name; that would make her even more real to him.

He looked at his watch. Just turned four. If he set off now, he could be in Harkside in an hour or so. Plenty of time to compare notes with Annie.