2 The Bradshaw Mystery Read online

  The Bradshaw Mystery

  by

  John Waddington-Feather

  Chapter One

  It was with mixed feelings that the Revd Detective Inspector Blake Hartley of Keighworth CID and NSM at Ingerworth Parish Church drove across town to the big house near Rombalton Moor. He’d been fast asleep at home when the duty sergeant rang. The housekeeper at The Grange had found her mistress dead.

  “Why do they always have to wait till the middle of the night when I’m fast asleep tucked up in bed to bump people off?” he grumbled to his wife. She was in her dressing-gown, having got up with him to make him a cuppa and get him ready.

  “That’s the way it’s always been, Blake,” Mary replied patiently helping him on with his overcoat. “And that’s the way it always will be. You chose to be a copper.”

  “And you chose to marry one, thank goodness,” he smiled back, kissing her on the cheek. He slipped his notebook into his pocket and made for the door. “Don’t wait up, love. I could be out all night.”

  “And I’ve heard that one before,” said Mary.

  He left her at the door and drove off into the night. Memories came flooding back. He knew the dead woman well. She was Miss Bradshaw though he hadn’t seen her in years. She’d become a recluse, living with only her housekeeper and gardener, but years before she’d been a leading light in the town like the rest of her family. One of the bright young things of the 1920’s and 30’s when Keighworth had been one of the richest towns in England; astonishingly wealthy and astonishingly mucky, like all mill-towns.

  As she’d grown older Miss Bradshaw had gone odd and locked herself away in the great family house near the moors. Hartley had been there often as a boy. Practically lived there - in the kitchen and servants’ quarters. His mother had been the cook before her marriage and gone there again after her husband had been killed in the army during the war.

  Inspector Hartley remembered the house just after the war when much socialising still went on. The Bradshaws were very upper-crustian. Among the richest families in Yorkshire But those days had long gone. The 1960s had seen both them and the textile trade off. The old families had disappeared one by one along with their wealth and new people had taken their place from Asia.

  The Grange was the last to survive. All the others had been converted into old people’s homes or disappeared without trace under the demolisher’s hammer. “Executive-style” bungalows had gone up in their stead, crammed like sardines over the old sites and gardens.

  But The Grange still stood in its own grounds, and a twenty acre meadow on the south side still cushioned it from the spreading suburbs of Keighworth. Tall and gabled, its crumbling facade loomed dark and forbidding, like the moors behind. Where the wind swept down from those bleak heights, a protective row of conifers had been planted. They hadn’t been touched in years and had grown to an enormous height. They stood shoulder to shoulder and blocked out light on that side of the house.

  But the other side, the entrance, was open. Just inside the grounds an overgrown path veered off into a thick clump of rhododendrons. A wormy notice-board still stood there. The wind had ripped off most of the paint, but you could still make out the words: “Tradesman’s Entrance.” That was the path Blake Hartley had been forced to use when his mother worked there. Now he drove straight up the drive to the main doors and walked in.

  A couple of police cars were parked outside and a constable met him as he left his car. “She’s in there, sir,” he said, opening the door for the inspector and pointing along the hallway. Hartley thanked him and strode in.

  A photographer was taking shots of the body and forensic were dusting for fingerprints. His sergeant, Ibrahim Khan, was hiding behind the photographer, keeping as far away from the corpse as possible. It wasn’t a pretty sight and Sgt Khan had no stomach for bodies. The mere sight of blood sickened him.

  The inspector paused in the doorway and looked slowly round the room, taking in its details. He ran his hand through the thick mane of brown hair now flecking grey and sighed. Then his eyes came back to the elderly spinster sprawled lifeless on the floor. Her head had been smashed from behind. Blood still oozed from it and Hartley’s gentle eyes narrowed, hardened a moment, then softened again as he murmured a prayer. The priest broke through the policeman’s lips.

  As he moved into the room, Khan turned to greet him, looking relieved. He came across at once glad to get away from the body. “Good evening, sir,” he began.

  “You mean ‘Good morning’, Khan,” Hartley replied yawning and looking at his watch. “Yesterday went overboard almost an hour ago.”

  Ibrahim Khan was shorter and darker than his boss. Much younger, too; young enough to have been his son. And there was something of that relationship between them when they were working. Indeed, Hartley was a kind of father-figure to the whole station - except Superintendent Arthur Donaldson.

  Khan was a second generation Asian. His parents had come from Pakistan to Bradford in the early 1950s. They’d done well. So had Khan, who’d won a place at the local Grammar School then gone on to Oxford. After graduation he trained at the Police College, then served on the beat in downtown London for two years with the Met before going back north. He hadn’t long been married and lived on the opposite side of town to Hartley, not that far from The Grange.

  “Found owt?” asked the inspector.

  “Only this,” said Khan, holding up a plastic bag with a slip of paper inside. “It was under the chair where the old lady had been sitting. It’s a betting slip, sir.”

  “Surprised you know what one of them is,” said Hartley. “You a good Muslim and non-gambler.”

  Khan smiled. “I’m surprised you yourself recognised it, sir. You a good Christian priest and all that.”

  The inspector grunted and knelt by the body, glancing at it briefly. It was Miss Bradshaw all right. She looked as arrogant as ever. But death had cut her down to size. Her dentures had slipped out, giving her a comical look. Khan kept his distance.

  The old lady’s handbag had burst open on the floor. It smelled strongly of scent. Hartley could see a bottle of it, and other oddments, in the bag. A set of keys was there also and a fob- watch.

  “We’ll have a look-see inside that bag when the photographer’s done,” said Hartley, standing up. “Any sign of a break-in, Khan? Anything disturbed?”

  “No, sir. Everything seems OK. We’ll know better when it gets light and we can see outside.”

  “Who found her?”

  “The housekeeper, Mrs Goodwin, sir,” said Khan. He lowered his voice and looked in the direction of the kitchen. “She’s in there, sir. Very calm considering what’s happened.” Then he added, “I think she’s a bit simple, sir.”

  “But not as daft as she looks,” commented the inspector. “I’ve known her for years.”

  “And she’s been drinking, sir,” added Khan. “Her breath nearly knocked me over!” Then his eyes wandered magnetically back to the body and he blenched.

  “You seem as if you could do with a drink yourself, Khan,” observed his boss. “I should go outside and get some fresh air. You look as if you’re going to throw up.”

  Mrs Goodwin was pouring herself another gin as Hartley entered the kitchen. The nearly empty bottle was on the table. Another one stuck out of the waste-bin.

  He knew Lizzie Goodwin well, but hadn’t seen her for years. They’d got on in a rum sort of way when he’d been a lad. She’d pulled his leg unmercifully then. The way adolescent boys came in for ribbing by the servants. She’d been a scullery maid then, but as the other servants left, she stayed on, rising through the ranks to housekeeper by the time she was forty. Only she and a half-witted gardener called Woodley remained of the old staff, which once numbered twenty.

  She was about ten years older than the inspector, into her sixties. She was a big woman, mannish and powerful with close-cropped steel-grey hair. Her movements were slow and deliberate like a man’s, too.

  Yet when the inspector first knew her she still had the bloom of youth on her. She was handsome. Full-blooded. Attractive. There was still a suggestion of it in her ruddy features and dark eyes. But age had taken its toll. Her skin had coarsened. Time and smoking had etched lines across her face.

  She’d lived at The Grange all her working life, coming as a girl into service from a farm over the eastern side of Yorkshire. She’d married the chauffeur, but he’d died early on in their marriage. They’d no children. When Blake knew her she lived in the garret with another maid. Now she had one of the lodge cottages at the old gates. The gardener, Sammy Woodley, lived opposite in the other. He and an old biddy in the housing estate down the road were her only friends.

  She looked up as Blake came through the door and pushed her glass to one side trying to hide it. She wasn’t drunk and, as Khan had remarked, looked surprisingly calm, though she scowled as he entered.

  “Hello, Lizzie,” he said affably. “It must be years since we last met.”

  She grunted.

  “Sad do this, isn’t it?” he began, taking out his notebook.

  She looked at him keenly, then went over to the stove and began to mash some tea. “Tha’rt Nellie Hartley’s lad, aren’t tha? I didn’t recognise thee at first, but I heard tha were coming. Tha’ll have some tea?”

  “Thank you,” he said and opened his book. “Lizzie, I’ve got to ask you some questions.” He paused to sip his tea then said, “There seems to be some discrepancy…”

  “Sto
p talking fancy. I don’t know what tha means,” she broke in. “Talk like tha used to when thy mother worked here.”

  The inspector coughed and smiled. “There’s summat doesn’t tie up,” he said. “It was some time - after eleven - before you phoned us to tell us about Miss Bradshaw. Yet you told the officer you’d got back here from bingo around ten o’clock. Why?”

  She didn’t answer at once. She looked agitated and fiddled with her hankie and blew her nose. Then she looked up suddenly and said angrily, “Because I didn’t find her straight away. That’s why. I thought she were in bed. She grumbled like hell if I woke her up when I came in, so I came in here to make sure she were fast asleep.” Lizzie drunk her tea noisily before she added, “In any case, I had a bit of a fright coming back tonight, an’ I had to have a drink to pull meself together.”

  “Fright?”

  “Somebody dashed out of t’gates just as I were coming in. Nearly knocked me over. I thought it were Sammy Woodley at first, ‘cos he carried a spade, but it weren’t.” She broke off and began munching a biscuit loudly. It grated on Hartley and he sensed she knew it for she made it last. “I bet it were one o’ them chaps from t’estate pinching our plants. They’re allus thieving from t’gardens.”

  She took another biscuit and began chomping it, watching Blake closely all the time. He said nothing but continued writing in his book. His silence forced her to speak again. She was uncomfortable with his silences.

  “It were when I started me rounds I found her. I’d a right shock I can tell thee. Opening t’drawing-room door an’ seeing her there wi’ her head all bashed in an’ covered in blood!”

  “Yet you didn’t contact us then.”

  “I phoned Mr Fawcett - her nephew. Tha remembers him? He told me to ring him straight away if owt happened to her. Like she were taken ill. But neither of us expected owt like this.”

  “What did he say?” asked Hartley.

  “It were a woman who answered t’phone.”

  “His wife?”

  “No. He’s never married.”

  Lizzie Goodwin glanced across quickly, but the inspector remained deadpan.

  “She said Mr Fawcett wasn’t there but would be back shortly. She told me to ring t’police, which I did. She said he’d drive over when he got in. I’ve been expecting him any time.”

  Inspector Hartley drained his cup and stood up. He put his notebook away and she looked relieved. She followed him to the door and they almost collided when he stopped to ask, “Oh, just one more question, Lizzie. Whenever you phoned Mr Fawcett to tell him his aunt was ill, did you let her know?”

  The housekeeper flushed. “After she’d gone odd, there were things I kept from her. She’d such a vile temper. Tha couldn’t reason wi’ her. I turned to Mr Fawcett for help when she were like that. He’s allus been good to me. More than her. More than them all. So it were him I took notice of. Not her. If tha sees what I mean.”

  Inspector Hartley smiled. “I think I do, Lizzie,” he said quietly. “You and he always did get on well, didn’t you?”

  Then he turned and left her to her biscuits and the bottle on the shelf.

  Chapter Two

  Sammy Woodley, Miss Bradshaw’s gardener, disappeared the night of the murder. And her nephew, Peter Fawcett, didn’t turn up either. The inspector particularly wanted to see both of them. Fawcett phoned in to say his car had broken down the other side of Skiproyd. Could he come in the next day when it had been repaired? Inspector Hartley told him to stay at home. He’d visit him there. To tell the truth, Hartley was curious to see where he lived. He knew Grasby Manor from his youth, but only from a distance. He’d never been inside.

  Fawcett could tell him a great deal about his aunt which the inspector wanted to know and which Lizzie had kept quiet about. Most of all, it was on a personal level he wanted to interview Fawcett. As they drove to the Manor the next day, he and Khan chatted about the case. The day before, he’d left his sergeant with Lizzie to see if he could get anything more out of her. He’d drawn a blank. “Didn’t get a peep,” he said, looking out of the window. “She answered in words of one syllable, then became downright rude - racist. She doesn’t care much for folk of my colour.”

  “I hope you’re big enough not to let it worry you. You’ve had it all before, Khan,” said Hartley gently. “To the likes of Lizzie even going to Bradford is like a trip abroad. Places like London are on another planet.” His sergeant smiled, and Hartley quipped, “She might be right there.” But Khan wasn’t impressed, so Hartley said more seriously, “You’re not the only one who’s had to face prejudice, Khan. I had to as a young copper. Admittedly it was prejudice of a different sort, but it bit just as deep. I could have ended up all bitter and twisted if I’d let it get on top of me.”

  They drove in silence as his words sank in.

  “When I was a lad,” he continued, “it mattered who your parents were and where you were brought up. Which school you went to - even how you spoke. If you didn’t fit you’d had it. The British class system ruled the roost then, and still does in some parts. But now it’s often something else. The colour of your skin, how much you earn, how big your house and car are. It’s almost a sin to be poor now, especially if you’re on benefits. Aye, lad, you’ll always have prejudice. It’s everywhere and I bet you have it in your own community.”

  Ibrahim Khan nodded and they both fell silent again, watching the long grey stone terraced houses slide by. The road north from Keighworth was lined with trees. It was a long straight road focussing northwards on the hills and farmland leading to the Dales.

  The river sliced the valley in two, separating green meadows from the rough pasturage rising sharply to the moors Black gritty dry stone walls varicosed the hillsides for some miles out of Keighworth till they reached Skiproyd. There they turned astonishingly white in limestone country; sharpening the very light. Along the valley, the crests were tinged red with dead bracken. Higher still, mournful clouds slouched over the Pennines from Lancashire, threatening as always more rain..

  As they drove, Blake Hartley pointed out landmarks from his past. His mother’s grandparents had come from the Dales, leaving their tiny small-holdings to find work and a steady wage in the mills at Keighworth. Money came more easily there, if less healthily.

  He glanced across at his sergeant still silent.

  “You’ve got one thing in your favour, Khan,” he said.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Education. I’d have liked to have gone to university, but never got the chance. We couldn’t afford it after my dad was killed. I had to leave school in the sixth-form. Went straight into the army to do my National Service. I learned a lot about life there. Joined the Force when I came out and never looked back. Never regretted it.”

  Then he returned to murder case they were on.

  “This chap Fawcett we’re going to interview. Like I said, I’ve known him since I was a lad. He’s had more chances in life than you and me put together. No prejudice to face. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Left a fortune by his grandad - but he still turned out a wrong ’un. Greedy as they come. Always wants more. And when he couldn’t get it the right way, he took it t’other. Aye, I’ve know him all my life. Long enough to feel that somehow he’s connected with his aunt’s murder.”

  Sergeant Khan looked across surprised. “Why do you think that, sir?”

  The inspector shrugged his shoulders, and wouldn’t meet the other’s eye.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Khan. Just a gut-feeling.”

  “You’ve something personal against him, sir. Haven’t you?” said Khan watching his boss keenly

  Hartley shifted uneasily. “You might say that.”

  Khan waited. It would all come out.

  “When I was lad,” said Hartley, a mile or two further on, “my mother was in service at The Grange. I had to go there each day straight from school till she’d finished work. She was cook for the Bradshaws, so I always had to stay in the kitchen or servant’s quarters. That’s how I came to know Lizzie Goodwin. But when the Bradshaws were away, I wandered round their part of the house. And I envied them. Oh, how I envied them! All their wealth and finery; all their self-confidence.”