A Dreadful Past (7 page)

George Hennessey took his leave from the Jenny household, expressing gratitude for their hospitality as he did so, and took the opportunity to wish Frank Jenny a good-humoured ‘good hunting' in respect of the ‘wretched' magpie. He then drove slowly to his home in Easingwold, following the B roads through Norton and Malton, and found himself greatly enjoying the quiet drive in the late spring weather. Upon arriving at Easingwold he drove through the town and exited on the Thirsk Road and then, when on the extreme outskirts of the town, he turned his car into the driveway of a detached house. At the sound of his car tyres crunching the gravel a dog began to bark loudly within the house, and did so excitedly in a welcoming manner. Hennessey entered the house by the front door and was met by a black mongrel that leapt up at him with a vigorously wagging tale. Hennessey knelt and patted the dog, and together they walked to the back of the house from which the dog exited via a dog flap set in the back door. Hennessey unlocked the back door and stood for a few moments watching his dog crisscross the lawn in search of recently laid scents.

Leaving the dog contentedly exploring the lawn, Hennessey returned into the house and made himself a large pot of tea which he allowed to infuse for the prescribed three minutes before pouring a portion of it into a tartan-patterned half-pint mug. He carried the mug of tea and once again stood on the patio at the rear of the house. ‘An interesting development.' He spoke quietly. ‘Well, perhaps it's still early days yet, but we are taking a very interesting fresh look at a cold case …' And so he continued talking as if to the air or to his garden or to Oscar, his dog, and an observer coming upon the scene would think he was talking to himself. But, dear reader, only those closest to him – his family, and also the new lady in his life – would know that he was in fact talking to Jennifer, his wife, who had died just three months after giving birth to their son. Jennifer, who had been walking through Easingwold one hot summer's afternoon and who had suddenly collapsed as if in a faint. Other foot passengers had gone to her aid but no pulse could be found. An ambulance was summoned which took her to hospital, where she was declared ‘dead on arrival' or ‘condition purple' in ambulance code. At the inquest, the doctor giving evidence had declared that Jennifer Hennessey had died of ‘Sudden Death Syndrome', which is the nearest the medical profession could get to explain why a young person in absolute and perfect health and still in her youth should fall down dead while doing nothing but walking in the street, quite calmly going about her business, all life having been removed from her in an instant as though, suddenly upon some whim, her life force had been switched off. It had been a great tragedy but Hennessey had picked himself up and had carried on ‘for Jennifer's sake'. Over the next few years George Hennessey had set about rebuilding their rear garden, observing a design Jennifer had drawn up while heavily pregnant with Charles. She had determined that the long back garden, which had been a dull, totally unimaginative expanse of lawn, should be divided widthways halfway down its length by a privet hedge with a lawn in the foreground, and beyond the hedge an orchard should be planted, with access to the orchard being gained by a gateway set in the hedge. Beyond the orchard a small area of wilderness was to be permitted in which a pond was to be dug and amphibians introduced.

It had then become his established practice, upon returning home each day, to stand on the patio, looking out over the garden where Jennifer's ashes had been scattered and to tell her of his day. ‘It is still very early on in the piece, as I say, and we are only able to address the case because things are quiet at the moment. Relatively speaking, that is. So back into the case we go with enthusiasm and gusto, but after twenty years memories will have blurred and become confused. Evidence will have been lost. Not all the players will still be with us. Well, all I can say is that we'll give it our best shot. It's all we can do.'

Later, after a wholesome, home-cooked chicken bake, George Hennessey settled down to read from a book about the Spanish Civil War which he had recently acquired as an interesting addition to his library of military history. The book, he found, transpired to be a pleasing mixture of highly detailed scholarly research combined with readability. It was, in his experience, a rare combination, and most pleasing because of it.

Later still, he and Oscar walked together enjoying each other's company to beyond the edge of Easingwold, where he took the dog off his lead and allowed him to roam freely across a meadow and in and out of a small wood. Later still, having returned Oscar to his house, George Hennessey strolled calmly into Easingwold, again another established practice, to enjoy a pint of brown and mild at the Dove Inn – just one – before last orders were called.

It was Wednesday, 22.00 hours.

In which more is learned about the Middleton household, two men have an Oriental experience, and both Reginald Webster and Thompson Ventnor are at home to the too kind reader.

T
ang Hall, dear reader, of which there has been repeated mention in the preceding chapter, is a housing development or ‘estate' which lies to the east of the centre of the city of York. It is a largely low-rise estate with steps within the buildings enabling tenants with flats on the upper floors to access their homes in keeping with the tenement design in Scotland and Continental Europe. In addition to the low-rise flats there are also streets with linked housing and pairs of houses at ground level with each house comprising of the ground floor and one upper floor, plus attic space and a small back garden. The estate is of a red brick appearance and dates in the main from the 1920s and 1930s. It is, by and large, neatly and cleanly kept by the local authority which maintains the small front gardens and the hedgerows which separate the gardens from the pavement and ensures that they are neatly trimmed. It is an estate wherein motorbikes are chained to the lampposts and where old motor cars line the kerbs. The majority of the adults under pensionable age are unemployed and many are known to the police. It is widely regarded to be the least desirable estate in York in which to live, but it is nevertheless an oasis of gentle manners and good conduct when compared to the notorious ‘sink estates' in cities such as Moss Side in Manchester, Easterhouse in Glasgow, St Paul's in Bristol and Seacroft in Leeds. One man's floor, the gracious reader might ponder, is another man's ceiling.

Carmen Pharoah drove the car into Hewley Avenue on the Tang Hall Estate and halted outside number 237. She and Thompson Ventnor found Hewley Avenue to be one of the streets in which the buildings were in pairs with a ground floor and an upper floor with small back and front gardens. The road, they also noted, was a mixture of old original, pre-World War Two developments which stood near the entrance to the avenue at the junction with Burlington Avenue and more recent 1960s housing which stood deeper within the avenue, yet the recently built housing blended, both officers thought, sensitively with the original houses. Carmen Pharoah and Thompson Ventnor left the car after securely locking it and walked up the short and narrow front path of number 237, which was lined with a waist-high privet hedge at the side. Carmen Pharoah knocked on the blue-painted front door using the soft yet still authoritative police officers knock, of tap … tap … tap. There was no immediate response. Pharoah and Ventnor glanced at each other and Pharoah was about to knock a second time when at that moment movement was to be heard from within the house in the manner of an internal door being opened with a distinct ‘click' and then shut. Moments later the front door was opened and a short and finely made woman stood on the threshold of the house. She had, noted the two officers, gaunt and drawn features, piercing green eyes and straggly, uncombed grey hair which reached to her shoulders. She wore a long black dress, the hem of which hung just below her knees, revealing thin calves which stopped in heavy black ‘sensible' shoes. The woman wore a necklace of multi-coloured plastic beads which she had looped twice around her long neck, and she wore equally inexpensive plastic bangles around each wrist. ‘Yes?' she said, with a trace of curiosity but without any trace at all of fear or alarm caused by the two strangers who had suddenly presented themselves on her doorstep.

‘Police.' Carmen Pharoah held up her ID card. Ventnor did the same.

‘All right,' the woman replied after glancing at each card. ‘I see you're genuine. Is there some trouble?'

‘Mrs Graham?' Pharoah asked. ‘Mrs Anne Graham?'

‘Miss … but yes, Miss Anne Graham, and I dare say that you'll be calling about the murder of the Middleton family all those years ago? Horrible thing to have happened.'

‘Yes, yes, we are.' Carmen Pharoah replaced her ID card in her handbag. ‘How did you know that?'

‘I didn't. I guessed.' Miss Graham glanced continually from Carmen Pharoah to Thompson Ventnor and then back to Pharoah and Ventnor. ‘I thought you'd be very likely calling on me when I saw the evening news on television last night. It said that the police were taking another look at the murders. I must say, you took your time to re-open the case but at least you're having another stab at it. So good for you, I say. Good for you.'

‘We're not re-opening it.' Ventnor held firm eye contact with Miss Graham. ‘It was never closed. Cases are only closed upon a conviction being obtained. But anyway, you sound angry, Miss Graham. Were you fond of the family?'

‘No, no, I wasn't,' Miss Graham snorted. ‘I didn't like them much at all really but I thought then, and I still think, that the police stopped their inquiries all too soon … But then I'm not a copper so I suppose you had your reasons. Or the police all those years ago had their reasons. So why are you investigating again?'

‘We have the time,' Carmen Pharoah replied quickly and strongly, sensing that Thompson Ventnor was going to tell Miss Graham about the Wedgwood vase which had been seen in the window of an antiques shop and further sensing that it was an item of information which was at that time best withheld from Miss Graham.

‘Yes … it's a quiet period,' Ventnor confirmed, taking his cue from Carmen Pharoah. ‘We have the time and so we thought we'd use it. Simple as that.'

‘So how can I help the police?' Miss Graham continued to look at the two officers with her cold green, piercing eyes. ‘I am sure I told the police everything I knew last time. I found the family when I called to clean that day. They were all in a heap … a bloody mess and the house was smashed up. It's a sight I have not been able to forget. I just cannot drive it from my mind. Even with the vodka … it just stays.'

‘No … no … it wouldn't be,' Carmen Pharoah replied sensitively and sympathetically. ‘Images like that are not easy to forget. But we heard you did well, how you kept your head, left the house as soon as you saw what had happened and ran to a nearby house and raised the alarm. So we can also say good for you.'

Miss Graham gave a small shrug of her right shoulder in response to the compliment.

‘We wondered if we could go over the events again with you, for our benefit being new to the investigation, and we also wondered if there might be anything you might now remember which you did not mention at the time,' Ventnor added. ‘Or anything which only seems relevant with the passing of time. It has been twenty years, after all.'

‘Twenty …' Miss Graham's voice faltered. ‘Has it really been twenty years?'

‘Yes.' Thompson Ventnor smiled. ‘Time flies, as they say.'

‘I can't think of anything I didn't tell the police at the time but I'll answer your questions, if you like,' Miss Graham replied in a sudden display of meekness in her high-pitched, rasping voice. ‘You'd better come in. You'd be better inside than out here on the step. I can see a few curtains twitching already. They're a nosey lot round here, really nosey. I mean, one life to lead is enough for me so I keep myself to myself but round here … it's like it's their life and everyone else's as well. So you'd better come in.' She turned and walked into the poorly lit hallway of her home. Carmen Pharoah stepped nimbly over the threshold and into the house. Thompson Ventnor followed her and shut the door gently behind him. Miss Graham led the officers into her back room which looked out on to a small rear garden surrounded by an evidently very recently trimmed privet hedge. The upper floor of a house in the next street could be seen beyond the garden hedge and above that was a blue sky with heavy white clouds at seven tenths in RAF speak. The room itself was quickly read by Pharoah and Thompson, who both thought its age and social status appropriate. It was, they saw, cluttered but not untidy, nor did it appear to be unclean. Artefacts which were in evidence were those to be expected for a single lady occupier in her late sixties. The curtains were kept in a half-closed position so that while there was sufficient light to see within the room, the room also had, the officers found, a soft, shadowy, almost sleep-inducing gloom about it. The house suffered from dampness and said dampness found and gripped the chests of both officers. Miss Graham sat in an armchair and invited Pharoah and Thompson to also take a seat. Carmen Pharoah sat in a second armchair which faced the chair in which Miss Graham sat, while Ventnor chose to sit on an upright chair which stood next to a small table. He took out his notebook and placed it on the table. He also took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and held it in his hand, poised, ready to write.

‘We understand that you cleaned Mr and Mrs Middleton's house out beyond Skelton way at the time that the family was murdered?' Carmen Pharoah began. ‘We'd like to establish that fact before we go any further.'

‘Yes.' Anne Graham's reply was short – curt, almost – so thought Ventnor, as though the previously glimpsed meekness had vanished.