A Woman Unknown (26 page)

The sergeant moved the book out of reach. ‘No need for that, Mr Sykes. I believe you just made a private visit.’

Fitzpatrick’s telegram was waiting for me when I arrived home.

I wasted no time in driving to Kirkstall. Fitzpatrick must have been looking out of the window because he opened the door on my first knock.

The sight of him shocked me; his face was grey with grief, hair uncombed. His left foot was bandaged to three times its normal size. He supported himself with one crutch, and a hand on the wall. Hobbling aside, he moved from the door to make room for me to step inside.

‘I came as soon as I got your message.’

He took hold of a second crutch, propelled himself across the room and lowered himself gingerly into a chair, waving a crutch at the opposite chair.

‘I’ve not much experience of sending telegrams. That “stop” was unnecessary. You would have understood if I’d said, Come urgently have news.’

‘Yes.’

He nodded, as if he had satisfied himself on an important point. ‘They charge by the word.’

I sat down. ‘What have you done to your foot?’

‘I’m no good any more. I can’t hold myself together.’

‘What happened?’

‘I was tidying at work. I dropped a case of type on my foot. I do nothing right. Had to be helped to the dispensary. It’s my concentration. I’ve lost it.’

‘That’s terrible. As if you don’t have enough to worry about.’

In spite of his injury, the room was immaculate. A low fire burned in the grate. Holy figures gazed from their framed position on the wall, looking with compassion at Fitzpatrick and wisely ignoring me.

I took his telegram from my pocket and unfolded it. ‘What is the news?’

He stared at the telegram. ‘You think Brown at the counter would have told me I didn’t need that “stop”. Nobody ever tries to save you a penny.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Mr Fitzpatrick. The “stop” makes a telegram a telegram. It imparts urgency.’

The word urgency struck a chord. He said, ‘Deirdre has been here. She’s taken her rosary and her lucky pixie.’

‘Are you sure she didn’t have them with her?’

‘No. They were on her dressing table yesterday.’

‘Well that’s a relief. She’s safe and well. Did she take anything else? Any clothing?’

‘Her grey coat has gone, a black skirt and two blouses.’

‘When do you think she was here?’

‘I waited in yesterday, and then went off for the night shift. I have to keep working.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘I left home at five yesterday evening. It was about three o’clock this morning when I dropped the case of type on my foot.’ He stared down at his foot as if it were far away, and belonged to someone else.

‘Is it very painful?’

‘I don’t mind if it is. It’s nothing. What’s a pain?’

We contemplated this immense question for a moment. ‘And what time did you get home?’

‘I was in the infirmary until after five. They know how to keep you waiting, so I would have been home by six or half past. I didn’t know she’d been. I was that done in, I crawled up to bed, and slept for a few hours. And then I saw that the rosary was gone …’

‘And the pixie.’

‘Yes.’

He looked suddenly forlorn, and quite weak. ‘Can I get you anything, Mr Fitzpatrick? Cup of tea? Slice of bread and butter?’

He shook his head.

‘How are you coping?’

‘I’m framing well enough. I know I’ve to keep my strength up.’

‘Mr Fitzpatrick, might any of your neighbours have seen your wife? Is there anyone she is close to?’

‘She keeps to herself. We don’t like getting over-familiar. You never know where it might lead. All I know is that she hadn’t been home when I left for work yesterday evening, and she had been back when I woke up.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘The question is,
did she come in the middle of the night, or while I was sleeping? Surely she’d have stopped if she looked in on me and saw I had a poorly foot.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Tell me, when you went to the post office to send me the telegram, did you inform the police that she has been home?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I want you to find her. The police are useless. First they showed barely an interest. Said they were doing what they could, but short of manpower. Then overnight it was as if they were hunting a criminal. They were here taking fingerprints. How will fingerprints help to find her?’

‘You said some of her clothing is gone. May I look in her room?’

He nodded glumly.

‘At least now we have something to go on. If you are right about her coming back last night, or early this morning, we know that she is safe, and has some plan.’

I escaped to the stairs and into the front bedroom. Two summer dresses hung in the wardrobe, alongside a wool skirt and a winter coat. I opened the dresser drawers releasing the smell of mothballs. There was a paisley print home-made blouse, a hand-knitted jumper and cardigan. Was the neat folding Fitzpatrick’s doing, I wondered. The washstand held towels, a face cloth, along with liniment, aspirins, a curved tortoiseshell comb, an expensive tablet of soap and various odds and ends.

When did you take your underwear and stockings, Deirdre, and your nightdress?

Slowly, I went down the stairs.

His look was hopeful, as though I may have divined
some crucial information from the whitewashed walls.

‘Is there an overnight bag missing? You’ll have noticed that there is no nightdress, underwear or stockings in her room.’

His mouth opened. ‘No. I did not open that drawer, where she keeps her …’ He eased himself up, grabbing the crutches, hobbling towards the cellar head.

‘Don’t risk that, Mr Fitzpatrick. What is it you have thought of?’

‘Her shopping basket and bag. They should be on the slab in the cellar. That’s where she keeps them, so as not to untidy this room, you see. They were there on Sunday, when I took the ham back into the cellar.’

‘Do you have a light in the cellar?’

‘No. Take the candle from the mantelshelf.’

I lit the candle with a taper from the jar.

The chill came instantly as I opened the door to the cellar. I felt a ripple of horror as I descended. What if Fitzpatrick had killed her, and all this concern was an elaborate charade? Yet the cellar had no smell of blood or fear, only coal, and damp. Everything was in order – the cold press, the dolly tub, brooms and mops. There was an overnight bag, an unlocked trunk that contained a valise, but no shopping basket.

When I came back upstairs, I said, ‘No shopping basket. So it looks as if she took her few things and carried them in a basket. She probably wore the coat.’

‘Where has she gone?’ he wailed.

‘That’s what we shall find out. Think carefully. Tell me everywhere she has been where she may go again: friends, family, anywhere at all.’

He closed his eyes. ‘That’s just it. I know only what
she tells me. Mostly, she goes back to where she came from, to those streets around the Bank, Cotton Street, where her mother lived, Flax Street, where she has a school friend who worked with her at the shoe factory before we married, Holdforth Square where she visits Eddie’s mother, so she says.’

‘Who else lives in the house on Cotton Street, Deirdre’s mother’s house?’

‘The aunts, Mary and Brenda. They don’t like me any more than her mother did.’

I began to suspect plots. Perhaps Deirdre’s brother would take her back to America. His having come to me with Fitzpatrick and Deirdre’s lovesick childhood sweetheart Eddie was nothing but a smokescreen. ‘Anywhere else you can think of? Somewhere she may have been happy and wanted to return to.’

‘We had our honeymoon in Scarborough. She loved the sea.’

‘Where did you stay?’

‘In a boarding house on the front, with a Mrs Redhead. Very smart woman.’

I would pass on that information, but the fact that Deirdre was still in this area three days after she had been last seen, made me think she was closer to home. ‘I’ll make enquiries,’ I said lamely, ‘but I wonder if she is somewhere nearby, with some friend in Kirkstall she hasn’t mentioned, or an old school friend or a former workmate, someone who would keep her confidence.’

‘If she was on the Bank people would know. You can’t keep secrets there.’ He suddenly became animated. ‘You’ve hit it. She must go to Cotton Street tonight.’

‘Why tonight?’

‘It’s her mother’s wake. Deirdre can’t not be there. My brother-in-law made the funeral arrangements. Her mother has been brought home, and later she’ll be taken into church. The Requiem Mass will be tomorrow.’

‘Then we should go. You’re right.’

His animation fled as quickly as it had come. ‘Her people don’t like me. They won’t want me there.’

‘But you’re the son-in-law. You were getting on famously with Deirdre. You went with her to the nursing home.’

‘How can I get there, like this?’

‘Get your coat, Mr Fitzpatrick. We’re going to the wake.’

He looked at me in alarm, as though I had made a lewd suggestion. ‘How will I explain you? My wife gone, and me turning up with a strange woman?’

‘Tell the truth. Introduce me. Say I am helping you to look for Deirdre.’

‘You’re right. I want her to know … if she is there … or even if she isn’t and somebody knows where she is, they can tittle-tattle back to her that I came.’ Fitzpatrick struggled to his feet. He nodded at the jacket on the hook behind the door. ‘Do you mind?’

I helped him on with his jacket.

He balanced on one crutch, switching it from left to right. ‘You’re right. What do appearances matter where Deirdre is concerned? I can’t miss the wake. And I mustn’t go empty-handed, being the son-in-law.’

‘I have never been to a wake, Mr Fitzpatrick. You must tell me what to expect.’

‘I must buy a bottle of whisky. You’ll stop at the outsales?’

‘Yes of course.’

‘Pass me that tin will you?’ He nodded at a toffee tin on the mantelpiece.

When I placed it on the table, he took off the lid and tipped out coins, including a guinea. He began to shake. His grey face crumpled.

‘She hasn’t taken a penny. She’s been back but she’s left pay for the milk, coal, insurance, housekeeping. How will she manage?’

‘Never mind that now. Is there enough for what you need?’

Given I was the one with two good feet who must buy the whisky, I stopped at the Lloyds Arms where I am known, and would not be stared at.

I gave Fitzpatrick the bottle to nurse.

As we came closer to the Bank, he veered between optimism, convincing himself that Deirdre would be at her mother’s to receive condolences, and pessimism, that she wandered lost on some moor or in a wood, with only a rosary and a lucky pixie in her pocket.

As I drove, I asked Fitzpatrick, ‘Tell me a little more about who shares the house and who might be able to help us.’

‘The two spinster aunts, Mary and Brenda, as I mentioned, and there’s the old uncle, Jimmy, who chooses to confine himself to the cellar when he’s not out and about on his rounds or attending funerals. You’ll recognise him from his similarity to a picture-book gnome.’

‘Who is most likely to have useful information?’

‘They are. The aunts. And Deirdre has a friend she was at school with, and worked with at the shoe factory on East Street.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Rita O’Neil. She was our bridesmaid, married to one of the fellows from the factory. You won’t miss her if she’s there. She’s takes over any room she enters. You’ll know her by her waving ginger hair.’

On Marsh Lane, a train rattled overhead, belching steam and smoke. Everything about these streets looked dull, grey and black.

As the motor bumped across the cobbles, half a dozen thin, dirty children looked up from their listless games of dipping fingers into summer-warmed gas tar and chalking on the pavement with a stone. Two of them were barefoot, all of them poorly dressed. As one, they jumped to their feet and ran after the motor.