Martin Edwards - Suspicious Minds

The fog in Harry’s mind was starting to thin. “And?”

“Newman died before the seventies property bubble burst. He left his old lady all the loot and she barely touched a penny. So it’s been quietly picking up interest all these years. Cathy must have had a shock herself when Ma died and she finally realised what the old lady was worth. Far as I can tell, she inherited the thick end of six hundred thousand.”

Harry whistled. “No wonder she wasn’t chasing Trevor Morgan for alimony.”

“There you are. Isn’t that women all over?”

The cloud had passed by and the courtyard was bathed again in sunlight. A young couple walked by, their arms entwined. The boy was talking softly to his girlfriend; she laughed musically at something he said. As they disappeared within the craft centre, Harry felt a pang of loss and of jealousy.

“Any idea what Cathy did with the money?”

Jonah’s attempt to look modest yet efficient collapsed into self-congratulation.

“You’re talking to an ex-CID man here, Harry. Finding out is second nature. There was the name of a solicitors’ firm on the probate papers. Maher and Malcolm.”

Harry groaned. “My old firm.”

“Is that right? Well, I happen to know the senior partner there. Geoffrey Willatt.”

A fellow Freemason, thought Harry. The old pals’ act.

“And?”

“I managed to have a word with Geoffrey. He’s the soul of discretion and couldn’t break a client’s confidence, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“But from what he said I managed to piece the story together.”

Surprise, surprise. “Which was?”

“They’d acted for Newman for years. Wrote his will and his widow’s. It’s a good firm, no reason why the daughter shouldn’t use their services. And Geoffrey did let one thing slip. They’d acted for her in buying a place out in Cheshire. A house with small shop attached. Together with someone she described as a business partner.”

“Alison Stirrup?”

“Correct. The deal went through two months ago, before Alison buggered off, but he didn’t know the background on anything about Alison. The instructions came from Cathy and one of his assistants did the donkey work.”

Geoffrey Willatt hasn’t changed, thought Harry. “And the shop was where?”

“Town called Knutsford. Just off the main street.”

The soul of discretion had obviously been in expansive mood on this occasion.

“And you traced Cathy? Found Alison with her?”

Jonah frowned. He didn’t want to be rushed, to have his narrative flow disturbed.

“I went over there. I’d spun Geoffrey a bit of a yarn about the Newmans being old friends and he got his runner to phone me with the address. Funnily enough, when I turned up for a recce I thought I’d made a mistake.”

Again the significant pause. Harry obliged this time by asking obediently. “And what was that, Jonah?”

“New signboard over the window. Currer and Acton Bell. Trading as Patches.”

Something stirred in Harry’s memory. He put his hand through his hair, trying to visualise the old market town. Years had passed since his last visit, yet he could remember it well. He and Liz had read something in the paper about the May Day procession and had driven over to take a look.

“I know Knutsford,” he said. “Mrs. Gaskell, the nineteenth century novelist, didn’t she come from there? Of course. She wrote about it in Cranford .”

“So?” Jonah looked irked.

“She also wrote a biography of Charlotte Bronte, one of those sisters tucked away in their Yorkshire parsonage, pouring all their imagination into novels in the days when writing was a man’s game. They used pen-names. Charlotte was Currer Bell. Anne was Acton Bell.”

“Bloody fanciful if you ask me.”

“Not so fanciful for two women with a liking for Victorian literature who decided to run off together where no one knew them and set up a little cottage industry, flogging pricey patchwork quilts to the gin and tonic set south of Manchester.”

His thunder half-stolen, Jonah said grumpily, “Any road, I sat myself outside the shop and waited. The women were easy enough to recognise. I’d got a good description of Mrs. Morgan from her husband and Stirrup gave me a photograph of Alison. They seemed very lovey-dovey when they weren’t attending to customers.”

“Jesus.”

Jonah regained some of his original complacency. “Not a bad job of work, though I say so myself.”

Harry grinned and patted the old man on the shoulder. “Bloody well done. Have you told Stirrup yet?”

“No. Thought I’d have a word with you first.”

“Appreciate it.” Harry reflected for a few moments. “Okay, I can see why they wouldn’t move out and set up home together in a blaze of publicity. But why do you think Alison has kept quiet, even though she must have read about Claire’s disappearance and the discovery of her body?”

“I’ve asked myself that one. Of course she didn’t have much time for her step-daughter, but even so…”

“I need to talk to her,” said Harry.

“Thought you’d want to. But don’t get any ideas about doing the decent thing and not letting on to your client if his wife begs you to keep her secret safe. I want my fee paid.”

“Don’t we all? But let’s take it step by step. If Jack finds out Alison has deserted him for another woman and left him to persuade the police that he didn’t bury her in the garden, he just might decide to make up for lost time and drive over there and do her in with his bare hands.”

“And how can you stop him?”

“Your guess,” admitted Harry, “is as good as mine.”

No matter how hard he tried, Harry could not get Liz out of his mind. Going back to Knutsford re-awakened memories which had long been slumbering.

Driving past the heath, he recalled the carnival atmosphere which had greeted the two of them on their May Day visit here years ago. This was where the procession had finally wound up, led by Jack-in-the-Green past side streets decorated with coloured sand. The procession, with its morris men and its dancing troupes and its decorated floats and its children’s bands. Liz had loved all of it and Liverpool’s dirt smells might have been part of a different world.

As they might again today. For Knutsford was basking in the afternoon sun, scarcely less indifferent to the world beyond its boundaries than in the age of Elizabeth Gaskell. As Harry locked his car — even here you couldn’t be too careful, invaders from Merseyside might be skulking out of sight — he heard the well-modulated tones of women in designer leisure wear discussing difficult decisions about whether a Jacuzzi added more to the value of a five-bedroomed detached than UPVC double glazing throughout. Elegant economy might be a thing of the past, but Cranford was still possessed by the Amazons.

He walked along King Street, past the Gaskell memorial tower which an amateur architect with a taste for Italian style and money to burn had erected in the centre of town. Every other building housed a prettified tea room or an expensive gift shop. An American tourist tapped him on the shoulder and asked the way to the heritage centre. The outside world had to beat a path to Knutsford, not the other way round.

Fifty yards ahead he could see woodland and a sign marking an entrance to Tatton Park. Harry turned into Swan Lane, to be confronted with another example of weirdly imaginative Italian architecture, a turreted fantasy which housed a firm of solicitors. He found it difficult to imagine an environment more different from Fenwick Court. Next door stood a smaller building, like a cottage with a shop front. Above the door was the sign in Gothic lettering Jonah had described.