upstairs in the bedroom. Very efficient. I still use the same method to get through the cold days. Not cold any more. . winter has gone. . I sleep in my bedroom these nights.’
‘You don’t think this is cold, sir?’ Yellich felt the chill within the house reach his bones.
‘No. . nowhere near, the cut-off point is when your breath condenses in the house; we are a long way from that point. We just have to get through this late frost and then it will be spring.’ He turned at the top of the staircase and led Yellich and Webster along a narrow corridor of creaking bare floorboards with a single window at the end of it; a naked light bulb hung forlornly from a black entwined electric cable just inside the window. ‘That’s the light I keep on to let the old boy who lives across the fields know that I am still alive. I’ll switch it on when it gets dark.’ He stopped by a door and opened it. ‘This was her room.’ He stepped aside.
Yellich and Webster entered the room and saw that it was spartan in the extreme. It contained a single metal framed bed with a hard looking mattress, a small wardrobe of perhaps the 1930s in terms of its age and a chest of drawers of what seemed to the officers to be of the same vintage. There was also a dressing table with a mirror attached to it and an upright chair in front of it. The floorboards, like the corridor outside the room, were without covering. The room was illuminated by a single light bulb which, similar to the light bulb in the corridor, was naked and hung from the ceiling at the end of a length of entwined electric cable of the type used in houses prior to the Second World War. There was no source of heating in the room. The window looked out across the fields at the front of the house to the road and to the hills beyond the road.
‘Do you see what I mean?’ Beattie said triumphantly. ‘I mean about the French Foreign Legion Syndrome. Who would accept this accommodation unless they had to? She was on the run all right. It should have made both me and my son suspicious.’
‘Seems so.’ Yellich looked at the cell-like room in the isolated prison-like house. He thought Beattie to be correct. Only a very frightened person would accept live-in accommodation of this low standard. There was not even a lock on the door. He asked if anyone visited her.
‘No. . not a visitor, no one called on her. . but. . since you mention it. .’
‘But?’ Yellich pressed.
‘There was the large bearded man. I saw him a few times standing on the edge of the road, just looking at the house. I do not often look out of the house and so he was probably there more often than the three times I saw him.’
‘That’s interesting.’ Yellich spoke softly, looking out of the window of the room. ‘Was Edith. . or Julia. . in the house at the time, can you recall?’
‘It was about the time she left, a few months ago, come to think of it. I well recall I mentioned it to her, that is to say that I had seen a man standing by the road looking at the house. She seemed worried by the information. Then she left. But she was planning to leave anyway. She had been emptying my bank account for weeks before I saw the man for the first time. Perhaps his arrival was just coincidence. Perhaps she thought she had taken me for all she could and was going to make tracks anyway. . but she did seem frightened when I described him to her.’
‘Can you describe him for us now? Can you remember his appearance?’
‘Well, the eyesight isn’t what it used to be. He was a large man, bearded, like I said, solidly built. He wore a fur hat.’
‘A fur hat?’
‘Yes. A man’s fur hat, like you see Russian soldiers wearing.’
‘I know the type.’
‘Light coloured. Not dark, so Arctic fox, not rabbit fur.’
‘And not frightened of being seen?’
‘No, he wasn’t, now you mention it. He did not seem to care if he was seen. Red jacket. . tartan pattern.’
‘Seems like someone we ought to talk to; he obviously had some interest in the house.’ Yellich turned to Webster who nodded in agreement.
‘You could try my neighbour,’ Beattie suggested.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, he saw him once, driving past very slowly. He got a good look at him. He’ll be able to give you more details than I can.’ Beattie stepped into the room and opened a drawer in the dressing table. ‘We kept all the stuff about her in here.’ He took out the reference and read it. ‘Look at what he said, that fox hunter type, “Industrious and utterly trustworthy”. Tosh! But he got rid of her and here. .’ he took another piece of paper from the drawer, ‘is the crime number I mentioned, given to me in respect of the theft of my money and valuables.’ He handed it to Yellich.
‘Malton Police.’ Yellich read the slip of paper.
‘Yes, that’s the local bobby shop around here. Still a fair few miles away but it’s the local cop shop.’
‘You don’t need it?’
‘No, I can’t claim for the lost money, I verified that with the insurance people, only for items, and she didn’t steal much from the house because there was little to steal. She took some of Mrs Beattie’s jewellery. . that I would like back but the value of the other stuff was minimal. Valuable only in terms of sentimental value. . but I refer to them as the “valuables”.’
‘He’s a tight-fisted old thing.’ Ben Tinsley stood defensively in the doorway of his house. ‘Dare say he has little good to say about me but do you know that in the wintertime he sleeps on a camp bed in his kitchen rather than have a heater in his bedroom, him and his wife also when she was with us? But we’re both getting on and we are neighbours, and so I keep an eye on him and he keeps an eye on me.’
‘Yes,’ Yellich smiled, ‘he told us the system you have of leaving a light burning to let each other know you are well. Also of moving his Land Rover about. A good idea.’
‘Not uncommon in the country. But do please come in out of the cold, gentlemen.’
In contrast to Alexander Beattie’s home, Yellich and Webster found Ben Tinsley’s home was small, warm and dry. A settled coal fire burned gently in the grate.
‘Not legal,’ Tinsley pointed to the fire, and did so with clear embarrassment.
‘I know.’ Yellich read the room, photographs of family on the wall and mantelpiece, a compact television and a pile of magazines about walking in the country and coarse fishing. A physically fit widower, fond of his family, living within his means, enjoying solitary pursuits: nothing for the officers to be at all suspicious about. ‘But we won’t report you.’
‘Thank you. This is the country, I am not polluting anyone else’s breathing air and there is nothing like a coal fire. You just can’t beat coal for a home fire. Take it from me, you just can’t beat a coal fire. Do take a seat, please.’
The officers sat in deep comfortable armchairs covered with flower patterned material.
‘So how can I help you?’ Tinsley sat on a matching sofa. ‘I saw you at Beattie’s house, house. . mausoleum more like, if you ask me. I mean, what is he proving living in such cold conditions? He sees it as an achievement to get through the winter without heating, miserly old fool that he is. I tell you, he is the sort of man who would buy a poppy for one Remembrance Sunday, pay next to nothing for it and wear it for the next ten Remembrance Sundays until it falls apart, then he buys another one for a penny or two and wears that for the first week in each November until that too falls apart, and so on and so forth. That’s Beattie, claiming poverty but I bet he has a pile tucked away somewhere. Anyway I knew you were cops so I didn’t interfere.’
‘You knew?’ Webster asked.
‘Yes. You looked confident, were a pair and calling during the hours of daylight. Also you are both in good physical shape. But I took a few photographs of you anyway,’ Tinsley smiled.
‘You did?’
‘Yes I did. Just in case. And I also made sure I got your car registration in one of the shots. I used a telephoto lens, you see, then I saw Beattie invite you into his house. . so I relaxed.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I’ll send prints of them to you when I develop the film. Malton Police Station?’
‘No. York. Micklegate Bar. But we’d still like to see them.’
‘Really? York Police, I mean. .’
‘Yes, really.’
