‘Thank you anyway,’ Ventnor stood, ‘just covering all our bases.’
‘Of course. . you’ll be paying for the damage of course. . where do we send the invoice?’
‘What damage?’
‘Well, following your phone call I took a quick trip out there to see what was going on.’
‘Yes. .?’
‘And all the units had been forced open. Now new chains and locks will be needed. . so where do we send the invoice?’
‘Well, one person was held in one of the units against her will, we had to check them all. . no time to get warrants or find the key holder. . life might have been at risk. So, no, we won’t be paying for any damage. Good day.’
Hennessey drove sedately home. It was a little early for him to leave Micklegate Bar Police Station but an officer of his rank was permitted a little fluidity in timekeeping in recognition of the extra hours he often, very often, worked. With Yellich and Webster still out visiting there was, he reasoned, little else he could do that day and so he enjoyed an early finish. Upon entering Easingwold and finding the town quiet, he stopped his car on Long Street where the houses and shops were joined, each with the other, to form a continuous roofline along the length of the road. He walked with a heavy heart to where she had fallen, all those years ago, a young woman in the very prime of her life, just three months after the birth of her first child, the first of a planned three for her and her husband George. She had collapsed. Suddenly. People rushed to her aid assuming she had fainted but no pulse could be found. She was declared dead on arrival at the hospital, or Condition Purple, in ambulance speak. Her post-mortem findings led the coroner to rule that she had died of Sudden Death Syndrome, which, Hennessey had come to learn, attacks young people in their twenties and who are in excellent health, causing the life within them to leave as if a light had been switched off and switched at random, and for no clear purpose. Hennessey, holding his three- month-old son in one arm, had used the other to scatter Jennifer’s ashes on the rear lawn of their home in Easingwold, and had then set about rebuilding the garden according to the design she had carefully drawn whilst heavily pregnant with Charles. George Hennessey never thought his wife was here, in Long Street, but felt her presence to be in the garden at the rear of their house. Even as a widower of a cruelly short marriage he always thought that he lived in ‘their’ house and, at the end of each day’s work, no matter what the weather, he would stand on the rear patio and tell Jennifer about his day. During the previous summer he had also told her of a new relationship in his life, whilst assuring her that his love for her was not and never would be diminished, and then he had felt a warmth surround him which could not be explained as coming from the sun alone. It was something deeper, something much, much richer and something very specific to him and him alone.
Carmen Pharoah got out of her car as she saw Stanley Hemmings amble in a lost, dream-like state towards his house. He cut, she thought, a helpless and a hapless figure — small with a battered look about him. He forced a smile when she showed him her ID.
‘Didn’t expect you, Miss, sorry. I just went out for a walk; don’t know what to do now our Edith is no more. Now she’s gone before. Just feel too alone in the house so I go out and walk round, can’t seem to stay settled. I’ll go back to work soon, that’ll keep my mind occupied.’
‘No matter, I thought I’d wait to see if you returned.’
‘Do come in, please.’ He walked up the drive of his house, past a small red van from which ‘EIIR’ had been removed from the sides but a trace of the lettering remained. Ex-Post Office van, deduced Pharoah, most likely bought at an auction. ‘One day I’ll go and see where she was held. . when you tell me where that is.’
‘Keeping it to ourselves for the time being, sir. Don’t want to contaminate the crime scene any.’
‘Oh, yes, like on television. . I watch those television programmes.’
‘Yes.’
‘I laid a bunch of flowers on the canal bank, though, assumed that was all right.’
‘Yes,’ Carmen Pharoah smiled, ‘no harm done there. The principal crime scene is where Mrs Hemmings was held captive.’
Hemmings put his hand inside his jacket pocket and took out a house key. ‘Do come in, Miss,’ he repeated as he unlocked and opened the door. Pharoah noticed how the key turned smoothly in a well lubricated lock. ‘Sorry about the mess, I haven’t tidied up for a bit, didn’t realize how much my wife did until I had to do it all myself.’
‘No matter.’ Carmen Pharoah stepped up the step and over the threshold and into the small kitchen. ‘You should see the houses we have to visit from time to time.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘The reason I have been asked to call is that I wonder if it’s possible for us, the police, to look at Mrs Hemmings’s personal possessions?’
‘Yes, of course. . by all means.’ Hemmings peeled off his jacket, reached for the kettle and filled it with water from the tap, and did so as if on autopilot, Carmen Pharoah observed, as if in a state of shock or as if a lifetime’s habit was to boil a kettle of water immediately upon returning home. ‘Her room is the back bedroom. Please. .’ he indicated the hallway which led to the stairs.
‘Her room? You don’t. . you didn’t. .?’
‘No,’ he turned to her with an icy expression, ‘we didn’t share a marital bed. Not lately anyway. We had an understanding, you see. It suited us both.’
‘I see. Can I go up?’
‘Yes,’ Hemmings lit the gas ring and placed the kettle upon it, ‘the back bedroom. . that is. . that was Edith’s room.’
Carmen Pharoah climbed the narrow stairway of the house and entered the rear bedroom. She encountered a musty smell within the room which had only a single unmade bed, a wardrobe and a dressing table. Carmen Pharoah pondered the unmade bed. Had Mrs Hemmings departed with some urgency? Did her husband care so little for her, despite his apparent grief, that he did not go into her room at all? When she was a missing person, making up her bed in anticipation of her return would have been the act of a worried and caring husband, or so Carmen Pharoah would have thought, but was it in fact the case that the quality of their marriage had deteriorated to the point that they were banned from each other’s room? Perhaps. . perhaps. . perhaps. Carmen Pharoah walked across the threadbare carpet to the dressing table. It seemed to her to be a sensible place to start looking, though she did not know what exactly she was searching for. Upon the table, in front of the mirror, was an array of cosmetics and a few items of jewellery, all of which she classed as ‘mid range’. Nothing there indicated wealth, nor equally of her struggling finances. It was, it seemed, fully in keeping with the house, a modest, three bedroom semi owned by a supervisor in the biscuit factory. Just Dringhouses, York. Comfortable. And mid range items within.
In the drawer of the dressing table she found Edith Hemmings’s birth certificate which put her age at forty- seven years, her birthplace as Ottawa, Canada and her maiden name as Aurille. Also in the drawer she found a Canadian passport in the name of Edith Avrille. The passport was still valid. Mr Hemmings had probably been her first husband although Carmen Pharoah knew that obtaining a passport in one’s maiden name, or renewing a passport in a woman’s maiden name, was not an uncommon practice, nor was it particularly difficult. She replaced the passport and took hold of a hardback notebook within which were written musings and overused sayings, ‘Don’t light a fire you can’t put out’ and ‘Pain is temporary but failure lasts a lifetime’ being but two. Also in the book were a number of addresses: St Joseph’s, Riddeau Terrace, Ottawa; Liff and Company, Barrie, Ontario; forty-three Allison Heights, Barrie; nineteen Wilbury Street, Barrie, Ontario. Carmen Pharoah felt it safe to disregard the single line entreaties to Edith Hemmings striving for common sense and proceeded to copy down all the addresses in the notebook. She then opened the wardrobe, rummaged through the clothing, felt her way across the top of the shelf in the wardrobe and, finding nothing else of promising significance, returned downstairs. She found Stanley Hemmings still in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea. ‘I have all I need,’ she told him, calmly.
‘Oh. What are you taking?’ Hemmings sounded alarmed.
‘Nothing. I am leaving everything where I found it. I have seen the birth certificate and passport and found her notebook; I have made a few notes but left everything in its proper place. We would ask you to do the same. Please do not clear the room, not just yet.’
‘Yes, understood. I won’t. I’ll be cremating her, by the way.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’ll be cremating her. Just thought you might be interested or would want to know. They have released the body.’
‘I see. . yes, the post-mortem was conclusive.’
