Henrietta Who?
By
Catherine Aird
A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY
'I've got her down,' said the pathologist, 'as Grace Edith Jenkins. The notes that came in with her say she was identified by her daughter.'
'That's right,' answered Sloan. 'Miss Henrietta Eleanor Leslie Jenkins said it was her mother.'
'Any doubt about the identification?'
'None that I've heard about, Doctor.'
'Either, Inspector, this girl…'
'Miss Jenkins.'
'Miss Jenkins has identified the wrong woman.'
'… or she wasn't the daughter.'
DEDICATION:
FOR ALL MY ELEVEN O'CLOCK FRIENDS, WITH LOVE.
HENRIETTA WHO?
CHAPTER ONE
Harry Ford was a postman. He was a postman of a vintage that is fast disappearing—that is to say he still did his delivery round on a bicycle. The little red vans had reached the large village of Down Martin but his own round of the smaller ones like Larking and Belling St. Peter was just as quick on two wheels as on four.
And he, for one, wasn't sorry. Gave you time to think, did a bicycle, even if it was a bit chilly at six o'clock of a dank morning in March. He was well muffled up against the cold though and he didn't mind the half dark. Besides, there were compensations. Another few weeks and he'd be abroad in that glorious early morning light that did something for the soul.
He braked gently as he coasted round the corner into Larking. He knew exactly where to brake on this road. In fact, there wasn't much of the village he didn't know after delivering its mail all these years.
An outsider would have said Larking was typical of a thousand other English villages. And, as it happened, this was true, though the people of Larking wouldn't have liked it. It had all the appurtenances of a normal village and the usual complement of important—and self-important—people: two different groups.
Spiritual leadership was provided by the Reverend Edward Bouverie Meyton (his father had been an admirer of Pusey). He lived at the Rectory on the green by the church (one Diocesan leaflet, three appeals, a Missionary newsletter, the quarterly report of the Additional Curates' Society and an interesting letter from the Calleshire Historical Association).
Secular leadership came from James Augustus Heber Hibbs, Esquire, at The Hall (an assortment of bills, two closely typed pages of good advice from his stockbroker, a wine list, a picture postcard from his cousin Maude, and a letter from Scotland about a grouse moor).
Harry Ford, postman, was not deceived. He knew as well as anyone else that real power—as opposed to leadership— was vested behind the counter at the Post Office cum General Store in the vast person of Mrs. Ricks (one seed catalogue: Mrs. Ricks rarely committed herself to paper).
Larking shared a branch of the Women's Institute with the neighbouring hamlet of Belling St. Peter (Mrs. Hibbs was president) and a doctor with a cluster of small communities round about.
And everyone thought they knew everything about everyone else.
In which they were very mistaken.
Harry Ford looked at the Post Office clock, dimly visible through the uncurtained window—though only from habit. He had done the round so often that he didn't need a clock to know that—saving Christmas and a General Election—he would finish his Larking delivery at a quarter to eight in the fartherest farmhouse, where—letters or not—he would fetch up in the kitchen with a cup of scalding tea.
Only it didn't work out that way this morning.
For ever afterwards he was thankful that he had been on his bicycle and not in a little red van. If he had been in a van, as he frequently reiterated in the days that followed, he couldn't possibly have avoided the huddled figure that was lying in the road.
'Right on the corner at the far end of the village,' he said breathlessly into the telephone after he had taken one quick look and pedalled furiously back to the telephone kiosk outside the Post Office. 'Lying in the road. Do come quickly,' he implored the ambulance. 'If anything else comes round that bend they won't be able to avoid her either.'
That word 'either' was full of profound significance.
'Where exactly?' demanded the man at the ambulance station. Larking was deep in rural Calleshire and the whole of that part of the county was an intricate network of minor roads. And it wasn't really light yet.
'Through Larking village proper,' said Ford, 'and out on the other road to Belling St. Peter.'
'The other road?' countered the man on the telephone, who had been caught out by bad directions before.
'Not the main road to Belling. The back road. Come to Larking Post Office and then fork left and she's about a quarof a mile down the road on the bad bend.'
'Right you are. You
'Dead?'
'Caller didn't say she was alive,' he said reasonably, 'and he didn't mention injuries. Just that she was lying in the road.'
'Dead then,' said the experienced Fred.
'Or drunk,' said the man in charge who had been at the game even longer.
She wasn't drunk.
Harry Ford going back to have a second, more considered look decided that beyond any doubt at all she was dead. He had been almost sure the first time by the inadequate gleam of his bicycle lamp but now with the sky
