'That's what the constable in attendance thought.''And from the opposite direction the second time.'
'Nasty.'
'Yes.'
Sloan replaced the receiver and looked out of the window 'A car, Crosby, and quickly. I want to get back to, Lading before the light goes. And get on to Hepple and tell him to meet us at the scene of the accident.'
Henrietta was still at the Rectory when the Rector returned.
He was undismayed when his wife told him that Henrietta was not Grace Jenkins's daughter.
'That explains something that always puzzled me,' he said.
Henrietta looked up quickly. 'What was that?'
'Why she came to Larking in the first place. As far as I could discover she had no links here at all. None whatsoever.' Mr. Meyton was a spare, grey-haired scholarly man, a keen student of military history and the direct opposite of his tubby, cheerful wife. 'If I remember correctly you both arrived out of the blue so to speak. And no one could call Boundary Cottage the ideal situation for an unprotected woman and child in war time.'
Henrietta blinked. 'I hadn't thought of that…'
'If she was deliberately looking for somewhere lonely…'
'Nowhere better,' agreed Henrietta. 'I just thought she liked the country.'
'It occurred to me at the time she had set out to cut herself off,' said Mr. Meyton. 'Some people do. A great mistake, of course, and I always advise against it.'
'Now we know why,' said Henrietta.
'Perhaps.'
'She wanted everyone to think I was hers.'
'She probably didn't want you to know you weren't,' said Mr. Meyton mildly. 'Which is something quite different.'
'But why on earth not?' demanded Henrietta. 'Lots of children are adopted these days.'
'True.' The Rector hesitated. 'There are other possibilities, of course.'
'I'm just beginning to work them out,' dryly.
'She might have had you by a previous marriage…'
'No. It wasn't that.'
'Or even—er—outside marriage.'
'Nor that,' said Henrietta tonelessly. 'The police said so. She wasn't anybody's mother—ever.'
'I see. There will be reasons, you know.'
She sighed. 'I could have understood any of those things but this just doesn't make sense.'
'It is an unusual situation.' Mr. Meyton gave the impression of choosing his words with care.
'Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter,' said Henrietta defiantly, 'whatever anyone says.'
'Quite so.'
'And I swear no one could have been kinder…'
'No.' He said tentatively, 'Perhaps—had you thought— most likely of all, I suppose—that you were a child of your father's by a previous marriage.'
Mrs. Meyton who had been sitting by, worried and concerned, put in anxiously, 'That would explain everything, dear, wouldn't it?'
'I had wondered about that,' said Henrietta.
The Rector stirred his tea. 'It is a distinct possibility.'
Henrietta stared into the fire. 'That would make me her stepdaughter.'
'Yes.' He coughed. 'It might also account for the strange fact that following his death she didn't tell you.'
'She didn't,' said Henrietta vigorously, 'behave like a stepmother.'
'That's a fiction, you know,' retorted the Rector. 'You've been reading too many books.'
Henrietta managed a tremulous smile, and said again, 'Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter. I know she loved me…'
'Of course she did,' insisted Mrs. Meyton.
'Perhaps that's the wrong word,' said Henrietta slowly. 'It was more than that. I always felt…' She looked from one of them to the other struggling to find a word that would convey intangible meaning, '… well, cherished, if you know what I mean.'
'Of course, I do,' said Mrs. Meyton briskly. 'And you were. Always.'
'It wasn't only that. She made great sacrifices so that I could go away to university. We had to be very careful, you know, with money.' She pushed her hair back from her face and said, 'She wouldn't have done that for just anybody, would she?'
What could have been a small smile twitched at the corners of the Rector's lips but he said gravely enough, 'I think we can accept that—whoever you are—you aren't—er—just anybody.'
'But am I even Henrietta?'
'Henrietta?'
'Henrietta Eleanor Leslie—those are my Christian names…'
'Well?'
'I thought I was my mother's daughter until this morning.'
'You're looking for proof that…'
'That at least I'm Henrietta.'
'If you had been baptised here…'
'I wasn't then?'
The Rector shook his head. 'No. Your mother…'
'She wasn't my mother.'
'I'm sorry.' He bowed his head. 'I was forgetting. It isn't easy to remember…'
'No.' Very ironically.
'Mrs. Jenkins told me you were already baptised.'
He did remember then. Aloud Henrietta said, 'That's why the bureau was broken into then. I can see that now.'
'You think there must have been something there?'
'I do.'
The Rector frowned. 'It does rather look as if steps have been taken to conceal certain—er—facts.'
Henrietta tightened her lips. 'It's not going to be easy, is it?'
'What isn't?'
'Finding out who I am.'
Sloan and Crosby saw Constable Hepple soon after they had forked left at the Post Office. He had brought a plan with him.
'You can't see the chalk lines any more, sir,' he said, 'but deceased was lying roughly here.'
'I see.'
'Walking home and hit from behind, I'd say,' went on Hepple. 'People never will walk towards oncoming traffic like they should.'
'No.'
'His front wheel caught that bit of grass verge afterwards, deflected a bit by the impact, I'd say.'
Sloan nodded.
'I've got a good cast of that,' said Hepple.
Sloan stood in the middle of the bend and looked in both directions. It was a bad bend but with due care and attention there was no need to kill a pedestrian on it.
Hepple was still theorising. 'I reckon he didn't see her at all, sir. There's not a suspicion of a skid mark on the road. Daresay he didn't realise what he'd done till afterwards and then he panicked.'
That was the neat and tidy explanation. And, but for Dr. Dabbe it would probably have been the one that went down on the record. Pathology was like that.
'Where exactly did you say she was lying?' asked Inspector Sloan.
