In the Family Page 6

  “Hello? Is that Mr. Hedley Atkins?”

  “No,” said a voice that Tim identified as being male. “It is a very close friend of his. I will fetch him for you. Who may I say is calling?” The voice rose higher with every word, until Tim could not be sure that it was not a woman, after all. He also detected some innuendo in the final sentence, though he could not make out its significance.

  “Thank you. Please say that it is Inspector Tim Yates, of South Lincolnshire Police.”

  The voice made no further comment. Tim heard the receiver being laid down carefully. Next he could detect a certain amount of scurrying about and whispering. Tim strained his ears, but could not make out any of the words that were being exchanged, except perhaps the phrase ‘some copper’ – though he could not be sure even of that. At length, he heard the receiver being picked up again.

  “Good evening. This is Hedley Atkins speaking.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Atkins. Detective Inspector Yates, South Lincolnshire Police. I wonder if I might come to visit you, to discuss some recent developments in a case that I’m working on?”

  “What kind of case? Is it something to do with my mother?” Hedley Atkins had sounded cordial at first, but he was more guarded now.

  “Not as far as I know. It concerns the disappearance of Kathryn Sheppard. I’m sure that you will remember it: you helped the police with their investigation at the time, and subsequently when their enquiries were reopened fifteen years later.”

  “Of course I remember it. I must say that I’m surprised that you are still working on it. I had assumed that you had decided not to take it any further, after the second investigation drew a blank.”

  “Murder cases are rarely closed completely, Mr. Atkins.”

  “It was never proved that she was murdered though, was it? May I ask what the new developments are?”

  “Of course. You may be aware that a skeleton was found at the side of the A1 a few days ago. We now have proof that it is Kathryn Sheppard’s.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “Quite certain. There can be absolutely no doubt.”

  “Interesting. I must admit, I wondered whether it was Kathryn when I read about it.”

  “Indeed? May I come to see you this evening? You will appreciate that we need to follow up all the leads that we have as quickly as possible.”

  “I’d hardly call myself a ‘lead’, Inspector. If you’ve read the notes that were taken during the previous investigations, you will see that I was merely questioned because Kathryn was my girlfriend for a while. In fact, she ditched me for someone else about a year before her disappearance and I rarely saw her after that. But I’m very happy for you to come to see me, if you think I can be of any help.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Atkins. Shall we say, in half an hour?”

  Hedley Atkins was alone when Tim entered his flat some twenty-five minutes later. Hedley shook Tim’s hand in a friendly way, and invited him inside. He was a tall, fairly slender man with a slight paunch: his was an athletic body that had been allowed to go to seed. He had a long face with extremely deep-set, brown eyes, and an unflatteringly boyish hairstyle of the pudding-bowl fringe variety.

  The flat was quite gloomy and dingily decorated, but immaculately tidy. It had a kind of dilapidated grandeur about it; it was situated in an early Victorian terrace that had been divided up into flats in the 1930s. The ceilings were high and ornately plastered; the sash windows tall and narrow. There was a tiny kitchen off the entrance vestibule, and, having shown Tim into the sitting-room, Hedley disappeared into it momentarily, emerging again with a kettle, which he held aloft.

  “Cup of tea, Inspector?”

  “Thank you, that would be kind. Has your friend gone home now?”

  “My friend? Oh, you mean Peter. He lives here. He’s out at the moment, though.”

  “I see. I hope I didn’t drive him away?”

  Hedley Atkins laughed.

  “Well, actually, I rather think that you did. He doesn’t like policemen, for some reason. I can’t think why. He’s a perfectly respectable, upstanding citizen, after all.”

  “I’m sure he is.” Tim shrugged. “He’s not alone. I’m afraid that quite a lot of people feel intimidated by the police, even if they haven’t done anything to break the law. I’m sorry that my visit has inconvenienced him.”

  Hedley laughed again.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t feel too sorry for him. He’s almost certainly gone to the Punch Bowl. He’ll have a good time in there.”

  Once Tim was ensconced on Hedley’s leather Chesterfield with a mug of tea in one hand, he began to talk about Kathryn Sheppard. He found Hedley Atkins cheerful and co-operative. His recollections of the events leading up to Kathryn’s disappearance and his account of their time together differed very little from what he had said in his statements to the police in 1975 and 1990. There was one thing puzzling Tim, however. He had decided to ask Hedley about it towards the end of their conversation.

  “Mr. Atkins, you said that you did not see Kathryn Sheppard on many occasions after she left her employment at the office in which you also worked soon after she broke off your romance, but that on the occasions on which you did see her, it was in the company of your sister, Bryony. I’m surprised that Bryony wasn’t brought in for questioning by the police during either of the investigations into Kathryn’s disappearance. Of course I don’t hold you responsible for that, nor do I expect you to be able to explain why so little interest was shown in Bryony. It seems to me that she could have been a star witness. So what I would like to ask you is, did your sister ever refer to Kathryn’s disappearance when in your company, or speculate what might have happened to her? She must have been upset by it, surely?”

  “I’m sure that she was, if she was aware of it. What you need to know, Inspector, is that my sister decided to make a new life for herself after my mother was convicted of killing my grandmother, which was some time before Kathryn disappeared. She changed her name and built a new life for herself, completely away from the family. I was not myself privy to either the identity that she had chosen or her whereabouts, and although we were close as children, I respected her privacy by not trying to find out. She may very well have still been in touch with Kathryn, of course. Only Kathryn herself would have been able to tell you that. I imagine that the police may have tried to locate her, but if they did, they didn’t tell me; and from what you say, if they did make such an attempt, they were unsuccessful.”

  Hedley Atkins delivered this explanation fluently enough, and without any obvious signs of defensiveness or of trying to withhold some part of the truth. Tim wondered if he was imagining the slight hunching of Hedley’s shoulders that he thought that he detected as the latter was speaking about Bryony, or the fleeting look of anxiety that seemed briefly to cloud Hedley’s expression. On the whole, he thought that he probably was.

  Chapter Nine

  Eliza had two sisters who lived quite near her, Lilian and Louisa. Both were married, Lilian to a painter and decorator and Louisa to a farm foreman, and they each had one son, Dorothy’s cousins George and Maurice. Dorothy did not see much of her cousins, because when Lily and Louie came to visit Eliza for one of their regular tea-parties, the boys were invariably left with their fathers, or with neighbours. Dorothy did not understand why, but she did not mind. She herself was never excluded from the tea-parties and, as the only child present, as well as being the only girl of her generation in her mother’s family, she was always made much of.

  Auntie Lily (her real name, Lilian, was never used) was her favourite. She had had her trials in life – chiefly Uncle Arthur, her husband, who was twelve years older than she, and who, she cheerfully informed everyone, regularly drank them “to the breadline” – but she bore her lot philosophically, and was also a figure of some standing in the community because of her (largely self-taught) nursing s
kills. Most of the local doctors called upon her to help at births, and she was the nurse in temporary residence at many sick-rooms across the fens, an invaluable asset, since the tiny cottage hospital could only accommodate those acutely ill or close to death.

  Auntie Louie was poorer and not as talented. She was also dumpier and less good-looking than either Eliza or Lily, who both had tall angular figures and aristocratic features (Eliza had once been compared to Lady Asquith, and had never forgotten it). Louie had resigned herself to being a labourer’s wife, and to mending and making do. She always regarded Dorothy with a faint air of disapproval, though she was kind enough when it came to serving her with slices of pork-pie or cake. It was as if Dorothy were tainted with something that she could not herself help, something which merited disdain but not punishment.

  Auntie Lily was a raconteur who liked hinting at mysteries. She would sit Dorothy on her knee and say to her, with meaning, “You ought to have been my little girl.” Dorothy did not ask what she meant by this, but she did know that when Lily was in the right frame of mind it was possible to ask her questions about her father. Such questions, when directed at Eliza, were invariably met with a wall of silence, followed by half a day of strictness and snapping. Eliza only referred to Dorothy’s father only when she was particularly exasperated with the girl. Then she would say, “You’re just like your father,” as if that condemned her to turn out badly.

  Auntie Lily and Auntie Louie were paying their first visit since Dorothy had recovered from the diphtheria. The special status that the family always accorded to someone who had suffered from a serious illness had therefore yet to run its course. Both had brought her especially nice gifts for her approaching birthday. Lily had dressed a doll for her, and Louie gave her some magic colouring books and a little palette of water colours. She was allowed to have them now, in order to be able to say thank-you properly.

  It was a suffocatingly hot day and Eliza had laid a tea-table under the arch of the weeping-willow tree that grew off-centre in Mrs. Frear’s rose-garden. Mr. and Mrs. Frear were both away, at an agricultural show. They approved of Eliza’s choosing the time of such absences to entertain her sisters.

  While Eliza was making the tea, Auntie Lily pulled Dorothy on to her knee and admired her lemon-yellow poplin Sunday dress with the bronze silk smocking on the bodice, which had been made by Eliza herself. Proudly, Dorothy lifted the skirt to show matching knickers with a tiny pocket for her handkerchief. Auntie Louie raised her eyebrows, and Auntie Lily laughed and quickly pulled the skirt back down over the child’s knees. Auntie Louie wandered off across the lawn to examine the rose bushes. Dorothy snuggled up to Auntie Lily.

  “Auntie,” she said, “tell me about my father.”

  Lily laughed again. She was neither a mischievous nor a hurtful woman, but she had a lively curiosity and she did love a mystery.

  “I’ve told you all that I know, Dorothy. I’m loath to repeat it and I certainly don’t want to upset your mother.”

  “I don’t see why she should be upset,” said Dorothy rather sulkily.

  “‘She’ is the cat’s aunt. You should refer to your mother as ‘Mother’.”

  “All right. I don’t see why mother should be upset.”

  “Well, you see, he treated her rather badly.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was a chauffeur,” said Lily, purposely misunderstanding. “At least, that’s what your mother said. She said that he was Sir Gordon MacLean’s chauffeur – your mother was working for Sir Gordon and Lady MacLean at the time, as Nanny to their two little girls.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know. Your mother didn’t tell me.”

  “Why didn’t she tell you? Didn’t you find out when you went to her wedding?”

  “I didn’t go to her wedding – and then he died, so I did not meet him. He died while you were a baby, so your mother said.”

  “Well, if she said so, it must be true. I certainly can’t remember him and he can’t just have disappeared, can he? What did he die of?”

  “Malaria, I believe. That’s what Sir Gordon told Grannie, anyway. He had been a soldier in the Great War, and had bouts of illness afterwards. Sir Gordon did hint that he had weakened his constitution in other ways . . .”

  “What business was it of Sir Gordon’s?”

  “Dorothy, that is very rude! Sir Gordon always took a very keen interest in your mother’s welfare – and in yours. It is because of Sir Gordon that your mother obtained the position here, as Mr. Frear’s housekeeper.”

  “I like Sir Gordon,” said Dorothy. “He always sends me a Christmas present and a birthday present, too.”

  “Indeed,” said Auntie Lily meaningfully. “As I have said, he has your interests at heart.”

  “Who are you talking about?” asked Eliza sharply as she crossed the grass carrying a wicker and beadwork tray on which she had placed a large brown teapot and hot water and milk jugs.

  Auntie Lily knew better than to recount the whole of the conversation.

  “I was just telling Dorothy how much you both owe to Sir Gordon,” she said blandly.

  “Oh, were you?” said Eliza, her voice taut with sarcasm. The subject was dropped. However, Dorothy could see that Auntie Lily’s darting mind read a great deal into that one small sentence and the way in which it was said.

  Chapter Ten

  Dorothy believed that she had not been deluded about what the future might hold when she had married Ronald Atkins. After all, she did not love him and did not pretend to herself – and increasingly in the weeks before their marriage, did not pretend to him – that theirs was a grand romance. She thought, therefore, that she was going into it, as she put it, ‘with her eyes open’. It was a bargain: she got a husband, he got a wife, and together they would acquire a home which, however humble, would be better than lodging in other people’s houses, as they had both been obliged to do all their lives. However, she had been unprepared for two things: the relentless drabness that followed when two people, and subsequently two people and a baby, tried living on a clerk’s salary in 1955; and the sheer unnerving monotony of her new existence.

  To herself she could admit that she was partially responsible for her plight, marooned as she was with a small child and virtually no money. She had deliberately avoided discussing contraception with Ronald, thinking that at twenty-six it was high time for her to conceive her first child. She had long cherished a dream of what her future as a housewife and mother might look like: it involved living in a warm house scented with flowers both winter and summer, and wearing nice clothes when she met her children at the school gates. She knew women who lived their lives like this: Jayne Adams, the butcher’s wife, for example, who had been one of her contemporaries at school. She did not pause to consider how far removed Ronald’s job and income was from that of a butcher ten years his senior who owned a prosperous sausage and pork-pie factory and several shops.

  When Bryony had been born, they had not even been living in a house, but in a caravan that had been found for them by Ronald’s Uncle Dick. They had saved the deposit for a house, but the post-war building programme was not happening fast enough to supply houses to all who needed them. So they were condemned to the social stigma of ‘van’ life right at the outset of the marriage.

  Dorothy was uncompromising about housework, both in the caravan and later, when after Hedley’s birth (to Dorothy’s mortification) they were allocated a council house. By this time, all the mortgage deposit money they had originally saved had been spent, first of all on the caravan, and then, after its subsequent sale, on furniture. Despite what Ronald continued to say, there was now no believable likelihood that they would ever own their own house. Women like Jayne had ‘home helps’. They may have wielded a hoover upon occasion (since these were desirable items and not owned by everyone: others had to resort to carpet sweepe
rs, tea-leaves and brush-and-dustpan sets), but they certainly eschewed the dirtier menial tasks, such as raking out the fire and cleaning the bathroom with the corrosive Vim powder which was all that was available and would have stripped the skin off their fingers. Eliza had been a housekeeper, not a skivvy, and she would not have dreamt of getting down on her hands and knees to scrub floors or scour a lavatory. Dorothy, who took no pride in this council property – the disgrace of living in it made her despair daily – had no intention of working her fingers to the bone to ‘make it nice’. Her definition of housewife did not equate to cleaning-woman.

  Although he had an irascible nature and would lose his temper with frightening regularity, Ronald was curiously diffident when it came to challenging Dorothy about her neglect of the housework. Invariably fastidious, he would sweep and polish and dust while Dorothy watched him grimly. Although she was not prepared to undertake these chores herself, she regarded it as a personal affront that he had decided to shoulder them. She would cook, however – very plain food – until the advent of sixties frozen meals relieved her of this thankless chore as well. She would wash and iron, the latter a task which she performed with some pride. She insisted on doing the shopping, cycling to the market twice a week and returning with a large canvas shopping bag of fruit, meats, bread and cakes looped over each handlebar (the groceries were delivered by Uncle Colin and Ronald grew almost all the vegetables they ate). She counted every penny of the ‘housekeeping money’ (£5) that Ronald handed over each Friday, and made sure that there was always a little left over to keep for herself.

  Her week was made up of repeating mundane reference points. Tuesdays and Saturdays were market days. Monday was wash-day, the nadir of her week, when she was obliged to slave over the gas copper in the wash-house all day (lunch on Mondays was always a variation of leftover Sunday joint, served joylessly with boiled potatoes). Wednesday was the only day that she got to herself. Thursday was Eliza’s day off from her latest ‘situation’ as companion to a Mrs. James, who lived at a gloomy old house called The Laurels in Sutterton, and she invariably invited herself to spend the day with Dorothy. On Sunday Doris came to lunch, and then stayed to work at her knitting and talk all afternoon until it was time for tea. Uncle Colin did not accompany her, because he would not close the shop. On Fridays Ronald came home early, and ‘got under her feet’.