Yvonne hugged herself excitedly. 'It's a good clue isn't it?'
Billy knew it was. 'Yeah, not bad, but we'll need to find some of her hair so that we can match it. I've seen 'em do it at the flicks. They get a hair from a comb or sommat and look at it down a microscope to match it with another one they got from sommat else.'
Yvonne beamed with satisfaction and arranged the remaining sheets of paper into a neat pad. 'What shall I write?'
'First things first,' he said, scratching invisible stubble on his chin. 'How did she die? That's the first thing.'
'They said she fell down stairs in the night and banged her head on the fireplace. They said there was blood on the fork steady.'
'The fork what?'
'That thing,' Yvonne said, pointing at the hearth. The thing the toasting fork is resting on. They said it made a distinctive mark on her head, like a square shape.'
'Oooh distinctive,' hooted Billy. 'What's distinctive? How d'you know all this? This weren't in the papers.'
'I know, but I heard that young doctor telling our Marlene. He likes her you know. I think he wants to take her out.'
'Huh, he shouldn't have much trouble there then. Your sister will go with any bloke, so long as he can breathe.'
'And just what might that mean?'
Billy turned away feeling it was probably safest not to respond. 'The toasting fork thing,' he mumbled. 'I can't see what's so "distinctive" about it.' Bending close to the hearth, he examined the wrought iron fork steady. It was a plain, functional object, with a clumsy homemade look. It had four little feet, which supported a cross bar with upturned ends to prevent the fork handle slipping off sideways. The toasting fork was a twin pronged twist of black iron, its handle end worn shiny from regular usage. 'That's impossible,' he said emphatically. 'Look at where it is. This kettle trivet is in the way.'
Yvonne peered over his shoulder. Immediately above the toasting fork steady, a round trivet, about the size of a tea plate, was hinged to the stove. It sat like an umbrella over the toasting fork. 'Well they found blood on it so it must be possible,' she argued, though she could not see how.
Billy got down on all fours and tried to put his head on the fork steady. 'Rubbish! Look at it. How can you fall and hit your head on that? It's too far under this kettle thing. I can't even get my head in there if I go on my knees and butt it like a tup.'
'Has somebody moved it?'
'There are no marks in the ash to show it's been moved.'
'But the blood?' Yvonne persisted. 'That's how they knew what killed her. They saw there was blood on it, her blood. They did a blood test and everything.'
'Doctor Hadfield told you this, did he?' he asked, frowning as she nodded. 'Well then, somebody's a liar. Any fool can see she couldn't have fallen on to that thing. It's impossible. And it's not been moved neither. You can see the ash and dust around it has not been disturbed. That shows you it's still in its proper place.'
The friends stared blankly at each other, each trying to justify what they were seeing. Confronting them was evidence that clearly contradicted the official report. Had Doctor Greenhow and the police made a mistake? It looked as if they had. Had they jumped to the wrong conclusion and simply assumed that she had fallen and knocked her head because she was old and frail? After all, old women had falls all the time.
But, Annabel Loveday was not frail and weak. She might have looked old, but she was even younger than Granny Smeggs, he reminded himself. And his granny was as fit as a flea. The police were wrong to say this was simply another frail old lady taking a fall in the night.
'I don't understand,' Billy said. 'They said there was blood on the toasting fork stand? How did it get there? Where is it now?'
Yvonne chewed her cheek thoughtfully. 'If it was put there deliberately, that means somebody killed her, doesn't it?'
'Yes, and they put her blood on that fork steady to make it look like she fell over. Then, when they came in to inspect it officially – the doctor and the constable, they saw the blood and hey presto, they jump to the wrong idea, probably because she always looked so old.'
'We hope,' said Yvonne, cryptically.
'What do you mean?'
'Well if they didn't make a mistake, it means they did it deliberately. That means it's a cover up.'
'Blimey! Who, the police and the doctor?' hooted Billy. 'Nah, why would they lie?'
'I don't know,' Yvonne said, spreading her arms in exasperation. 'But you must admit it's crazy that they could completely misunderstand what they saw. I mean we spotted it straight away. They're supposed to be the experts, not us. It's their job. They're grown ups. We're just kids.'
'Huh, when did being a grown up ever mean owt?'
'Anyway, no matter what else we think,' said Yvonne. 'We can be certain that somebody deliberately put the old lady's blood on that fork steady, or they lied about it. That means somebody wants everybody to think she just toppled over - an accident. But we know different now. We know she was murdered.'
'Write it down.'
'And another thing,' Yvonne said, pointing a trembling finger, 'it's got coal ash on it.'
'So what?'
'Well, I was wondering if she could have been hit with it. You know like, did somebody pick it up and bash her with it?' She paused, staring at Billy, inviting him to see her point. He gaped back at her dumbly. Exasperated she went on. 'Well, if it had been picked up to bash her with, there wouldn't be any ash on it, would there? It would have got knocked off. And you'd be able to tell it had been moved.'
'Write it down,' Billy said, excited by their rapid progress. Yvonne was proving to be an unexpectedly good assistant detective, he thought. They made a good team.
'When I found her I came in through the back door.' He pointed it out to her as if it was some great mystery. 'I guess they've padlocked it on the outside now …'
'Try it.'
'No point; anyway I'd have to go round and climb over the wall, and we've only got one key. It's not very likely it fits both padlocks, is it?'
'I mean just try it. Pull it from the inside,' she insisted. When he made no move, she marched to the door and tried it herself. It swung open revealing a padlock still locked through a broken hasp and staple. It had been prised from the doorjamb. 'You see?' she cried.
'OK you were right, but now you've put your fingerprints all over it the clue is rubbish. You might as well not have bothered.'
Yvonne narrowed her eyes and gently shouldered the door closed. 'It's not rubbish,' she growled through clenched teeth. 'It tells us a lot - you know it does.'
Billy spotted an iron bar in the stone sink beside the door. With a sheet of the writing paper to protect it from his fingerprints, he carefully picked it up. 'I bet this is what they used to force the lock off. It looks like a car jack handle.'
'You wunt have seen it if I hadn't opened the door.'
Billy groaned. 'Oh chuffin eck! I hope you're not gerrin all mardy about it. Why can't you just gerron with the job and stop moaning? If we're detectives we've got to be more grown up about stuff. It's no good thee gerrin all mardy.'
Yvonne glared at him. 'Mardy? I'm not mardy, but who'd blame me if I were? You never give me credit for nowt.'
'OK, tha were reight,' he conceded grudgingly. 'I were wrong. Now write it down, and take thee mardy face off.'
A smile slid slyly across Yvonne's lips as she began writing.
'She was laid down with her head near the fireplace, and her feet near the back door,' Billy said. He moved to the spot and lay down, demonstrating the position the body had been in when he had found it. 'She had her hair down, so that shows she'd gone up to bed. There was a candle on the table. That's started me thinking.'
'What?' she asked.
He raised his face to her, a puzzled expression furrowing his brow. 'What?'
'You just said the candle on the table started you thinking.'
'Yes because if she'd fallen down them stairs, the candle should have been on
the floor, not the table. She'd have dropped it, wouldn't she?'
Yvonne frowned. 'The police could have picked it up.'
'No, I'm talking about before, when I found her - before we rang 'em. Nobody had been in the house by then, except me - and the murderer. 'We'd better look for fresh wax on the floor, or on the stairs. If she fell and dropped it, candle wax would have splashed on to sommat. And that'd prove somebody had picked it up afterwards.'
'Why use a candle? Why didn't she just turn a light on?' Yvonne asked.
'She's only got gas. She never used lectric. Some old folk don't like lectric. My granny uses it but she's always going on about how gas was better.'
After a thorough search, they agreed there were no tell tale splashes of candle wax on the stairs, or the coconut fibre matting. The old lady, they concluded, could not have fallen and dropped a lighted candle.
Billy was now racing around, bobbing up and down to view the room from every angle. Yvonne was silent and still. She was looking at the floor where the old woman's body had lain. 'What's up?' Billy asked, noticing her troubled demeanour.
'She never dropped that candle,' Yvonne replied sadly. 'She never fell down the stairs. She never banged her head on that fork steady.' Her eyes were bright with tears as she looked into Billy's. 'Somebody killed her, Billy. Somebody killed the poor old lady. Brutally bashed her head in, and left her alone and cold on the stone floor.'
'Well of course they did. I thought you knew that already. What do you think I've been saying for the last three weeks?'
'Yes I know, but somehow it didn't seem real. It felt like a game, but not any more. Now it really is real. This is where it happened. This is where somebody beat a harmless old lady over the head and killed her.' She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
'But they made mistakes,' Billy told her softly. 'And that's where me and thee come in. We'll find their mistakes and we'll make sure they don't get away with it. That's what'll hang 'em.'
'But we'll have to be careful, Billy,' she cautioned. 'Whoever did it is going to know we're after them. They'll want to stop us. They could even try to kill us.'
'Gimbals!' Billy gasped as the stark reality hit him. 'I never thought of that. Yeah, somebody's going to be watching us every minute; him who forced that door with this jack handle. Maybe it's the same one who bushwhacked me near the rabbit hutches?'
'Stan?'
'Maybe - or his mad owd father.'
'What do we do?' Her voice was tight with fear.
Billy looked forlornly around the room, considering the question. His gaze finally settled on a faded brown photograph hanging on the wall. He had seen it before, but now took time to study it. It portrayed a young woman stiffly seated before a corporal of infantry, standing with his hand resting proprietarily on her shoulder. He assumed it showed the old Star Woman and her husband, taken sometime before he went off to the front in nineteen-fifteen, never to return. The pair looked sad and already detached. Even faced by her photograph, he found it hard to think of her as such an attractive young woman, and in love. A wave of sadness washed over him, stiffening his resolve to get justice for her. 'We'll get 'em, Wy,' he croaked. 'We've gotta find 'em and hound 'em down until they pay. Write it all down, Wy: all about the candle and the wax and everything.'
Yvonne scribbled feverishly, the pink tip of her tongue visible at the corner of her mouth. 'That clock's another clue,' Billy told her, pointing to a cheap, moulded tin clock, painted to look like a priceless Louis XV ormolu. It was on the table now, but Billy remembered the table had been clear, except for the candle. He could not swear that the clock had been on its sideboard shelf, where it belonged, but he had no doubt whatsoever, that it had not been on the table.
The old lady's sideboard was a magnificent oddity amongst the simple, everyday objects in her low, dark room. Two flame mahogany serpentine doors, each with a drawer above it, seemed to glow with an inner radiance. A curving triangular backboard, edged with carved vine leaves, supported tiers of small cupboards and whatnot shelves. It rose to a peak just below the ceiling. Billy dragged a dining chair up to it and stood on it for a better view of the higher shelves. On the narrow shelf in front of the topmost cupboard door, a faint mark in the dust showed where the tin clock had stood. Billy supposed that someone had moved it, so as to open the cupboard door, but had not put it back. But why? What was in the cupboard? He recalled the old lady's arms stretched out towards the sideboard. Had she been trying to get to it? He opened the little cupboard.
Yvonne scrambled up to join him on the chair and peered. into the cupboard. It contained three school exercise books and some pencils and pens, quivered in a Bovril jar. There was also an inkbottle, and some used leaves of blotting paper.
'Chuffin eck! Look at this,' Billy gasped. He brought out the exercise books, jumped down from the chair, and carefully arranged them on the table. Numbered one, two and three, each bore the title, My Life, Annabel Lillian Loveday.
Yvonne picked up number three. Two pages fell out. 'Somebody's torn some pages out,' she said, and immediately began comparing the loose pages with the blanks she had found on the floor. The tear patterns matched. 'They're all from this book. Somebody must have torn out some written on pages and left these blanks.' She began counting the torn pages. 'There's five missing.'
Billy returned to the fireplace and began examining the ashes in the grate. 'Maybe they burned 'em. We might be able to see what they said with a mirror,' he said excitedly.
Yvonne laughed. 'That's for blotting paper, you dope.'
Blushing, Billy hid his hot cheeks. 'There's paper ash here,' he said, 'but it's completely burned through. You can't tell what it says on it.'
'Let me see.' Yvonne moved in and peered closely at the little pad of cinder wafers resting on top of the coal ash.
'It's no use,' Billy said. 'That doesn't tell us anything.'
'It does. Look at the ashes.'
Billy stared disbelieving. 'I am doing, and you can't read owt on 'em.'
'No I mean the coal ash underneath the burned paper. It's all dropped down and flat, like it was completely burned out. That shows it was a cold grate. Somebody burned them pages after the fire had gone out. They had to set light to 'em.'
'I found a dead match,' cried Billy, delighted to have at last found cause to enter his find onto the growing list of evidence.
'It tells us even more.'
'What more?'
'It tells us when,' said Yvonne confidently. 'It must have been very late, probably the small hours of the next morning, because the fire was out and the grate was cold when they burned the pages.' She eyed Billy critically, annoyed that he did not seem able to grasp the significance of her deduction. 'It could mean that whoever did it was spotted on the street by somebody going to work early - like my dad and yours do.'
Billy was impressed, and secretly had to admit that he had not taken his own advice to regard everything as a clue.
'The thing is what did it say on those pages?' Yvonne asked rhetorically. 'Was whatever it said the reason she was killed?'
'Sometimes they get impressions in paper from when somebody has pressed on hard when they were writing,' Billy said, keen to demonstrate some grasp on forensic examination. Yvonne was not convinced, but held the blank pages up to the light to see if any such indentations were apparent. None were.
Billy examined the blotting paper he'd found in the cupboard. The ghosts of words danced before his eyes, tantalizingly illegible. 'Somehow we need to find out what was on those pages. I think you're right, Wy. The murderer must have torn 'em out because they betrayed him, or sommat.'
'What do we do now?'
Billy was about to suggest a thorough search of the sideboard and the bedroom upstairs when Mr Leaper burst into the house. 'Sorry kids. I got waylaid in the shop,' he gasped, shaking his head. 'I accidentally let it slip that I was, retained, and I couldn't get away. I was hoping to keep it quiet until we was all done, but you know what some
folk are like. They have to go ferreting for gossip.' He stomped around the room clicking his tongue, picking things up and putting them down again. 'I think we should get all the small stuff on first, Billy. There's some orange boxes on the cart - bring 'em in, there's a good lad.'
Billy slipped the exercise books under his jumper and went to get the orange boxes, secretly fuming that Mr Leaper had chosen that moment to return. Why hadn't he stayed in the shop a few more minutes? Even five minutes would have been enough to search the sideboard's cupboards and drawers. It was a major blow.
With orange boxes teetering above head height, Billy carried them in from the cart. He had decided to persuade Mr Leaper to give him the job of emptying the sideboard. That way he could search it. He would get Yvonne to distract him. That shouldn't be too difficult. All she needed to do was mention his horse and he would talk for an hour and give her a conducted tour of Beattie's harness and brasses.
Despite Billy's best efforts, Mr Leaper insisted on doing the job himself. He made them responsible for collecting all the pots, pans, cutlery and cleaning things. Angry and disappointed, Billy resolved that somehow he had to see what had been in the sideboard's drawers. Also, and crucially, there was supposed to be a secret drawer. Its existence had become common knowledge since the old lady's death, together with rumours of gold sovereigns and even Tsarist Russian jewellery.
When they had finished and Beattie strained to get the cart rolling, Billy watched anxiously. Soon the sideboard would be locked in store beneath the Ebenezer Chapel, awaiting the auctioneer's hammer. It would be too late. Already some of her effects were smouldering on a fire in the farthest corner of the skittle yard, rejected as mere rubbish by the retained Mr Leaper. Thank gimbals, Billy told himself, he had managed to hide the exercise books, the jack handle and other bits of evidence.
As he watched the cart trundle away, he vowed that somehow he would have to find and search that secret drawer before the auctioneer sold the sideboard and it was lost to him forever.
………
CHAPTER FOUR