Tuppenny Hat Detective Read online

  On the Monday after the school holiday, with his cuts and bruises faded to hardly more than faint smudges, Billy had little to show for his beating behind the rabbit hutches. A bright purple bruise, or suppurating scab, might have impressed his schoolmates, but pale discolorations that have to be pointed out, even in bright sunlight, would earn no kudos. Disappointed, he hid them away and kept quiet.

  Study was impossible. He tried to concentrate, but the Star Woman's death preoccupied him. Throughout the day, his various teachers took pot shots at him with bits of chalk, textbooks, and blackboard rubbers, in an effort to improve his concentration. In history, Sister Clare, who prowled between the neat rows of battered desks like a snarling black panther, whacked him on the head with a wooden ruler whenever she came close. Finally, she dragged him out for four stripes on the hand with the cane, for what she called, "Wasting God's glorious gifts by dilly-dally-daydreaming."

  At home after school, with his fingers still throbbing from the caning, Billy took Annabel's exercise books to the bottom of the garden and hid himself in the family's chicken shed to read them. The pages had a cluttered, confusing appearance that took him a while to accept. The old lady's handwriting however, was neat and precise; each word penned with obvious care. But between the lines and in the margins, comments, altered words and extra lines had been pencilled in by a different hand - one more rushed and untidy. Presumably, she had asked someone to read it and suggest the changes. Whoever it was had even marked whole sentences for removal.

  Annabel's story sobbed from the pages, unfolding in bursts of disjointed reminiscence. Hers was a shocking world of disappointment and loneliness. Billy read, feeling ashamed and somehow guilty for the old woman's pain. If only he'd known that she was so unhappy, perhaps he would have viewed her differently. He might have tried to get to know her better, befriend her, offer her some cheer.

  Then, with rising anger, he demanded of the startled chickens around him, 'What good would it have done? She was an old grouch. Some people can't even be happy at Scarborough on a Bank Holiday Monday.'

  *

  Kick Morley called for Billy at his back door early that evening, a sodden leather football under his arm - then on his left foot - then on his head – then back under his arm again. He wanted to go up to the Bole Hills for a kick-about on the cinders, before it got too dark. Unfortunately, football was the last thing on Billy's mind. Annabel's story had raised many questions, which he felt only a visit to Granny Smeggs would answer. Football would have to wait.

  Disappointment scarred Kick's face. 'Thart mardy these days,' he complained. 'Tha never wants to do nowt. All tha thinks about is t'bloody Star Woman. Thart no fun no more.'

  Though Billy tried to explain, it was useless; his apologies were swatted aside. Kick was angry and smarting with rejection. He stomped off, grumbling.

  Heavy with guilt, Billy watched him head up towards the windy open spaces at the top of the street. 'I'll call for thee tomorrow,' he shouted, attempting consolation.

  'Don't shape thee sen,' was Kick's sullen reply.

  A few minutes later Billy arrived outside his grandmother's cottage, and pushed against the garden gate, battling its powerful spring. Granny Smeggs reacted to the gate's familiar creak and popped up to her window to see who was visiting her. A smile lit her eyes when she saw her grandson. She was always happy to welcome Billy. He brought lightness and jokes, and even a little mischief into her life, but on this occasion, she could see that his leaden gait and frowning face signalled trouble.

  'What's up, lost a bob and found a tanner?' she asked, as he came in to her tiny house.

  'All her furniture's gone. I'll never find out if there worra secret drawer,' he moaned, flopping into the armchair opposite her rocker.

  'Why do you want to know?'

  'Well I just do. I think it's great having secret drawers in things. You could hide owt in it: diamonds, gold,' he enthused.

  'Oh quite right. I keep all my diamonds in mine,' she joked.

  Billy scowled and sagged deeper into the armchair, drawing his head into his tank top like a concerned tortoise. If there was a secret drawer in the old lady's sideboard, Granny Smeggs seem unwilling to discuss it sensibly.

  'Look, you can forget all that nonsense about gold sovereigns and secret drawers,' she told him. 'The poor soul didn't have two farthings to rub together, let alone sovereigns.' She smiled, sensing his frustration. 'She did have a secret drawer though. It had her rent book in it.'

  Billy's head tortoised out from its woolly shell. 'Where is it? Did you see it?'

  Granny laughed. 'What sort of secret would it be if everyone knew about it?'

  'Well how do you know she hid the rent book in it?'

  'Mash us a cuppa and I might tell you. And there's a date and walnut cake in the meat-safe on the cellar head.'

  Tea and cake - nobody made cake like Granny Smeggs: fruitcake, coconut cake, apple and bilberry sponge, date and walnut, and seed cake. There was never a day when there was not a cake of some sort in her meat-safe.

  Granny's little cottage was at the end of a row of three identical sandstone dwellings. Each had a small ground floor room with a coal cellar beneath, and a bedroom above. For heat and cooking, there was a black-leaded iron range. Cold water flowed from a brass tap over a stone sink in a corner.

  'Some of the old sideboards have a false back in a drawer,' Granny said, as she watched Billy balance her kettle on the fire bars. 'Usually you push it in and the drawer pops out. I know she had one, but I don't remember it well. I only saw it once when I paid the rent for her Tommy because of his impetigo.'

  Impetigo - rent for Tommy - she's flipped! he thought. What's she babbling about?

  'I only glimpsed where she kept it – accidentally like,' she went on. 'It was just fleeting. She didn't want me to see it.' She glanced at him huffily, reflecting his disbelieving frown. He forced a smile, and tried to appear uncritical.

  'You see, normally she left the rent with her Tommy to give to the rent man when she was out working. But when Tommy went to the skin nurse for his impetigo, she left it with me and I paid it. Well she'd forgotten that it was rent day, and I knew it was her Tommy's skin clinic day, so I went round to remind her. As soon as she saw me coming in through her door she rushed for the rent book. She was just on her way out to work. That's how I saw her secret drawer.'

  'Where abouts?'

  'Oh crickey, I can't think.'

  Billy watched his grandmother, her face a mask of concentration. 'I think it was in her Tommy's old folder.'

  'Not the rent book, the drawer, where was the secret drawer?'

  'Oh, in the top drawer.'

  'There's two – which one?' Billy demanded, excitement smothering courtesy.

  'Left. Yes, definitely the left one,' she said, appearing not to have noticed his rudeness. 'The one nearest as you went in.'

  Billy released a sigh. Her story was beginning to make sense. Tommy, he had already guessed, was Annabel's son. Granny was not losing her marbles after all.

  'And don't think you can bark at me that way, young man,' she scolded, delivering him a sudden clip on his ear.

  'Sorry, Gran,' he mumbled, ducking unnecessarily as she followed up with a proffered slice of date and walnut cake.

  'You said she kept the rent book in Tommy's folder. What was that?' asked Billy, speaking into his steaming teacup.

  'Oh just something he made at school, but she loved it. She thought it was marvellous. It was just folded card and gummed tape, but he'd painted a design on it; a lovely bird and a lion. It was very nice. She kept her gas bill and all her most important papers in it.' Granny gazed reflectively into her teacup. 'He was ever so good at drawing and painting was her Tommy. He could have been a real artist, you know: shop fronts, and signs on things.'

  Billy bit his cheek thoughtfully. 'What's a DFM?' he asked.

  'What d'you mean - the medal? It's a medal. The Distinguished Flying Medal,' she told him
, 'It's for them in the RAF.'

  'How do you get it?'

  'You mun do sommat very brave. They don't give 'em out like liquorice allsorts you know. It's only for the bravest.'

  'I think somebody got one cos they lied about sommat,' he told her. 'I can't be sure because it's not all there, but that's what I think.' He handed her book two of Annabel's memoirs.

  Mrs Smeggs read the title on the little book's cover, taking it from his hands as carefully as if it had been sculptured snow. She placed it on her lap and gently patted along the edges of its pages with her palms. 'How did you get this? You must give it back, Billy love,' she breathed reverently.

  'I didn't steal it. I saved it, Gran. It would've been burned else. Old Leaper would have chucked 'em on that fire he had.'

  'Oh but, Billy love, are you sure?'

  'Of course I am, Gran, and when we get the murderer, I'll give 'em back. But you've gorra read it first – please, Gran.'

  'Where's the other? This says book two, have you got another one?'

  'There's three,' he said, pulling the others from under his jumper. 'They're ever so sad. If you don't want to read 'em all - I've marked the main bits with tram tickets.'

  'Oh, I know it'll be sad. I know this poor woman's story already,' Mrs Smeggs said. 'I knew her Noah too. We were at the same school. He was a bit older, but I remember him. He went off to the front in 1915. The same year they got married. He was killed on the Somme - him and thousands of other lovely young chaps.'

  'It says about her son. That was him – Tommy, wasn't it?'

  'He was a smashing boy - a flyer - sergeant in the RAF. Tommy Loveday.'

  Billy visualised a scrawny boy with purple ointment blobbed all over his face and shaven head, rather than the smart RAF sergeant his grandmother was seeing in her mind's eye. He prodded impatiently at the exercise book on her lap. 'Did he have a DFM?'

  'No, but if he did, it certainly would not be through lying about it.'

  'Read what she says.'

  The old lady started to read, then stopped to clean her glasses. 'I'll read it later when you've gone. Anyway, I can tell you for sure, even before I read a single word of it, Tommy Loveday would not have lied. He wasn't the sort,' she said emphatically. 'He was a grand lad.' She started reading again, and Billy watched her closely, waiting for her expression to betray her impressions. It did not. She turned the page and stopped. 'I'll read it later - when you've gone.'

  *

  That evening, with the measured tick of her clock, and the hiss of the coals on her fire for company, old Mrs Smeggs reluctantly opened exercise book one and began to read. She had known Annabel Loveday for most of her life. Her solitary existence in her cottage nearby had been as obvious to her as to anyone else who had bothered to notice. But unlike most, Mrs Smeggs knew that her loneliness was no recent circumstance. Annabel had always been alone. Even as a child she had somehow occupied the edge of living. The little girl, barely noticed, watching the dance, but never tapping her toe except in the hidden inward mimicry of others.

  Mrs Smeggs read, tears glazing her eyes. She found a few mayfly moments, jewelled with promise. They glittered briefly on the page: love, courtship, marriage and childbirth. In these rare interludes, she sensed lightness and certainty in Annabel's words, until, at the turn of the page, the sinuous drag of loss and disappointment took over again.

  …..DFM awarded for a lie, can't make a man what he is not, nor ever could be.

  Mrs Smeggs read the line again. Whatever had been written before these words was missing - torn out, and no doubt destroyed by now. She felt weighed down by the awful questions this raised. Who had lied? Who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal because of their lying? And who had been passed over because of it? Could this be at the root of Annabel's mysterious death? Was Billy right after all? Had Annabel been about to release a time bomb - some dark secret that would bring somebody's orderly life crashing down – a life built on lies.

  Who else knew about her journals? Who could be so desperate to keep her quiet that they beat her over the head and killed her?

  ………

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The sun had barely risen when Billy arrived at his grandmother's cottage the next day. He had escaped his mother's watchful eye on the pretext of taking Ruff for a walk. The wirehaired terrier didn't care why he was out so early. For him it was a thrill. Nothing beat hanging out with Billy, except of course anything remotely edible.

  'Can I have some toast?' Billy demanded, barging in to his granny's cottage without greeting or courtesy.

  'And a very good morning to you too, I'm sure,' Granny Smeggs replied crossly. 'Where're your manners? Why aren't you at school? Get that dog off my chair.'

  'Sorry,' he mumbled. 'I've got hours yet. 'Can I – please?'

  Mrs Smeggs was drawing up the fire with a sheet of newspaper and a coal shovel. 'I'm hardly up yet. What on earth are you doing here at this time? And you can gerrof that loaf, there's no toast. You can see the fire's not drawn. It'd taste like a sweep's cap. Go and fill the scuttle and we'll have a cuppa while it draws.'

  Billy descended into the tunnel-like coal cellar beneath Granny's living room. The cellar steps smelled of cheese, apple pie, and coal. 'Have you read it?' he yelled up to the glimmer of daylight at the top of the steps.

  'Come on, hurry up. I'm nithered with that door open. The draft from that cellar would blow the bill off a penguin.'

  Billy quickly returned with the shiny coalscuttle. 'Miserable isn't it? I bet you blubbed. Yvonne Sparkes did, but I didn't,' he lied.

  At the fireplace, the draw-paper began to scorch. Before it could catch light, granny pulled it away flooding the room with firelight and warmth. She carefully folded the paper to save for use another time,.

  They made tea and drew their chairs up to the blaze. 'Did you read it all?'

  'Of course I did.'

  'I think somebody lied about sommat and gorra medal for it. The bits you need are all ripped out, but there's that bit about the DFM. And she says Tommy was in the RAF like somebody else from round here.'

  'And who was that, d'you think?' Granny Smeggs asked him, tapping the exercise books with a home made cheese biscuit.

  'I don't know for sure. Do you?'

  'I might.'

  'It could be Poshy Pearce,' Billy probed. 'You know, him at the chemists? I've heard he was a flyer, and he's gorra lot of medals.' He eyed his granny, trying to fathom her reaction, but she gave nothing away.

  'How can you say that? It doesn't say that anywhere in here.'

  'I didn't say it was him, I'm just asking,' he explained. 'There were lots of 'em in the RAF. I don't know 'em all do I? But Poshy Pearce is a clever Dick. He's always hoity-toity and tells you off for doing legs up in his shop window.'

  'Legs up?'

  'Yeah he always chases you off, and swears. He's a real misery.'

  'Maybe, but that's not proof of anything.'

  'Call it a hunch, doll,' Billy drawled, suddenly assuming an American detective voice, such as Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade.

  'Yes well, hunches might be OK in the movies, but they aren't evidence, my lad,' she scolded. 'I've known Arnold Pearce and Tommy Loveday since they were younger than you, and neither of 'em would do sommat like that.'

  They bit into cheese biscuits in unison, eyeing each other warily. Silence hung over them. Mrs Smeggs spoke first, flicking crumbs off her cardigan. 'You're right though, they were together in the air-force, but Tommy especially would never have lied about anything.'

  'Well somebody did. Look what she says - err - that bit at the end - the bit they didn't tear out? She says ..,' he scrabbled for the page, ' "It doesn't make a man what he is not, nor ever could be.". That's the same as saying that if you're rubbish and you tell a lie to get sommat that you don't deserve, you're still rubbish when you've gorrit.'

  Granny frowned, confused for a second or two, but then nodded in agreement.

  'Poshy Pearce
is rubbish. And no matter how many medals he's got, he's still rubbish.'

  'That's only your opinion. And the best you can say about it, is that it's based on him not letting you play on his shop front. You could hardly call that evidence for anything, except perhaps his good sense. And you can't go accusing people just because you don't like them. If you're going to be a detective you have to find proper evidence, and right now you don't have any - do you?' She stared into the fire. 'And anyway, he's not the only one from round here who was in the RAF with Tommy Loveday.'

  'Who else?'

  'You'll have to find that out won't you? If you're a detective - do some detectivin.'

  Dejected, Billy tortoised his head into his tank top. 'Well I think it's poshy Pearce,' he muttered glumly. 'He's just the sort.'

  Granny Smeggs poked the fire, the reflections of flames on her spectacle lenses hiding her eyes from him. 'Mr Pearce is a hard working young man. He keeps that chemist shop beautiful. He always changes the newspaper in his scales before he weighs a baby.'

  'Well I think he's the liar, and I think Tommy helped him,' Billy said, darkly. 'She even says in one bit that her Tommy was upset about sommat – sommat that had happened to their crew.'

  'Yes I read that too, but we don't know what she meant,' she argued dismissively. 'It could be nothing at all, a simple competition with other crews, a bloomin darts match, or an egg and spoon race, or sommat. You can't tell from what she said. You've got to stop building things up in your mind if you're going to be a detective. You can't make things be what you want them to be. You have to find proof!' She sighed, fixing him with a steely gaze. They sipped their tea in silence, their faces lit by the fire roaring up the chimney, dragging molten light from the bubbling coals.

  'Tommy was lovely. You couldn't meet a nicer lad,' she said reflectively. 'I can't understand how he got to be friends with Arnold Pearce in the first place. They were chalk and Cheddar. I expect they met up at some airfield and got together because they were both from round here. They'd been to the same school, you see, so they knew each other well enough, but they could never have been friends - chalk and Cheddar.'

  'Why not? What was different about them?'

  'Huh, well back then Arnold Pearce was a good time boy. He was always chasing the girls and gadding about. He wouldn't have found Tommy much fun at all. Tommy never went in for that sort of thing.' She smiled at some recollection. 'I remember when they were little ...'