the news that Mrs Snape would no longer be coming in to run the house. Arnold had shrugged. ‘She didn’t say anything, she just got on and did what was needed. She was good at it too. I wasn’t surprised. I knew they learned domestic science, cookery and needlework, all that kind of thing, at school. It was just that she’d never been asked to do it before.’ No, she had never appeared to resent the change, she had never made any comment. Some fifteen months later, a few days after her seventeenth birthday, she had left home.
Kelsey asked Lockyear to outline the circumstances. ‘She left school in the summer,’ Arnold told him. ‘She’d done well there. She’d won a couple of prizes, one of them was for being the best student on the secretarial course. She could easily have got a good steady job in Martleigh right away. I know for a fact she was offered one in a solicitor’s office and another with an estate agent – on account of winning the secretarial prize. But she wouldn’t take either of the jobs, and she wouldn’t look for another.’ She hadn’t discussed the matter with him. ‘That wasn’t her way,’ he said with a note of old resentments. She had gone along to a secretarial agency in Martleigh and put herself on their books; they had sent her out to local temporary and relief jobs.
‘And I also know for a fact,’ Arnold had added, ‘that she was offered jobs by different employers she worked for while she was with the agency.’ But again she had accepted none of them. One spring morning, seven or eight months after she joined the agency, she had left home. She hadn’t told him she intended going, she had left no note, had apparently said nothing to Joanne. He had only become aware that she had left when he came into the house after closing the shop for the day and had found no sign of supper and no sign of Helen. When she hadn’t come in by nightfall he had gone into her bedroom and found most of her belongings gone.
‘Were you surprised?’ Kelsey asked. Arnold shook his head. ‘No, I can’t say I was. She was always secretive.’ He had phoned the agency to see if they knew anything. They told him Helen had given the usual month’s notice and had left with an excellent reference from them and no doubt equally good references from various employers. She had given them to understand she was taking a short holiday and then going off to some larger centre, London or one of the provincial cities, in search of wider opportunities.
Arnold hadn’t worried overmuch about her, he had felt she was quite capable of looking after herself.
Joanne was then fourteen, reasonably competent in the house. She worked well at school, was no trouble there or at home. A quiet girl who never bothered with boyfriends, never wanted to go out to discos or parties. She had stayed in her room a lot, reading, studying, drawing; she hadn’t appeared to miss Helen.
In due course she had left school. She had wanted to take an art course, had wanted to go off to some college near London. But it would have cost a lot of money – and Arnold couldn’t see what it could lead to. The local education authority had cut back on discretionary grants and in any case didn’t look with favour on art courses, taking the view that the country was already oversupplied with unemployed designers – a view Arnold heartily endorsed.
He had done his best to discourage these notions on Joanne’s part. He reckoned she’d inherited her fancy ideas from her mother. ‘She wanted me to advance her the money for the course,’ he said. ‘Out of the three thousand that would be coming to her one day under my father’s will. Of course I refused. The whole of the three thousand would have been swallowed up well before the course ended – and that wasn’t what my father had in mind for the money, he intended it as a nest-egg for the future.’ He had told Joanne she could either find herself a job right away in the town or she could take some sensible, straightforward course at the Martleigh College of Further Education. If she didn’t fancy the secretarial side there was domestic science, accountancy, hotel catering; a wide variety of practical, down-to-earth subjects.
‘But she wouldn’t have any of them,’ he said. ‘She went out and got herself a temporary job.’ At an art shop in Martleigh, serving behind the counter while one of the regular girls was in hospital. The job had lasted a few weeks, then she had worked for three months in a needlework shop where one of the assistants was on maternity leave. After that she was taken on in a department store for the Christmas rush and the January sales. Shortly before her stint there came to an end the letter had arrived from the solicitor up north, informing the girls of the death of their mother’s sister. Joanne had appeared very anxious to get her hands on her share of the aunt’s money, but she hadn’t told him she intended going to Cannonbridge to look for Helen; he had known nothing about that until the Sunday she left. She had simply informed him as she cleared away the breakfast things that she was going.
He had had no idea that she knew of anything to link Helen with Cannonbridge. She hadn’t mentioned any such link to him then, she had merely told him that that was where she was going. He asked how long she intended staying. She had shrugged and told him to expect her when he saw her. She might go on somewhere else from Cannonbridge, it depended on what she found out. He had told her she was on a fool’s errand, the money from the aunt’s intestacy would be paid over in the end, he couldn’t see why there need be so much rush.
No, he hadn’t worried about her. She was as determined a character as Helen; she was intelligent and serious-minded, had always behaved sensibly in Martleigh, he had no reason to suppose she would behave otherwise in Cannonbridge.
‘If you had never heard of her again,’ Kelsey put to him, ‘if she had simply stayed away, like Helen, would you have done anything about it?’
Arnold was silent for a minute or two. His eyes never left the Chief’s face. At length he said, ‘No, I don’t believe I would. I’d probably have thought she’d found Helen and decided to stay with her.’
‘You wouldn’t have expected her to inform you of that decision?’
He shook his head. ‘Probably not. I don’t think you quite appreciate what self-willed, independent girls they were.’
What would happen to the aunt’s money, now that both girls were dead? ‘I imagine it will all go to the State.’ Arnold had looked unwaveringly at the Chief. ‘It certainly won’t come to me. The old lady was no kin of mine.’ Hard to see how Arnold stood to benefit by the girls’ deaths, Lambert pondered – apart from no longer having to pay out the two dowries.
Kelsey had asked how often Arnold had visited Cannonbridge over the last few years. ‘I came here on a coach trip about fifteen years ago,’ Arnold had answered. ‘I haven’t been here since, never had any occasion to.’ He had paused briefly. ‘Until today.’
There was no sign of life in the butcher’s shop or the living accommodation when Lambert reached Thirlstane Street. He got out of his car and stood surveying the property; he could discern no movement behind the windows, no sound from within.
He went next door and pressed the bell; it was a minute or two before his ring was answered. When the door was at last flung open Mrs Snape stood facing him with an expression of lively irritation that was at once replaced by a smile of welcome.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she exclaimed. Her dark skirt and ruffled blouse were protected by a smart frilled apron; she wore sparkling ear-rings and a matching necklace. Her hair was elaborately arranged, her face carefully made up. She came out on to the step and glanced sharply up and down the street. ‘I thought it was another reporter.’
‘Have they been pestering you?’ Lambert asked.
She shrugged. ‘It was him they wanted, of course.’ She jerked her head towards No. 34. ‘But he wouldn’t speak
