Carmen Pharoah climbed the narrow stairway of the house and entered the rear bedroom. She encountered a musty smell within the room which had only a single unmade bed, a wardrobe and a dressing table. Carmen Pharoah pondered the unmade bed. Had Mrs Hemmings departed with some urgency? Did her husband care so little for her, despite his apparent grief, that he did not go into her room at all? When she was a missing person, making up her bed in anticipation of her return would have been the act of a worried and caring husband, or so Carmen Pharoah would have thought, but was it in fact the case that the quality of their marriage had deteriorated to the point that they were banned from each other’s room? Perhaps. . perhaps. . perhaps. Carmen Pharoah walked across the threadbare carpet to the dressing table. It seemed to her to be a sensible place to start looking, though she did not know what exactly she was searching for. Upon the table, in front of the mirror, was an array of cosmetics and a few items of jewellery, all of which she classed as ‘mid range’. Nothing there indicated wealth, nor equally of her struggling finances. It was, it seemed, fully in keeping with the house, a modest, three bedroom semi owned by a supervisor in the biscuit factory. Just Dringhouses, York. Comfortable. And mid range items within.
In the drawer of the dressing table she found Edith Hemmings’s birth certificate which put her age at forty-seven years, her birthplace as Ottawa, Canada and her maiden name as Aurille. Also in the drawer she found a Canadian passport in the name of Edith Avrille. The passport was still valid. Mr Hemmings had probably been her first husband although Carmen Pharoah knew that obtaining a passport in one’s maiden name, or renewing a passport in a woman’s maiden name, was not an uncommon practice, nor was it particularly difficult. She replaced the passport and took hold of a hardback notebook within which were written musings and overused sayings, ‘Don’t light a fire you can’t put out’ and ‘Pain is temporary but failure lasts a lifetime’ being but two. Also in the book were a number of addresses: St Joseph’s, Riddeau Terrace, Ottawa; Liff and Company, Barrie, Ontario; forty-three Allison Heights, Barrie; nineteen Wilbury Street, Barrie, Ontario. Carmen Pharoah felt it safe to disregard the single line entreaties to Edith Hemmings striving for common sense and proceeded to copy down all the addresses in the notebook. She then opened the wardrobe, rummaged through the clothing, felt her way across the top of the shelf in the wardrobe and, finding nothing else of promising significance, returned downstairs. She found Stanley Hemmings still in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea. ‘I have all I need,’ she told him, calmly.
‘Oh. What are you taking?’ Hemmings sounded alarmed.
‘Nothing. I am leaving everything where I found it. I have seen the birth certificate and passport and found her notebook; I have made a few notes but left everything in its proper place. We would ask you to do the same. Please do not clear the room, not just yet.’
‘Yes, understood. I won’t. I’ll be cremating her, by the way.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’ll be cremating her. Just thought you might be interested or would want to know. They have released the body.’
‘I see. . yes, the post-mortem was conclusive.’
‘Yes. . so they cut her up so much it just seems the right thing to do is to cremate her. She won’t rest at peace with her insides cut open. She was neat like that. Liked things just so, did our Edith.’
‘Have you anybody to keep an eye on you, Mr Hemmings, to look in on you at a time like this?’
‘At a time like this I am best on my own, but thank you very much for your concern. Best back to work in my brown smock. . but again, thank you for your concern, Miss. I appreciate it,’ he added with a weak smile.
Carmen Pharoah let herself out of the house and walked slowly back to where she had parked her car, feeling a strange sense that she had visited emptiness.
‘He’s right.’ Terry Selsey, proprietor of The Hunter’s Moon, leaned on the highly polished bar of the pub, having handed a coffee each to Yellich and Webster. ‘It’s the recession, you see. This is a struggling pub at the best of times. It struggled when I opened for seven days a week, when folk had money to spend, and I just kept my head above water, but only just. Then customers stopped coming in and the hard times began. I had to let staff go, one by one, and now me and the wife run it between us. Just the two of us. We tried everything to lure the punters in, put on food but nobody had the money to eat out. Lowered the price of the beer until we were virtually selling it at cost but still nobody came in. So now we don’t open until eight p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday and even then it’s like this most of the time.’ He nodded to the empty chairs and to the silence. ‘I’d even welcome a fight to break up because that would mean there were customers in the place. . that it should come to thinking like that.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Yellich stirred his coffee.
‘Do you?’ Selsey snarled. ‘You with your security of employment, early retirement at fifty-five years, inflation-proof pension. . do you know what I mean?’ Selsey’s eyebrows knitted. He was clearly, thought Yellich, a man with a short fuse.
‘I meant,’ Yellich replied calmly, ‘I knew what you meant about wanting a fight to break up because that meant you had customers in the pub.’ He thought Selsey to be like many publicans he had met. He was a man with a ready smile, superficial joviality, but with the ability to turn and growl at the slightest provocation. It occurred to Yellich that a change in attitude on Selsey’s part might generate a little more business for The Hunter’s Moon. ‘So, the Canadian?’ Yellich asked.
‘Yes,’ Selsey glanced to one side. ‘He came in a few times, when we were busier; this is going back a couple of years mind. He went into the Black Bull further up the street as well but in the end he seemed to prefer this pub. The Bull is also a weekend-only shop now. Never caught his name but he seemed a likeable bloke, friendly when you talked to him, wore a wedding ring, but he definitely had an agenda.’
‘An agenda?’
‘Yes, by that I mean he wasn’t on holiday or on vacation as he might have said. The Canadian, he was a man with a mission. He liked his English beer, though, drove away well over the legal limit but he could handle it. He had to go back to Malton.’
‘Malton?’
‘Yes, he said that once at about nine thirty one evening and he sank his pint in a hurry, as though he was under time pressure. I thought then that it was a good thirty minutes drive. . so he had to be home by ten, wherever “home” was, as though he was staying at a guest house which locked the doors at ten p.m. sharp.’
‘All right. That’s interesting. Did he ever indicate to you or anyone that you know of, did he ever hint at his purpose? I mean did he indicate the nature of the agenda you mention?’
‘No. . not to me though he was apparently interested in the old house out of the village, the crumbling mess occupied by an old boy called Beattie. You can’t miss it.’
‘Yes, we have visited Mr Beattie. He also mentioned the large, well built man looking at his house but he thought that the Canadian, being the man in question, was more interested in the occupants than he was interested in the house itself.’
‘Occupants? Since his wife died the old boy is the sole occupant, the old boy who is rumoured not to feel the cold. . they say he sleeps in his kitchen.’
‘Oh, he feels it all right,’ Yellich replied, ‘he feels it, he just has a different attitude towards it than do the rest of us. We believe that when the Canadian was in the vicinity he, that is Mr Beattie, had a live-in help. . a lady. . as a domestic assistant. We believe that she was the object of the Canadian gentleman’s interest.’
‘Ah. . of that I know nothing. He said nothing about that when he was drinking his beer.’
‘I see. Did he talk to any other customers in the pub?’
‘Anybody who talked to him but he preferred his own company. He came in for a few beers, not idle chat. He was that sort of man.’