"I don't know," she wheezed regretfully. It was an admission she rarely had to make. "She wouldn't have said. She wasn't a talker."
"So I heard," said Sloan.
"I saw her leave in the morning," offered Mrs. Ricks. "In her best, she was."
"Was she?" said Sloan, interested.
"And she was gone all day. At least I never saw her get off a bus before I closed." Mrs. Ricks apparently monitored the bus stop outside the Post Office window as a matter of course.
"Nasty things, car accidents," observed Sloan to nobody in particular.
"You needn't think, officer," said Mrs. Ricks, divining his intentions with uncanny accuracy, "that you'll find anyone to say a word against Mrs. Jenkins, because you won't."
"Madam, I assure you…"
"She didn't," went on Mrs. Ricks with the insight born of years of small shopkeeping, "mix with people enough to upset them, if you see what I mean."
Sloan saw what she meant.
"Difficult job, all the same," he said diffidently, "bringing up a child without a father."
Mrs. Ricks gave a crowing laugh. "She brought her up all right. She never did anything else all day but look after that child. And that house of hers."
"Devoted?" suggested Sloan.
Mrs. Ricks gave a powerful nod. "It was always 'Henrietta this' and 'Henrietta that' with Mrs. Jenkins," she said a trifle spitefully. "A rare old job it was to get her to take an interest in anything else."
"I see."
Mrs. Ricks gave a sigh and said sententiously, "Here today, gone tomorrow. We none of us know, do we, when we shall be called…"
Sloan got her back to the point with an effort. "Do you happen to know which is her pension day?"
"That I do not," declared Mrs. Ricks. "But I can tell you one thing…"
"What's that?"
"That she never got it here."
"Oh?"
"There's some that don't." She looked round the crowded little store, saleable goods protruding from every square inch of wall and ceiling space, and lining most of the floor too. "They like where bigger."
Sloan saw what she meant. The sales point of the billhook was practically making itself felt.
"Especially," said Mrs. Ricks in her infinite wisdom, "if it isn't as much as they'd like you to think. Sergeant, wasn't he?"
Sloan nodded.
Mrs. Ricks sniffed. "Sometimes they were. Sometimes they weren't."
Calleford Minster rose like an eminence grise above and behind the clustered shops at the end of Petergate. Mr. Arbi-can of Messrs. Waind, Arbican & Waind would be very happy to see Henrietta but her appointment with him was not until a quarter to three. Farmers as a race lunch early and Henrietta and Bill Thorpe had time to spare.
Henrietta turned towards the Minster. "It's lovely, isn't it?"
Bill Thorpe turned an eye on the towering stone. "It's more than lovely. Do you realise it could be useful to you?"
"To me?"
He nodded. "That chap in the photograph…"
"My father," responded Henrietta a little distantly.
"He was—what did you say?—a sergeant in the East Cal-leshires?"
"That's right. What about it?"
"He was killed, wasn't he?"
She flushed. "So I understand."
"Well, then…"
"Well then what?"
"Calleford's their town, isn't it?"
Henrietta sighed. "Whose town?"
"The East Calleshires," explained Bill Thorpe patiently. "The Regiment. They've got their barracks here. Like the West Calleshires have theirs in Berebury."
"What if they have?"
He pointed to the Minster. "If this is their home town then I think we might find their memorial in the Minster here, don't you?"
"I hadn't thought of that," she said slowly. "He—my father—'ll be there, won't he?"
Bill Thorpe led the way towards the Minster gate. "We can soon see."
The East Calleshires did have their memorial in the Minster. Henrietta followed Bill Thorpe into the Minster and down the nave. She lagged behind slightly as if she did not want to be there, glancing occasionally at the memorials to eighteenth-century noblemen and nineteenth-century soldiers.
An elderly verger led them to the East Calleshire memorial on the North wall of the North transept.
"It catches the afternoon light just here, you know," he said. "Nice piece of marble, isn't it?"
"Very," said Bill Thorpe politely.
"They couldn't get no more like it," the man said. "Not when they came to try. Still, they weren't to know they were going to need a whole lot more less than twenty years later, were they?"
Bill Thorpe nodded in agreement. "Indeed not. That knowledge was spared them."
"So that," went on the man, "come 1945 they decided they would put those new names on these pillars that were there already. Quite a saving, really, though the money didn't matter, as it happened." He signed. "Funny how often it works out like that, isn't it?"
"Very," said Bill Thorpe.
"The same crest did, too." It was obvious that the man spent his days showing people around the Minster. His voice had a sort of hushed monotone suitable to the surroundings. "That's a nice bit of work, though they tell me it's tricky to dust. They don't think of that sort of thing when they design a monument."
"I suppose not."
The verger hitched his gown over his shoulders. "You two come to look somebody up?"
"Yes," said Bill. "Yes, we have."
"Thought so. People never ask unless they particularly want to see someone they was related to." He looked them up and down and said tersely, "First lot or second?"
"Second."
He sucked his breath in through gaps in his teeth. "It'll be easier to find them."
" 'An epitaph on an army of mercenaries' " said Bill Thorpe sadly as the old man wandered off.
Henrietta wasn't listening.
"Bill," she tugged his sleeve urgently. "Look."
"Where?"
She pointed. "There…"
"It goes," agreed Bill Thorpe slowly, "from Inkpen, T. H. to Jennings, C. R."
"There's no one called Jenkins there at all," whispered Henrietta.
CHAPTER NINE
Bill Thorpe shifted his weight from one foot to the other and considered the matter.
"He should have been here, shouldn't he?"
"He was in the East Calleshires," insisted Henrietta. "My mother always said he… I was told he was but there's the photograph too."
"The man in the photograph was wearing their uniform."
"Exactly," said Henrietta.
"But that's all."
"All?"
"All you know for sure," said Thorpe flatly.
Henrietta turned a bewildered face back to the memorial. "Do you mean the man in the photograph wasn't killed?"
Bill ran his eye down the names. "He may have been killed and not called Jenkins."
"Or," retorted Henrietta astringently, "I suppose he may have been called Jenkins and not been killed."
"That is the most probable explanation," agreed Thorpe calmly.
"How—how am I going to find out?"
"Did you ever see your mother's pension book?"
"She didn't cash her pension at the Post Office," she said quickly. "She took it to the bank. She told me that. Then she used to cash a cheque."
"I see."
There was a long pause and then Henrietta said, "So that, whether or not he was my father, he wasn't killed in the war, was he?"
"Not if he was in the East Calleshires and was also called Jenkins," agreed Bill Thorpe, pointing to the memorial. "Of course there is another possibility."
Henrietta sighed but said nothing.
"He might not have been killed on active service," went on Thorpe.