"Do they? I've never seen mine."
"You'll have one somewhere. You'll see. Your mother will have kept it in a safe place for sure."
"The bureau…" cried Henrietta. - "That's right," said Mrs. Meyton comfortably.
"It's not right," retorted Henrietta. "Someone broke into the bureau on Tuesday."
"Oh, dear."
"And there's certainly no birth certificate in there now…"
"A copy," said Mrs. Meyton gamely. "You can send for one from Somerset House."
"But don't you see," cried Henrietta in despair, "if she wasn't my mother I don't know what name to ask for."
CHAPTER FIVE
"Crosby…"
"Sir?' Crosby had one ear glued to the telephone receiver but he listened to Sloan with the other.
"You tell me why a woman brings up a child as her own when it isn't."
"Adopted, sir, that's all."
"Why?"
"Why adopt, sir? I couldn't say, sir. Seems quite unnecessary to me. Asking for trouble." His early years on the beat had made a child-hater out of Crosby.
"Why adopt when she did," said Sloan. 'That's what I want to know."
"When?" echoed Crosby.
"The middle of a war, that's when. With her husband on active service."
"Do we know that, sir, for sure?"
"We don't know anything for sure," Sloan reminded him with some acerbity, "except that Dr. Dabbe swears that this Grace Edith Jenkins never had any children." He paused. "We know a thing or two that are odd, of course."
"The bureau?"
"The bureau. Someone broke into that for a reason."
"They found what they were looking for…"
"Yes, I think they did. Something else that's odd, Crosby…"
Crosby thought for a moment. "Odd that they didn't have to break into the house. Just the bureau."
"Very odd, that."
"Yes, sir." Crosby waved his free hand. "Dr. Dabbe is coming on the line from the hospital now, sir."
Sloan took the receiver.
"This road traffic accident you sent me, Sloan, one Grace Edith Jenkins…"
, Doctor."
" I confirm of death. Between six and nine o'clock on Tuesday evening. Nearer nine than six."
"Thank you." Sloan started to write.
"She was aged about fifty-five," continued the pathologist. "Forty-five; I think it was, Doctor." Sloan turned back pages of the file. "Yes. Her daughter said she was forty-five. Forty-six next birthday."
"And I," said Dr. Dabbe mildly, "said she was about fifty-five."
Sloan made his first significant note.
"She had also had her hair dyed fairly recently."
"Oh?" said Sloan.
"From—er—blonde to brunette."
"Had she indeed?" The pathologist never missed anything.
"I should say she had been hit from behind by a car which was travelling pretty fast. The main injury was a ruptured aorta and she would have died very quickly from it.
"Outright?"
"In my opinion, yes."
That, at least, was something to be thankful for.
"I should say the car wheel went right over her, also rupturing the spleen. There are plenty of surface abrasions…""I'm not surprised."
"Both ante-mortem and post-mortem.""Post-mortem?"
"There was also a post-mortem fracture of the right femur," said the pathologist.
Sloan said, "I'm sorry to hear that." .
"I fear," said Dr. Dabbe, "that these injuries are consistent with her having been run over by a heavy vehicle twice.
"Two successive cars?" asked Sloan hopefully.
The pathologist sounded cautious. "I'd have to see the planof how she was lying but I'd have said she was definitely hit from behind the first time."
"That's what the constable in attendance thought.""And from the opposite direction the second time."
"Nasty."
"Yes."
Sloan replaced the receiver and looked out of the window "A car, Crosby, and quickly. I want to get back to, Lading before the light goes. And get on to Hepple and tell him to meet us at the scene of the accident."
Henrietta was still at the Rectory when the Rector returned.
He was undismayed when his wife told him that Henrietta was not Grace Jenkins's daughter.
"That explains something that always puzzled me," he said.
Henrietta looked up quickly. "What was that?"
"Why she came to Larking in the first place. As far as I could discover she had no links here at all. None whatsoever." Mr. Meyton was a spare, grey-haired scholarly man, a keen student of military history and the direct opposite of his tubby, cheerful wife. "If I remember correctly you both arrived out of the blue so to speak. And no one could call Boundary Cottage the ideal situation for an unprotected woman and child in war time."
Henrietta blinked. "I hadn't thought of that…"
"If she was deliberately looking for somewhere lonely…"
"Nowhere better," agreed Henrietta. "I just thought she liked the country."
"It occurred to me at the time she had set out to cut herself off," said Mr. Meyton. "Some people do. A great mistake, of course, and I always advise against it."
"Now we know why," said Henrietta.
"Perhaps."
"She wanted everyone to think I was hers."
"She probably didn't want you to know you weren't," said Mr. Meyton mildly. "Which is something quite different."
"But why on earth not?" demanded Henrietta. "Lots of children are adopted these days."
"True." The Rector hesitated. "There are other possibilities, of course."
"I'm just beginning to work them out," dryly.
"She might have had you by a previous marriage…"
"No. It wasn't that."
"Or even—er—outside marriage."
"Nor that," said Henrietta tonelessly. "The police said so. She wasn't anybody's mother—ever."
"I see. There will be reasons, you know."
She sighed. "I could have understood any of those things but this just doesn't make sense."
"It is an unusual situation." Mr. Meyton gave the impression of choosing his words with care.
"Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter," said Henrietta defiantly, "whatever anyone says."
"Quite so."
"And I swear no one could have been kinder…"
"No." He said tentatively, "Perhaps—had you thought— most likely of all, I suppose—that you were a child of your father's by a previous marriage."
Mrs. Meyton who had been sitting by, worried and concerned, put in anxiously, "That would explain everything, dear, wouldn't it?"
"I had wondered about that," said Henrietta.
The Rector stirred his tea. "It is a distinct possibility."
Henrietta stared into the fire. 'That would make me her stepdaughter."
"Yes." He coughed. "It might also account for the strange fact that following his death she didn't tell you."
"She didn't," said Henrietta vigorously, "behave like a stepmother."
"That's a fiction, you know," retorted the Rector. "You've been reading too many books."
Henrietta managed a tremulous smile, and said again, "Grace Jenkins brought me up as a daughter. I know she loved me…"
"Of course she did," insisted Mrs. Meyton.
"Perhaps that's the wrong word," said Henrietta slowly. "It was more than that. I always felt…" She looked from one of them to the other struggling to find a word that would convey intangible meaning, "… well, cherished, if you know what I mean."
"Of course, I do," said Mrs. Meyton briskly. "And you were. Always."
"It wasn't only that. She made great sacrifices so that I could go away to university. We had to be very careful, you know, with money." She pushed her hair back from her face and said, "She wouldn't have done that for just anybody, would she?"