A Woman Unknown Page 0,1

uneasiness made me wish he had found his way to someone else’s door. He looked at me from desolate brown eyes, whipping off a brown trilby to reveal thick dark-brown hair, tinged with grey, glistening with hair oil, and combed straight back from a low forehead. He smoothed a nervous finger over his neatly trimmed moustache. In the lapel of his brown striped suit, he wore a Sacred Heart pin. Over his arm he carried a brown overcoat, in spite of the warmth of the August evening. His brown boots shone from spit and polish. The image that came to me was of a wounded seal, washed up and losing its gloss.

‘Mr Fitzpatrick? Please come in. I’m Mrs Shackleton.’

His damp handshake strengthened my notion of his likeness to a seal.

Sykes had been gazing out of the dining room window and turned as we came in.

Sitting at the top of the table, my back to the window, I felt the warmth of the last rays of the evening sun on my head and neck. Shafts of light played across the table. Fitzpatrick took the seat to my right, opposite Sykes.

‘It’s about my wife,’ Fitzpatrick said, without waiting to be asked. ‘As I explained to Mr Sykes, Deirdre disappears for days at a time. She has me frantic with worry. I want to know what she’s up to.’

I groaned inwardly. This was the kind of request I dreaded.

‘Mr Sykes may have explained that we do not take on matrimonial cases.’

‘This is not what they call a matrimonial case, Mrs Shackleton. There’s nothing wrong between us. I only want to know where she is going, what she is doing.’ He flashed an appealing glance at Sykes. ‘She could be up to her old tricks. If she’s caught again, she won’t get off so lightly. It will be prison, shame, disgrace.’

Sykes could not have shut his trap more tightly if he had uncorked and swallowed a bottle of glue, but his concern was obvious.

‘Can you be more precise, Mr Fitzpatrick, about what gives you cause for concern?’

I almost said ‘suspicion’, but chose my words carefully so as not to fuel his anxieties.

He placed his big hands flat on the table. ‘Sometimes I wonder has a person got a hold over her, to make her do things she wouldn’t do, or is getting money out of her.’

‘You speak as though you believe there is extortion of some kind, or that your wife is being blackmailed. Do you have grounds for such fears?’

‘The word blackmail has come to me but I don’t know from where. I just know she’s up to something. I feel it in my bones.’

I resisted the urge to ask which bones, knee bones, funny bones, skull, but nodded encouragement. ‘How long have you been married?’

Be careful, Kate, I told myself. Next I would be saying they should talk it over, and spend a weekend at Blackpool, just the two of them, while the weather held.

‘Six years. We married at St Anne’s in 1917.’ He produced a wedding photograph from an inside pocket and pushed it across the table towards me.

The photograph had been removed from a frame. The bride looked happy and confident. She was petite, with wavy hair, high cheek bones and an infectious smile. The groom looked as though he had bet on the wrong horse and lost his wages. ‘What age was she when you married?’

‘Eighteen.’ He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I’m going on forty-five. She has twenty-four summers but looks like spring. Why wouldn’t she? I’ve given her an easy life. She doesn’t work. We have no children.’ His lower lip quivered. ‘And now she’s off all hours.’

Fitzpatrick seemed a kindly man. His uneasiness was palpable. ‘Have you asked your wife where she goes?’

He frowned. ‘She tells lies. Short of locking her in the house what am I to do? I have to work. I did try locking the door once, when we’d had words, but she climbed out of the window. And there’s always a plausible story. Her mother is ill. Her aunt at the convent has invited her on a retreat. Another man would beat her over it, but she is so …’ He turned to Sykes. ‘You know how exquisite she is. I could never raise a hand to her.’

He spoke as if we had suggested such a thing. ‘Perhaps she is telling the truth,’ I said.

‘Oh she is always partly telling the truth. Since she found out last year that her mother is