Arnold’s mother had died when he was twenty, and his father had married Mrs Mowbray, a widow, seven years later; her daughters, Helen and Joanne, were at that time aged eight and four. ‘I did my best to get on with them all,’ Arnold told the Chief. Things had gone along well enough until the death of the second Mrs Lockyear a few years later. She was a woman of some refinement, fond of reading and music, very different from the robust, down-to-earth countrywoman his father had married first time round. The second Mrs Lockyear had fussed over her daughters, dressed them in artistic clothes she made and embroidered herself, encouraged them to think of themselves as talented, likely to make a place for themselves in the world beyond the domestic hearth. Her new husband humoured her, charmed by his luck in snaring this unlikely bird of paradise. Arnold was living at home, working in the shop – he had worked there ever since leaving school. He had felt himself an outsider in the new family circle. It was then that he had taken on the allotment, had begun to spend his spare time digging and hoeing, planting and weeding, in fair weather and foul.
Perhaps if the marriage had lasted longer Lockyear senior might have ceased to humour his new wife to the same extent, but three years after she walked out of the register office on his arm she was abruptly taken off by a rapid disorder of the blood. Her husband couldn’t believe she would die. Right up until the last moment he had fought against the idea, had refused to countenance it. He was knocked sideways by her death. Certainly there was never any question of his going out to look for any successor to her.
He was determined to look after his stepdaughters with every possible care. He went next door and asked Mrs Snape if she would come in daily to cook and clean, keep an eye on the domestic side of things in general, watch over the two motherless girls. She had readily agreed.
Things continued in this fashion for another four years and then Lockyear himself died, dropping dead from a heart attack one afternoon as he was unloading the van after a trip to the slaughter-house – right there in Thirlstane Street, in front of the shop, standing by the rear doors of the van, with Arnold helping him to unload.
After that it was just Arnold and the two girls, Helen now almost sixteen and Joanne twelve. In Lockyear’s will everything had been left to Arnold; house, business, furniture, savings. There was a clause instructing Arnold to pay over by way of dowry the sum of three thousand pounds to each girl on the occasion of her marriage or at the age of thirty if she should still be unmarried at that time. In addition Arnold was charged with continuing to provide a home in Thirlstane Street for both girls for as long as they should require it.
‘What happens to the dowry money now?’ Kelsey had asked. It seemed it would pass to Arnold. Certainly not a fortune, Lambert mused, though many men had killed for a great deal less. He had no idea if Arnold was in any way strapped for cash, how well the shop was doing.
‘I certainly didn’t drive either of the girls out of the house,’ Arnold had said with some heat. ‘Whatever you may hear from others.’ It was true that shortly after his father’s death he had made some alterations to the way the household was run; that was surely only to be expected. He had informed Mrs Snape that her services would no longer be required. ‘After all,’ he told the Chief, his brown eyes steady and unflagging, ‘Helen was rising sixteen. Some girls are married at that age, running a house and looking after a husband, entirely on their own. I didn’t see why she shouldn’t buckle down to a bit of housework. I felt it would do her good, she’d have to learn how to manage a home one day. And Joanne was old enough to help. They were both strong, healthy girls. I couldn’t see that it was any great hardship.’
Helen was at that time in her final year at school, taking a course in book-keeping and secretarial skills. Kelsey asked how she had received 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