Free The Case of the Missing Bronte by Robert Barnard Page A

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    As I drove away from the University of Milltown, without a regretful backward glance, I felt a prickling in the spine that meant I had decided I had to see this Tetterfield. And certainly it could not be said that there were any other pressing leads that demanded to be followed up, apart perhaps from the activities, professional and unprofessional, of the Reverend Amos Macklehose. So I got out my AA map and discovered that Bradford was only thirty-five miles or so. Since Hutton-le-Dales could be taken in with only the smallest of detours, I decided todrop in there on the way, to see if anything had turned up. It was a gorgeous spring day, and Hutton was looking idyllically peaceful when I drove through it. There was no sign of life at the cottage, but as I opened the gate a figure came round the side of the cottage, wheeling a barrow. It was a boy of thirteen or so, and he grinned cheerily at me as I came into the little garden.
    â€˜Hello,’ he said. ‘I got permission. Are you the one that’s investigating the break-in?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said. ‘And you’re the young man who helps in the garden.’
    His hair was short and curly, and his skin was just slightly browner than it might be from a fortnight on the Algarve. Even my wife’s parents (a charming couple whom you’ll meet some time, I expect, though if I were you I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry) would have found it difficult to detect more than the faintest touch of the tarbrush (to use their favourite phrase) — though to do them justice, that touch would be enough: in racial matters they have all the beautiful tolerance of the British urban working-class. No doubt this touch was sufficient too to mark him off in rural Yorkshire — certainly the fact that he was ‘coloured’ had been carried to the appalling Macklehoses.
    â€˜That’s me,’ said the boy. ‘We’ve got the day off school today, and I thought I’d do a bit for Miss Wing. She’ll want it looking all right when she comes out of hospital.’ He must have seen a shadow pass over my face, because his forehead crinkled, and he looked up at me. ‘She will come out, won’t she? She will be all right?’
    â€˜We hope so,’ I said. ‘But she hasn’t regained consciousness yet.’
    â€˜Oh golly,’ he said. ‘She mustn’t die.’
    â€˜You get on well with her?’
    â€˜Oh yes. She’s all right. She pays me a bit for the jobs I do in the garden. And she teaches me a bit — about plantsand that. She says I’ve got a gift for natural history. No one else says I’ve got a gift for anything. She doesn’t think the school I go to’s any good, doesn’t Miss Wing. She says I should be a bo- botanist when I grow up.’
    â€˜And will you?’
    â€˜Don’t know,’ he said, grinning. ‘It’s a while yet, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Do you know anything about the break-in?’ I asked.
    â€˜Only what the rest of the village has been saying. Wish I did know something. I’d like to get him. The first I heard about it were next morning — the other kids were talking about it on ’t school bus. I got off and walked back, but the place were swarming wi’ cops, and Miss Wing were in hospital. I got into hot water over that, at school.’
    â€˜What about the day before — or the day before that? Notice anything suspicious in the village?’
    â€˜Suspicious? Like what sort of thing?’
    â€˜Like strangers, for example.’
    â€˜Don’t remember,’ he said reluctantly, after screwing up his face with effort. ‘People drive through here, you know, and sometimes they stop at the pub. I think there may have been some religious people around about then — ’
    â€˜Religious people?’
    â€˜Je-Jehovah’s Witnesses, or summat. My Mam shut the door on them. Said we