by Eric Brown
Her right hand tightened around a small, wadded handkerchief. ‘It was all so long ago,’ she murmured.
‘You probably can’t recall that much from back then,’ Langham said, ‘but if you could answer a few questions …’
She shook her head, and at first Langham thought it was in refusal. Then she said, ‘You’re quite wrong, Mr Langham. I can recall the time as if it were just yesterday. You see, it was the happiest time of my life.’
Langham exchanged a surprised look with Ralph. ‘It was?’
‘You don’t often meet a man like Maxwell Fenton, gentlemen. And when you do, well …’ She smiled, and the expression transformed her face. ‘You grasp it with both hands, don’t you?’
Ralph asked, ‘You loved Fenton?’
‘I was deeply in love with him. He was the kindest, most loving man I had ever known.’
Langham tried not to show his surprise. ‘Just when was this?’ he asked.
‘It was nineteen thirty,’ she said. ‘I was twenty-five, and Maxwell was in his forties. He was at the very start of his most successful period: he was selling his work, staging important exhibitions in the big London galleries, enjoying critical acclaim. I loved him so much, and I revelled in his success, in his love for me.’
‘But you didn’t marry him?’ Ralph said.
Her eyes clouded. She looked down at her fists clenched in her lap. ‘That was impossible,’ she murmured.
‘Impossible?’ Langham echoed.
‘I was married already, you see.’
‘Ah,’ Langham said.
‘I was married to a man called Archie Forester, and a greater contrast to Maxwell Fenton you could not imagine. I married young, Mr Langham, and regretted doing so from almost the very first day. Archie was an insecure, domineering bully, a businessman who worked in the city. Oh, he was successful in his field, and wealthy … but shallow, vindictive. He kept me tied to the house, monitored my every movement.’
‘How did you meet Maxwell Fenton?’ Ralph asked.
She smiled as if at the recollection of that very first meeting. ‘Archie allowed me to go to painting classes – we were living in London at the time – and Maxwell was a tutor there. We were attracted to each other immediately, and …’ She shrugged. ‘And we embarked upon the most wonderful, intense love affair. Embarked? I make it sound like an ocean voyage, don’t I? “Swept up” would be a better phrase. We were swept up in a beautiful, headlong affair. It changed my life, gentlemen; it made me realize, after five years of servitude, what real life could be like.’
‘What happened?’ Ralph asked. ‘Hubby found out?’
‘He did, but not immediately. What happened to end the affair was that I fell pregnant.’
Ralph leaned forward. ‘And Maxwell was the father?’
She nodded. ‘He was.’
Langham recalled what Hermione Goudge had mentioned about one of Maxwell Fenton’s lovers losing her baby in infancy.
‘And when he found out about the kid, Fenton left you?’ Ralph said.
She twisted the handkerchief in agitated fingers. ‘You must understand that Maxwell was a free spirit. He made it clear, at the start of the affair, that he didn’t want me to leave my husband, that he didn’t want conventional domestic ties. I accepted that; I was so happy at having found someone like Maxwell, in contrast to Archie, that I would have accepted anything, any condition Maxwell might have placed on our relationship.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Call me a fool, if you like.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Langham said. ‘It must have been—’
‘It was hell, Mr Langham, and then my husband found out. He suspected something and hired a detective … And when he discovered I’d been unfaithful to him and was having Maxwell’s child – or rather children, as I was pregnant with twins – Archie demanded that I have the pregnancy terminated.’
So Hermione Goudge had been wrong, Langham thought: Prudence Forester had not lost her child in infancy.
‘I refused, of course. I was not killing my babies to assuage my husband’s jealousy. But when I told Maxwell I was having his children, he simply walked away, left me. I found myself suddenly all alone without a penny to my name – without Maxwell and tied to a vindictive husband. I told Archie that I would stay with him, but that I would not end the pregnancy. Instead, I would have the twins adopted. He agreed to this with ill grace. He thought that by allowing me to have the children adopted he could keep me. Well, in a way he was right; he did have me – physically, though never in spirit.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Langham said. ‘And the children?’
‘A boy and a girl, and it broke my heart when I gave them up for adoption. They were taken into an orphanage in London.’ She smiled, on the verge of tears now. ‘I can see you asking why I didn’t stick to my guns, tell Archie to go to hell, leave him and keep my son and daughter. But I was young and naive, and I would have had nothing, nothing at all – no house, no money, and certainly no social standing. This was back in the thirties, at the height of the depression.’
‘So you stayed with your husband,’ Ralph said.
‘For better and for worse, richer and poorer.’
‘And your children?’ Ralph asked.
‘When the children were four years old, I was informed that my daughter … that she had died. Encephalitis. My son was in a home in London. It was my hope that he would be adopted by a kind, loving family, but …’
Langham leaned forward. ‘What happened?’
She shook her head, almost flinching at the recollection. ‘He was ill for the first few years of his life. He barely survived, and he was five by the time he was well enough to be taken into foster care. He needed a lot of medical attention, and he never found the adoptive parents I wished for him. He was returned to the orphanage and remained there.’
Ralph asked, ‘Did you ever see him during this time?’
She shook her head. ‘No, that wasn’t allowed.’
‘And I take it Maxwell likewise wasn’t allowed to see his son?’ Langham asked.
‘He wasn’t,’ she replied. ‘Not that he was in the slightest bit interested in doing so.’
That, Langham thought, sounded more like the Maxwell Fenton he had come to know.
She smiled from Ralph to Langham. ‘But happily my son survived, gentlemen. Not only survived, but prospered. When he was twenty-one, he was allowed to access his records and, with my consent to the authorities, he arranged that we should meet.’
Langham nodded. ‘And?’
‘One moment, please.’ She stood and moved from the conservatory.
Ralph ran a hand through his thinning hair. ‘Don, you don’t think …?’
Langham found that his mouth was very dry as he said, ‘I don’t know.’
Prudence Forester returned, smiling. She was holding a slim booklet and a small black-and-white photograph. She passed Langham the photo, which showed a boy and girl seated side by side; they were perhaps three years old.
‘My daughter, Hilary, had the most wonderful head of red hair, Mr Langham, though obviously you can’t make that out in the photograph.’
Hilary, Langham thought …
She passed him the booklet. ‘My son discovered literature, gentlemen. He changed his name and became a poet.’
His heart pounding, Langham stared down at the booklet in his hands: Etude: Twenty-One Poems by Crispin Proudfoot.
He looked up at the woman. ‘When did you last see your son?’
‘Why, just two weeks ago.’
‘Do you know if he was in contact with his father?’
Prudence nodded. ‘He’s been a regular visitor at Winterfield over the course of the past year.’
‘The past year?’ Ralph repeated. ‘He wasn’t living in Paris?’
The woman looked bemused. ‘But he’s never lived in Paris. He often stays with Maxwell at Winterfield, though he doesn’t tell me much about the relationship he has with his father. Is something wrong?’
Lang
ham stood. He moved past the woman and stared through the glass. Ralph was at his side, gripping his arm. ‘Proudfoot …’ Ralph murmured. ‘But why the hell would he shoot his own father?’
Langham felt ill. ‘Or kill the others? Christ, Ralph, he’s in Suffolk with …’
Ralph clutched his arm. ‘I’ll get through to the hotel, speak to Mallory’s man.’ He turned to Prudence. ‘Do you have a telephone?’ he snapped.
She indicated the door. ‘In the hall, but …’
Ralph shot through the doorway and into the house.
‘Mr Langham, is something …?’
Langham stared at her, his vision swimming. ‘We must go. Thank you so much for your time.’
He pushed past her, hurried down the hall, and edged past Ralph who was speaking urgently into the receiver.
He ran out to the car and started the engine. As soon as Ralph emerged from the house at a sprint and dived into the passenger seat, Langham accelerated from the drive and turned down the lane.
‘Got through to a receptionist at the hotel,’ Ralph said. ‘She said the detectives were somewhere outside. I told her to find them, quick sharp, with the message that Proudfoot was the killer. Then I phoned the Yard and told the desk sergeant about Proudfoot. He said he’ll alert the constabulary at Bury St Edmunds right away. They’ll have someone there in twenty minutes.’
‘It won’t be in time,’ Langham said, hunching over the wheel. ‘They won’t be armed.’
‘But Mallory’s men at the Grange should be,’ Ralph said.
‘Should be – but I’m pretty damned sure they aren’t.’ Langham cursed. ‘And Proudfoot’s been there all day. He’s had time to … and you saw what he did to the others.’
‘Don, it’ll be fine. Jeff has his best men up there, and if the worst comes to the worst, Pamela has my revolver.’
Langham glanced at him. ‘What?’
‘In the car the other night, when you were consoling Maria – I told Pamela to protect Maria and gave her my revolver.’
‘Even so …’ Langham began, his mind racing.
‘Don, it’ll be fine, OK? Everything’ll be fine. Look, do you want me to drive?’
‘You?’ Langham shook his head. ‘No, I …’ He needed to be in control, needed to be doing something.
They sped through the village and turned on to the main road. He accelerated, hit forty, then fifty, and overtook three dawdling cars in quick succession.
‘North on the A131, right?’
‘That’d be quickest.’
He overtook another car. He tried to calculate how long it might take them to reach Abbotsford. Twenty minutes? Twenty-five at the most? The police would arrive just before them, but what if Proudfoot had already …?
There was no need to speed, he told himself. But something pressed him to do so. What if the police could do nothing, unarmed as they were? What if they had confronted Proudfoot, but he’d already …
He swerved around a coal lorry. The road ahead, rising to the near horizon, was clear of traffic. Langham put his foot down and hit sixty.
He thought back to his meetings with Crispin Proudfoot.
When he had seen the young man outside the Tivoli Mansions, on his way – or so he said – to see Hermione Goudge about the sympathy card he’d received …
‘Christ, Ralph! What a fool …’
‘Don?’
‘The other day, when I saw Proudfoot outside the Tivoli … and what he told me in the café … What a stupid, blind fool I’ve been!’
‘Don, you couldn’t have—’
‘But I could! That’s just it. Listen, when I saw him that morning – he was in a blue funk about the card he said he’d just received. I asked him how he had the card when he’d moved into the Muswell Hill place the day before – and he said he’d had to pop back to his old flat for something. Hell – why didn’t I realize I’d inadvertently caught him out, and that he was lying?’
‘You weren’t to know that, Don.’
‘And another thing – in the café he told me he’d stolen two hundred pounds from Fenton’s desk at Winterfield five years ago, but why didn’t I cotton on to the fact that Fenton wouldn’t have had that kind of cash lying around in a drawer? He was impoverished. I should have realized that, seen that Proudfoot was lying.’
‘That morning when we saw him outside the Tivoli,’ Ralph said. ‘You think he was going to kill the Goudges there and then?’
Langham thought about it. ‘I reckon so, but he changed tack when he saw that I’d seen him in the street. He gave me the sob story about his being on the hit list. I’ll grant him this, he was convincing. He even showed me the sympathy card – he probably had a stack of them for future use.’
‘So he went back to the Tivoli later that day? But how the hell did he get in?’
‘How else? Jeff said he didn’t post a guard on the place until four. My guess is he went back before then and simply walked in and said he was visiting a resident, if he was asked.’
‘And he killed the Goudges sometime after six o’clock … but how did he get out of the place, with the bobby on the door as he was?’
Langham glanced at Ralph. ‘The redhead!’ he said. ‘The concierge and the constable both reported seeing the woman leave at nine. Bloody hell, could it have been Proudfoot, dressed up as his dead sister?’
‘Proudfoot? You’re kidding!’
‘Why not? The redhead was described as small, plain …’
‘I s’pose it’s possible,’ Ralph allowed.
They drove on in silence for a while.
‘Proudfoot being the killer clears up why Edgar Benedict was contacted via the agency by someone calling himself Mr Smith,’ Langham said. ‘Fenton was dead by that time, two weeks ago, so Proudfoot used the alias when he called the agency.’
‘But why did he kill his old man?’ Ralph asked.
‘A mercy killing?’ Langham suggested. ‘To end his suffering?’
They came to a junction and the car in front slowed down. Langham braked, swearing, ‘Come on, come on!’
They set off again and Langham put his foot down, swerved around the car, and left it in his wake.
‘If the rozzers see us now!’ Ralph said.
‘I’m stopping for no one. They can chase us into Suffolk and then slap me with a ticket! Hell.’
‘What?’
He felt like weeping. ‘Yesterday, at Muswell Hill. Remember, I gave Proudfoot that little lesson on how to fire his revolver?’
Ralph murmured, ‘You weren’t to know.’
‘And if he uses it against Maria …’
‘He won’t. The cops’ll get there first. And anyway, Pamela’s armed, isn’t she? She’s a bright girl, Don. Proudfoot’s a drip. She’ll have him on toast.’
‘He’s a drip who evaded the cops and killed four innocent people – five, including Benedict. He’s a wily bastard. Christ, if I get my hands on him, I swear, Ralph, I’ll tear him limb from limb.’
‘And I’ll help you.’
They bypassed Braintree and drove north, and Langham was relieved to see that the road ahead was sparsely populated with traffic: just a handful of cars and the occasional lorry.
He thanked his lucky stars that soon he and Maria would be moving into the country. He recalled her delight at finding the cottage at Ingoldby-over-Water and her gaiety that afternoon as they explored the village.
But if Proudfoot had his way …
The sickness in his stomach was matched by the ache in his back as he crouched forward over the wheel. He was too tense; but how could he possibly relax?
He nodded towards the glove compartment. ‘The gazetteer. Page forty.’
Ralph pulled the booklet from under the dash and flipped through the pages. ‘Got it.’
‘The Grange is this side of Abbotsford, on the B1066. But when we come off this road, what’s the number of the road?’
Ralph found the relevant road and gave the number.
‘Shout w
hen we’re getting near.’ Langham licked his lips. ‘How far from Abbotsford are we?’
‘Five miles, a little more. We’re nearly there, Don.’
It was the uncertainty that was the torture, the not knowing one way or the other. Maria was either fine now or …
He winced at the alternative.
The traffic was light. The sun was still out. On any other occasion, he would have enjoyed the sight of the rolling country, the farms and villages nestling in the vales and folds.
‘OK,’ Ralph said. ‘Take the next turn left, about a quarter of a mile away. We’re almost there. Two or three miles off …’
He slowed down, turned left along the secondary road, then accelerated, speeding along the dipping and rising lane and around tight bends. There was no other traffic on the narrow lane; he just hoped they wouldn’t come across a tractor or truck trundling in the opposite direction.
He felt the weight of the revolver in his overcoat pocket and thought about what they might find at the Grange.
It was all over, one way or another.
Maria was alive.
Or dead.
And the hell was that he didn’t know.
He accelerated up a long, straight stretch of road that climbed the gradient of the swelling hillside. They crested the rise and he stared down on the patchwork vista of Suffolk farmland far below. His heart leapt.
‘There!’ he said, pointing.
The village of Abbotsford, a collection of stone cottages and a Saxon church, nestled in a vale perhaps a mile away. Before the village, standing in splendid isolation, was the Grange.
Langham swerved right down a narrow, twisting lane, and after a minute the engine spluttered. He swore as the car stalled.
‘Don?’
‘The petrol, Ralph! For Christ’s sake!’
The car slowed, moving in spasmodic jerks. Langham gripped the wheel. He felt like screaming in rage and frustration. Instead, he steered the Rover into the side of the lane and leapt out, Ralph in close pursuit.
He set off along the lane at a sprint.
TWENTY-SIX
After lunch in the great hall, Maria took her manuscript to the library and read for an hour. Pamela had retired to her room, dreamy-eyed from spending an hour with Dennis.