by Amy Myers
Her excitement mounted as she arrived at the retirement home where Mary Beaumont lived. Four Winds (what an encouraging name for the frail) was on a slope of the North Downs overlooking the village, a nice spot but lonely (and certainly windy despite the rain). As a hotel it might have been ideal, but for old people living apart from the community it seemed hardly that.
The house was a Victorian monstrosity made bearable by huge rhododendron bushes and wisteria growing up the wall. The staff seemed welcoming enough, which was a good sign, but it was dark inside the entrance hall.
‘Mary’s in her room,’ she was told.
No dignifying the elderly with ‘Mrs Beaumont’ here. ‘Which is?’ Georgia enquired.
To her surprise the girl actually took her to the room rather than jerking a thumb. Another good sign.
‘Is she . . .’ Georgia broke off, not knowing whether she would find someone hale and hearty or an Alzheimer’s victim.
It was obviously a familiar question, for the girl cut in: ‘It’s one of her good days. Quite perky she was this morning.’
The door was flung open without ceremony. ‘Here we are, Mary. Visitor for you.’
At first Georgia could see no one. Then slowly a heap of brightly coloured shawls in a large armchair by the window moved and Mary Elgin peered out at her.
‘You’ve come then,’ she snapped before Georgia could even deliver her prepared introduction. ‘You’ve taken your time, I must say.’
Oh crabby old lady . . . Georgia thought with relief. No Alzheimer’s here.
A sharp pair of blue eyes stared out of the lined sunken face, but her thin hair once released from its cocoon of shawls had a bright diamonte-studded blue bow adorning it, and the blouse was a jazzy red. No hiding from the world here.
‘I had to go home to see my father last night,’ Georgia explained.
‘Last night? It was years ago I saw you. I ain’t lost my marbles yet, young woman.’
Oh boy, Georgia thought, heart sinking. And this was one of the good days.
‘I’ve been in here nine years and it were before that,’ Mary Elgin continued.
‘What was?’
‘When you came. I knew you’d be back. I knew it.’
‘Came where?’ Georgia asked carefully. Surely she could not mean—
‘To my teashop of course. Where do you think? Buckingham Palace?’
‘But you can’t remember me. I only came—’
‘Ah, that got you, didn’t it?’ Mary said with quiet satisfaction. ‘I knew you were the one. I knew you’d be back. You and that man . . .’
‘My father.’
‘Yes. I knew it.’
Georgia refused to believe it. This must surely be Jim Hardbent’s doing, and it had become confused in Mary Elgin’s mind. ‘Did Jim telephone you last night?’
‘No Jim rang me. No one else neither. They never do.’ Mary’s eyes fixed her with a piercing gaze. ‘I have the sight, young woman. Of course I knew you were the one.’
‘The sight?’ Georgia hesitated. ‘You mean you can foretell the future?’
‘Not so clear as my mum, but I saw you all right. Mum was a true Romany. Should never have stayed in Wickenham, but that’s what love does for you. I should know. She belonged to the woods, to the roads, a travelling woman.’
‘Davy Todd,’ Georgia said abruptly. ‘That’s why you knew I’d be coming.’
‘There you see. You know. Why did it take you so long?’ she asked querulously.
‘I’ve only just . . .’ Georgia was going to say ‘learned about you’, but that wouldn’t be the right phrase, ‘understood,’ she amended.
‘And what do you understand, my lovely?’
‘I understand –’ emotion battled with the need for honesty – ‘that you think Davy was innocent.’
‘Think, lady? I know he was. Davy was with me that night.’
‘Your father denied it.’
‘I’ve nothing to say against my dad.’
‘Then—’ Where was this going? Georgia couldn’t make it out.
‘Lady,’ Mary interrupted, ‘I have something to say against the world.’
‘What is that, Mrs Beaumont?’ Georgia asked gently.
‘For hanging my Davy. Now you’ve bothered to turn up at last, I’ll tell you what really happened, so pin back your lugholes and listen. It was the night of the Hallowe’en dance. Thursday. Mum and Dad wanted to go, so I agreed to mind the little ’uns. Davy came over to join me, though of course they didn’t know that. Davy was a gentle soul. Loved his work, loved nature. Green-fingered was Davy. He knew a Dartford warbler when he saw one, and the rarest orchid, together with every plant on God’s earth. What with me being interested in plants like Mum was, we got on well – she knew all the healing plants, so Mum didn’t mind Davy too much. Dad would have liked him too if he hadn’t been a Todd. The Todds and the Elgins didn’t get on, see.’
‘What was the reason for that?’
‘Went way back. All because some Todd ran off with an Elgin’s wife. Or maybe an Elgin did the running. Don’t matter anyway. So me and Davy took what chances we could for being alone. About ten o’clock Davy said he’d better be going, and as he got up he saw something out of the window. “That looks like Miss Ada,” he said, “going up the lane to Crown Lea. Funny that.” “Why?” I asks. “Because that’s where we’re going tomorrow night.” “We?” I says indignantly. Davy was mine. “Me and her.” Davy caught sight of my face, which must have been a picture. “You can come too if you like. Miss Ada won’t mind. She wants to listen to nightingales, and I said I’d show her the badgers too.”’
‘I don’t remember any reason for the meeting being given in the press reports,’ Georgia said. This was a new angle altogether. Badgers and nightingales were unlikely, but no more so than the idea of Ada and Davy going there for lovemaking.
‘It weren’t there. Davy’s lawyer said it didn’t matter what they was to do the following night. It was this night that was important, so he shouldn’t go on about it; the more he talked about a meeting being arranged the more it would prove that there was something between them.’
Mary was right; Davy’s confirmation that he was expecting to see Ada on the Friday night hadn’t sounded good. He should have stuck to what his lawyers said – or should he? Georgia shook herself impatiently. Surely that one was up for Davy? He spoke the truth; if he had been guilty he’d have followed his lawyers to the letter.
‘So what happened then?’ Georgia held her breath, aware that there was a hint, just a hint that Davy could indeed have been innocent.
‘I told him I didn’t mind, and I didn’t. Miss Ada was an old woman to my mind. So I told him he was welcome to her, knowing I had his heart. Well, we were so busy talking about it, we didn’t hear Dad coming back early from the dance. When we did, Davy rushed out of the back door but Dad saw him and dashed after him. I went out too, and we all had a battle royal, him saying Davy was up to no good with me – he was wrong there,’ Mary added complacently. ‘Very good it was, I can tell you. So, anyway, I was saying I was going to marry him, Dad saying he’d see me dead first, Davy saying no he wouldn’t and he was going to marry me. And on it went turning into a bit of a punch-up. It was past eleven thirty when he let Davy go home. I had such a walloping after that for being out with a Todd and bringing dishonour on the family.’
‘Why didn’t all this come out at the trial? You only said your father had seen you with him.’
‘My dad denied it and told me I’d be a goner if I said at the trial Davy had been in his house, so I said I met him outside. I was only a kid.’
‘But why—’
‘Don’t I blame my dad? You’re young, missy. And so was I. Mum explained it to me. Dad was an Elgin and he felt it really badly that I’d let the family down by courting a Todd. It was family honour involved, and there’s no gainsaying that. I hated my dad, honour or no honour. Next year, Mum went back to her own folk. Never saw her again, save
once, when she was passing through. Dad killed himself after she left.’
Georgia shuddered. ‘But you still wouldn’t say anything against your father.’
‘Nothing would bring Davy back and I was born an Elgin. I owes the family something now it’s too late for Davy.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m ninety-two, and you came back. So I know it’s the time to speak out. I’ll be meeting Davy soon and I need to look him in the eye.’
Georgia battled with emotion versus common sense. Emotional pressure was being piled on her, and perhaps Mary Elgin with her gimlet blue eyes was well aware of it.
‘So what happened after that evening?’ she asked quietly.
‘Next morning we heard Miss Ada had been killed, and the police went after Davy since he’d been seen going home all dishevelled with blood on his face. Of course, that was because of the fight with Dad. I said Davy had been with me outside the house but no one would believe it. Everyone in the village apart from Mum and Dad knew we were courting, so of course I’d say that. Dad just denied anyone had been with me that evening, and they believed him because they wanted to. Dr Proctor was popular and Ada was his daughter; they wanted a scalp.’
‘I’m interested in this appointment with Ada for the following night. Did you believe what Davy said about the nightingales or did Miss Proctor have an eye for the young men?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ She shut her lips primly.
‘Ada had a fiancé who was killed in the First World War,’ Georgia prompted her.
‘That’s right. Mr Guy, son of Major Randolph at the big house.’
‘Wickenham Manor?’
‘Nah. Another one, don’t remember the name. Hazel something. He was a bad ’un was Mr Guy. They were engaged but he was carrying on with other ladies, and once he eloped with an heiress, so they say, only he was stopped just before he got a ring on her finger. Then he came crawling back to Miss Ada, like he always did. Except after the war. He never came back from that. Missing, believed killed. Broke the Randolphs’ hearts, they sold up and moved away.’
‘Is that why Ada Proctor never married? She was waiting, just in case he did come back.’
‘So they said.’
Georgia hesitated then decided to ask her question: ‘If Davy didn’t kill Ada, who do you think did?’
‘Some of them hoppers used to hang around after the season ended in the hope of more work. How would I know? Anyway, that’s your job. It could have been anyone.’
So it could, Georgia reflected gloomily, as she drove away from Four Winds. It could have been anybody who saw a woman walking alone in the fields at that time of night and decided to take full advantage, not reckoning with Ada’s strong physique. But that brought her full circle. Either Ada had a strong reason for being there alone or she knew her attacker. Had she mistaken the night of the appointment with Davy? No, that was definitely out. She wouldn’t have arranged to meet him in the field; she’d probably have arranged to meet him at the end of the lane, the gate into the field. It had been dark, for heaven’s sake. Even if it had been a moonlit night, it was unlikely anyone would have been lingering in the fields in the hope of a solitary woman wandering by. More likely she was followed from the road by someone – like Davy. Oh damn, she cursed softly. Everything led back to him – except for Mary Elgin.
The M20 was crowded for midday, and she pondered whether to turn off to South Mailing to seduce Luke out to a quick sandwich. She decided against it. She would, she thought with pleasure, be seeing him tonight anyway. He’d offered to take Peter and her out to dinner and tonight, who knew, the course of true love might run smooth. She mulled this happy thought over, until the image of Mary’s face came back to her. Crabby, hopeful, tired, all in one. True love for her had stopped with Davy Todd, Georgia suspected. Whatever Bill Beaumont had been like, it would have been hard to live up to a Davy Todd enshrined in her memory as a tragically lost Romeo.
Star-crossed lovers indeed, but in this case it had been the feuding parent who had died, and Juliet lived on to her crabby old age. Dear heaven, if she lost Luke, would she become like that? Was it sheer selfishness on her part to assume that love would merely wait around for her to make up her mind?
Get real, she ordered herself sharply. Relationships can’t be forced by logic. They work themselves out – unless fate takes a vicious hand as it had done with Davy Todd. She was aware that she was now thinking of Davy as well as of his supposed victim. Now that she had scratched the surface of Wickenham’s past, she was becoming as sure as Peter that something or someone had disturbed its peace. Was it Davy or Ada who had lain their fingerprints on this village’s history? Or both? Or, as she once again guiltily recalled, the skeleton?
Chapter Four
She found Peter in the garden, enjoying the golden September sunshine, which provided valuable thinking time and space. Whenever he’d had an overdose of the Internet, he would either retire to the window overlooking the one and only street of any size in Haden Shaw or, if the weather was good enough, whizz down the ramp from the conservatory doors into the garden.
He listened to her account of her visit to Mary Elgin with unusual patience for him, from which she deduced that however fruitful a day he had had on the Net, he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d ‘placed’ Mary Elgin there too.
‘Badgers!’ he snorted in disgust, when she had finished. ‘Did you discover who Ada Proctor was, Georgia? Nature lover, string of human lovers, dried-up spinster mourning her lost sweetheart?’
‘That’s chauvinistic typecasting,’ Georgia pointed out. ‘Long out of date. She might have been mourning her lost lover, but still have been leading a happy fulfilling life. Anyway, I’ve only had one interview with anyone who actually knew her. Give me a chance.’
‘So Mary Elgin has the sight,’ continued Peter as though she had not spoken. ‘Pity she can’t use it to see who framed her Davy.’
‘If anyone did,’ Georgia reminded him. ‘And although her story was credible she’d had a long time to think it up.’
‘What was your instinct?’
‘It’s worth looking further into.’
‘The fingerprints are there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ Peter leaned back, placed his hands comfortably over his stomach and pronounced: ‘They’ll vanish of course.’
She knew that. The further they delved the more they risked the original fingerprints being overlain by the reality of the present. Everyday events would blot out the intangible threads they struggled to connect. That’s why it was so important that their initial impressions had to be captured, just as those on entering a crime scene had to be faithfully recorded.
‘But it’s worth a cup of tea,’ Peter finished hopefully.
Georgia seconded that. She brought the tray into the garden, looking with affection at her father, who was lying back, eyes closed, with his face tilted upwards to the sinking sun. Not for long. ‘So you’ve fallen for the old Romeo and Juliet line, have you?’ The eyes shot open suspiciously.
‘Rubbish,’ Georgia retorted guiltily, conscious of a grain of truth in his accusation. ‘There was no hard evidence against Davy, only circumstantial.’
‘There was the blood on his face.’
‘She was strangled,’ Georgia pointed out. ‘How could he get blood on him? She must have had a torch. She looks a powerful woman, so why didn’t she clock him one if he began to get fresh? Or is that the supposed reason for the blood?’
‘The Crown claimed Ada scratched his face in her own defence.’
‘How?’ Georgia pounced. ‘This was 1929. It was the end of October and she was in the middle of the fields. No lady would ever go out without her gloves, particularly at that time of the year. Did she have time to take them off before scratching his face, do you think?’
‘Gloves,’ growled Peter. ‘You have a point,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘You should check that exhibits list. No mention of them in the Time
s evidence, or a torch come to that, yet there were, if I recall rightly, mentions of her handbag and shoes. Court shoes. Hardly badger-hunting gear, are they?’
‘People only had old clothes and new then, not vast ranges of casual wear.’
‘But don’t court shoes have high heels?’
‘Yes and if,’ Georgia admitted, ‘she was going to meet a lover, she might have worn them, field trek or not. But,’ she concluded triumphantly, ‘lover or not, she wouldn’t have worn them for Davy. He must have been used to seeing her in gardening boots. She’d have dressed up perhaps, but not to that extent.’
‘Accepted. Unfortunately for Davy, however, he had been cutting the last of the lavender that day and his jacket was covered with bits of dried flower seed. There was some on Ada’s coat too, which the defence couldn’t explain, since her father testified that she had been wearing her best and not her gardening coat. The prosecution went to town on this. When tackled with this, Davy suddenly “remembered” that he had seen her when she came back from London. She’d popped outside to ask him to roll the lawn next day. Weak.’
‘So weak, it could be true,’ Georgia pointed out. ‘But that best coat doesn’t sound like a canoodle with Davy, any more than the court shoes do.’
‘If we tentatively agree we’ve heard a little of Davy Todd’s story, where,’ Peter complained, ‘is Ada’s? Absent.’
‘The victim’s usually is.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s usually lurking somewhere, whether in letters, in diaries, or just in memories of people who’ve known the victim.’