by Amy Myers
‘So you’re a writer, Georgia.’ Trevor Bloomfield handed her the glass of white wine she had requested, and Julia pushed a bowl of Japanese crackers towards her. Georgia rather liked these, so this became a minor point in their favour. Otherwise her jury was out on how she reacted to them.
‘Yes, I write with my father. He does most of the actual writing and I do the research.’
‘I’ve read one of your books,’ Trevor said, sounding genuinely interested. ‘The case in Forest Gate.’
Georgia murmured something appropriate, and he continued: ‘So what can we do for you on the Proctor case?’
‘Everything revolves round the Manor – and its lord. I thought if anyone was able to help me with records, memories and so forth it would be you.’
‘We are hardly seen as public benefactors at present,’ Trevor said drily. ‘We’re more like Public Enemy Number One, to all the sports fans here. No one cares much that the Bloomfields are selling their interest in the hotel and the estate but when the question of these two fields becoming a supermarket came up, it was a different matter. So much for the beloved old squire tradition.’ He laughed. ‘You don’t take enough free gruel round to the poor cottagers, Julia.’
‘Most of them are richer than we are,’ she rejoined sourly. ‘I offered to let the kids in the village come in to blackberry on the estate a few weeks ago. And how many came, do you suppose?’
‘None?’ Georgia fed her the correct line, but personally if she were a village kid she’d steer well clear of this steely eyed witch and her offerings.
‘Nearly right. Half a dozen old folks from the almshouses. Don’t talk to me about being Lady Bountiful.’
Georgia dutifully laughed. ‘I hope they made you a pie as a thank you.’
‘They don’t know the meaning of the word. Anyway, Trevor,’ Julia continued, ‘some people approve of the supermarket. Not that it matters a damn anyway since we already have permission and the sale will be going through soon. The Todd faction is against it, naturally enough, since it owns quite a few of the village stores, but that means the Elgins are for it. Especially since some of them are builders, who can see a chance of business coming their way.’
‘Elgins?’ Georgia picked up quickly. ‘I’ve only met Mary Elgin.’ Keep the conversation flowing. The more people speak the more they tell you, was her experience, whether they mean to or not.
‘There you are, you see. She’s Mary Beaumont, but she’s still thought of as an Elgin.’
‘To you, too?’ Georgia asked curiously. ‘You must still be very involved in village affairs.’
‘The Manor might not be a manor any more,’ Trevor answered, ‘but the hotel needs local employees, and so, bang, we’re saddled with village feuds. They all want work, they all want custom, though, and I made it clear they won’t get it unless I can rely on there being no feuds waged at Wickenham Manor.’
‘The Ada Proctor case seems to have been affected by the Todd–Elgin feud.’ Georgia brought the conversation firmly back to her own needs. ‘Would you have any records, do you think? Was your family involved at the time?’
‘I don’t see how it could have been. My grandfather was Squire then, so I suppose he must have been involved at some level. But then there was another war and that would have wiped the slate of village memory clean. I seem to remember a family photo of Grandfather with the old doctor standing by his Austin. I suppose he must have known Ada too.’
From the lack of interest on his face, Georgia began to realize she wasn’t going to get very far. Hopes of being invited to trawl through the Wickenham Manor archives receded, but in that case she had nothing to lose and so decided to plunge straight in with both heavy feet.
‘I’ve heard rumours that Ada had lovers other than Davy – if indeed he was one. She was engaged to a Guy Randolph during the war, but after his death there seem to have been others. Would you – I know it’s a long shot – have any idea whom?’
‘Randolph?’ Trevor queried sharply.
‘Do you know anything about him?’
‘There were Randolphs who were chums of my grandparents, I believe. I only know of them because there were pictures in the family album. That was Major Stewart Randolph, but this Guy might have been a son perhaps. Another drink?’
Georgia accepted, knowing this was a signal it would be time to go once she had finished it. There was a distinct frostiness in the air now, which puzzled her. ‘Your grandfather never spoke of Guy Randolph returning after the war years, did he? He was missing, believed killed.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Or village rumours of other lovers?’ Hell, she thought, I’m blowing this with a vengeance.
Trevor didn’t even bother to reply, but surprisingly Julia did. For the first time she was displaying positive interest. ‘More than just rumours.’
‘Darling?’ Trevor was having a hard time concealing his impatience now.
Julia ignored it. Somehow Georgia had struck a nerve. ‘My mother told me about it. There was some kind of link between my grandmother’s servants and the Manor’s. This is all hearsay of course, and I might not have remembered it correctly.’
‘Hearsay can be jolly interesting.’ Georgia urged her on, in her researcher’s earnest voice, as Julia shot a triumphant ‘so what?’ glance at Trevor. ‘It can’t do any harm now everyone’s dead, and could just do some good.’
‘Trevor,’ Julia continued airily, ‘I’m sure your father told me that John Sadler was having an affair with Ada. That’s why I remembered what my mother had said. He was still here when I first met you.’
Trevor shrugged dismissively. ‘John Sadler was my grandfather’s trusted steward, running the estate, and he was married with two small children. It seems very unlikely he would have a fling with the doctor’s daughter.’
To Georgia’s relief, Julia persisted. ‘Yes, but my mother said that Ada was good friends with Rose Sadler. She might have used that as a cover for a relationship with John.’
‘Are the Sadlers still in the Wickenham District?’ Georgia ignored the thundercloud on Trevor’s face.
‘Not that I’m aware of. I don’t remember any Sadler on our pensions list.’
A pensions’ list? This sounded good. ‘I suppose none of the Manor servants you mentioned would still be alive?’ Georgia asked hopefully.
She’d been addressing Julia but Trevor broke in once more. No doubt about it now. The gentleman was actively hostile. ‘No. There was only one living in then and she died years ago.’
‘Her daughter’s still alive,’ Julia said helpfully. ‘She runs the W.I. here. Alice White. Trevor, you don’t remember what happened to the Sadlers, do you?’ She was bearing down hard on him, and he could hardly refuse to answer, though he looked as though he’d like to.
‘I remember John being around in the early sixties, but I have no idea whether he dropped dead or left the district.’
‘I suppose the Manor archives wouldn’t have anything on them?’ Georgia asked brightly.
‘There are none,’ Trevor whipped back with evident relief. ‘My late grandmother occupied herself with sorting out such records as might be of interest to the country archive office, and destroying the rest. Regrettable, but in those days, there was not such a passion for disinterring the past.’
He appeared politeness itself as he showed her to the door, but nevertheless she knew his last remark had been aimed straight at her. She found it odd that he was so reluctant to talk about what must now be a mere matter of history. Perhaps he was one of those men who are fine so long as one sticks to the path they have preordained for you, but who refuse to go the extra inch, let alone mile. Then she remembered Jim Hardbent’s similar reluctance to talk too freely about Wickenham’s past. So far, and no more. There was still a barrier she had to either crash through or gently raise the latch. The message she was getting was that Wickenham looked after its own affairs, and that applied from the Squire down. Or, with her opinion of Trevo
r Bloomfield, from the Squire up.
Now Georgia was left only with the maid’s daughter as a possible lead, she realized, as she walked back to Country Stop for dinner. The thought of going straight back to Todd territory was suddenly unappealing, however, so she decided to take another walk to Crown Lea field. Fresh air might clear her brain. Two hundred years ago or so, she reflected, as she walked up the lane into the field, there would have been a memorial erected on the spot where Ada died. Today withering flowers would mark such a murder. For Ada’s there was nothing. No family, no friend, no record to resurrect the living woman.
The stile into the Lea was broken down, and she leapt the ditch, remembering – like Ada – that she was wearing the wrong shoes for this kind of terrain. Nor did she have the Ordnance Survey map with her. Ahead to her left were grass-covered downs. To her right, woodland. That must be where the denehole lay. When she was suitably clad she must go to see it, so that she could at least describe the scene to Peter.
And then she saw a man walking a dog coming towards her from the woods. Just an average normal sort of man on a routine mission. Apparently. But who could tell?
‘Good evening,’ she said, as he approached.
He glanced at her as though her solitary stationary self must mean she was intending to pounce on him, and he passed with evident relief. Had Ada seen someone she recognized coming towards her despite the dark? The sun was beginning to sink fast now, and it was nearing the time of year when Ada Proctor had died. Had she felt fear or excitement? Only seventy-five years separated them. If Ada were beside her now, would she like her, or not? It was not so fanciful to imagine one could stretch out a hand in the darkness and lightly touch the past.
Chapter Five
‘Did you see The Times this morning? – Oops, sorry, haven’t cleared away.’ Lucy Todd dived at the table, which still bore the remains of its previous occupant’s full English breakfast.
If anything was needed to make up her mind about her own order, that was it. ‘I’ll have the grapefruit and toast, please,’ Georgia decided. ‘And tea.’
‘I’ve got real coffee.’ Lucy was clearly surprised, and Georgia didn’t know whether she should be flattered or merely amused that she had been set down as a coffee drinker. Sometimes she was, but today she wanted tea. Coffee would wind her up too much at a time when she was letting impressions seep into her rather than grabbing at them.
‘Tomorrow perhaps,’ Georgia announced to a speedily retreating back. ‘No, I haven’t seen a paper yet.’ Obviously. She was only just up.
‘We’ve made the front page with the protest meeting.’ A grapefruit was whisked from kitchen to table.
A misunderstanding here, then. Not the national Times, but probably the Gravesend Times, which covered Wickenham. Equally important in people’s lives, but the focus was narrower. Last week’s edition had carried a mention of public opposition to the sale of the sports fields and that feelings were running high. Georgia had gathered that the council had refused to revoke the planning permission and that this protest meeting was being hastily called to organize some sort of appeal to the Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment. She wondered how this news was being taken by the Bloomfields. Any hopes that the sale would go through quietly were unlikely to be realized. Judging by the gleeful look on Lucy’s face, there was trouble brewing.
‘That’s what Mr Scraggs is here for,’ Lucy continued.
‘Who?’
‘The gentleman in room 2. He’s an artist.’
Her predecessor at breakfast. ‘Really?’ Polite interest. The word ‘artist’ covered a vast range of interpretation.
‘He does houses, he says.’
Georgia suppressed the thought that Lucy might have mistaken the word ‘painter’ for ‘artist’, when she saw someone who could only be the said artist lingering in the open doorway. There was no doubt about it, at least from his looks: straggly brown hair, small equally straggling goatee beard and a pale anxious face above it.
‘Good morning,’ she said amicably, and the said artist turned briefly in her direction.
‘Morning,’ he managed.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Scraggs?’ Lucy cooed in her professional voice. Arrangements were made about evening meals, while Georgia returned to her grapefruit. It had been cut in a rush – naturally – but was none the worse for that. Ten days had passed since her first visit, but Georgia was beginning to feel at home both at Country Stop with the Todds and in Wickenham itself, even though she was aware that to them she was still very much an outsider. There were dangers in becoming too much part of the Wickenham ‘family’, however, for Ada Proctor’s Wickenham was another country from the Wickenham of today. Somehow she had to forge a link between them. For her, the physical shape of Wickenham in the 1920s was now taking shape nicely, and this was a good base.
The online 1901 census had revealed that Major Stewart Randolph had a wife named Ethelind (where had that come from: a parentage devoted to Anglo-Saxon ancestry, a fanciful notion by a pregnant wife, a family name?) and two children, Guy and Gwendolen. Guy had been ten at the time of the census and Gwendolen six. A Dr John Proctor had been living at The Firs, together with Dr Edward Proctor, his wife Winifred and their daughter, Ada, then nine years old. The Hon Gerald Bloomfield had lived at Wickenham Manor with his wife Mary, their sons, Jack and Matthew, and a daughter, Anne. The only Sadler listed, however, was clearly not the family Marsh & Daughter was interested in. She was eighty-six, and her name was Queenie.
Nevertheless the census information in conjunction with Kelly’s provided a useful picture of daily life, time though it took to compile it. There had been five grocery stores then (those were the days!), two bakers, a haberdasher, two butchers, a farrier, a dressmaker, three teashops, three pubs, two garages, a dairy, two greengrocers, the post office and a combined coal merchant and ironmonger. The carrier to Maidstone and to Gravesend ran twice weekly, buses and trains ran regular services and the fishman called on Thursdays. When can I move back? Georgia had thought ruefully.
*
Mary Elgin was quite impressed at her local knowledge when Georgia arrived.
‘I remember old Stinky Tom – him and his stinking cod,’ she remarked scathingly. ‘Not good enough to give the cat, Mum would say. He had plenty of paws of his own, though, did Tom. I remember that too. So you’re doing your homework, are you?’
‘That’s right. An all-round picture comes first.’
‘What use are pictures? What are you doing about my Davy?’ Mary turned querulous.
‘There’s nothing I can do about Davy, unless we can find out how Ada really died, and who killed her.’
Mary grunted, but Georgia took this for encouragement or at least not disagreement. ‘I need to find out if Ada really did have lovers or even admirers. She might not have admired them but it would still give the men a possible role in her death. I know you said you didn’t know anything about the other men in her life, but the name of Sadler has been mentioned. Can you tell me anything about him?’
‘Course I can. Why didn’t you ask me? He were a scallywag, I can tell you. Good at his job at the Manor, but fancied himself and expected everyone else to as well. He was an old man to me, so I took no notice. Anyway, he had a nice wife and kiddies. He was a foreigner though, so were they all.’
‘What nationality?’
‘Oh, he were English. Wasn’t Wickenham born and reared though. Came here with the family when he started work at the Manor.’
‘When would that have been?’
‘Can’t say. I remember him coming, that’s all, so must have been after the war, probably in the twenties. Lot of folk moving around then.’
‘Do you know what happened to the family? They’re no longer in Wickenham.’
‘He were there after the second war, I do remember that. Must have gone sometime later, I suppose.’
‘And you’ve no idea where?’
‘Never had much to do wit
h them. Went to live with one of their kids perhaps. It’s not like that today. No one wants you, whether you got kids or not. Not even the government wants you nowadays.’
Georgia took this as a cry against the outrage of growing old. Mary Elgin was right. This home was good, compared with many Georgia had visited, and the staff were good-natured and helpful. But did they want her? ‘What about your own family?’ she asked gently. ‘I’ve met the Todds, but no Elgins yet.’
‘Not much lost there,’ was Mary’s immediate reply.
‘You’re still in touch with them?’
‘Touch? They wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole. Vi and Emmie looked down on me for bringing shame on the family by loving my Davy. Can’t blame them, I suppose. That’s what Mum and Dad told them, and they were younger than me, so they believed it.’
‘What happened to you after your mother left and your father died?’
‘The elder ones were married, so they took in Vi and Em. Didn’t want me, thank you very much. I went to Grandma Higgins, my mum’s mum. She’d more or less given up the travelling life by then, and lived in Meopham, so I went there and went into service. Then I met Bill Beaumont, and remembered him from Wickenham days, so that clinched it. I’d show them. So I married him and back I came to Wickenham bold as brass. Gran thought it a great joke. She never did like those Elgins. By the time Bill and me were married most of the talk had died down. We were in the Slump by that time, and folk had other things on their minds. The waters had closed over poor Davy. But I never forgot. I kept up Ada’s grave while I could, since Davy didn’t have one. I thought he’d like that. He was always a thoughtful one, was Davy. After the trial, the Todds wouldn’t talk to me, they reckoned I was the cause of it all, though how that could be I don’t know. Nor would the Elgins.