Bright Young Things

by Jane A. Adams

  Pat, when you come and rescue me, I will want such a fire lit and I’ll have a hot, hot bath and I will eat what I want and then sit in front of the fire and get warm and I’m going to sleep there, in front of the fire, curled up like a cat. Cold is misery, Pat. This is all misery.

  He used to say that one day we would marry. We would elope like some ridiculous Regency couple and marry in secret and then reveal ourselves to our families as man and wife. As a living, breathing wife. I used to listen to him and think what a grand story this would make but now it just seems so vile and so grotesque. Then he told me what he had done. About that poor girl they put in the car in my place. I told him that you would see through the trick but then he showed me the newspapers, the obituaries, the reports of my untimely death. How could you forgive me for putting you through my death? I wanted to be at the centre of my own, wonderful, precious, romantic story. I wanted to believe. I wanted to be loved by someone who told me I was the most precious soul he had ever met.

  Oh Pat, I was such a stupid little fool. Can you forgive me?

  I know now that all he wants is to break me, body and soul. If you don’t come for me, Pat, then I know I’m going to die. He’ll kill me. He’ll break me and then he’ll kill me stone dead. As stone dead as that poor girl in the car.

  Pat, what am I to do? Martha promises that she will send my letter. But what if she can’t? What if you don’t believe her? What if you come too late?

  I’m so, so scared. I’m just so very frightened. I just don’t know what to do.

  Sunday 19 January

  It took a little while before Pat came to the phone and Henry occupied himself by comparing the various samples of handwriting sitting on his desk to the letters signed with the florid R. From time to time he fancied that he saw a likeness in the way that a letter was formed or a T was crossed or in the swagger of a signature. But he knew there was nothing that was similar enough. He looked again at the handwriting of Ben Caxton, studying the way the letters were joined, the odd little breaks in words, as though there had been a moment of hesitation before writing the next syllable, and he wished that he had asked Ben Caxton to write a capital R or to note down something extracted from one of the letters, but the situation had not really been conducive to that.

  All of this would be sent to the documents expert later in the hope that they might find some link that Henry could not see, but he held out little expectation.

  Pat finally came to the phone. ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector. I’m so sorry to have kept you. Now what can I do for you?’

  ‘I happened to be speaking to Ben Caxton last night and he mentioned the two of you were once very close friends and that friendship led him to take a particular interest in your sister. I just wanted to ask you about this.’

  There was a moment of silence on the other end of the telephone and then Pat said cautiously, ‘Yes, we were close once. I suppose in a commonplace way we are still friendly. There were those, including my father, who would have liked the friendship to deepen into something more. It would have been a good match, I suppose, but I did not love him. If I’m being truthful I didn’t even like him very much in the end. But I had no idea at first that he was in any way interested in Faun. It was only later, when other people commented on his interest, and then I looked more closely.’

  ‘By his own admission he kept an eye on her. He talked about himself as a surrogate older brother.’

  Again, that moment of silence. ‘Do you suspect him of anything?’

  That was a good question, Henry thought, and he didn’t have an answer. ‘I was speaking to him simply as someone who might have had dealings with your sister in the weeks before she disappeared. I’ve been speaking to a lot of people. My lists of friends and acquaintances are now very long indeed.’

  ‘But you are not asking me about those others.’

  That was a fair point. ‘I may well ask about others, but for the moment I’m asking what you know about Ben Caxton. Other people commented on the fact that he was interested in your sister. The usual explanation was that he had been interested in you and so it did not seem so unnatural. He describes her as a child, a child who seemed lost and rather unhappy, and so he felt he had a duty to take on the older brother role.’

  Pat laughed, but the sound was brittle and humourless. ‘Oh yes, I imagine that would suit him very well.’

  ‘Can I ask what you mean by that?’

  ‘There are men who are charming, who engage and even seduce by the charm. And once you are in their thrall they become more and more possessive of what you do and what you say and what you think. How you dress and who you choose to see. I could imagine that being trapped in a marriage with a man like that would be difficult in the extreme, and this is why, even though Ben Caxton asked me to be his wife, I refused. My father was not pleased. He and Ben had business deals they wanted to move forward, and after I rejected him these business deals were taken off the table. My father, I believe, lost some money. Shortly after that I met my husband, fell in love, married and moved away from my father’s house. Now I rarely even visit. Does that begin to answer your question, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘It does, thank you, Mrs Clifford, Pat, though it would have been helpful to have known this before. Tell me, did you meet a man called Victor Mullins when you were still on close terms with Mr Caxton?’

  ‘Vic – yes, it would be hard not to meet Vic. Technically Ben was Vic’s employer but they behaved more like equals, more like friends. They seem to have a shared language, a shared connection that I didn’t always understand, but I suppose that’s because Vic was the one who brought him back from the war and looked after him.’

  ‘Brought him back?’

  ‘Ben was seriously wounded, as no doubt you know. He was shipped to a field hospital and his father was notified that he might not survive. His father, having the money and resources to do so, moved heaven and earth to have his son collected and brought back to England and Vic was the man who did that. He was only young, but as an Irish citizen was not compelled to join the war. He was, I believe, a stockman on the agricultural part of the estate for old Mr Caxton and by all accounts doing so very well and Mr Caxton took a fancy to him, decided that he would promote him and give him a better position. Anyway, he apparently volunteered to go to France and fetch the young master home and that’s what he did. It can’t have been easy, and it can’t have been easy keeping Ben alive on that return journey. I suppose the two of them became friends.’

  ‘And is this Vic of a similar type to Ben Caxton?’

  ‘He can be as controlling, I think, but less obviously so. I didn’t know him well, Henry. He was just someone that was always there ready to do Ben’s bidding. If I was visiting the house it was often Vic who was sent to fetch me. I remember I was discouraged from driving my own car there, so I was dependent on Vic or Ben if I wanted to leave. At first it seemed like a courtesy and then it seemed irritating, and then it seemed more than that. It was as though even in this simple little instance Ben wanted to know where I was and that I couldn’t leave and that I didn’t have my independence. Growing up with someone like my father, I’ve come to value my independence enormously.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ Henry told her honestly.

  ‘I was old enough, Inspector … no, mature enough is probably a better way to put it, to know that I didn’t like what was going on and that I must stand my ground, but Faun was not like me. Since our mother died Faun had been a lost soul. She had no one to guide her. I did my best but I had married and moved away so it became much more difficult for her. I offered her a home with us, told her she could come and stay until she had money of her own, but she seemed intent on living in London, and on living her own life. I was just glad that she was away from my father’s house, but it seems I should have taken better care of her.’

  ‘You could not have known.’

  ‘Oh, but I should have known. I did know how wilful she was and I did know that if an
ybody warned Faun away from anything that would be the direction she would take. I should have understood that better and acted upon it.’

  ‘And did you warn her away from Ben Caxton?’

  Pat laughed bitterly. ‘Initially I warned her away from Victor Mullins,’ she said. ‘She told me she’d seen him box and I was appalled. I know respectable women go to see boxing matches, but I’m not convinced it is a place for a girl of eighteen as she would have been. She wouldn’t tell me who had taken her, but from what you’ve told me it was obviously Ben Caxton. She talked about Victor as being so alive, animalistic but also intelligent. Essentially I think she just had a pash, a girlish crush, and it would have died down and passed over as these things do, but it seems it led her into trouble.’

  ‘I have no proof of that; I have no solid proof against anybody or relating to anything just now.’

  ‘But your instincts tell you that Ben Caxton was involved in my sister’s death.’

  ‘The evidence tells me that the accident was no accident, that the girl in the car was killed before she was placed there and set alight, which is a small mercy as I’m sure you’ll agree. That your sister may not have been complicit in the staging of this accident but she was almost certainly present. The evidence suggests that Mal Everson was innocent in all of this. It’s not possible to know if something was put into his drink but it is likely, and it’s also likely he wasn’t driving and knew nothing about the other girl. Beyond that there is very little to say.

  ‘Pat, did your sister ever talk about receiving love letters from somebody with the initial R?’

  ‘Love letters? No, and who is R?’

  ‘We don’t know. Of course R may be a subterfuge, a misdirection. The letters have no return address and are signed only with the initial. If I have one sent over to you, could you look at it and see if you recognize the handwriting or anything else about it?’

  ‘Certainly. Should I also ask Violet? She’s staying with us for a little time. She had a most enormous argument with her father when she got home from seeing Mal. He will calm down – Everson Senior is not a bad sort, but he does have peculiar ideas about the place of women and that they should not get involved in the affairs of men. Anything to do with business or unpleasantness he sees in exactly that way. I think he just wants to protect her, but is going the wrong way about it.’

  ‘If you could ask Miss Everson that would be most helpful,’ Henry told her.

  Ben

  She had written many letters, in that rounded, schoolroom, undeveloped hand of hers, full of gushing and ill-considered emotions. She adored him, he was the perfect man, she wanted nothing more than to be with him and his letters filled with her with joy.

  Not much joy in the end, Ben thought and his lips twisted into a grimace.

  He twisted the letter he held into a spill and used it to light his cigarette, holding the tip in the fire until it caught. Then he dropped the paper into the flames and watched it burn. That was the last of them, infantile emotions reduced to ash and, as he prodded them with the poker, disappearing into the wood ash and the coal dust beneath.

  He would have preferred Pat. As his wife there would have been some permanence to the relationship and he would have enjoyed the challenge of breaking a woman like that. Faun had offered no such challenge. She had thrown herself in his direction and she had been fun for a time.

  The problem was, Ben acknowledged, he was so easily bored.

  SIXTEEN

  Monday 20 January

  Mickey Hitchens had had a busy day, dividing his time between the records of Companies House and various newspaper archives. Late that afternoon he laid his findings on Henry’s desk, then sat down opposite to explain.

  ‘You were correct in your guess – Ben Caxton and Caius Moran were indeed partners of record for some eighteen months, a relationship that formally ended just over four years ago. The business, Titus Imports, had more or less finished trading about a year before that. There were various financial and legal threads to disentangle, which I don’t begin to understand, but which I don’t think are relevant to us.’

  ‘That would fit with what Pat told me,’ Henry said, ‘that her father seemed to envisage some kind of personal and business alliance, and it would have suited him had Pat married Ben Caxton and their businesses come together in a more formal kind of way. Did the end come amicably?’

  ‘It would seem not, from the number of solicitors’ letters flying back and forth. I can’t access everything, of course, not without a proper warrant. I went there today effectively as a member of the general public and then had an interesting little discussion with one of the clerks, who explained matters to me in a very off-the-record way. But of course, what I have from him is inference rather than evidence and if you wish to dig deeper then we will need to get the experts involved.’

  ‘If that becomes necessary then that’s what we’ll do, but for the moment what we need is an overview of their business dealings. And how have the respective businesses been impacted by the Wall Street crash and the stock market collapse?’

  ‘It’s a matter of record that both took hits, but then Caxton seems to be recovering. His investments were more widely spread and more cautious, but Moran lost a packet when Wall Street went down. He had invested heavily in American securities and though he is now putting on a brave face, he is also quietly selling stocks and property and not for the full market value.’

  ‘And Caxton?’

  ‘As I say, seems to be recovering. He sold a number of assets in June last year, before the problems really started, and liquidated several of his holdings. It’s as though he saw trouble coming. By all accounts he is a shrewd businessman and prefers businesses where the initial investments are not great and the turnarounds are swift. He’s been involved in importing and exporting, mostly fine art and jewellery and has a gallery in London. He also keeps the agricultural traditions going, it seems these were the foundation of his family’s wealth and old Mr Caxton was well thought of as a man who actually knew what he was talking about when it came to breeding sheep and cattle.’

  ‘And what have you discovered about Ben Caxton, other than his business dealings?’

  ‘I did as you suggested and perused the society pages and announcements for the last decade. Truthfully we should have persuaded your Cynthia to do that; she’d have been a dab hand at it. I scarcely knew where to look at first, but you might be interested to know that Ben Caxton has been engaged on no less than three occasions. The final time to Pat Moran.’

  ‘She was actually engaged to him? She didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘It was short-lived,’ Mickey said. ‘If it actually happened at all. From what I can gather Caxton posted the announcement. Pat rather publicly refuted it. The whole thing was passed off as a prank to save too much embarrassment; you remember there was a fad, a few summers ago, for mock weddings and phony engagements and general shenanigans. I never did like practical jokes, Henry. But it seems everyone chose to accept this as an explanation and no more was said.’

  ‘Though I can’t imagine Caius Moran seeing the funny side.’

  ‘Indeed, no.’

  ‘You said Caxton had been engaged before. Twice before?’

  ‘And each time he came out of the situation advantageously. The first was to a widow by the name of Nora Oldman. She was at that time only thirty-three years old and the sole beneficiary of her late husband’s estate. Six months after his death she became involved with Mr Caxton and engaged three months after that. The newspapers reported it as a whirlwind romance and the wedding was set for December the twenty-seventh 1923. It seems that Mrs Oldman wanted everything settled legally before she took the plunge and she signed her will a month after the engagement, leaving everything to Ben Caxton. Then she drove her car off the road and into a frozen dyke, somewhere in the Cambridgeshire Fens two days before Christmas. The police report suggests black ice.’

  ‘Convenient,’ Henry said.

  ‘
But as likely to be an accident as it is to be foul play. There was no suggestion of anything untoward and though her relatives challenged it, the will was carefully drawn up and witnessed and their opposition got them nowhere.’

  ‘And the second engagement?’

  ‘To Miss Julia Farnham in 1926. She was twenty-eight at the time and her parents had recently died. She was left in charge of the family acres which, as it happened, adjoined farmland owned by the Caxton family. She was known to suffer from depression and it seemed even an engagement to the eligible Mr Caxton was insufficient cure for that malady. The poor woman took an “accidental” overdose of her sleeping draft and died, a month before the marriage was supposed to take place. Caxton got the land. He’d apparently bought it from her for a pittance under the pretext that it would soon be their joint land through the marriage.’

  ‘In which case why not wait for the wedding? Her property would have been his property from the moment they signed the register, so he could have saved even that pittance of a payment.’

  ‘It’s a question a number of people, including the local newspaper editor, seem to have asked. Caxton bought the local paper and sacked the editor and senior staff. He is not a man who likes to be crossed.’

  ‘Somewhat like Caius Moran, then. Pat had a lucky escape – from both of them.’

  ‘But the younger daughter still had money coming to her,’ Mickey said. ‘From what her sister told us, she would have come into her fortune, from her mother’s trust, when she was twenty-five.’