The Return of Rachel Stone

by Amy Cross

  “What happened here?” Natalie asked, turning to Jack. “Who did this?”

  “He tried to kill her,” Jack replied, as he began to piece together the chain of events. “That's why he brought her out here. She must have fought back somehow. Maybe we'll never know exactly, but obviously it didn't all go according to plan.”

  “Herbert!” Margaret sobbed, settling back down on the ground next to her dead brother and hugging him tight. “Oh Herbert, why did it have to be like this? Why couldn't we have just gone away and been together? Why couldn't that have been enough for you?”

  “You should have told me sooner,” Jack said, turning to her. “You should have told me before he even left the house to fetch her. If we'd got here a little sooner, maybe we could have done something.”

  Instead of replying, Margaret simply continued to cling to Herbert's body.

  “He murdered her,” Jack continued, with a rising sense of anger in his voice, before suddenly he lunged at Margaret and tore her away from the corpse. Pushing her down against the ground, he ignored her pleas and held her in place, and for a moment he seemed ready to strike her. “You've ruined us all!” he yelled. “How the hell are we going to get money without Herbert? He was in control of everything! Now he's dead, the company goes to the shareholders and we'll be left broke!”

  “I'm sorry!” she sobbed. “I loved him so much!”

  “We're ruined!” he shouted.

  “I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I just -”

  Suddenly he slapped her. He hadn't intended to hit her at all, let alone so hard, and he immediately pulled back in shock as she sobbed on the ground. After a moment he looked down at his trembling hand.

  “I didn't mean that,” he whispered, feeling as if his chest was filling with ice. “You were getting hysterical, but I didn't mean to do that to you.”

  “Stop it!” Natalie hissed, grabbing him and pulling him further away from his sister. “For God's sake, Jack, you can't blame her for this! What's wrong with you?”

  “We're ruined,” he stammered again, staring with wild eyes at the horrific, bloody scene. “I don't give a damn about my brother. Or about Diana, either. They were both terrible people.” After a moment, he looked up at Natalie. “Don't hate me for saying that. It's just the truth.”

  “You can still get money, can't you?” she asked. “Jack, why wouldn't you be -”

  “Because he's the only blood descendant!” he hissed. “Dad never wanted to adopt anyone, it was all Mum's idea! So Dad got his own back by insisting in his will that only Herbert would get any part of the Stone family business. If you think that sounds irrational and bitter, then join the club. And now with Herbert gone, we're penniless. The whole company will go to the shareholders and we'll be left with nothing.”

  “What about Rachel?” Natalie asked.

  “She's blood,” Margaret whispered, still in shock. “She could inherit. Maybe we could even be trustees for her. But first we'd need to find her.”

  “With Herbert and Diana dead,” Jack continued, “and Rachel gone, we're done for. We're broke, and we're ruined, and there's nothing we can do. It's all over.”

  He sat in silence for a moment, as Margaret continued to gently sob next to him. After a moment, however, his eyes came alive with the seed of an idea, although it took him a couple of minutes to figure out the basics.

  “Herbert was a recluse,” he said finally. “Diana too, practically. They almost never appeared in public. They had few friends. I don't think Herbert was photographed at all. He was weird like that. I always used to mock him for that, but now I think maybe we can use it to our advantage.”

  “I guess the police will want to take a few photos now,” Natalie pointed out.

  “Only if they find out,” Jack continued, turning to her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We're the only ones who know about this,” he pointed out. “It's not like anyone's going to knock at the door and ask to see Herbert for a few drinks. The man never saw anyone else, he never had visitors. Diana was the same. She doesn't even have any family out there. People barely even know what Herbert and Diana looked like.”

  “So?”

  “So Herbert conducted all his business by phone and email. As long as his lawyers and employees still hear from him, they'll never realize that anything has changed.”

  “The man is dead, Jack,” Natalie replied. “What are you going to do, prop him up in the chair behind his desk?”

  “Don't be ridiculous!” he snapped, before glancing over at Margaret. As soon as he saw her face, he could tell from her eyes that she understood what he was suggesting. “It wouldn't have to be forever,” he continued. “Just six months, maybe a year at most, while we get everything in order. The extra attention due to Rachel's disappearance is going to be a complication, but it's not something we can't work around. That bloody house is mostly sealed shut anyway, there's no way anyone would come barging in and realize Herbert's gone.”

  “What about the police?” Margaret asked.

  “They already said they no longer need to interview Herbert or Diana.”

  “But what if -”

  “I'll put his bloody clothes on and pretend to be him, if that's what it takes!” Jack hissed. “I'll put on ten kilos and act like an ass, that should be enough to convince everyone. And Natalie can pretend to be Diana if necessary.”

  “I can?” Natalie replied, clearly shocked by the idea.

  “For a few months,” he continued, turning to her. “For more money than we'll ever be able to spend.”

  She opened her mouth to argue with him, but somehow the words seemed to catch in her throat and she stayed silent. After a moment she looked down at the dead bodies, then at the grass, but still she didn't argue.

  “It'll never work,” Margaret whispered.

  “Of course it'll work,” Jack told her. “We'll bury the bodies. We'll cover this whole mess up, and after six months or a year we'll have what we need and we'll all move on.” He paused, waiting for them to agree with him. “We can do this!”

  “It'll never work,” Margaret said again, slowly shaking her head. “It's a ludicrous idea.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Today

  “Six months,” Diana whispered as she lifted the wig off and set it on the dresser. “A year at most. That's what you said. And now look at us. Fifteen years later, still playing those same roles.”

  “We got comfortable,” Herbert said, setting a set of clothes on the bed before opening a drawer and taking out the shirt and pants he'd not worn in more than a decade and a half. “The money did that, I suppose.”

  Diana removed her false eyelashes, and then she felt a shudder run through her chest as she stared at her reflection and saw – for the first time in fifteen years – the face of Natalie Briggs staring back at her.

  “Diana -”

  “Don't ever call me that again,” she said firmly. “Diana Stone died at Rafter's Wood fifteen years ago. If you call me Diana again, I swear I'll scream.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “Natalie,” he said finally.

  “Yes, Jack?” she asked, turning to him.

  “I lost myself in this role,” he replied. “At first, I hated pretending to be Herbert, but over time I think our personalities started to merge. What's wrong with me?”

  “I had to drink,” she explained. “God, I drank so much. It was the only way to keep from breaking down in panic every night.” She paused. “But people believed us, didn't they? For the past fifteen years, nobody realized the real Herbert and Diana were dead. Are we going to tell the truth now? Are we going to go to the police and admit everything? Are we going to tell them where the bodies are buried?”

  He shook his head.

  “But Jack -”

  “We're going to stick to the original plan,” he said, interrupting her. “Better late than never, right? Besides, we deserve it after all the work we've done. I need to lose some of this ex
tra weight.” He looked at his reflection again. “I really managed to make myself look like him, didn't I? I think I might be about to throw up.”

  “What about Margaret?” Natalie asked.

  “What about her?”

  “She knows about what we did. She was complicit in the whole thing.”

  “We'll pay her off,” he replied. “She knows which side her bread's buttered. We'll take as much as we can and share it equally, and then we'll go our separate ways. Margaret can go wherever she wants, but we won't see her again. And we'll go back to Malta, Natalie, or we'll go somewhere else entirely. Somewhere we can start again, somewhere we can be ourselves for the first time in fifteen years.”

  “But what about all the paperwork?”

  “We can't use that excuse, not anymore. We've let the paperwork trap us here for too long already.”

  She paused, before nodding.

  “I feel so much better already,” Jack continued, stepping over to her and kissing the side of her face. “I feel so free. Don't you feel the same?”

  “Not yet,” she replied, shuddering slightly as she felt his touch. “I won't feel free until we've left this place a long, long way behind.”

  ***

  “I suspected something was up quite early on,” Bradley said as he set the flowers down on the grave. “I'd barely met old Herbert, you see. He really was something of a recluse. I'd met him just enough to think something was wrong, and not enough to be sure. The same with Jack, really.”

  “Didn't you ever ask Margaret?” Jo replied.

  Bradley turned to her.

  “This is nuts,” Nick muttered.

  “You and Margaret are so close,” Jo continued, waiting for Bradley to explain. “Surely at some point over the past fifteen years, you could have mentioned to her that something seemed different about her brother?”

  “At first I think she was curious to see whether I was deceived,” he replied. “Perhaps I was the litmus test for their little scheme. I've been something of a fool when it comes to Margaret, and I suppose I took any opportunity to stay close to her. As long as she wanted to use me that way, I sort of let things happen. Eventually I was allowed to visit the house sometimes. Almost nobody else was ever granted that privilege, but I was allowed to go for dinner. I think Margaret was using me to calm her nerves. I think if she saw that I was tricked, she felt better about the whole deception. And I was willing to play that role for her, without her ever having to explain.”

  “Because you were in love with her?” Nick asked.

  Bradley hesitated, before nodding.

  “It's sick,” Nick continued. “I mean, it's properly, deeply disgusting.”

  “Rachel's return seems to have caused everything to unravel,” Bradley pointed out. “Margaret finally pushed me away. But you have to understand, she did nothing wrong. She never hurt anyone, and she wasn't part of the lie. She's completely innocent!”

  “Apart from going along with it all for fifteen years,” Jo muttered.

  “She's a good person! She was just too scared to say anything!”

  “Too comfortable with the money, more like,” Nick suggested. “I don't know what laws she's broken, but there are bound to be a few. Especially if she helped hide the bodies all those years ago.”

  “I guess that explains why they wouldn't undergo a DNA test when it appeared that Rachel had come back,” Jo said. “They couldn't.”

  “I imagine that was the last thing they were expecting,” Bradley replied. “They must have not known what to do when she appeared.”

  “But you said that Herbert was the one who had Rachel abducted,” Jo continued. “Or at least, you said that's what you suspected, from the things Margaret admitted over the years. If that's the case, why wasn't she returned after his death?”

  “Maybe the kidnapper got scared,” Nick suggested.

  “I'm afraid I can't help you with that side of things,” Bradley said with a sigh. “Still, I think we know what Rachel – or rather, what Cassie – learned about the Stone family. We know the big secret she uncovered. You don't think that's why she was killed, do you?”

  “I think that's exactly why she was killed,” Jo replied.

  “But who would do such a thing? Margaret could never hurt a soul!”

  “Maybe it was the same bastard who broke my nose,” Nick suggested. “If that's the case, we're looking for a big, strong guy. Muscly too.”

  “That description doesn't sound much like Jack,” Bradley pointed out.

  “It doesn't sound much like anyone we know,” Jo replied. “I have to go to the house and get them to tell me everything. There must be more to this, there must be things that even you didn't know.” She turned to leave, and Nick quickly followed.

  “Miss Mason!” Bradley called out. “I need one small favor!”

  She turned back to him.

  “Please don't let Margaret know that I'm the one who told you about all of this. I don't think she'd be very happy, and I suppose I'm still holding out hope that once all of this is over... Well, you know what I mean. I think Margaret and I could be very happy, if she'd only realize how much I care for her.”

  Without replying, Jo turned and walked away.

  “God,” Nick muttered, hurrying to keep up with her, “some of these people are insane.” He waited for her to agree, before realizing that she seemed too focused on the task at hand. “Go on, then,” he continued. “What's your theory? What do you reckon happened to baby Rachel after her real parents died?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  15 years ago

  The cry rang out through the forest at the far end of the Stone estate. A baby seemed to be in distress, but the sound was actually coming from a small speaker nailed to one of the trees.

  Mac Trelawney was standing nearby, watching the house and waiting for Herbert to hear his signal. He'd been waiting for an hour now, but so far nobody had come out of the house. The agreement was that every night at 9pm on the dot, Herbert would step onto the patio and listen for the sound of a baby crying. If he heard that sound, he knew to go to the cabin the next day and speak to Mac, but for several nights now he'd completely ignored that signal, and Mac had resorted to loitering in the forest.

  “Come on, you bastard,” he muttered under his breath, “what -”

  Stopping suddenly, he saw Herbert in one of the windows. Or at least, he saw a man wearing one of Herbert's pinstriped suits, and with his hair slicked back in Herbert's style. As he squinted, however, Mac realized that the man in the window wasn't Herbert at all. And a moment later a woman appeared in the window too, wearing one of Diana's dresses. Mac could tell, however, that she definitely wasn't Diana. It was as if he was witnessing some kind of grotesque masquerade, the effect of which was compounded when the real Margaret stepped into view and began speaking to the two others.

  “What the bloody hell's going on now?” Mac whispered.

  ***

  “This is all going wrong!” he muttered as he zipped his bag shut in the cabin. “I never should've let myself get involved with these freaks! God knows what they're up to at that house.”

  Rachel was squirming in her makeshift crib, smiling as she watched him.

  “It's been too long now,” he continued, taking the stash of money from under the table. He had half his payment from Herbert, and he was starting to realize now that the other half wasn't going to come. At this point, he was more concerned about simply getting away unnoticed. “I can't get implicated in this. I can't go back to jail just because some rich bastard's cocked his plan up. He'll blame me for the whole mess, you know. He'll toss me onto the coals and let me take the blame.”

  He put the money into his second bag and slid the zipper across, before turning and heading toward the door. After a moment, however, he stopped as he heard a faint gurgle coming from Rachel's crib. Turning to her, he saw that she was once again smiling at him.

  “I'll take you back to them,” he explained, “and...”
/>
  His voice trailed off for a moment, and then he headed over and reached down to adjust one of her blankets. As he did so, she gripped his finger with her tiny hand, holding him tight.

  “Don't be like this,” he told her. “It's time for you to go home.”

  He waited, but she was still holding his finger, still staring up at him with a smile.

  “Do you know what I am?” he asked. “I'm a terrible person. No offense, kid, but you're not exactly a reliable judge of character.”

  Again he waited, but his resolve was starting to break and he was actually beginning to feel sorry for the girl.

  “You poor little thing,” he said with a sigh. “I wouldn't wish your lot on anyone. Once I take you back there, everyone'll be celebrating, but there'll be no reason for all that. The truth is, Rachel, I think you're in for one hell of a tough life as a member of the Stone family. They're up to something, and Herbert's just the tip of a very large, very disgusting iceberg. Every last one of those bastards is messed up. Excuse my language. It's awful for them to have a lovely little girl like you, while a good, decent woman like my wife can't have kids at all. The whole thing's obscene and...”

  Suddenly Rachel let out another gurgle.

  Almost a laugh.

  “If I could just take you home to her in Liverpool,” he continued, “you'd be so much happier. We'd all be so much happier. I can't do that, though, 'cause...”