‘Sir Peter?’ Now Maddie was mystified.
Harriet nodded. ‘That time you and Mr Frank went to the Hall and he wouldn’t give his permission to change the use of his land. I went to see him the next morning.’
So, Maddie thought, remembering now, Theo had been right.
‘I – I threatened to tell all I knew about him leaving Amelia’s child – his own grandchild – outside the orphanage.’ She put her hand across her face now in shame. ‘And the next day he had that stroke. I must have caused it.’
Now it was Maddie who reached out and took the wrinkled hand between her own. ‘Don’t, Mrs Trowbridge. Don’t upset yourself. It’s over now. All in the past.’
‘No, no,’ Harriet’s voice was stronger. ‘I must tell you. I want to talk about it. It’s been like a weight all these years. Maybe if I’d told Nicholas the truth, talked to him about his father, been honest and open, then maybe all this would never have happened. I’ve got to take a share of the blame.’
‘No, no . . .’ Michael began, but she shook her head, denying him the right to excuse her.
‘Poor Nicholas,’ she said. ‘I never wanted him in the first place and then I resented him because of what his father had done and I shouldn’t have done that. It was cruel.’ She sighed. ‘And crueller still of me to love you, Michael, more than my own flesh and blood. But I couldn’t help it. You were such a sunny-natured little boy and Nicholas was always so difficult. It was so easy to love you.’
And then Adam, too, because he had been Michael’s son, Maddie thought, but she said nothing.
‘Maybe if I’d shown Nicholas more affection . . .’ Harriet sighed heavily and added, ‘I can’t turn the clock back, can I?’ She patted Maddie’s hand. ‘But I can try to make it up to you.’
‘Mrs Trowbridge, there’s something you ought to know. We’ve – er – found out a bit more in the last few days. We’ve talked to Theo and, well . . .’ Maddie faltered, not knowing if she could carry on. She looked to Michael for help.
Responding, he took over, saying gently, ‘We believe that Maddie is not your husband’s child, but his sister.’
‘His sister?’
Michael nodded. ‘There was a baby born in the woods, wasn’t there, to John’s mother?’
Harriet nodded. ‘Yes. There was. I was there. I was there when poor Mary gave birth.’ Harriet shuddered. ‘You could hear her screams echoing through the trees. It was awful.’
‘And she died, didn’t she?’ Michael prompted. ‘Mary, did you say her name was?’
Harriet nodded. ‘Yes, she died that same night. There in the woods, in the freezing cold.’ She paused and then went on. ‘After that, the villagers took pity on us all. Your father took me and Nicholas in and folk in the village looked after the rest of the family. I think they all felt guilty when they heard what had happened. All except Sir Peter, that is. He hadn’t an ounce of pity in him, that man.’
‘And the baby? Mary’s baby?’ Maddie asked softly.
Harriet glanced at her. ‘She stayed with her father and later, I heard she had died, though I was surprised ’cos when she was born she was a lusty little thing, a real fighter, you know.’ Harriet was staring at Maddie now as the realization crept into her mind and she murmured, ‘A real little fighter, just like you.’
There was silence in the room, the only sound the singing of the kettle on the hob.
‘We think,’ Michael went on, ‘that when the family left the village, they left the baby at the Home.’
Harriet nodded, though her gaze was still fastened on Maddie. ‘To think that I helped deliver you, there in the darkness and the cold. I held you and tried to keep you warm against me. I even fed you from my own breast because I still had milk . . . And all this time I thought you’d died.’
Gently, Michael said, ‘There’s something else we must tell you.’ He hesitated, unsure how Harriet would take the news. ‘We believe that the other child, Amelia’s baby, is – is Jenny.’
Harriet’s gaze swivelled and fastened on Michael. ‘Jenny?’
‘Yes. Mr Theo says she resembles his sister, although there is a likeness between Maddie and Jenny. But there would be, wouldn’t there? After all, they are aunt and niece.’
Harriet nodded slowly. ‘Yes, yes, they would be. And you and me,’ she turned again to look at Maddie. ‘We’re sisters-in-law, then, aren’t we?’
Maddie nodded.
A smile twitched at the corner of Harriet’s mouth. ‘So, I picked the wrong one from the Home, then, did I?’
‘Seems like it.’
‘Serves me right,’ and added with some of her familiar spirit, ‘I shouldn’t have been such a bitter, twisted old bat.’
‘How – how shall you feel about Jenny now?’ Maddie had to ask, had to know, for Jenny was a very important part of her life and always would be.
Harriet sighed and leant her head back against the chair. ‘It’s over now, all over. I don’t feel that awful hatred any more. Just a terrible sadness. I shan’t take it out on Jenny, I promise you.’
Impulsively, Maddie leant forward and kissed Harriet’s pale cheek. ‘Thank you, Mrs Trowbridge. Now, Michael and I must get some work done. We’ve a float to build for the Parade on Saturday. You sit and rest.’
‘No, no.’ Harriet heaved herself up. ‘I’ve some gingerbread men to make for Adam when he comes home. I promised. Besides, I can’t wait to get back into me kitchen. I ’spect it’s in a right mess.’
Maddie chuckled. She had never thought that she would be thankful to hear that the housekeeper had not lost all her grumbling ways.
‘Right, we’ll be off.’
‘Dinner will be ready at twelve thirty and don’t be late in.’
‘No, Mrs Trowbridge.’
‘I suppose,’ Harriet said, ‘now that we’re sisters-in-law, you’d better call me “Harriet”.’
Maddie grinned at her. ‘I’d prefer “Mrs T”.’
Harriet smiled, tremulously at first, but with a growing sureness. ‘Mrs T, it is, then.’
They left her to return to her kitchen and her work of caring for the household. ‘We must fetch Adam home,’ Maddie said softly, closing the door between the kitchen and the wash-house, behind her. ‘It’ll help her to have him back here.’
Reaching up to lift a coat down from the pegs and searching for his Wellingtons, Michael said, ‘The sooner the better. I can’t wait to start getting to know my son.’
But Maddie was hardly listening, she was staring at the yellow scarf that Michael had just uncovered as he removed the coat from the peg. Nick’s scarf.
‘What is it, love? You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.’
Maddie leant against the wall, her gaze still on the scarf. ‘I – I feel as if I have. I’ve just remembered something else.’
‘Oh, what you were trying to remember about the night Dad died?’
Maddie shook her head. ‘No, no, not that. Something else. When he got injured with a fork.’
‘Injured? You didn’t tell me about that. What happened?’
Swiftly, Maddie recounted the events, ending up by saying, ‘I remember Nick saying that he didn’t hear Frank coming so close to him because he had his scarf tied tightly round his ears against the wind.’ She stared at Michael now, her eyes wide. ‘I was so upset at the time, it didn’t register properly, but I do remember later looking at that scarf here on the peg, so he couldn’t have been wearing it. Oh Michael, do you think he did that on purpose, too?’
‘Wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ Michael said drily. ‘And when I get time, I’m going to have a snoop around the battery house, just to see if I can piece together how he did that. Because I’m sure now that he did. What I can’t understand is how he did it, if you say he was away for the night. He could have easily done something if he’d been here, but he had to be away, didn’t he, to make it so that Frank had to be the one to go out?’
‘Oh!’ Maddie clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Now
I’ve remembered. It was Jenny.’
‘Jenny?’
‘Yes, she said that Steven thought he’d seen Nick on his bicycle in the village that night and I said no, he must have been mistaken and it must have been the following night, the night Nick came back, that he’d seen him. But now . . .’
Grimly, Michael nodded. ‘It’s all starting to fit together now, Maddie. Come on, we’re going to look around that barn right now.’
Fifty-Eight
It took them two hours of searching every nook and cranny in the battery house and then in the big barn; of feeling along dusty shelves, of sweeping cobwebs from every corner and scrabbling through rusty, neglected tools.
‘What exactly am I looking for?’ Maddie stood back, smudges of grime on her face.
‘I’m not really sure, I . . .’ Michael glanced at her and then came towards her, ‘Oh Maddie, you look just like the day I first saw you.’ Gently, he wiped away the smudge from her forehead and then kissed her.
Playfully, she smacked his arm. ‘Now don’t start that, else I’ll take you into the hay shed again . . .’
Michael chuckled. ‘I’m game if you are.’
They fell against each other, kissing and laughing until Maddie said breathlessly, ‘Oh do stop. We must find whatever it is we’re supposed to be looking for.’
‘Yes. Right,’ Michael said, firmly setting her away from him. ‘Remind me later to carry on where I left off, though.’
‘Oh I will. I certainly will,’ she whispered and they smiled at each other.
It was when Michael tipped out the bin that held the corn for Harriet’s hens that they both heard the chink of metal on the concrete floor. Squatting down, they delved beneath the pile of corn and unearthed a round brown knob, very similar to the knob on the control panel in the battery house. Michael picked it out and wiped away the dust. He stood up slowly, holding it in the centre of his outstretched palm. ‘So, that’s how he did it?’
‘How? What is it?’
‘A metal knob instead of a bakelite one. The minute Dad touched this, he would have got a nasty shock.’
‘Would that account for the marks on his hand?’
‘Probably. I think Nick hid somewhere . . .’ He glanced about him towards the buildings on two sides of the big barn. ‘In here somewhere, maybe. He’d’ve had to move the spring pointer off the studs to change the knob,’ Michael murmured, thinking aloud. ‘So then the lights would go out and he’d leave them off so that someone would come out. But how did he know it wouldn’t be you?’
Maddie shook her head. ‘Frank never taught me anything about the battery house.’ She shuddered. ‘But I nearly did come out that night. I didn’t want Frank to come out in the cold and I wanted him to tell me what to do.’
‘But Dad did come out,’ Michael said softly, ‘just as Nick hoped.’
‘Then what?’
‘Well, I think after the accident had happened, he switched the knobs back somehow, hiding this one deep in this bin. Mrs T would never have guessed what it was, even if she’d ever found it. Then I think he did leave and that’s when Steven saw him cycling through the village.’
‘You’re – you’re not going to tell Mrs T all this are you?’
Michael shook his head. ‘No. There’s no need. The poor woman’s got enough to come to terms with. No, Maddie we’ll keep this just between ourselves.’
For a moment he gripped the metal knob tightly in his hand and Maddie saw tears sparkle in his eyes. ‘Poor Dad,’ he said, brokenly.
Maddie went to him and they put their arms around one another, each remembering Frank Brackenbury in their own special way.
It was the day of the Tulip Parade and everyone at Few Farm was trying to put the recent nightmare behind them.
Nick had been buried quietly in the lonely corner of the churchyard near his father. Only his mother, Michael and Maddie were there to mourn him. Although Harriet had shed no tears, she had clung to Michael’s arm and leant heavily against him throughout the short service conducted at the graveside. Maddie could understand the tumult of emotions the woman must be feeling. Her own feelings were chaotic; sadness for poor Nick and for Frank, who should still have been with them. Yet there was joy, too, in having Michael home and knowing he loved her. And then, there was Jenny. Her darling little Jenny Wren. They really were related after all. If only, Maddie had thought as the vicar’s voice droned on, if only I could know the rest of my family . . .
Now, today, they all wanted the Tulip Parade to signify a new beginning. Maddie and Michael had worked through the night to finish their float for the Parade. Adam had been sent to bed, still protesting, at midnight but they had stayed in the big barn all night, pinning the tulip heads on to the straw matting.
‘Who made the frame? It’s very clever,’ Michael asked, standing back to admire the shape of the huge tulip sitting on the open back of the farm truck. Even the cab was decorated with an archway of flowers above it in rows of different colours, like a rainbow of tulips in the sky.
‘Steven’s brother, Ron. He works as the blacksmith now. He’s very clever with his hands. Must get it from his dad.’ She paused a moment, the head of a golden tulip resting in the palm of her hand. ‘I wonder what I get from my family?’
‘A way with animals, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ll never forget the way you handled Ben and waded in amongst the cows without batting an eyelid.’ They smiled at each other, remembering. ‘By the way what happened to poor old Ben?’
‘He was so miserable after your dad died and with no real work to do since the cows had gone, we let him go to a farmer near Holbeach. It – it . . .’ She hesitated again. ‘It was Nick’s idea.’
‘Even wanted the poor old dog out of the way, eh?’ There was silence before Michael went on, ‘Yes, I reckon that’s what you’ve got from your family. Their way with animals . . .’ He grinned at her. ‘To say nothing of a way with people, too. Your dad was head groom for Sir Peter and didn’t Mrs Grange say that your brother was very good with them, too? That was how he came to teach Miss Amelia to ride?’
‘Mm,’ Maddie said absently, now scarcely listening. She had latched on to the words ‘your brother’ and now she said them aloud, savouring the sound of them. ‘My brother.’
‘What? What did you say, love?’
She smiled self-consciously, but there was no need to be shy with Michael. Never again would there be secrets or awkwardness between them. ‘I was just trying out how it sounded. My brother. I’ve never been able to say it before.’
‘Or dad. You’ve never said that either.’
‘No,’ she said wistfully. ‘Do you think I’ll ever get the chance?’
‘’Course you will. Trust Mr Theo. He’ll find them. He said he would.’
Maddie smiled at the almost childlike faith Michael now had in Theo. Any charges against Maddie had been dropped as soon as Theo had explained to the police all that had happened. They were satisfied that the tragic young man who had taken his own life had also been guilty of administering arsenic to Frank, to his own mother and even allowing Maddie to stand accused of his crimes.
‘Mr Theo’s put adverts in this week’s local papers already, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but they could be anywhere. My father could be dead. He’ll be quite old by now, won’t he?’
‘Well, getting on a bit, yes. But that doesn’t mean to say he’s not still alive. How many other brothers and sisters did Mrs Grange say there were, apart from poor John?’
Maddie remembered exactly. ‘Four besides me and John. But I don’t know whether they were girls or boys. Maybe somewhere I really have got a sister.’
‘Harriet would know.’
‘Yes, I’ve thought about that. But I don’t like to keep bringing the subject up. I don’t want to upset her.’
‘I shouldn’t worry too much about that. She seems her old self again.’ He grinned at Maddie. ‘Ordering us all about, just like she always used to. I even heard her call you �
��girl” the other day.’
Maddie laughed. ‘Yes, she did. But somehow, it doesn’t have the same sting to it now. And,’ she added pulling a comical face, ‘at my advanced age, it’s quite a compliment.’
‘There,’ Michael said as he popped the last tulip head into place. ‘I think that’s finished. What do you think?’
Maddie felt the lump in her throat. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘And all our own work,’ Michael said proudly.
‘With a bit of help from Stinky Smith and his brother,’ Maddie reminded him.
‘Oh yes. Who’s going to be the Tulip Queen?’
‘A young lass from the town.’
‘It ought to be you,’ Michael put his arm around her.
‘I’m too old,’ Maddie laughed and kissed him. ‘But thanks for the compliment.’ They stood admiring their handiwork. ‘Who’s going to drive it in the Parade? You?’
‘No, I think we’ll let Ron Smith drive it for us. He’s earned it, don’t you think? Besides,’ he gave her waist a squeeze, ‘I want to watch the Parade with you and Adam. I can’t bear to be parted from you for as long as an hour,’ he teased.
‘Now you can stop all that canoodling,’ came Harriet’s voice behind them at that moment. ‘Your breakfast’s ready.’
They turned to find her standing in the doorway of the barn and went towards her, their arms still around each other. Michael put his free arm about the older woman and together they went into the house.
‘Maddie! Maddie!’
They were standing watching the Parade, the four of them, when Maddie heard Jenny’s voice calling her name and turned to see her pushing her way through the crowd.
The Tulip Girl Page 36