The English Boys

by Julia Thomas

She crooked her finger at him, inviting him to sit down beside her. “You know what else makes the day better?”

  “Oh, I have some idea.” Hugh still didn’t move, and for a second, there was a battle of wills as they stared laser-like at each other across the room. Then she kicked off her heels and stood up in bare feet, her hands on her hips. A moment later, she walked over and kissed him. Daniel turned and fumbled in his pocket for his mobile, checking it for messages in the urgent hope that he could excuse himself to make a call. He would have left already, but they stood between him and the door.

  “Not so fast, Richardson,” she said. She walked over and tried to kiss him, too, but he took her hand and pushed her back. “How would you like to have the best fuck of your lives, gentlemen?”

  “That’s enough,” Hugh said.

  She shrugged and headed for the drinks table, pulling a bottle from a silver tray. “Who else wants a drink?”

  Hugh took the bottle from her and placed it back on the tray. “Not tonight, Lizzie. You need to go home and sleep this one off.”

  “There’s only one thing I need.” She lifted her hand and began to undo the hidden zipper in the side seam of her dress. “Anyone going to give me a hand?”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Hugh asked in a patient tone.

  “I think I’m going to have my way with my two favorite boys.”

  “I hate to spoil a good party, but I have to go,” Daniel said, shaking his head.

  “Come on!” she cried. “It will be the best time you’ve ever had.”

  Hugh reached out and put his arms around her, startling Daniel. Then he zipped the dress and went over to get her shoes. “That’s not how it works. When I want a good rogering, I decide for myself who the lucky girl will be.”

  “Have you got this?” Daniel asked him, opening the door, anxious to bolt out into the cool night air.

  “I’ll ring for a cab,” Hugh answered. Then he turned to Lizzie. “You can stop this ridiculous display, my dear. Nobody’s interested in taking advantage of a drunk girl. Or being taken advantage of, for that matter.”

  Lizzie shot him a vicious look, and for a moment Daniel paused on the step, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Hugh took out his mobile to make the call, never taking his eyes off Lizzie. He requested a taxi, giving his address to the party on the other end. Then he cupped his hand over the phone and looked at Daniel. “I’ll be right out.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Lizzie said. She slid her feet into her shoes and grabbed her handbag.

  Hugh raised a brow. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Daniel nodded at Hugh, relieved to know the situation was in hand. As he made his way down the front steps, he noticed the couple next door returning from a black tie event. The woman, in her late forties or early fifties, wore a silver Grecian-style gown that clung to her shapely body, with a diamond necklace nestled snugly between her breasts. The man with her caught his eye, and he turned away, taking a sharp gulp of air. A couple of minutes later, Hugh stepped outside, and Daniel said good night and walked all the way home.

  The following day, two constables had knocked at his door, informing him that Lizzie had drowned in the Thames. He answered questions both at his flat and later at the police station, as had Hugh, and apart from the odd remark between them now and then, the circumstances had never been mentioned again. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should have stayed and put Lizzie in a cab himself, or perhaps even taken her home. He had been disgusted by the entire display, wanting only to extricate himself from the situation. Sometimes he blamed himself. If he had seen her home, there was a good chance she would not have been found dead hours later. Eventually, he reconciled it in his own mind: Lizzie Marsden had been on a collision course with death, and if she hadn’t been so drunk and fallen into the river, she would have overdosed on drugs or been killed by a jealous lover. She never would have changed, and all of the regret he had that he was even remotely involved with someone on the last night of their life didn’t alter the fact that sometime, somewhere, her time would have been up. It was an ugly but nevertheless true statement, if a small salve to his conscience. He had sometimes wondered how long it had taken for Hugh to bundle the girl into a cab. He’d even suspected that once he was gone, they had gone at it like rabbits. And why not, he thought. People could do as they liked. But never once had it occurred to him that Hugh had killed her.

  He’d heard it said once that every murder was related to either money or sex. Now, as he sat next to Carey in the cab and pocketed his mobile, he tried to understand Lizzie’s death. If it had been murder, what was the motive? The only thing he could imagine was that she might have threatened to tell someone that she’d slept with both of them that night. Personally, he would have hated that on a number of levels. It was a scandal that could have damaged both his career and Hugh’s, and would even have tainted the Ashley-Hunt family by association. If Hugh had something to do with her death, he decided, that must have been the reason why.

  But what of Tamsyn’s murder? he wondered. Sex could be a logical motive there too. She had been raped, but if Hugh was involved, had she blackmailed him as well? Money as motive he could understand. She was a poor girl making it on her own in London. But why would she have wanted to marry Hugh? He looked at Carey, who, judging from the look on her face, was lost in her own equally morbid thoughts.

  He hoped they would find a journal or something else among Tamsyn’s things to shed light on the situation. They needed to know the truth, both of them, if they were ever going to be able to put this all behind them.

  The cab slid to a stop on the corner a few doors down from Hugh’s house, and Daniel helped Carey out before paying the driver. It was late afternoon and sunny, but he felt no desire to wait until after dark, when they would either have to trip around in blackened rooms or turn on lights and arouse someone’s suspicion.

  “How will we get inside?” she asked.

  “I’ll see if there’s a key under the urn or something,” he answered.

  “Wouldn’t that be a bit obvious?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  Carey stepped back and tried to shield him from view as he stooped down to look under the heavy urn, using his shoulder to support the weight of it and running his fingers along the bottom. He eased it back down and sighed.

  “No luck.”

  He narrowed his eyes and then reached up to the lintel, running his hand along the top until he came into contact with something hard and metal. He smiled as he took the key in his hand and held it out for her to see.

  “I can’t believe that worked,” she said.

  “Come on,” he said, putting the key in the lock. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  Although Daniel had entered the house on innumerable occasions, it was unsettling coming in without Hugh’s knowledge. He was betraying his best friend. He wondered for a second if it was even possible that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. The clippings of Noel and Hugh were circumstantial evidence at best. Perhaps Tamsyn had seen him in the magazine and liked his face. Daniel rubbed his forehead, which had suddenly begun to ache. Without a doubt, the stress was getting to him.

  “We should ring Inspector Murray,” Carey said, echoing his thoughts. She stood in the center of the room, looking at him.

  “We will, but we’re already here. We’ll look for a diary and then go. Five minutes and no more.”

  He looked around the familiar room. He had last been here on the night before the wedding, having a private toast with Tamsyn and keeping her company while Hugh took care of some last-minute business before they were to leave the country the next day. At the time, he hadn’t asked what sort of business it had been. He had simply been glad for some time alone with her. It was painful to admit it now, but he had harbored some small hope that she’d have a change of h
eart before she pledged herself to Hugh in front of everyone they knew.

  “Right,” he added when Carey was silent. “You know what sort of journal she preferred.” There was little evidence of Tamsyn in the room, other than one small, heart-shaped picture frame holding a photo of Tamsyn and Hugh together that an associate producer had taken in Dorset. “We’ll probably have to search upstairs.”

  Daniel knew then that he would never have been able to be a detective. He had no idea how to sort through people’s lives and homes, even for an urgent reason. He led Carey up the staircase to the bedroom where her sister had lived for the last few months of her life, in order to disturb what little of her there was left.

  “Have you ever been here before?” he asked.

  “No. Tamsyn and I didn’t see each other much in the last few months. I was trying to finish a difficult term. We met for coffees a few times. I should have been more involved. If I had been there for her—”

  “Maybe you should wait downstairs,” he said, cutting her off before she could go any further.

  “No,” Carey answered. “It can’t be any easier for you.”

  He hesitated as he reached the top of the stairs. “Study or bedroom?”

  “Study.”

  Across from Hugh’s bedroom was a smaller room he used for his hobbies. Of course, it had none of the posh appointments of his father’s, but it was a fascinating room nonetheless. There was a large wood-and-iron settee that doubled as a bed in an emergency, though it had doubtless never been used, and two chairs in the corner.

  A hefty mahogany desk was positioned against the wall across from the settee, which served as a repository for some of Hugh’s personal interests. The desk was covered in odd, antique accessories that seemed snatched from Darwin’s laboratory: filmy test tubes and vials; bell jars covering old nests and petrified eggs; ancient, dusty books; mounted fish and a harrowing red squirrel with bared fangs that had been rendered lifelike by an adept taxidermist. There were hundred-year-old spectacles folded reverently over a 1930s edition of a John Stuart Mill book. Moths and butterflies, pinned to a velvet backdrop and protected by a thin layer of glass, hung on the wall. Daniel had been in this room once before, but he had found the artifacts creepy and the occasion had never arisen to come in again. By the look on Carey’s face, she felt the same way.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said. “We’ll have to look in the bedroom.”

  “There’s almost nothing of Tamsyn in the entire house,” he said, almost to himself. “I wonder if he’s cleared her out already.”

  Even in the closet, few of her clothes were hung beside Hugh’s. However, her familiar duffle lay on the floor under her dresses. Daniel picked it up, opening it at once.

  “Here we go,” he said, extracting an orange notebook, possibly even the one he had seen her writing in on their drive. He scanned the pages. Seeing Tamsyn’s handwriting was painful so soon after reading her diaries. Unfortunately, she had written nothing that could shed light on who had killed her.

  Carey took the pack from him and rummaged through it. “Two books, some bracelets, her favorite chocolate bars. How could anyone have so few possessions? She must have abandoned her things when she moved in with Hugh. There’s no other explanation.”

  Daniel flipped through the journal again, but it contained nothing more than a few wisps of poetry. It wasn’t the damning evidence for which he had hoped. He handed it to Carey. She turned a few of the pages before putting it back in the pack and returned it to the spot in the closet where she’d found it.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” she said.

  “There must be something,” Daniel said. “There’s got to be some clue to explain why all of this happened.”

  “I can think of one.”

  “Which is?”

  “You only saw what you wanted to see,” Carey answered. “To you, she was sexy and fun. I knew the side of her that had truly been broken. I’ve been thinking that she developed Borderline Personality Disorder after the rape. Of course, I didn’t diagnose her myself. I mentioned her once to my old psychiatry professor.”

  “What is Borderline Personality Disorder?”

  “It’s a syndrome that develops after a severe trauma. The victim shows signs of intense emotional ups and downs, impulse control problems, and eroded self-image. Even violent tendencies.”

  “Tamsyn wasn’t like that.”

  “You’re wrong. Six months after Emma was born, Mum forced her to come back to try to work it out. She took half a bottle of sleeping pills, trying to end her life.”

  Daniel was stunned into silence.

  “That’s why they never made her come back again. They had to accept her on her terms from then on.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Carey brushed her hair away from her face. “I knew how much it would upset you.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her. “Do you think Hugh knew?”

  “I don’t know. Tamsyn managed to keep the truth from you.” She sighed. “What now? Are you ready to quit?”

  “No. I still think she would have had a diary. Someone who kept one faithfully as a child wouldn’t have abandoned the practice later.”

  “Hugh could have destroyed it, if there was one.”

  An idea was starting to form, and he looked at her. “You don’t suppose she would have kept it on a computer, do you?”

  “Where would it be?” Carey asked.

  “The laptop is usually in the credenza downstairs in the media room. Hugh likes to surf the net while watching the telly.”

  “She wouldn’t do that. It would be too risky for her to write incriminating things on a shared computer.”

  “She was a risk taker,” Daniel replied. “If you’re right, it might have even given her a thrill.”

  He took the stairs two at a time, with Carey right behind him. They went down the corridor, through the kitchen, and to the back of the house, which, for the previous owners, had once been a large, conservatory-like room for dinner parties that had probably been featured in House & Garden. Hugh had redone the room in dark paneling and thick leather chairs, and before Tamsyn had come along, the two of them had watched countless action films sprawled across them. A credenza stood to the left of the fireplace, and Daniel slipped open the door and took out a laptop. He lifted the top and turned on the power.

  “I hate this,” Carey said, as they waited for the computer to boot up.

  “I don’t like it any better than you.”

  A few seconds later, they were in.

  “She’s made a log for her favorite websites,” Carey said, clicking on various icons. “Where would she keep something private, though? Online? If that’s the case, we’ll never find it.”

  “Something’s telling me to look in plain sight.” Daniel clicked on My Documents and they read through the list together: Clothes websites, Emily Dickinson, Favorite Restaurants, Gloves and Hats, Wedding Ideas. He hovered the mouse over Emily Dickinson. “Let’s try this.”

  A document opened, the first few pages of which were poems by the late American poet. Carey frowned and then pointed to the number of pages in the document.

  There were a hundred and eighty seven.

  “I don’t think Dickinson was that prolific,” she said, “And even if she was … ”

  “Bingo,” Daniel murmured, scrolling down. The first entry he stopped at arrested both of their attention.

  May 18

  Success! I was bolder than I thought today, actually having a conversation with Daniel Richardson on the ferry. I liked him more than I expected, but I have to stay focused on the goal. I’ve waited ten long years to make them pay for it. This is my chance, and I can’t do anything to jeopardize it, no matter what.

  Hugh was sitting inside with a drink. I could see him thro
ugh the windows, and I wonder if he was looking at me. If he saw me, will he remember? If he remembers me, I won’t be able to get close to him, but if not …

  I stopped the conversation with Daniel about twenty minutes before we arrived in Dover. I had to distance myself from the two of them before landing. I threw the hat in the trash, changed into jeans and a T-shirt, and pulled my hair back in a knot. I even took off half my makeup to try to look younger. Who says a theatre background is useless? They got a cab together, and I followed some distance behind in another. It cost a bloody fortune, but I was able to stay close enough to see where Richardson was dropped off. Now I know where he lives. All I have to do is figure out what to do next.

  “Dear God,” Daniel whispered. “It’s true.”

  Carey closed the screen and logged on to the Internet.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Emailing it to myself. I’m not going to sit here and read the whole thing like we have all the time in the world. We have to get out of here.”

  Just as she attached the document and hit send, the screen went black. They both jumped.

  “The battery’s gone flat,” she said. He could see she was trying to get hold of herself.

  “Check your mobile to see if you got it,” he suggested.

  She pulled her mobile from her pocket and sighed with relief. “I did.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  They left the house, locking the door and putting the key back exactly as they’d found it. Once in the street, he hailed a cab.

  “Get in,” he said.

  Carey stepped inside and slid across the seat for him to get in beside her. Instead, Daniel closed the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll come by later. I have something to take care of first.”

  “You’re going to see Hugh!” she cried.

  Instead of answering, Daniel tapped on the roof twice and stepped back as the cab pulled away. From the back window, Carey was shooting him daggers. But the truth was, he was going to have to confront Hugh, and after what he had just learned, he didn’t want her anywhere near the bastard.