The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  They approached the lodge. It was surrounded by banks of dark-green rhododendrons, growing unrestrained, which did nothing to cheer the surroundings. There was no other garden, only rough grass going down to the loch. The large windows of the lodge looked blank and unwelcoming. As Jemima drove slowly up the stony road, the front door opened and something white was glimpsed within. It was eerily quiet once the car’s engine stopped. Then the door opened further and the flash of white proved to be a girl wearing jeans and a blue jersey. She had extremely fair, almost lint-white hair, plaited. For a girl of eight she was quite well built—even stocky.

  “Tamsin,” said Mrs. Parr. She pronounced the name as though for Jemima’s benefit; but it was once again disquieting that she made no move towards the child. The interior of the house, like the glen itself and the mountains, was dark. Most of the paintwork was brown and the chintz curtains were patterned in a depressing brown and green. Nevertheless, some energy had obviously been spent recently in making it cosy. There were cheerful traces of childish occupation, books, a bright red anorak, shiny blue gumboots. Pot plants and an arrangement of leaves bore witness to the presence of a domestic spirit in the house—once upon a time.

  In the large kitchen at the back of the house where Jemima insisted on repairing for coffee there was also an unmistakeable trace of modern civilization in the shape of a television set. There was a telephone too—but that was black and ancient looking. Tamsin went with them, still silent. In the kitchen they were immediately joined by Tara, equally silent, equally blonde.

  The two sisters stared warily at the women before them as if they were intruders. Which in a sense, thought Jemima, we are. Her eyes caught and held by the two striking flaxen heads, she recalled Mrs. Parr’s words concerning Zillah’s nephew and niece: “Quite fair too then, but not as fair as Zillah’s and not as fair as my children…” Could children actually become fairer as the years went by? Impossible. No one became fairer with time except out of a bottle. Even these children’s hair was darkening slightly at the roots. Jemima felt that she had a first very positive clue that the Parr children were exactly what they purported to be. She was so relieved that a feeling of bonhomie seized her. She smiled warmly at the children and extended her hand.

  “I’m Jemima Shore—”

  “Investigator!” completed Tamsin triumphantly. And from her back she produced a large placard on which the cheering words: “Welcome Jemima Shore Investogator” were carefully inscribed in a variety of lurid pentel colours.

  “I did it,” exclaimed Tara.

  “I did the spelling,” said Tamsin proudly.

  Jemima decided it would be tactful to congratulate her on it. At least fame on the box granted you a kind of passport to instant friendship, whatever the circumstances. In the kitchen too was another figure prepared to be an instant friend: Mrs. Elspeth Maxwell, caretaker of the lodge and since the death of Zillah, in loco parentis to the Parr children. Elspeth Maxwell, as Jemima quickly appreciated, was a woman of uncertain age but certain garrulity. Instinctively she summed people up as to whether they would make good or bad subjects for an interview. Mrs. Parr, madness and melodrama and all, would not in the end make good television. She was perhaps too obsessional at centre. But Elspeth Maxwell, under her flow of anecdote, might give you just that line or vital piece of information you needed to illuminate a whole topic. Jemima decided to cultivate her; whatever the cost in listening to a load of irrelevant gossip.

  As a matter of fact Elspeth Maxwell needed about as much cultivation as the rhododendrons growing wild outside the house. During the next few days, Jemima found that her great problem consisted in getting away from Elspeth Maxwell, who occupied the kitchen, and into the children’s playroom. Mrs. Parr spent most of the time in her bedroom. Her public excuse was that she wanted to let Jemima get on with her task, which had been described to Tamsin and Tara as investigation for a programme about children living in the Highlands. Privately she told Jemima that she wanted to keep clear of emotional involvement with the children “until I’m sure. One way or the other.” Jemima thought there might be a third reason: that Mrs. Parr wanted to consume at leisure her daily ration of cheap red wine. The pile of empty bottles on the rubbish dump behind the rhododendrons continued to grow and there was a smell of drink upstairs emanating from Mrs. Parr’s bedroom. Whenever Mrs. Parr chose to empty an ash-tray it was overflowing.

  On one occasion Jemima tried the door. It was locked. After a moment Mrs. Parr called out in a muffled voice: “Go away. I’m resting.”

  It was conclusive evidence of Mrs. Parr’s addiction that no drink was visible in the rest of the house. Jemima was never offered anything alcoholic nor was any reference made to the subject. In her experience of alcoholics, that was far more damning than the sight of a rapidly diminishing sherry bottle in the sitting-room.

  Elspeth on the subject of the children was interminable: “Ach, the poor wee things! Terrible for them, now, wasn’t it? Their mother drowned before their very eyes. What a tragedy. Here in Kildrum.”

  “Step-mother,” corrected Jemima. Elspeth swept on. But the tale was indeed a tragic one, whichever way you looked at it.

  “A fearful accident indeed. Though there’s other people been drowned in the loch, you know, it’s the weeds, those weeds pull you down, right to the bottom. And it’s one of the deepest lochs in the Highlands, deeper than Loch Ness, nearly as deep as Loch Morar, did you know that, Miss Shore? Then their father not so long dead, I believe, and this lady coming, their real mother, all on top of it. Then you, so famous, from television…”

  The trouble was that for all her verbiage, Elspeth Maxwell could not really tell Jemima anything much about Zillah herself, still less about her relationship with Tamsin and Tara. It was Elspeth who had had the task of sorting out Zillah’s effects and putting them into suitcases, still lying upstairs while some sort of decision was reached as to what to do with them. These Jemima made a mental note to examine as soon as possible. Otherwise Elspeth had seen absolutely nothing of Zillah during her sojourn at Kildrum Lodge.

  “She wanted no help, she told the Estate Office. She could perfectly well take care of the lodge, she said, and the children. She was used to it. And the cooking. She wanted peace and quiet, she said, and to fish and walk and swim and go out in the boat—” Elspeth stopped, “Ah well, poor lady. But she certainly kept herself very close, herself and the children. No one knew her in Kildrum. Polite, mind you, a very polite lady, they said at the Estate Office, wrote very polite letters and notes. But very close.”

  And the children? The verdict was more or less the same. Yes, they had certainly seemed very fond of Zillah whenever glimpsed in Kildrum. But generally shy, reserved. And once again polite. Elspeth could only recall one conversation of any moment before Zillah’s death, out of a series of little interchanges and that was when Tamsin, in Kildrum Post Office, referred to the impending arrival of Mrs. Parr. Elspeth, out of motherly sympathy for their apparent loneliness, had invited Tamsin and Tara to tea with her in the village. Tamsin had refused: “A lady’s coming from London to see us. She says she’s our Mummy. But Billy and me think Zillah is our Mummy.”

  It was, remarked Elspeth, an unusual burst of confidence from Tamsin. She had put it down to Tamsin’s distaste at the thought of the arrival of “the lady from London”—while of course becoming madly curious about Tamsin’s family history. As a result of a “wee discussion” of the subject in her own home, she had actually put two and two together and realized that these were the once famous Parr children. Elspeth, even in Kildrum, had naturally had strong views on that subject. How she would now have adored some contact with the household at Kildrum Lodge! But that was politely but steadfastly denied her. Until Zillah’s death, ironically enough, brought to Elspeth exactly that involvement she had so long desired.

  “I did think: mebbe she has something to hide, and my brother-in-law, Johnnie Max
well, the ghillie, he thought mebbe the same. Keeping herself so much to herself. But all along, I dare say it was just the fear of the other mother, that one”—Elspeth rolled her eyes to the ceiling where Mrs. Parr might be supposed to lie “resting” in her bedroom—“fear of her finding the children. Ah well, it’s difficult to judge her altogether wrong. If you know what I mean. The dreadful case. All that publicity.”

  But Elspeth looked as if she would readily rehash every detail of the case of the Parr children, despite the publicity, for Jemima’s benefit.

  None of this was particularly helpful. Nor did inspection of Zillah’s personal belongings, neatly sorted by Elspeth, bring any reward. It was not that Jemima expected to find a signed confession: “Tamsin and Tara are imposters. They are the children of my sister…” Indeed, she was coming more and more to the conclusion that Mrs. Parr’s mad suspicions were the product of a mind disordered by alcohol. But Jemima did hope to provide herself with some kind of additional picture of the dead woman, other than the malevolent reports of the first Mrs. Parr, and the second-hand gossip of Elspeth Maxwell. All she discovered was that Zillah, like Jemima herself, had an inordinate fondness for the colour beige, presumably for the same reason, to complement her fair colouring; and like a good many other Englishwomen bought her underclothes at Marks & Spencer. Jemima did not like to speculate where and when Mrs. Parr might have last bought her underclothes.

  There were various photographs of Tamsin and Tara but none predating Scotland. There were also some photographs of Zillah’s sister Kitty; she did look vaguely like Mrs. Parr, Jemima noticed, but no more than that; their features were different; it was a question of physical type rather than strict resemblance. There were no photographs of Kitty’s children. Was that sinister? Conceivably. Or maybe she had merely lost touch with them. Was it also sinister that Zillah had not preserved photographs of Tamsin and Tara in Sussex? Once again: conceivably. On the other hand Zillah might have packed away all her Sussex mementoes (there were no photographs of Mr. Parr either). Perhaps she came into that category of grief-stricken person who prefers not to be reminded of the past.

  From the Estate Office Jemima drew another blank. Major Maclachlan, who had had the unenviable task of identifying Zillah’s body, was polite enough, particularly at the thought of a television programme popularizing his corner of the Highlands. But he added very little to the public portrait of a woman whose chief characteristic was her reserve and determination to guard her privacy—her own and that of the children. Her love of country sports, especially fishing, had however impressed him: Major Maclachlan clearly found it unjust that someone with such admirable tastes should have perished as a result of them.

  Only Johnnie Maxwell, Elspeth’s brother-in-law who was in charge of fishing on the loch, contributed anything at all vivid to her enquiries. For it was Johnnie Maxwell who had been the principal witness at the inquest, having watched the whole drowning from the bank of the loch. To the newspaper account of the tragedy, which Jemima had read, he added some ghoulish details of the pathetic cries of the “wee girl,” unable to save Zillah. The children had believed themselves alone on the loch. In vain Johnnie had called to them to throw in the oar. Tamsin had merely screamed and screamed, oar in hand, Tara had sat quite still and silent, as though dumbstruck in horror. In their distress they did not seem to understand, or perhaps they could not hear him.

  Altogether it was a most unfortunate, if not unparalleled accident. One moment Zillah was casting confidently (“Aye, she was a grand fisherwoman, the poor lady, more’s the pity”). The next moment she had overbalanced and fallen in the water. There was no one else in the boat except the two children, and no one else to be seen on the shores of the loch except Johnnie. By the time he got his own boat to the children, Zillah had completely vanished and Tamsin was in hysterics, Tara quite mute. Helpers came up from the Estate. They did not find the body till the next morning, when it surfaced in the thick reeds at the shore. There were some bruises on it, but nothing that could not be explained by a fall from the boat and prolonged immersion.

  That left the children. Jemima felt she owed it to Mrs. Parr to cross-examine them a little on their background. Confident that she would turn up nothing to their disadvantage, she could at least reassure Mrs. Parr thoroughly as a result. After that she trusted that her eccentric new contact would settle into normal life or the nearest approximation to it she could manage. Yes, the gentle, efficient cross-examination of Tamsin and Tara would be her final task and then Jemima Shore Investigator would depart for London, having closed the case of the Parr children once and for all.

  But it did not work out quite like that.

  The children, in their different ways, were friendly enough. Tamsin was even quite talkative once her initial shyness wore off. She had a way of tossing her head so that the blonde pigtails shook, like a show pony shaking its mane. Tara was more silent and physically frailer. But she sprang into life whenever Tamsin felt the need to contradict her, as being her elder and better. Arguing with Tamsin made even Tara quite animated. You could imagine both settling down easily once the double shock of Zillah’s death and their real mother’s arrival had been assimilated.

  Nevertheless something was odd. It was instinct, not reason, that guided her. Reason told her that Mrs. Parr’s accusations were absurd. But then nagging instinct would not leave her in peace. She had interviewed too many subjects, she told herself, to be wrong…Then reason reasserted itself once more, with the aid of the children’s perfectly straightforward account of their past. They referred quite naturally to their life in Sussex.

  “We went to horrid school with nasty rough boys—” began Tara.

  “It was a lovely school,” interrupted Tamsin, “I played football with the boys in my break. Silly little girls like Tara couldn’t do that.” All of this accorded with the facts given by the lawyer: how the girls had attended the local primary school which was fine for the tomboy Tamsin, not so good for the shrinking Tara. They would have gone to the reputedly excellent school in Kildrum when the Scottish term started had it not been for the death of Zillah.

  Nevertheless something was odd, strange, not quite right.

  Was it perhaps the fact the girls never seemed to talk amongst themselves which disconcerted her? After considerable pondering on the subject, Jemima decided that the silence of Tamsin and Tara when alone—no happy or unhappy sounds coming out of their playroom or bedroom—was the most upsetting thing about them. Even the sporadic quarrelling brought on by Tamsin’s bossiness ceased. Yet Jemima’s experience of children was that sporadic quarrels in front of the grown-ups turned to outright war in private. But she was here as an investigator not as a child analyst (who might or might not have to follow later). Who was she to estimate the shock effect of Zillah’s death, in front of their very eyes? Perhaps their confidence had been so rocked by the boating accident that they literally could not speak when alone. It was, when all was said and done, a minor matter compared to the evident correlation of the girls’ stories with their proper background.

  And yet…There was after all the whole question of Zillah’s absent nieces. Now was that satisfactorily dealt with or not? Torn between reason and instinct Jemima found it impossible to make up her mind. She naturally raised the subject, in what she hoped to be a discreet manner. For once it was Tara who answered first:

  “Oh, no, we never see them. You see they went to America for Christmas and they didn’t come back.” She sounded quite blithe.

  “Canada, silly,” said Tamsin.

  “Same thing.”

  “It’s not, silly.”

  “It is—”

  “Christmas?” pressed Jemima.

  “They went for a Christmas holiday to America. Aunt Kitty took them and they never came back.”

  “They went forever,” interrupted Tamsin fiercely. “They went to Canada and they went forever. That’s what Zilla
h said. Aunt Kitty doesn’t even send us Christmas cards.” Were the answers, as corrected by Tamsin, a little too pat?

  A thought struck Jemima. Later that night she consulted Mrs. Parr. If Zillah’s sister had been her next of kin, had not the lawyers tried to contact her on Zillah’s death? Slightly reluctantly Mrs. Parr admitted that the lawyers had tried and so far failed to do so. “Oddly enough it seemed I was Zillah’s next of kin after Kitty,” she added. But Kitty had emigrated to Canada (yes, Canada, Tamsin as usual was right) several years earlier and was at present address unknown. And she was supposed to have taken her two daughters with her.

  It was at this point Jemima decided to throw in her hand. In her opinion the investigation was over, the Parr children had emerged with flying colours, and as for their slight oddity, well, that was really only to be expected, wasn’t it? Under the circumstances. It was time to get back to Megalith Television and the autumn series. She communicated her decision to Mrs. Parr, before nagging instinct could resurrect its tiresome head again.

  “You don’t feel it then, Jemima?” Mrs. Parr sounded for the first time neither vehement nor dreamy but dimly hopeful. “You don’t sense something about them? That they’re hiding something? Something strange, unnatural…”

  “No, I do not,” answered Jemima Shore firmly. “And if I were you, Catharine”—they had evolved a spurious but convenient intimacy during their days in the lonely lodge—“I would put all such thoughts behind you. See them as part of the ordeal you have suffered, a kind of long illness. Now you must convalesce and recover. And help your children, your own children, to recover too.” It was Jemima Shore at her most bracing. She hoped passionately not so much that she was correct about the children—with every minute she was more convinced of the rightness of reason, the falseness of instinct—but that Mrs. Parr would now feel able to welcome them to her somewhat neurotic bosom. She might even give up drink.