The Big Book of Female Detectives

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

  Afterwards Jemima would always wonder whether these were the fatal words which turned the case of the Parr children from a mystery into a tragedy. Could she even then have realized or guessed the truth? The silence of the little girls together: did she gloss too easily over that? But by that time it was too late.

  As it was, immediately Jemima had spoken, Mrs. Parr seemed to justify her decision in the most warming way. She positively glowed with delight. For a moment Jemima had a glimpse of the dashing young woman who had thrown up her comfortable home to go off with the raggle-taggle-gypsies seven years before. This ardent and presumably attractive creature had been singularly lacking in the Mrs. Parr she knew. She referred to herself now as “lucky Catharine Parr,” no longer the wretched Queen who lost her head. Jemima was reminded for an instant of one of the few subjects who had bested her in argument on television, a mother opposing organized schooling, like Catharine Parr a Bohemian. There was the same air of elation. The quick change was rather worrying. Lucky Catharine Parr: Jemima only hoped that she would be third time lucky as the sleeping-car attendant had suggested. It rather depended on what stability she could show as a mother.

  “I promise you,” cried Mrs. Parr interrupting a new train of thought, “I give you my word. I’ll never ever think about the past again. I’ll look after them to my dying day. I’ll give them all the love in the world, all the love they’ve missed all these years. Miss Shore, Jemima, I told you I trusted you. You’ve done all I asked you to do. Thank you, thank you.”

  The next morning dawned horribly wet. It was an added reason for Jemima to be glad to be leaving Kildrum Lodge. A damp Scottish August did not commend itself to her. With nothing further to do, the dripping rhododendrons surrounding the lodge were beginning to depress her spirits. Rain sheeted down on the loch, making even a brisk walk seem impractical. With the children still silent in their playroom and Mrs. Parr still lurking upstairs for the kind of late-morning rise she favoured, Jemima decided to make her farewell to Elspeth Maxwell in the kitchen.

  She was quickly trapped in the flood of Elspeth’s reflections, compared to which the rain outside seemed suddenly mild in contrast. Television intrigued Elspeth Maxwell in general, and Jemima, its incarnation, intrigued her in particular. She was avid for every detail of Jemima’s appearance on the box, how many new clothes she needed, television make-up and so forth. On the subject of hair, she first admired the colour of Jemima’s corn-coloured locks, then asked how often she had to have a shampoo, and finally enquired with a touch of acerbity:

  “You’ll not be putting anything on, then? I’m meaning the colour, what a beautiful bright colour your hair is, Miss Shore. You’ll not be using one of those little bottles?”

  Jemima smilingly denied it. “I’m lucky.” She wasn’t sure whether Elspeth believed her. After a bit Elspeth continued: “Not like that poor lady.” She seemed obsessed with the subject. Was she thinking of dyeing her own hair? “The late Mrs. Parr, I mean, when I cleared out her things, I found plenty of bottles, different colours, dark and fair, as though she’d been making a wee experiment. And she had lovely fair hair herself, or so they said, Johnnie and the men when they took her out of the water. Just like the children. Look—” Elspeth suddenly produced two bottles from the kitchen cupboard. One was called Goldilocks and the other Brown Leaf. Jemima thought her guess was right. Elspeth was contemplating her own wee experiment.

  “I’m thinking you’ll not be needing this on your natural fair hair.” There was a faint ironic emphasis in Elspeth’s tone. “And Tamsin and Tara, they’ll have lovely hair too when they grow up. They won’t need Goldilocks or such things. And who would want Brown Leaf anyway with lovely fair hair like theirs? And yours. Brown Leaf would only hide the colour.” Elspeth put the bottles back in the cupboard as though that settled the matter.

  Irritated by her malice—there was nothing wrong with dyeing one’s hair but Jemima just did not happen to do it—Jemima abandoned Elspeth and the kitchen for the playroom. Nevertheless, Elspeth’s words continued to ring in her head. That and another remark she could not forget. Tamsin and Tara were both reading quietly, lying on their tummies on the floor. Tamsin looked up and smiled.

  “When will the programme be, Miss Shore?” she asked brightly. “When will you come back and film us? Oh, I’m so sad you’re going away.”

  Jemima was standing by the mantlepiece. It had a large mirror over it, which gave some light to the dark room. In the mirror she gazed back into the room, at the striking blonde heads of the two children lying on the floor. It was of course a mirror image, reversed. The sight was symbolical. It was as though for the first time she was seeing the case of the Parr children turned inside out, reversed, black white, dark fair…Lucky children with their mother restored to them. A mother who drank and smoked and was totally undomesticated. But was still their mother. Zillah had done none of these things—but she had done worse: she had tried to keep the children from the mother who bore them. Lucky. Third time lucky.

  Jemima stood absolutely still. Behind her back Tamsin smiled again that happy innocent smile. Tara was smiling too.

  “Oh yes, Miss Shore,” she echoed, “I’m so sad you’re going away.” For once Tara was in total agreement with her sister. And in the mirror Jemima saw both girls dissolve into soundless giggles, hands over their mouths to stifle the noise. She continued to stare at the children’s blonde heads.

  With sudden horrible clarity, Jemima knew that she was wrong, had been wrong all along. She would have to tell the woman resting upstairs that the children were not after all her own. A remark that had long haunted her came to the front of her mind. Catharine Parr: “Just like the wretched Queen who lost her head, and I’m just as wretched.” And now she knew why it had haunted her. Catharine Parr had not been executed by Henry VIII, but she had been childless by him. Now she would have to break it to Mrs. Parr that she too was childless. Would be childless in the future.

  It had to be done. There was such a thing as truth. Truth—and justice. But first, however dreadfully, she had to confront the children with what they had done. She had to make them admit it.

  Wheeling round, she said as calmly as possible to the little girls: “I’m just going to drive to the telephone box to arrange with my secretary about my return. This telephone is out of order with the storm last night.” She thought she could trust Tamsin to accept the story. Then Jemima added:

  “And when I come back, we’ll all go out in the boat. Will you tell your—” she paused in spite of herself, “Will you tell your Mummy that?”

  The children were not smiling now.

  “The boat!” exclaimed Tamsin. “But our Mummy can’t swim. She told us.” She sounded tearful. “She told us not to go in the boat, and anyway we don’t want to. She told us we’d never ever have to go in the boat again.”

  “Oh don’t make us go in the horrid boat, Miss Shore,” Tara’s eyes were wide with apprehension. “Please don’t. We can’t swim. We never learnt yet.”

  “I can swim,” replied Jemima. “I’m a strong swimmer. Will you give your Mummy my message?”

  When Jemima got back, Mrs. Parr was standing with Tamsin and Tara by the door of the lodge, holding their hands (the first time Jemima had glimpsed any sign of physical affection in her). She was looking extremely distressed. She was wearing the filthy torn mackintosh in which she had first arrived at Jemima’s flat. Her appearance, which had improved slightly over the last few days, was as unkempt and desperate as it had been on that weird occasion.

  “Miss Shore, you mustn’t do this,” she cried, the moment Jemima was out of the car. “We can’t go out in the boat. It’s terrible for the children—after what happened. Besides, I can’t swim—”

  “I’m sorry, Catharine,” was all Jemima said. She did not relish what she had to do.

  Perhaps because she was childless herself, Jemima Shore believed passionately
that young children were basically innocent whatever they did. After all, had the Parr children ever really had a chance in life since its disturbing beginnings? And now she, the alleged protector of the weak, the compassionate social campaigner, was going to administer the coup de grâce. She wished profoundly that she had not answered the bell to Mrs. Parr that fatal Sunday morning.

  The rain had stopped. The weather was clearing above the mountains in the west, although the sky over the loch remained sullen. In silence the little party entered the rowing boat and Jemima pushed off from the soft ground of the foreshore.

  “Come on, Tamsin, sit by me. Row like you did that afternoon with Zillah.”

  Mrs. Parr gave one more cry: “Miss Shore! No.” Then she relapsed with a sort of groan into the seat at the stern of the boat. Tara sat beside her, facing Jemima and Tamsin.

  After a while Jemima rested on her oar. They were near the middle of the loch. The lodge looked small and far away, the mountains behind less menacing. Following the rain the temperature had risen. Presently the sun came out. It was quite humid. Flies buzzed round Jemima’s head and the children. Soon the midges would come to torture them. The water had a forbidding look: she could see thick green weeds floating just beneath the surface. An occasional fish rose and broke the black surface. No one was visible amongst the reeds. They were, the silent boat load, alone on the loch.

  Or perhaps they were not alone. Perhaps Johnnie Maxwell the ghillie was somewhere amid the sedge, at his work. If so he would have seen yet another macabre sight on Loch Drum. He would have seen Jemima Shore, her red-gold hair illuminated by the sunlight, lean forward and grab Tara from her seat. He would have seen her hurl the little girl quite far into the lake, like some human Excalibur. He would have heard the loud splash, seen the spreading circles on the black water. Then he would surely, even at the edge of the loch—for the air was very still after the rain—heard Tara’s cries. But even if Johnnie Maxwell had been watching, he would have been once again helpless to have saved the drowning person.

  Mrs. Parr gave a single loud scream and stood up at the stern of the boat. Jemima Shore sat grimly still, like a figure of vengeance. Tamsin got to her feet, wielded her oar and tried in vain to reach out to the child, splashing hopelessly now on, now under the surface of the loch. Jemima Shore continued to sit still.

  Then a child’s voice was heard, half choking with water: “Zillah, save me! Zillah!”

  It seemed as though the woman standing at the stern of the boat would never move. Suddenly, uncontrollably, she tore off her white mackintosh. And without further hesitation, she made a perfect racing dive on to the surface of the loch. Minutes later Tara, still sobbing and spluttering, but alive, was safely out of the water. Then for the first time since she had thrown Tara into the loch, Jemima Shore made a move—to pull the woman who had called herself Mrs. Catharine Parr back into the boat.

  * * *

  —

  “The police are coming of course,” said Jemima. They were back at the house. “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  Tamsin and Tara, in dry clothes, had been sent out to play among the rhododendrons which served for a garden. The sun was gaining in intensity. The loch had moved from black to grey to slate-blue. Tara was bewildered. Tamsin was angry. “Good-bye, Mummy,” she said fiercely to Zillah.

  “Don’t make her pretend any longer,” Jemima too appealed to Zillah. And to Tamsin: “I know, you see. I’ve known for some time.”

  Tamsin then turned to her sister: “Baby. You gave it away. You promised never to call her Zillah. Now they’ll come and take Zillah away. I won’t ever speak to you again.” And Tamsin ran off into the dark shrubberies.

  Zillah Parr, wearing some of her own clothes fished out of Elspeth’s packages, was sitting with Jemima by the playroom fire. She looked neat and clean and reassuring, a child’s dream mother, as she must always have looked during the last seven years. Until she deliberately assumed the messy run-down identity of Mrs. Parr, that is. How this paragon must have hated to dirty her finger-nails! Jemima noticed that she had seized the opportunity to scrub them vigorously while she was upstairs in the bathroom changing.

  Now the mirror reflected a perfectly composed woman, legs in nice shoes, neatly crossed, sipping the glass of whiskey which Jemima had given her.

  “Why not?” said Zillah coolly. “I never drink you know, normally. Unlike her. Nor do I smoke. I find both things quite disgusting. As for pretending to be drunk! I used to pour all those bottles of wine down the sink. But I never found a good way of producing cigarette stubs without smoking. Ugh, the smell. I never got used to it. But I feel I may need the whiskey this afternoon.”

  Silence fell between them. Then Zillah said quite conversationally: “By the way, how did you know?”

  “A historical inaccuracy was your first mistake,” replied Jemima. They might have been analysing a game of bridge. “It always struck me as odd that a woman called Catharine Parr, an educated woman to boot, would not have known the simple facts of her namesake’s life. It was Catharine Howard, by the way, who lost her head, not Catharine Parr.”

  “Oh, really.” Zillah sounded quite uninterested. “Well, I never had any education. I saw no use for it in my work, either.”

  “But you made other mistakes. The sleeping-car attendant: that was a risk to take. He recognized you because of all the drinking. He spoke of you being third time lucky, and at first I thought he meant your quick journey up and down from London to Inverness and back. But then I realized that he meant that this was your third journey northwards. He spoke of you ‘going north’ the second time and how you weren’t so drunk as the first time. She went up first, didn’t she? You killed her. Then faked your own death, and somehow got down to London secretly, perhaps from another station. Then up and down again under the name of Catharine Parr.”

  “That was unlucky.” Zillah agreed. “Of course I didn’t know that he’d met the real Catharine Parr when I travelled up under her name the first time. I might have been more careful.”

  “In the end it was a remark of Elspeth Maxwell’s which gave me the clue. That, and your expression.”

  “That woman! She talks far too much,” said Zillah with a frown.

  “The dyes: she showed me the various dyes you had used, I suppose to dye Mrs. Parr’s hair blonde and darken your own.”

  “She dyed her own hair,” Zillah sounded positively complacent. “I’ve always been good at getting people to do things. I baited her. Pointed out how well I’d taken care of myself, my hair still blonde and thick, and what a mess she looked. Why, I looked more like the children’s mother than she did. I knew that would get her. We’d once been awfully alike, you see, at least to look at. You never guessed that, did you? Kitty never really looked much like her, different nose, different shaped face. But as girls, Catharine and I were often mistaken for each other. It even happened once or twice when I was working for her. And how patronizing she was about it. ‘Oh, that was just Zillah’ she used to say with that awful laugh of hers when she’d been drinking ‘Local saint and poor relation.’ I was like her but not like.” Zillah hesitated and then went on more briskly.

  “I showed her the bottle of Goldilocks, pretended I used it myself and she grabbed it. ‘Now we’ll see who the children’s real mother is’ she said, when she’d finished.”

  “The bottle did fool me at first,” admitted Jemima. “I thought it must be connected somehow with the children’s hair. Then Elspeth gave me the key when she wondered aloud who would ever use Brown Leaf if they had fair hair: ‘It would only hide the colour.’ ” She paused. “So you killed her, blonde hair and all.”

  “Yes I killed her,” Zillah was still absolutely composed. She seemed to have no shame or even fear. “I drowned her. She was going to take the children away. I found out that she couldn’t swim, took her out in the boat in the morning when I knew Johnnie M
axwell wasn’t around. Then I let her drown. I would have done anything to keep the children,” she added.

  “I told the children that she’d gone away,” she went on. “That horrid drunken old tramp. Naturally I didn’t tell them I’d killed her. I just said that we would play a game. A game in which I would pretend to fall into the lake and be drowned. Then I would dress up in her old clothes and pretend to be her. And they must treat me just as if I was her, all cold and distant. They must never hug me as if I was Zillah. And if they played it properly, if they never talked about it to anyone, not even to each other when they were alone, the horrid mother would never come back. And then I could be their proper mother. Just as they had always wanted. Zillah, they used to say with their arms round me, we love you so much, won’t you be our Mummy forever?” Her voice became dreamy and for a moment Zillah was reminded of the person she had known as Catharine Parr. “I couldn’t have any children of my own, you see; I had to have an operation when I was quite young. Wasn’t it unfair? That she could have them, who was such a terrible mother, and I couldn’t. All my life I’ve always loved other people’s children. My sister’s. Then his children.”

  “It was the children all along, wasn’t it? Not the money. The Parr Trust: that was a red herring.”

  “The money!” exclaimed Zillah. Her voice was full of contempt. “The Parr Trust meant nothing to me. It was an encumbrance if anything. Little children don’t need money: they need love and that’s exactly what I gave to them. And she would have taken them away, the selfish good-for-nothing tramp that she was, that’s what she threatened to do, take them away, and never let me see them again. She said in her drunken way, laughing and drinking together. ‘This time my fine cousin Zillah, the law will be on my side.’ So I killed her. And so I defeated her. Just as I defeated her the last time when she tried to take the children away from me in court.”