A Tangled Thread

by Anthea Fraser

  Edward nodded. ‘It must have come as a shock.’

  ‘Actually, we’d had prior warning; an old friend of Greg’s phoned when I got back from your house on Sunday. He told me about the Jake Farthing connection, and also …’ She straightened her shoulders and determinedly held his gaze. ‘Also that he apparently had another family in Yorkshire. They knew him as Laurence Gregory.’

  ‘God, Jill!’

  ‘The police have taken their DNA, and when Richard phoned to tell them who he was, they said they’d like his and Georgia’s as well, if they’d agree.’

  Edward moistened his lips. ‘And did they?’

  ‘Most definitely; in fact, they’re having it done today. It’s the only way we can begin to sort out this mess.’

  She put a hand to her head and he ached to comfort her but could think of nothing to say. ‘I’d been wondering whether he spent some of these last months in Yorkshire, but apparently his sons were told he died years ago.’ She gave a shaky laugh. ‘He seems to have made a habit of “dying” when living became inconvenient. What I need to know is the time frame: were we the chicken or the egg? In other words, did they have him first, or did we? Or did we unknowingly share him?’

  Edward said gently, ‘He chose to live with you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Some of the time,’ she said bleakly. ‘But as Richard pointed out, he was away a great deal, supposedly to do with work. Who knows how many other families might come crawling out of the woodwork?’

  Her voice had risen to the edge of hysteria and he caught hold of her hand. ‘Jill, don’t. I’m sure it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Are you? I’m not. I don’t even know how many there are in the Yorkshire group and I simply can’t take in the fact that they’re related to my children.’ She gave a little shake of her head. ‘And as if that isn’t bad enough, how am I going to face my friends after all this publicity?’

  Aware of her slipping control, she made an effort to pull herself together. ‘But that’s enough of that,’ she said more calmly. ‘You’re supposed to be having a lesson, aren’t you, so if you’d like to go and sit at the piano we can run through what you’ve been practising this week.’

  And since he could think of nothing to add by way of comfort, Edward did as she asked.

  Richard had also been suffering from unwanted publicity and his lunchtime appointment to have mouth swabs taken – with the implication that he mightn’t be his father’s son – had added considerably to the stress. He was convinced he was the subject of the whispering in corridors, either because of his father’s colourful past or, even worse, Maria.

  It was now five days since the anonymous note had been left on his desk, and it had been preying on his mind ever since. Who could have left it? And why? Were they intending to publicize the affair, report him to the Head? He’d deliberately not mentioned it when he’d met Maria the previous day, fearing that she might by some change in her demeanour incriminate both herself and him still further. Thank God it was almost the end of term, when he’d be free of her. By now he was bitterly resenting her hold over him – he who’d always prided himself on being in control. Even the act of love-making was no longer pleasurable but an unappeasable hunger, and added to this lethal mix of embarrassment, worry and sexual tension was the emergence of these unknown relatives who had suddenly and so unexpectedly come on the scene.

  Learning his father had at least two other sons had been a body blow; the belief that he was the only son had been his sole comfort whenever Greg had snubbed or ignored him. Eventually, he’d told himself, his father would come to appreciate him and they’d become staunch allies, the men of the household. Even after his supposed death he’d clung to the belief that, had Greg lived, they would have come together. Now even that meagre consolation had evaporated, adding to the stress that was piling on him from all directions.

  ‘Sir?’

  Tearing himself away from his introspection, Richard looked down at the small boy in front of him.

  ‘Very good, Harry. You can do the rest for homework,’ he said.

  ‘I still can’t believe you actually did it!’ Sue Little stared at her friend with a mixture of admiration and apprehension.

  Pat Stevens, a fellow Reception teacher, was triumphant. ‘I told you I would, and I did!’

  ‘But suppose someone had seen you go into his study?’

  ‘So what? I could have had a dozen reasons.’ Pat gave a satisfied little smile. ‘It should be giving old po-face something to mull over!’

  ‘But suppose you’re wrong and there’s nothing in it?’

  ‘Oh, there’s something in it all right. Come on, it was you who put me on to it in the first place, telling me about him driving her and Toby to hospital.’

  ‘Yes, but he was on the scene when it happened. I never meant—’

  ‘All the same, no other kid has had the four-star treatment. So after that I paid them more attention, and, like I said, blow me down if they didn’t drive off together after school. They didn’t see me – I’d promised Jackie a lift and was waiting in my car at the far end of the car park – but I saw them all right. And if further proof was needed, as I told you, I came round the corner from the dining hall last week in time to see him bundling her into his study. For God’s sake, what more do you want?’

  ‘How about her? Has she given anything away?’

  ‘No, but she always looks like the cat that got the cream.’

  Sue sipped her coffee uneasily. ‘So what did it actually say, the note?’

  ‘Just a quote from The Sound of Music: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”’

  Sue gasped. ‘Pat, you didn’t!’

  ‘Oh, but I did! And I’d give a month’s salary to have been a fly on the wall when he opened it!’

  At which point the bell for the end of break halted the conversation.

  ‘Richard?’

  He glanced at his watch, biting back an expletive. ‘Good morning, Mother.’

  ‘I’m glad I caught you; there’s something else the Scottish detectives should know.’

  ‘Can’t it wait, Mother? I’m running late as it is.’

  ‘No, dear, it can’t wait, which is why I’m phoning. I’d have rung earlier but I’ve only just learned of it myself.’

  He sighed audibly. ‘I’m in the car; just a minute while I switch to hands-free. Right, fire away.’

  For the next five minutes, as he negotiated the lunchtime traffic, he listened in growing amazement to the story of the supposed fatwa.

  ‘But that’s nonsense!’ he burst out as she came to the end of her account. ‘For one thing, that’s not how fatwas work. All right, he might have received threats, but I very much doubt it was a fatwa.’

  ‘Whatever it was,’ Jill said curtly, ‘it was the reason he didn’t feel he could come home, and what’s more it gives a possible motive for his murder.’

  ‘I very much doubt—’

  ‘I’m not interested in your doubts, Richard, I’m asking you to pass it on to the detectives. Can I rely on you to do that, or do I have to contact Georgia?’

  ‘I’ll tell them, of course, though—’

  ‘That’s all I wanted to hear,’ said his mother, and ended the call.

  Stonebridge

  Will burst in as Sylvie was bathing their baby.

  ‘I’ve found her!’ he crowed. ‘Dad’s wife or widow or whatever she calls herself!’

  ‘What do you mean, found her?’ Sylvie bent over the rim of the bath, supporting her daughter with one hand and gently splashing her with the other, to the child’s delight.

  ‘Who she is, I mean.’ Will seated himself on the lavatory lid. ‘It seemed likely from the names in the press that Dad had simply switched his around and was actually Gregory Lawrence, so I googled that and found a listing for a Mrs Gregory Lawrence in Sussex. QED, or Quite Easily Done, as we used to say at school.’

  ‘And what good will that do?’ Sylvie asked, rinsing the shampoo off th
eir daughter’s curls.

  ‘I’m going to write to her, suggesting a meeting.’

  Startled, Sylvie turned to him. ‘Will, you can’t!’

  ‘Why not? I’m not proposing we should become bosom pals, just that we meet on one solitary occasion to exchange what, if anything, we know about Dad and try to understand why he did what he did.’

  ‘They’d never agree. It will have come as even more of a shock to them because they knew him. They’re probably trying to convince themselves you don’t exist.’

  Will flushed. ‘Well, like it or not we do, and since Dad and Mum met when he was at uni, she presumably got in first.’

  ‘But he didn’t stick with her,’ Sylvie pointed out more gently. ‘He moved on, married someone else and had another family.’

  Will leant forward. ‘I could have understood him dumping her when she was pregnant with David; a lot of men do a disappearing act at that stage. But he came back, Sylvie, after he was married – and I was the result. I have to know if there was any reason for it, if he was going through a bad patch with his wife and perhaps thinking he’d made a mistake.’

  ‘If so, he lived with that mistake for thirty-odd years.’ She lifted the baby out of the bath and, wrapping her in a towel, sat down with her on the stool. ‘Have you spoken to David?’

  ‘No, and I’ll only tell him if and when she replies. Come on, love, back me up here. How about giving me a hand in drafting the letter?’

  Sylvie sighed. ‘Let’s get Amélie settled, then we can discuss it properly.’

  ‘I knew I could count on you!’ Will said.

  Foxclere

  Victoria had been reluctant to leave Richard that Saturday morning; the news about Greg’s double life had hit him hard and the DNA appointment the previous day, together with a rambling story of Jill’s about terrorists, had been the final straw. Personally she hadn’t seen the point of the DNA; once Jill had identified that man as her husband it was obvious Richard and Georgia were his children, but the Scottish police didn’t seem to see it that way.

  And Richard had been under a strain even before these latest developments; he was always exhausted by the end of term, but this was something else, as though he were living on a knife-edge. She’d tried gently questioning him but he’d immediately closed up, assuring her he was only tired.

  ‘Are you going to the golf club?’ she’d asked brightly as she was leaving the house, but he’d shaken his head.

  ‘There are enough people at school obliquely questioning me about Father without laying myself open to any more.’

  ‘Darling, what Greg did is no reflection on you! Just hold your head up and meet them eye to eye.’

  ‘Easy to say.’

  ‘Well, what will you do then, till I get home?’

  ‘I brought back a stack of reports I can look through and I’ve some to write myself. That’ll keep me busy, and there’s some cricket on the box this afternoon.’

  She’d hesitated. ‘Would you like me to phone Nigel and say I can’t make it today?’

  ‘Of course not. Go and flog your paintings; I’ll be fine.’

  Nigel had some news for Victoria on her arrival at The Gallery.

  ‘I saw Jeff Parker in the pub last night – you know, the guy who has that art shop in Brook Street. He was talking to a pal of his who’s also in the trade, and he happened to say there’d been a bloke in trying to track down pictures by local artists.’

  ‘Really?’ Victoria perched on the edge of the counter. ‘Did he describe him?’

  ‘Yes, and it was our friend Bernard, all right. What’s more, the other guy said he’d had a woman in making the same enquiries, and her description fitted Tina.’

  Victoria’s eyes widened. ‘Did you say they’d both been here?’

  ‘You bet I did. It looks as though they’ve been doing the rounds of all the art shops in the area. We agreed they’re hell-bent on tracing a particular painting but they don’t seem to know which one, which is odd to say the least.’

  Victoria glanced down the length of the shop. ‘Well, we’ve still got the Lockhart seascape and market scene, but he didn’t seem interested in them apart from asking how long we’d had them, of all things! I told him the seascape had been for sale for a month or two and the other much the same, though I remembered after it was one of a later batch.’

  ‘Well, if we have another attempted break-in I’ll give the police their names,’ Nigel said. ‘They seem a very dodgy pair.’

  The doorbell chimed and a couple came in with a little boy of about seven. Victoria’s heart sank; children could be a liability unless they were kept under close supervision, and sadly those who visited The Gallery seldom were.

  ‘We’ve just moved house,’ the woman said brightly, ‘and as it’s bigger than the last one, we haven’t enough pictures to go round.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ Nigel said smoothly, moving forward. ‘Would you like to browse and see if there’s anything that takes your fancy, or are you looking for a particular artist?’

  ‘No, no one in particular. We’ll just look round, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Please do,’ Nigel answered, keeping a weather eye on the boy, who had taken a small rubber ball out of his pocket.

  ‘Not indoors, Jeremy,’ said his mother automatically, but predictably the child took no notice. Why the hell didn’t she take it away from him? Nigel wondered irritably.

  The family moved slowly down the room, pausing at each painting while their son began bouncing his ball, and, since it almost always eluded him, running up and down the shop in pursuit of it.

  Catching Victoria’s less-than-happy expression as vases teetered and decorative jars tinkled, his mother said apologetically, ‘He’ll be careful, but he gets bored if he’s nothing to play with, and we don’t want to be rushed into making a decision.’

  And Victoria, wishing they could be rushed, smiled and murmured, ‘Of course.’ She turned away and busied herself dusting the pottery, hoping to disguise the fact that she was guarding it from an errant bounce.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t be long!’ The child’s whining voice drifted down the room.

  ‘We won’t, darling, I promise; just a few more minutes.’

  ‘But I’m bored! You said we could go to the park!’

  When his parents ignored this latest complaint, he threw the ball violently against the wall, where it hit the frame of the Lockhart market scene. Everyone held their breath as the picture skewed sideways, hung briefly from one hook, then, as it gave under the weight, crashed to the floor with a splintering of glass.

  ‘Jeremy!’ his mother gasped, horror-stricken.

  Grim-faced, her husband grasped the child by one arm and marched him out of the shop, leaving his wife to face the music.

  The woman seemed close to tears. ‘I’m so terribly sorry – he didn’t do it on purpose!’ She dropped to her knees and began to pick up shards of glass but Nigel, swiftly arriving on the scene, raised her to her feet.

  ‘Please, leave it, you’ll cut yourself,’ he warned.

  ‘We’ll pay for the reframing, of course,’ she assured him breathlessly. ‘At least the picture itself doesn’t seem to be damaged.’

  Victoria, helplessly surveying the carnage on the floor, suddenly bent closer. ‘What’s that?’ she asked curiously, edging a piece of frame aside with the toe of her shoe.

  Lying amid the broken glass was a small silver key.

  THIRTEEN

  Foxclere

  Still apologizing profusely, the child’s mother, a Mrs Sinclair, had left her card so they could contact her about the repair, but they’d no time to examine their find as a steady trickle of customers continued throughout the day, and it wasn’t until they closed at four o’clock that they were free to give it their undivided attention.

  ‘Where exactly did it come from?’ Victoria puzzled. ‘It’s too bulky to have been inside the picture – the back wouldn’t have gone on.’

 
Nigel picked up a broken piece of frame. ‘This is fairly deep, isn’t it? It could have been wedged under the overhang. It would have been visible if anyone had looked closely, but perhaps it was only a temporary hiding place and for some reason whoever put it there never got back to retrieve it.’

  ‘Either that, or when he went back the painting had been moved,’ Victoria hazarded.

  ‘Then it must have been either in a shop or at a framer’s. Who did we acquire this one from?’

  ‘The artist herself, Alison Lockhart. Don’t you remember, she brought it in to show us and gave us first option?’

  ‘So she did; she could have come straight from the framer’s. Hang on a minute.’ Nigel bent to examine the backing that was now propped against the wall. ‘Thought so! There’s a label here giving the name and address of the picture-framer. Bernard was keen to look at the back, wasn’t he? Suppose he wanted to check if it had been at the place where the key was hidden?’

  ‘But why hide it in the first place? And, the million dollar question: what does it open? It doesn’t look like a door key; I suppose it could belong to a safe but they’re mostly combination these days.’ She picked it up and turned it over in her fingers. ‘There’s a number on one side – two-five-six – and a stylized outline of some kind of bird on the other.’

  ‘Well, whatever it opens, it must be what Bernard and Tina were after. If they’d only been honest about it instead of skulking around and trying to break into our premises we could have handed it in at the insurance brokers, but there must be some reason for all this subterfuge, so our best bet is to contact the police. We can give them his name and tell them about his suspicious behaviour.’

  ‘And the address of the framer,’ Victoria added. ‘But before we do any of that, we’d better phone Ms Lockhart. It’s remotely possible the key might belong to her, though it seems highly unlikely.’

  A quick call confirmed that the artist knew nothing about any key and could not imagine how it had become lodged under the frame. ‘When you find out, do tell me!’ she said.