Betrayal at Cleeve Abbey

by Anita Davison

  ‘That’s what I said, and thus far I cannot be implicated. Don’t look at me as if you know something I don’t. And if you think Bracenose will tell you what he knows, forget it. He knows I’ll make things far worse for him if he did that. No, what I need you to know that I never intended to hurt Eddy. He’s a charming boy and Venetia is my friend.’ She twisted her hands in front of her. ‘I was desperate for funds and Graham was going to share the insurance money with me. However I swear to you, I had nothing to do with what happened to Maguire.’

  ‘What did happen to him?’ Flora braced herself for the details she had longed to know since hearing of her father’s death, but now dreaded to hear. ‘Why did he come here that night?’

  ‘How do you know he came here?’ Caroline’s face paled beneath the two circles of rouge she had applied to her cheeks. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘That’s not important. Just tell me.’ She gripped the sofa arm, her fingernails sinking deep into the loosely stuffed upholstery.

  Caroline’s eyes fluttered closed, and when she opened them again, they were soft, almost pleading. ‘I had just returned from dinner at the Abbey, when Maguire arrived in a furious temper claiming to know why Graham had poisoned the beer at the fête. He demanded Graham withdraw his insurance claim or he would expose him.’

  Her father would never have walked away from something so blatant as intended fraud. She could visualize him now, stern and indignant but refusing to be silenced. She eased along the sofa, putting some space between them. ‘But Mr McCallum wasn’t prepared to do that?’ If she put the blame squarely on McCallum, maybe Caroline would seem less panicked.

  ‘We couldn’t let that happen. Marriage wasn’t possible, I know that now, but I couldn’t bear for him to be imprisoned for something so trivial.’

  ‘Hardly trivial. He still tried to break the law,’ Flora said, though there was no emotion behind it. Her thoughts were still running inside her head. Why wasn’t marriage possible for them? They might not be rich, but they could still make a comfortable life for themselves. Or maybe that was naïve, and comfortable wasn’t acceptable in their world? People like Caroline and McCallum required much more. ‘Caroline,’ Flora asked gently. ‘What happened to my father?’

  ‘I happened to him.’ A male voice brought Flora’s head up to where Graham McCallum pushed away from the door frame. ‘It’s remarkably easy to make a spirited horse rear.’ He strode into the room with the slow confidence of a man with nothing to fear.

  ‘It was you!’ Flora’s cup rattled against the saucer as she returned it clumsily to the table. She leapt to her feet as anger surged through her. ‘You killed my father!’

  ‘Graham.’ Caroline lurched towards him. ‘I didn’t tell her anything. She knew what we did with the beer, I—’

  ‘Be quiet, Caro. You’ve said enough.’ He brushed her aside, directing a smile at Flora that held no warmth. ‘I didn’t tell you to invite her here for a cosy female chat.’

  Chastened, Caroline backed away, a fist pressed to her mouth. It wasn’t only love that made her cling to the man, but fear too.

  ‘Unfortunate, but necessary.’ A flash of distaste crossed McCallum’s face, though it was gone in an instant, replaced by triumph. ‘I knew he would take the quickest route back to the Abbey, so I waited on the edge of the wood.’ He strolled to the fireplace, both feet planted apart as if he owned the room. ‘I even offered him money, more than he could have earned in a decade, but the short-sighted fool was completely unreasonable.’

  ‘You didn’t have to kill him!’ Flora shouted. Her hands clenched as she fought the urge to rush at him and drag her fingernails down his face.

  ‘What choice did he give me?’ McCallum’s upper lip curled as he reverted to the excuse all villains hid behind: blaming their victim for their own fate. ‘I could see he wasn’t comfortable on that horse. It took little effort to unseat him. He hit his head when he fell, so all it took was a little encouragement with my whip send my horse over him and the deed was done.’

  ‘Then you moved him.’ It all fitted with what she had heard about the scene in Bailey Wood. They didn’t find any evidence of two horses in the earth because he didn’t fall there.

  A scream of fury built inside her at the thought her father had found himself at the mercy of this ruthless, cold man with no one to help him.

  ‘I sent his horse off and dragged the body to uneven ground with a few rocks to make a fall look more credible. The coroner accepted it as an accident.’ McCallum sighed and regarded Flora as if she were an annoying insect. ‘But you simply couldn’t leave well alone.’

  ‘That was how your mount loosened a shoe?’ Flora knew she pushed him but couldn’t help herself. ‘When I asked you what you were doing at the Abbey that day, you said it was because Caroline had borrowed the horse.’

  ‘Me?’ Caroline turned a venomous glare on McCallum. ‘Why would you say that?’ She backed away slightly, her face working as she processed what he had said. ‘You intended to blame me, didn’t you?’ Her mouth opened as she gasped. ‘If you were found out, you would let everyone believe I killed him?’

  ‘Stop fussing, Caro.’ McCallum sneered. ‘No one can connect that horse to Maguire’s death now.’

  Flora was about to disabuse him but changed her mind. If the second set of hoof prints could be matched to McCallum’s horse, he could still be prosecuted for murder. While he thought himself safe, perhaps there was still a chance she could get out of this house in one piece. Her logic deserted her and terror took over at the knowledge this was a man capable or fraud, deceit and had already killed one person. Did he intend to kill her too?

  Where was Bunny?

  ‘Had Maguire simply kept quiet instead of threatening to expose me, he could have ended his days as a pensioner in one of the Vaughn’s cottages,’ McCallum went on, evidently comfortable with the sound of his own voice. ‘As it was, he almost ruined everything.’ He paused in front of Flora, his chin jutted and his face inches from hers.

  Flinching, she stepped back, the back of her legs coming up against the sofa. A sensation of being trapped flooded through her but he moved away again. She released a breath, though her heart thumped uncomfortably in her chest. This man definitely meant her harm.

  A cold dread settled into her stomach, and she couldn’t move. She eyed the door again and then the French windows, but the former was too far away to reach; the latter blocked by Caroline.

  ‘I’m sure you feel a certain righteous indignation at what I did.’ McCallum held his hands open, palms outwards. ‘However, there’s no proof apart from Bracenose’s testimony, and he’ll do what I tell him.’ He confirmed what Caroline had said earlier, though from what she saw outside, given enough encouragement, Bracenose might be willing to testify against these to. Unfortunately the pair of them stood between her and her way out.

  ‘What about Scrivens?’ Flora wasn’t sure what the butler’s part had been, and couldn’t imagine why he would have been arguing with her father. Unless it was something to do with Betsy Mason’s disappearance.

  ‘He’s in too deep to risk talking, after all, he helped me move Maguire’s body.’

  Rage swept through Flora’s veins, and her face felt hot as an unwelcome image of the two of them dragging her father deeper into the wood invaded her head. Tears threatened, but she blinked them away. That wasn’t the way either to defeat a man like him. Maybe she could divide them instead. Play on Caroline’s fear that she had unwittingly been involved in a situation beyond her control.

  ‘I have a question,’ Flora began, ‘why involve Caroline in murder? You don’t hang for being an accomplice to insurance fraud. Murder, on the other hand, is quite different.’

  ‘Graham, is that true?’ Caroline closed the space between them and grabbed at his sleeve. ‘That I could hang?’

  ‘Use your head, woman.’ He roughly shrugged her off. ‘She’s trying to turn us against one another.’ The smug sneer on his face contrasted with Car
oline’s bewilderment. ‘Which is rich if you consider what I did for you.’

  ‘For me?’ Caroline frowned, genuinely confused. ‘What have you done for me?’

  ‘Scrivens would do anything for a few pounds, though as it turned out, he spent a night at the Petersham Hotel at my expense and he still managed to fail spectacularly.’

  Flora’s triumph that her ploy had worked instantly dissolved as Eddy’s words came back like a distant echo. That idiot Scrivens fudged the job, so get it done right this time. It felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. Bile rose in her throat as the horrifying facts dropped into place. ‘You sent Scrivens to set the fire in our basement?’

  ‘What does she mean, Graham?’ Caroline’s panic had turned to fury. ‘What fire?’

  Ignoring her, McCallum picked an imaginary piece of fluff from his jacket. ‘You’ve been very clever, my dear Flora.’

  ‘There could have been eight people in that house.’ Flora’s anger returned. ‘You risked killing us all because of insurance fraud? What are you, insane?’ His presumed intimacy made her flesh crawl. More so because she had liked this man, even trusted him when he had spoken with such feeling about his dead wife. Or was that too all part of his deception?

  ‘That, I admit, was a mistake,’ McCallum went on. ‘Scrivens had no experience with arson. He miscalculated.’

  ‘It was an amateur attempt.’ Fury made her reckless, though she knew that to goad him might make him more dangerous. ‘I still don’t understand. My father was about to have you arrested, so I can see why you prevented him, but why me? What have I done to you?’

  McCallum turned his cruel smile on Caroline. ‘Do you know, Caro, I actually think she has no idea.’

  ‘No idea of what?’ Flora demanded, irritated with his self-satisfaction and penchant to play games.

  He chuckled, lending a sinister element to an already incomprehensible conversation. ‘Isn’t it obvious, my dear? Maguire wasn’t your father, William Osborne is.’

  25

  ‘What a ridiculous suggestion.’ Furious at this slur on not only her mother but herself, Flora marched towards the door. ‘You’re lying. This is an attempt to justify your story.’

  She made to shove past him when his hand closed on her upper arm in a vice-like grip and he brought his face close to hers. Her vision went out of focus as his face blurred and receded in front of her.

  ‘Without you, Mrs Harrington, Caroline had a clear road to Osborne and his money. And by that I mean we had.’ He shoved her roughly backwards, continued to the door and pulled it firmly closed. He strode to the trolley and poured himself a cup of tea as if they were all part of some pleasant social ritual. ‘Bracenose let slip to Scrivens who you were.’ He waved the pot vaguely in Caroline’s direction but she shook her head. ‘Scrivens told Caro here, and loyal dear that she is, she told me.’

  ‘It’s true, but you must believe me, Flora,’ – a sheen of sweat formed on Caroline’s upper lip and she twisted her hands together – ‘I would never condone any harm coming to you.’

  ‘But it isn’t true!’ Flora almost screamed. ‘Riordan Maguire was my father. And you killed him!’

  Ignoring her protests, McCallum strode slowly back to the wing chairs beside the fireplace, one ankle crossed at his knee in casual comfort.

  ‘Did you know what he planned?’ Flora demanded of Caroline, gesturing to McCallum,

  ‘No! Never. I knew nothing about any fire.’ Caroline wrung her hands like a Shakespearean heroine, her former bravado gone. ‘It’s not as if it would have worked anyway. William was never interested in me. I used every wile I could think of, but he hardly notices I am there.’

  ‘Do shut up, Caro,’ McCallum snapped. ‘Maybe not right now, but in Osborne’s grief at losing his daughter, you could have comforted him. He wouldn’t be the first man who married from a sense of gratitude. You would have thanked me afterwards.’ He peered at Flora from beneath lowered brows, like a tiger ready to pounce. ‘You still might.’

  ‘I am not his daughter!’ A rush of blood surged through Flora’s veins as the implication of Caroline’s garbled excuses and McCallum’s proud boast sank in. It couldn’t be true? Could it? But if not then why the fire, the quest for William’s money? This contrived meeting? She tossed her head and regarded McCallum steadily. ‘Even if what you say is true, it makes no sense. Mr Osborne has never offered me anything.’

  ‘That’s not what he told me.’ McCallum adjusted his jacket flap over his thigh, his foot swinging gently. ‘Not directly of course. He wasn’t likely to reveal a past indiscretion so freely. Who would? But when I suggested he invest in my business, he refused on the grounds he had already committed his capital to a trust fund for his family.’

  ‘He probably meant his nieces and nephew.’ Flora searched for holes in his story, still unwilling to believe he told the truth. His lies were all part of his scheme to unbalance her. Make her vulnerable so when he pounced she wasn’t prepared.

  ‘Hardly.’ McCallum’s eyes took on a calculating look. ‘Lord Vaughn has provided well for those girls of his. He’s already married two of them off to rich husbands and has a third lined up for the youngest. The boy will inherit the estate and the title. Oh, and Osborne didn’t tell me about you, by the way. Maguire did.’

  ‘My father knew?’ Flora broke off, horrified. ‘About, about Mr Osborne?’

  There had never been so much as a whisper or a careless word to imply Riordan Maguire wasn’t her real father. Or was that what the ‘poor Lily Maguire’ comments had been about? But her father had loved her, hadn’t he? The father who had raised her. And she, Flora, had loved him. She still did.

  ‘Did he know about your mother and William?’ McCallum snorted. ‘Of course he did. That night, when I met him near the wood, and told him I knew about you, he changed his tune. Said he would keep quiet about the insurance fraud if I swore never to go near you. He wasn’t to know that I had already sent Scrivens to deal with you. Couldn’t let some by-blow stand in the way of a lucrative Osborne fortune, now could I?’

  ‘My father would never have agreed to such terms. He was an honourable man and wouldn’t hide—’ But then he had hidden one of the most vital truths about her all these years? What was she supposed to believe when everything she had ever known no longer made sense?

  ‘You miscalculated.’ A slow anger burned in her chest. ‘If Scrivens had succeeded, and he no longer had me to protect, Father would have gone straight to the authorities.’

  ‘And that,’ McCallum pointed his free hand at her, ‘is why I had to finish him off.’

  Flora clenched her fists, willing him to stop talking so she could think, but his voice droned on.

  ‘You can imagine how I felt when Lady Vaughn announced you were alive, well and on your way here with your husband.’ His low, menacing laugh made Flora’s insides knot until she could not keep still any longer.

  ‘I’m not listening to this!’ She swept her still full cup and saucer from the table and hurled it at McCallum’s head.

  He ducked, the china smashing on the slate hearth behind him. His own cup upended, and brown liquid splashed the front of his shirt. He made an impatient tutting sound as he dabbed at the stain. ‘Flora, really, you’ve quite ruined this shirt.’

  Caroline gave a moan of dismay and bent to the shards of china on the floor.

  Aware she had only a split second to act, Flora lunged for the French doors, praying they weren’t locked. The door handle gave beneath her hand, and she erupted into the sunlit garden, though with no clear idea of which direction to take. Was she at the back of the house or the side? Which way was the road?

  The French door slammed against the wall. ‘Get out of my way, woman!’ McCallum was seconds behind her.

  Flora plunged to the right, into a wall of dense, dark green shrubbery of towering rhododendron bushes. The thick foliage blocked out the bright sunlight, a maze of tightly packed bushes with wrist-thick trunks she had to mano
euvre through with no idea which direction she took. Branches grabbed at her skirt and tugged her hair from its pins as she pushed her way through the pungent earthy smell of the uneven ground beneath her feet.

  McCallum’s shout came from close by, sending Flora’s heart into her throat as he called to Caroline to check the front.

  Loud rustling and low curses followed. Too close. She fought the impulse to run and dropped into a low crouch. If she made as much noise moving through the bushes he would be on her in seconds. She hunkered lower, taking a sideways look through the leaves. She had stopped at the edge of a terrace that led down to a lawn which resembled more an overgrown meadow than a garden. Waist-high grass sprinkled with ragged poppies was surrounded by thick hawthorn and brambles as well as a wall of more untamed rhododendron bushes. She surveyed the disorder, oddly grateful that Caroline’s failure to keep her garden in check afforded so many places to hide.

  The terrace had weeds poking through the paving stones, the walls broken in places. A wooden hut that might have once been a summerhouse occupied one corner, which she rejected as too obvious a place to hide.

  McCallum waded through the grass toward the hut and she hunched lower. He disappeared inside for mere seconds before he hurled the door back into place with a furious curse; the crack of wood echoing across the empty garden. He swivelled around in a sweep of the back of the house. ‘Flo-ra!’ He drew out her name in a sing song voice that made her heart skip a beat. ‘Don’t be stupid, girl. You can’t stay out here forever.’

  Temptation to scream back at him that he was wrong clawed at her, but aware that was exactly what he wanted, she clamped her lips together. A bird called from somewhere and the buzz of insects added to the roaring in her ears. Her forehead stung where a branch had caught it above one eyebrow, the warm trickle that followed told her she was bleeding but she ignored it. Her ankle throbbed where she had twisted it on a rough piece of ground, but not enough to slow her down.