A Final Reckoning

by Susan Moody

  LATER STILL: Clio came up to my room when the boys had gone to bed, and apologized on Harry’s behalf. Said he was a bit stressed at the moment as he’s working terribly hard on some important project or other. I wonder how often she has to make excuses for him. She brought a bottle of Cointreau with her, would you believe, and between us we drank about half of it. Got very girly and confessional: I had the distinct impression she’s pretty fed up with Harry, wants rid of him – and frankly, if he pulls a stunt like tonight’s very often, I can’t blame her. Though this morning, he was terribly apologetic, said the boys had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and had caught the full brunt of his anger. Hmm, as Mom likes to say.

  Jill says he’s hardly ever like that: he’s usually very calm and controlled, it’s Clio that seems to lose it.

  Oh dear, I’m beginning to wonder what exactly I’ve let myself in for.

  Meanwhile, the boys and I have decorated the entire lower floor with all sorts of wonderful decorations. There were boxes and boxes of them up in the attics, some dating back to Clio’s own childhood, according to Edward. I don’t know who’s more excited about Christmas: them or me. Only two more days until Christmas Eve. Harry comes home early tomorrow for the hols, and the staff all go back to their own homes tonight, so I’ll be the only one on duty. Also I’m supposed to be doing the cooking (hollow laugh … you know what I’m like in the kitchen. Mom’s fault: she’s such a brilliant cook) for four whole days. Not that there’s much to do for Christmas Day, just some vegetables, really, because Jill’s prepared everything and stuck it in the icebox or the freezer. She’s made something called Cumberland rum butter, a kind of hard sauce to serve with the Christmas pudding, which has already been cooked, just needs to go into the oven with rum poured over it, to heat up, and the chestnut stuffing’s just waiting to be pushed up the turkey’s backside. Jill’s made mincemeat tarts, too. The boys and Clio have been detailed to do the vegetables under my supervision – because she’s so vague, she’s just as likely to sprinkle sugar on the salad and salt on the rum butter, so really all I have to do is shove the turkey in the oven and supervise the laying of the table – will they use that Spode service …? Oh please, God, yes – while Harry deals with drinks etc.

  So for the next two days they’re going to have to make do with my signature dish, i.e. pasta in a cheese sauce. No, I can do better than that, obviously, and the freezer’s full of goodies. I don’t think any of us is going to starve.

  I’ve bought everybody presents and wrapped them. There’s this ginormous Christmas tree in the hall, which the boys and I have decorated, and I’ve stowed my prezzies under it. There’s already quite a pile – and some of them actually have my name on them!

  But of course she never got to open them.

  The attic was chilly. On my hands and knees, I peered into the storage area beneath the eaves, now empty after my exertions the evening before. There was a short discoloured cord just inside to the left, which I pulled, praying not only that it would not break, but also that some kind of light would come on. Which it did. A dim yellow forty-watt light, admittedly, but it gave a weak illumination to the wood-lined space.

  I wished I had brought a torch, and debated crawling back out and going to my bedroom for the one I’d packed in my bag before leaving London. Ham had taught me always to carry a torch, because you never knew when you were going to need it. But once my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I could see quite well. I edged deeper in, the slanted ceiling only a foot or so above my head, peering into the interstices of the roof beams as I passed them. I found nothing.

  Miraculously, I was able to turn round at the far end and start crawling back. I had an irrational feeling that I should hurry, that any moment someone would come up the stairs after me and slam the door shut, incarcerating me in there until I died and gradually desiccated, flesh vanishing from my bones, no one around to hear my weakening cries as I slowly died of thirst and hunger. It always amazes me how rapidly the human brain can paint these scenarios of doom and disaster. And as I made my undignified way along the unpainted wooden floor, feeling splinters embed themselves in my knees and the balls of my thumbs, I saw the faintest of gleams wedged between two intersecting roof beams. And another one. And another. Awkwardly I balanced on one hand and reached up. A frame of some kind. Oval, barely visible, and then only to someone going towards the door, rather than away from it. I tugged and pulled and finally managed to extricate what I could immediately see was a valuable miniature, portraying a curly-haired suitor with ruffles down the front of his shirt, plucking half-heartedly at a stringed instrument of some kind. Hadn’t Sabine mentioned this very one … a Hilliard? Excited now, I looked harder into the interstices, and saw another of the crammed-in frames, which proved to be a portrait of a young boy, ten or twelve years old, perhaps, with a floppy blue cravat tied round a loose white chemise. Looking closely, I could see that the edges of the frame had been lightly coated in some kind of dark covering: ink, soot, paint? Blood? I shuddered at the thought. Presumably this was to hide the tell-tale glimmer of gold.

  In all, I discovered eight more miniatures and had no doubt that there were more of them secreted somewhere among the beams and crevices of the attic. Having tidied the place up, and loosely returned most of the stuff which had been stashed under the eaves, I took the entire eight downstairs with me. Obviously I had no intention whatsoever of keeping them – stealing them – I merely wanted to examine them at my leisure, and compare them with the ones Sabine had mentioned. At first glance, it seemed pretty certain to me that, despite her limited descriptions, these were the very same ones which had been displayed in Harry Redmayne’s study when she was living here. So how had they found their way up to the attic and been so very carefully hidden? Who could have been responsible for that? And why?

  I thought back, trying to reconstruct what might have happened. The police were called, the bodies identified and removed, statements were taken, an arrest was made. After that, was the whole place sealed off as a crime scene? Brian Stonor was the one to ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, when we met in the bar before lunch. ‘Once Clio Palliser had been carted away to the nick, I – as the least experienced of the detectives present – was detailed off to go upstairs with Mr Redmayne and keep an eye on him while he packed up some clothes and necessities. He was anxious about the valuable stuff around the place, and I told him that an inventory would be made as soon as the SOCOs had done their work, after which the place would have to be sealed up for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘And he went along with it?’

  ‘Didn’t have much option. He tried to trouser a few bits and pieces, some silver things, and those little portraits you’re talking about, miniatures, insisted they were his property, he had every right, etcetera, etcetera, but we wouldn’t allow him to since at that point, for all we knew, almost anything in the house might have some bearing on the case, or be needed to provide evidence at the trial. Bear in mind that nobody actually saw Clio Palliser perpetrate the crime, and she herself wasn’t saying yea or nay. So the whole house became a crime scene: yards of yellow tape, nobody allowed in or out except the police, a copper on guard at the front door. That went on for weeks: it was a slow old process back then – and it’s even slower now, believe it or not.’

  ‘Perhaps because they’re more thorough now. Anyway, what happened after that?’

  ‘Eventually, Redmayne was allowed back into the house in order to pack stuff up under police supervision and have it taken somewhere for safe storage. But of course a lot of it wasn’t his, it belonged to the Pallisers, so he had no claim to it. And once that was done, he vanished into thin air, as far as I can make out.’ He chortled. ‘Though of course he can’t have done, when you think about it. But I’ve tried to discover his whereabouts and come up with a complete blank.’

  ‘Do you think he’s dead?’

  ‘Not him … Too much of a slippery customer, in my opinion. Not that
I’ve ever heard anything against him. Bound to be alive somewhere.’

  ‘So where do you think he went?’

  ‘Changed his name, I should think. Set up shop in New York, or San Francisco. Or even somewhere in South America.’

  I could see it so clearly: Redmayne managing by some means or other to stuff the miniatures in his pockets – and anything else portable – and then hiding them upstairs in the attics while the removal men went about their business. I was willing to bet that if you could find someone who’d remember, they’d tell you that he was wearing a gamekeeper’s jacket or something similar. He wouldn’t have dared walk out of the front door with the loot, in case some suspicious or overzealous policeman demanded to search him or his briefcase, but getting up to the attic would have been easy enough; he must have been very confident that he’d be able to get back into the house at some point and retrieve the stolen goods.

  And somehow, he had been unable to do so. I wondered what had stopped him.

  ‘The solicitors handling the estate insisted on putting in a sophisticated alarm system right away,’ said Stonor, answering my unvoiced question. ‘Actually, it was the insurance company rather than the solicitors. Connected to the local cop-shop, so a would-be thief would have to be quick about it. But it did mean that the house was kept relatively safe.’

  ‘Until David Charteris chanced along.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Stonor swallowed some beer and looked down into his glass as though wondering where the contents had gone.

  ‘Very interesting.’

  I remembered Desmond Forshawe’s odd expression, the first time I had visited him, when I mentioned the miniatures. ‘Was anyone else allowed into the house?’

  ‘The boy. Gavin. They let him in to pack up his kit, take his presents from under the tree, say goodbye to the staff. And the dogs. This was before his mother had arrived to collect him. She had to fly over from Nigeria, where the father was working, so he went to stay with some family friends until she got there. The same ones where he’d been to supper the day it all happened.’

  ‘He must have been in a frightful state.’

  ‘He was. Mental and physical. In fact, I’m not sure he didn’t develop pneumonia; not surprising after spending the night out in the woods in just his underclothes.’

  ‘Poor kid.’ No wonder he had seemed so uneasy, being back here. It made it all the more strange that he should have come, but no more strange, I guess, than my own attendance.

  ‘After that weekend,’ Stonor said, following an entirely different train of thought, ‘I looked Charteris up on the Internet. He’d made a killing on the stock market – I think it said he was a multimillionaire by the time he was thirty – and that’s how come he had the wherewithal to buy the place and turn it into a hotel.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it. And from what Maggie Fields told me, he hasn’t a clue what’s in the house.’

  ‘Or isn’t, as the case may be.’

  I was assessing all this information as best I could, wondering what, if any, bearing it had on any of the matters I was concerned with. Probably none. ‘And you never found any trace of either Harry Redmayne, or Clio Palliser, after she was let out of Broadmoor?’

  ‘Not a sausage. Strange, really. You’d think by now that some enterprising investigative journalist might have tracked down one or other of them. It was a notorious case at the time. Remember that Mary Bell, who killed a couple of kids when she was about ten? They found her, didn’t they? And that was many years later. Clio, at least, must still be alive, to have sold the house to David.’

  ‘So both of them, either separately or together, have managed to hide their identities.’ I shook my head. ‘God, I’d love to know where they are.’

  ‘Would you really, Chantal?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘What would you do with the information if you had it?’ He finished his glass, leaving beer-foam hanging like lace around the inside of it. Then he said, as though he was Dad’s echo, ‘Why bother? It won’t bring your sister back. Nor those poor kids.’

  ‘You’re still on the hunt for them.’

  ‘That’s because I want to be sure that justice was properly done.’ He put his head on one side. ‘That’s not your motivation at all, is it?’

  I considered the question. ‘Originally, I just wanted to get as close as I possibly could to my sister for the last time.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘And then you came along. And all these red herrings were swimming around – if indeed they are red herrings. And then the waters were muddied even further …’

  ‘This is the same water the herrings were swimming in?’

  We smiled at each other.

  He patted my hand. ‘Come on, girl. Maybe it’s time to let go. To move on. Have another drink and relax.’

  ‘Brian,’ I said, grabbing his fingers, ‘I’m really glad you came here with me.’

  ‘So am I. And you know something? I’m going to take my own advice and move on. Nothing’s going to change what happened in the past: it’s the future which matters.’

  ‘What happened to the notion of justice being properly done?’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘I know. But Clio Palliser’s out now, whether she did it or not. Perhaps the truth doesn’t matter so much any more.’

  ‘I know you don’t believe that.’

  He nodded at me. Winked. Said, ‘Too true.’

  ‘So what are we going to do tomorrow?’

  ‘Go down to the pub around lunchtime, make some general enquiries, see if we can pick up anything new. The locals usually know a thing or two. Especially with several of them working up at the Big House.’

  ‘Didn’t you do that at the time?’

  ‘Different culture back then. People kept themselves to themselves, to their own community, didn’t talk to the police if they could help it.’

  ‘OK, that’s the plan.’

  Before I went to bed, I walked down to the chapel in the grounds. Again, dusk was falling and the sky glowed gold and purple behind the little bell-tower. This time, the door was firmly shut; when I tried the wrought-iron handle, it didn’t budge. I gazed up at the magisterial carving over the lintel, Cronus devouring his children, and again felt the stir of recognition. Surely I had seen work in this same style very recently. I had likened it to Eric Gill’s carvings, last time I looked at it, but I knew I had not caught sight of Gill’s work for many months.

  A flare of excitement caught light inside my head. If I had seen work like this not long ago, and I knew that the shadowy art student had executed the one here at Weston, then I must be able to track him down.

  We left the hotel at around twelve. Although the temperature was cool, the sky was blue, and the walk through late autumnal lanes, bounded by bare hedges to which the occasional scarlet and crimson leaf still clung, was pleasant. We followed the roads for a while, then turned on to a track which led to the back door of the Palliser Arms. Not surprisingly, nobody was sitting outside, but the beer-scented taprooms inside were crowded.

  At the sight of Brian Stonor, at least a dozen voices called greetings. We stood pressed together while drinks were bought and smiles exchanged. He went into jovial mode, and I remembered that he had been brought up in these parts, probably even went to school with half of these people.

  I was wondering how we were going to get on to the subject of Clio Palliser and the killings, when a woman pushed her way through the crowd towards me.

  ‘I know you from somewhere, don’t I?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m Linda Windrow. I’m sure we’ve met—’ Her eyes widened. ‘Hang about. I know who you must be. That poor girl’s sister. Sabine Somebody. You’re the spit and image of her.’

  In my judgement, she’d already had at least two large sherries before the one she was currently in the middle of. But I wasn’t counting. Besides, alcohol was a known tongue-loosener, which could be al
l to the good.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘My sister mentioned you in her letters home.’

  ‘That was a nasty business,’ Linda said. ‘Really nasty. And your sister was such a nice little thing. Should never have happened, to my way of thinking.’

  Three men got up from a table nearby, and I sat down on one of the vacated chairs. ‘Why don’t we sit down,’ I said. ‘And can I get you another of those?’

  ‘That’s good of you, love.’ She turned and gestured at the man behind the bar, who was watching me with unconcealed curiosity.

  ‘Why do you say that …? What shouldn’t have happened?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, everyone knew Clio Palliser was a bomb waiting to explode. Nutty as a fruitcake, in my opinion.’ She finished her sherry and picked up the new one which had arrived. ‘And she hated Christmas and all that malarkey. Couldn’t be doing with it. Can’t say I’m all that thrilled about it myself, too commercial these days, but you have to think of the kids, don’t you?’

  I nodded. ‘So you weren’t surprised when …’ I lifted my shoulders.

  She knew what I meant. ‘Surprised, yes. I mean it was bloody terrible, pardon the pun, those boys killed like that. And your sister. But Clio was like a pressure cooker, and Christmas just wasn’t her scene. I think that’s why she hired your sister, to relieve the stress, not that it seems to have worked. But we all knew something dreadful would happen sooner or later. Not that dreadful, but …’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘Should have been in the loony-bin, if you ask me.’

  ‘And I suppose you’re absolutely sure it was her who did it?’

  Linda stared at me, astonished. ‘Not her? ’Course it was her. ’Course it was.’ Another pause. ‘Besides, who else could it have been?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She patted my knee. ‘How could you know? You weren’t even there, were you?’

  ‘I seem to remember someone mentioning one of the neighbours,’ I said, deliberately naive. ‘Some woman who lived up the road, a bit hot-tempered? Lady Something?’