Perfect Sins

by Jo Bannister

  Byrfield flinched as if she’d slapped him. “You knew my father. Which of them would you feel inclined to blame?”

  Hazel didn’t have to think long. “Fair enough. So, is that what you’re going to do?”

  It was almost as if he’d committed himself by talking about it. While it was just a worm eating away in his brain he had the option of doing nothing about it. But he’d chosen to share his fears—with a police officer, of all people—and even if Hazel wouldn’t have bullied him into doing something he didn’t want to, his own conscience would. It wasn’t just a sick thought anymore. He’d acknowledged it was a possibility, and now he owed it to the child buried by his lake—whoever he might turn out to be—to find the truth.

  And, of course, the same sample that could turn his whole family upside down could equally well set his mind at rest. If it did, he swore to himself he would never complain about the weather or the suicidal tendencies of sheep or the fact that his expensive new bull was a card-carrying member of Gay Pride ever again.

  He set his jaw. As a member of the aristocracy it wasn’t his best feature, but he did what he could. “Yes,” he said. “As soon as I can arrange it.”

  “Will you tell David what you’re doing?”

  “No.”

  “Or your mother?”

  “Good God, no!” Byrfield sounded horrified. “I’m not telling anyone, unless I have to. If the results mean that I have to.”

  Hazel nodded. “It’s your decision.”

  “But you don’t think it’s the right one.”

  “Pete,” she said patiently, “it’s none of my business. Only that you’re my friend, and I want you to walk away from this with your soul intact. Do what you’re comfortable with. Do what you can face doing. But there’s a risk that events may take the decision out of your hands. If that happens, it may become harder, not easier, to talk to your mother. I wouldn’t like to think you missed your last best chance.”

  His gaze dipped. “You think I’m being pathetic.”

  Hazel shook her head. “I think you’ve had a shock. I think you’re trying to deal with it without hurting anybody’s feelings. I just think this is too important for hurt feelings to be an issue. You need to be honest with your mother. I’d like to think she’d be honest with you in return.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” he said wistfully. “I know you’re right. It’s just … I haven’t got your moral courage. I know what you did in Norbold. You did what was right, what needed doing, even though it put your life in danger. I’m not that brave.”

  “Pete.” She reached out and took his hand. She was surprised to find he was actually trembling. “You may have to be. If this thing goes pear-shaped, it’ll be your job to hold the family together. To look after your sisters, and Byrfield. You’ll need to be brave then, and strong. But you know, don’t you, you can count on your friends.”

  He managed a shame-faced little smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  CHAPTER 11

  COUNTESS BYRFIELD, RETURNING late from a charity lunch in Cambridge, passed the strange dog on the stairs up to her apartments. Each turned her head to watch the other as the countess continued climbing and the lurcher headed toward the kitchen. The countess was thinking, In better days than these the gamekeeper would have shot a mongrel like that. Who knows what Patience was thinking?

  At least her own rooms remained a haven of peace from her son’s ridiculous friends: the one who was always covered in mud, the impertinent one with the dog, and the one who if memory served—and it always did—was actually the handyman’s brat! Alice Byrfield closed her door behind her with an audible sigh of relief. At least in here the world still operated according to the rules that had obtained for most of her life. At least in here things knew their place.

  At least here she had the privacy to consider how these new developments might affect her. How much, if at all, she should admit to knowing. She was alone—her maid didn’t come in on Sundays: how very different things were when she was a girl! So slowly, thinking all the time, she took off her jacket and hung it up, and took off her earrings and put them away, and pressed the button on the electric kettle, which was as close to domestic work as Alice Byrfield ever got.

  With the cup of Earl Grey thus provided, she sat down in her wing chair in the bay window, with its matchless view across the park toward the lake and the fields of Home Farm, and thought about the little hummock in the grass and whether the discovery of its contents had the power to disturb the life she had created here.

  * * *

  Finding herself at a loose end after tea, Hazel gravitated—as she had in spare moments through much of her childhood—toward the stables. The brick-built boxes were empty, but curious heads lifted from grazing in the paddocks beyond. She recognized Viv’s old hunter, twenty-five years old but still game for a day out if the opportunity presented; the old earl’s favorite broodmare, barren now, which Pete Byrfield occasionally threw a saddle on; even one of the old ponies Hazel had ridden. A quick calculation told her their combined ages must now be something over seventy. Don Jackson, the local knacker, who for years had looked forward to getting a call about them, had just about given up, suspecting that the three horses would dance at his funeral.

  A footstep on the cobbles behind her warned Hazel she had company, and she turned, to find Lady Vivienne Byrfield—unmarried despite her mother’s best efforts, highly successful as Something in the City—bearing down on her like a Corvette at full revolutions. She hadn’t been a pretty girl and she wasn’t a handsome woman, but she radiated a mixture of self-confidence, genuine competence, and a totally unsentimental kindness that made people like her anyway.

  “Hazel!” she boomed as she strode across the stable yard. She always managed to give the impression of being a much bigger woman than she was. Her brother had monopolized whatever tall genes dangled from the family tree: Viv was on the short side of medium height and the broad side of medium build. “Taking Starlight for a spin?”

  Hazel gave a rueful grin. “I’d need something a bit bigger these days. The last year I Pony Clubbed him, I had to pick my feet up over the jumps.”

  “Take Leary, then.”

  Even from half a field away, even at twenty-five, Cavalier was a bigger, stronger horse than Hazel had any ambitions to ride. “Thanks for the offer, but—would you believe it?—I left my parachute at home.”

  Viv grinned. “He’s a bit keen, that’s all. You’d enjoy him.”

  “No,” said Hazel carefully, “Mill Reef was a bit keen. Desert Orchid was a bit keen. Arkle was a positive slug by comparison. Maybe I’ll get Pete to saddle Blossom for me sometime.”

  “That old thing!” snorted Viv, tossing her dark brown hair as a horse tosses its mane. “Couldn’t jump out of your way. Couldn’t fight its way out of a wet paper bag.”

  “My point entirely.” Hazel smiled.

  Viv Byrfield gave in with a good grace. “I’m really here to see Pip. Just wanted to say hello to the old chap on my way in.”

  As they walked toward the house, Hazel reflected on the paradox of the English nobility—or one of them—which was that someone like Lord Byrfield could trace every relative, every forefather (and -mother), every dotty aunt, disappointed cousin, and strategically married sister back to the Battle of Bosworth and still be not quite secure in his own identity. She decided it was something to do with the names. Guardians of the lineage gave their children names like Peregrine because they’d look good on the pedigree, not because they’d wear well on the child. They didn’t even use them themselves—his mother called the current earl Pippin, his sisters called him Pip, friends called him Pete. No wonder he was never entirely sure who he was.

  “I got this weird phone call from him a couple of hours ago,” confided Viv. “I don’t suppose you know what it’s about?”

  Hazel played for time. “What did he say?”

  “Just that something had happened and he needed me down here, ASA
P. My first thought was Mother, but he said she’s all right. He said he was all right, too, though I’m not sure I believed him.”

  There were things Byrfield had said to Hazel that Hazel couldn’t possibly pass on, not even to his sister. But there were other things that were a matter of public record, and if Viv knew about the grave they’d found, it might make it a little easier for Pete to open the conversation that was to come. Though God only knew how he was going to end it.

  So she explained about the archaeological survey, the grassy mound between the woods and the lake, and what it turned out to be hiding. “So now Byrfield’s in the middle of a police investigation. My friend and I just happened to be visiting my dad at the time. I imagine Pete’s looking to you for moral support.”

  Viv broke her mannish stride just long enough to give Hazel what used to be called an old-fashioned look. “Really? When you’re here?”

  Hazel shrugged that off without much thought. “Of course I want to help, any way I can. But when things get unpleasant, there’s nothing quite like family.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Vivienne. “There’s certainly nothing quite like mine.”

  Ash, who seemed to have slipped into the role filled in earlier times by the butler, met them at the door. Hazel was introducing them, and about to ask where Byrfield was, when the answer preceded the question. Despite the immense solidity of the building, raised voices were making their way through the heavy doors and down the wide staircase. It was hard to make out words, impossible to follow the conversation, but when Hazel identified one as Byrfield’s—she’d never heard him shout before—she knew at once both who the other was and what the subject of the argument must be.

  She glanced at Viv. “Do you think you should go up?”

  Viv was already on her way, taking the broad steps two at a time. “Probably not,” she cast back over her shoulder, “but I will anyway.”

  Even without the voices to guide her, she’d have headed directly to her mother’s rooms. In this house, disputes had almost always revolved around Alice. She tapped—no, rapped—on the door as she went in, but the absence of an invitation did not deter or even delay her. With no children of her own, Vivienne Byrfield had always felt keenly protective of her younger brother.

  Before the door shut, Hazel heard the words “And now we’ve got the Last Tycoon sticking his oar in!”—delivered not, as they might have been, in good-natured exasperation or even irony, but with a hard-edged deliberation designed to hurt. Then the thick timber lodged against its equally substantial jamb, and the rest of the exchange was muffled to mere rumbling.

  Viv Byrfield clenched her jaw on all the sharp, angry, telling retorts trying to fight their way out, knowing that another argument with her mother about her own way of life could only distract from whatever business her brother had here. That had to be serious, because nothing avoidable would have made him confront the countess, or stay if he found himself confronted. There had been a time when she’d envied Pip his inheritance, resenting the absurd rule of primogeniture that gave the title and the estate to the younger child when she knew that she herself would have done a better job. She didn’t envy him anymore. If his inheritance included sharing the house with their mother till death should part them, he could keep it.

  She said, tight-lipped, “Would one of you care to explain this … performance?”

  Alice swiveled, her haughty gaze coming around like the beam of a lighthouse. “Since this is my home,” she declared imperiously, “I think I’m the one entitled to an explanation.”

  Viv tried her brother. “Pip?”

  He passed a hand across his mouth as if to stop himself from screaming. Then he turned to face her. “You’ve heard about the child?” Viv nodded wordlessly. “They can’t be precise, but he’s probably been there about thirty years. You’d have been five or six when he died. Viv—have you any recollection, from when you were small, of another child in this house? An older child?”

  When she realized what he was asking, her eyes flew wide. She tried hard to remember. “I don’t think so. I remember the cousins coming and sometimes staying. There were parties here—children’s parties. But that’s not what you mean, is it? You mean another child who lived here. Our … brother?” While she was still reeling from the implications of that, she thought she spotted the flaw in his reasoning and relief flooded in. “But Pip—if we had an older brother, he’d be the earl, not you.”

  “If he’d lived,” said Byrfield in a low voice.

  “Well yes, if he’d lived. What I’m saying is, if they had a son before me, they’d have been over the moon. Everyone would have known about it. There’d have been announcements in the London papers, for heaven’s sake! And almost certainly no more children.”

  “He wasn’t … normal,” mumbled Byrfield. “The medical examiner thinks he had Down syndrome. A son, but not a very satisfactory heir. I want to know if…” And there he ran out of words.

  “If?” demanded Alice harshly.

  Byrfield’s sister pressed him, gently, as well. “Pip? What is it? What is it you’re thinking?”

  There was no alternative. He had to say it. He had to say it, and risk his mother’s fury and his sister’s disbelief. He had to say it if the sky should fall. “I want to know if they had a disabled son and kept quiet about him in the hope of producing something better. I want to know if they got rid of him when I came along.”

  The silence that followed was like an animal in the room with them, huge and dark and dangerous, the stench of its breath burning the air. They were transfixed by the certain knowledge that if any of them spoke again or moved, it would strike.

  Predictably, it was Alice who broke the spell. For something over forty years she’d been confident in the knowledge that the most dangerous animal in any room was probably her, and even an accusation of murder wasn’t going to intimidate her for long. “You”—she spun the word out while she looked for something substantial enough to follow it—“pup! How dare you say that to me? I am your mother. You owe everything to me. I will have your respect.”

  Byrfield’s voice came from somewhere in the toes of his boots. “Then tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Her voice rang with soaring contempt. “You’re not just wrong, you’re insane! If we were trying to improve the Byrfield stock, whatever makes you think we’d have settled for you?”

  Byrfield flinched as if she’d slapped him. Viv shouldered between them as if she, too, anticipated violence. “Stop this, both of you! Are you mad? Pip, you can’t really think…?” But it was clear from his face that nothing he’d said had been thoughtless, or casual, or merely for effect. He looked as if he’d dragged the words up from inside his bones and they’d left bleeding, open wounds. Viv turned a quadrant. “Mother? Is this making any sense to you?”

  Alice fixed her with a cold glare. “You have to ask? Ask him what evidence he has. Or if it’s just another opportunity to hurt me. I know none of you can ever resist the chance.”

  “That is so unfair,” whined Byrfield, and Viv nodded fierce agreement.

  “Don’t let’s open the book on who hurt who most, Mother,” she said tersely, “it really doesn’t show you in your best light.”

  “I haven’t had a civil word from any of you since the day your father died!”

  “Pip has shown you every courtesy! Which is a great deal more than you ever showed him, or any of us!” She turned back to her brother. “I wouldn’t put it past her. But is it even feasible? If they had a child before me, even if he wasn’t perfect, it would be a matter of public record. I don’t see how they could have kept him secret for ten years.”

  “The miscarriage,” mumbled Byrfield wretchedly.

  “What?” Alice’s voice climbed to a crescendo of furious disbelief.

  Viv was watching her brother intently. “Mother’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. I know.”

  “Abroad. Italy, wasn’t it?”

  “On a yacht
in the Adriatic, so I was told.” She glanced at her mother for confirmation, but the countess just stared bitterly over her shoulder. Viv shrugged and carried on. “A last chance for a holiday before parenthood hit them. But how does that help?”

  Byrfield looked utterly miserable. “What if she didn’t lose the baby? What if he was born alive but”—he, too, glanced at his mother—“unsatisfactory? There was time for them to decide what to do. What to tell people. If they said she’d miscarried, people would sympathize and wish her better luck next time. And there was no reason to suppose their next two children would be girls.”

  Lady Vivienne Byrfield had built a successful career on two things: dropping the title, which suggested to the business world that she might be better at opening factories than buying and selling them, and seeing the whole picture—the broad outline and the fine detail. She could look at a proposal and see, almost instantly, if it was a goer and where the problems would lie. That’s what she was doing now. “If they were prepared to kill their first child, why would they go to the trouble of smuggling him back into England—back to Byrfield? God knows, a yacht in the Adriatic was a pretty good place to dispose of an unwanted baby!”

  “But they needed to be sure they could do better.” Pete Byrfield could hardly believe he was saying these things out loud. But he had to if they were going to be dealt with. And he was damned if he was going to back down now and never know, one way or the other. “If they had another son, they could afford to dispose of Mark One. But if they had only daughters, then it was important to have a male child—any male child—to keep the estate in the immediate family for as long as possible. If Dad died first, Mother would be able to stay here if she could produce—like a rabbit from a hat—a legitimate heir. For as long as he lived, she was secure.”

  Viv said nothing, trying very hard to see where his reasoning had broken down. But all she could see were minor procedural difficulties, hardly an obstacle to a determined woman like her mother.