by A B Morgan
She rested in the swivel chair, her confidence growing by the minute. ‘Probate records confirm that the terms of Dominic Nithercott’s bloodline will had been met. As the only child, Guy inherited everything.’ She took a steadying breath. ‘This would appear to make him “suspect number one” regarding the demise of his parents. Said parents, Dominic and Beulah Nithercott, were actually distant relatives according to records, did you know. Third cousins twice removed or something like that.’
Konrad raised one scar-crossed eyebrow at this. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Keeping the money in the family seems to be the norm for the landed gentry.’
Ella swallowed before continuing. ‘I then checked the birth record for Abigail Renfrew and found nothing unusual. Her parents are recorded as Elizabeth and Oliver Renfrew as you would expect. But,’ said Ella raising a flat hand, ‘a tiny reference in Abigail’s medical records led me in a different direction.’
‘What reference?’ Konrad was wide-eyed.
‘The medical information Mal managed to … purloin,’ Ella said carefully, ‘led to a series of enquiries, not all of them legal and above board.’ She glossed over Mal’s dubious modus operandi. ‘I have here a record of blood types for Abigail, Elizabeth and Oliver Renfrew. I also found an entry in medical records for Elizabeth Renfrew identifying Abigail as a suitable blood donor because she was type O. However, her parents were type A and type AB. The upshot is that Betty cannot be Abigail’s mother. Are you with me so far?’
‘No,’ Konrad said. ‘The idiot’s version, if you please.’
Ella gave him a sympathetic warm smile. She had experienced the same struggle. ‘Abigail offered to give blood when her mother was in ICU after the assault, after the murders at Nithercott Hall. She has type O blood. Type O is universal and can be given to anyone with type O, type A, type B or type AB.’
‘I’m with you so far,’ Konrad said.
‘Good. Here comes the important bit. The records clearly state that Betty is type AB and Oliver has type A blood. This means their child cannot have type O blood.’
‘Holy shit,’ exclaimed Konrad, leaning forward to the edge of his seat. ‘Then who the hell are Abigail’s parents?’ he asked, trying to get his hands on the paperwork.
‘Wait for it…’ Lorna said, shoving back against him and foiling his attempts to secure the eagerly anticipated news.
‘You put him out of his misery, Lorna. You helped me find it.’ Ella turned the papers over and laid her hands over them, depriving Konrad of the secret for as long as she could.
‘No. This your baby … pardon the pun.’
Ella smiled at Lorna, enjoying the playful interaction. Konrad was not so amused. ‘Will you two just get on with it before I burst a blood vessel.’
Noting his flushed features and throbbing carotid pulse, Ella relented. ‘Abigail’s real mother is Beulah Harrington. Who became …?’
Ella and Lorna faced each other waiting for Konrad’s moment of realisation. When it came it was a noise worthy of an opera singer.
‘Oh, my sainted bloody aunts!’ he sang, standing and spreading his arms as wide as they would stretch. He looked skyward, raising his arms as he did so. Ella stared as Konrad paced the room, back and forth like a caged animal, wailing unanswerable questions.
‘Abigail was Beulah’s child? How did you find that out? Who was the father? How did Abigail end up marrying Guy?’ He faltered as the expletives finally freed themselves. ‘Well fuckety ding-dong-a-do and bugger me sideways with a large vegetable of some description! Does Guy know they are siblings?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Keeping it in the family
He stopped the maniacal prancing and raked fingers through spiky silver hair. ‘Are you absolutely sure? Because if this is right, then this is incest. The big secret is incest, Lorna. Incest, Ella!’ Konrad exploded, uncoiling his limbs and laughing like a fairground automaton. It was some time before he composed himself again. ‘Go on. Give me what you’ve got,’ he said to Ella, expelling a long breath.
‘I checked your other information about Betty Renfrew, and she was first cousin to Beulah Nithercott. So, the family ties are tighter than they first appeared to be. With some highly illegal shenanigans involving hacking into a database, Mal has provided the indisputable evidence that this is a surrogacy case. Oliver Renfrew provided the sperm and Beulah acted as surrogate mother before she married Dominic, we think because Betty, her cousin, couldn’t conceive. There is reference to polycystic ovaries in her medical record.’
Nodding like a demented bird, Konrad encouraged Ella to keep dishing up the facts. She happily complied.
‘When Beulah married Dominic, she promoted her cousin, gave her a job in charge of household management at the hall and a lodge house on the edge of the estate for the family to live in at a peppercorn rent. All very cosy.’
‘Which means what?’ Konrad asked her, still unable to sit down even in the confines of the small office.
‘Which means, as reported in the papers at the time of the murders, Guy and Abigail grew up on the same estate. She was two years older than him, but I suppose they became playmates, and he married her because the games of doctors and nurses went too far… I’m speculating.’ Ella threw back her head and sighed heavily. ‘They had to get married because she became pregnant and that’s when all hell broke loose.’
‘I’ve heard worse theories,’ Lorna said. ‘However, this doesn’t entirely stack up. Why on earth would Beulah keep her first child so close? It must have been painful to see someone else bringing up your own daughter and put a huge strain on everyone to keep it a secret.’
She and Ella had been over the records endlessly, back and forth, cross-referencing every last detail and there was no getting away from it. Guy Nithercott married the daughter of the family housekeeper who was also his half-sister and a distant cousin. If this dynamite were ever to be made public the repercussions would be unthinkable and catastrophic for an international billion-pound business such as Global Enterprises – not to mention Abigail or Guy himself and the Nithercott family name.
All at once, fearful of the tidal wave of sensationalism she had unleashed, Ella became very quiet. Inside her head, however, she was calm. She knew this wasn’t a flight of fancy, a wild guess. It was true. In St Cuthbert’s Hospital Abigail told a sad tale of childhood isolation and school bullying. She led Ella to believe that she and Guy became engaged soon after meeting each other again at a summer ball, and that she married in haste, not realising how controlling he could be. Ella didn’t believe her any more than she accepted the stories of Guy’s sexual appetites and phobia of germs. Which one of these wild fantasies held any truth was anyone’s guess.
‘It makes you wonder what sort of an immoral conspiracy we’ve stumbled upon.’ Lorna said. ‘Imagine finding out you’ve been having sex with your own half-brother?’ By the look on her face, Lorna was struggling to process silent thoughts about Abigail.
Ella was reflecting on events at St Cuthbert’s. ‘When I met Isla Renfrew at St Cuthbert’s Hospital she insisted Abigail was dangerous. As we know, Isla Renfrew was Oliver and Betty’s niece, right here on the family tree,’ Ella confirmed. ‘Did she know? Or was she doing the same as we are and got caught trying to find out because she was too stupid to use a different name?’ Ella closed both eyes as the full horror of Isla’s death occurred to her. She put her hands either side of her face.
‘Crap,’ said Konrad, not much above a whisper. ‘I did get too close. The court injunction against me was slapped in place within days of another approach to Betty Renfrew through her sister-in-law Faye.’
‘Isla’s mother?’ Lorna enquired.
‘It has to be.’
Konrad looked glum. ‘We hoped Faye Renfrew could persuade Betty to speak out. Channel 7 offered her a lot of money for an in-depth interview. Anyone else would’ve jumped at the chance. Not her. Faye Renfrew insisted she knew nothing. Nothing,’ he said, throwing his hands in the
air.
‘We tried all sorts of deceptions to get her to reveal what went on in the hall just before the Nithercott seniors died, but she was a dry well.’ He faltered. ‘Now I think of it, one of the researchers made an approach to Faye’s adult daughter, to Isla.’
‘Shit,’ echoed Lorna, now looking pale.
After that, no one spoke for several minutes. When they did, it was Konrad who took charge. ‘I want you to give me everything you’ve got, Ella. Things are coming to a head, I fear. I managed to get hold of DI Quinn last night. According to flight records and confirmation from the pilot, Guy flew to Le Mans as planned.’
‘So, he was never missing?’ Lorna asked.
‘No. This story about him being missing was started by Guy’s personal secretary, a man by the name of Cartwright who took it upon himself to call the Old Bill.’ Konrad let out a sharp tut. ‘Apparently Guy left his office in a taxi - a mode of transport he hardly ever uses - he was in a nervous state and MacDonald was nowhere to be found.’
Konrad was rummaging through paperwork on his desk as he spoke. ‘MacDonald is never one to be absent from his duties. That man is always either with Guy or at the hall. His private life is limited to meeting old service mates for a beery weekend four times a year or whoring. I’ve checked.’
‘Of course he did,’ Lorna said, winking at Ella. ‘My husband spoke to a couple of lovely prostitutes who professed to know nothing about our Glaswegian friend MacDonald, because they couldn’t understand a word he said. He paid well and performed admirably. MacDonald, not Kon, you understand. His whoring days are long gone.’
Ella laughed out of surprise at Lorna’s frank disclosure. Konrad seemed oblivious to the background chatter. He picked up a pen and scribbled something on a notepad. Then began an expanded explanation.
‘Cartwright, who sounds like a proper old woman, failed to get hold of Guy, and when Abigail declined to speak to him, he concluded the worst; armed robbers, kidnap or similar. He convinced himself that it was like the original burglary when the Nithercott seniors were killed. He was Dominic’s young assistant in those days. DI Quinn thought he was over-reacting. The only person unaccounted for is MacDonald …’
Startled by the ring tone on Lorna’s phone, Ella jumped in her seat.
‘Lorna Neale.’
Lorna looked across at Ella before speaking again. ‘She’s still in there is she? How do you want to play this then?’ She looked round at Konrad and held her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Mal’s still going ahead as planned. No one knows he’s working for you.’
Konrad nodded his approval.
‘Okay, Mal. Thanks for the update.’ Lorna ended the call.
‘Clare Gray?’ Ella asked.
‘Yes. She did go to Pearls and Curls and she’s been there for over an hour already. What do we know about the place?’
Ella loved how Lorna found pieces of the jigsaw so speedily. She had a nose for it. ‘I nearly applied for a job there,’ Ella said. ‘I put it on my rejection pile because it was too far on my bike and the buses aren’t regular enough. I didn’t even bother researching the business. I’ll have a look now, shall I?’ she offered.
‘No, you keep on the family tree trail. We need to know how Abigail produced the requisite paperwork in order to get married to Guy. She can’t have used her own birth certificate, can she?’
‘I checked this late last night,’ Ella said eagerly. ‘In cases of surrogacy the intended parents apply to the family court on a form C51 for the right to be legal parents. The surrogate signs to agree. On the original birth certificate, the surrogate mother’s name will appear in full but, if all parties agree, the child can be given the intended parents’ surname. The original is then sealed and kept until the child requests it at the age of eighteen, if they ever do. Then a new birth certificate is issued. From that point on, there is only the public record of the legal parents not the natural ones. No one is any the wiser. See? And it’s quicker and slicker than adoption.’
At this Konrad became unusually still and a heavy expectant air filled the already claustrophobic room. ‘Fucking hell,’ he exhaled. ‘What a cover-up. All trace of Beulah as her mother disappeared. Oliver donates sperm, turkey baster is employed and Bob’s your uncle, Abigail is conceived and handed to Betty. What a fine and selfless act. Perfect planning, had it not been for dirty little adolescents, sneaking around trying not to get caught in the straw bales, fumbling their way to ecstasy in the grounds of Nithercott Hall, right under the noses of their parents.’
He tapped one finger rapidly against closed lips before he said anything else. ‘Well done, Ella. That would explain exactly how this was so well hidden … but not why the marriage went ahead unchallenged.’ He raised his head and whinnied like a horse. ‘God, no wonder the pair of them look so similarly freaky, what with the gene pool being so small.’
Lorna was looking through information on the internet. ‘Perhaps they thought Abigail and Guy would never find out.’ She didn’t sound convinced.
Over years of investigations, Konrad hadn’t been looking for this sort of secret, nothing like it. He was seeking evidence for the murder of Guy’s parents and now, over and above the matter of a humungous fortune, there was another stupendously clear motive for those crimes and for Isla Renfrew’s so-called accident. He began to wonder who else had paid the ultimate price for keeping such an outrageous secret from being revealed and just who was doing the keeping.
‘Oh boy, this gets better and better,’ Lorna announced without warning. She picked up her phone. ‘Mal? You don’t need to travel on to Ringhampton. We still want you to get information from Oliver Renfrew but as he used to own Pearls and Curls he could well be inside the building. He’s semi-retired and works there on a consultancy basis. It’s not just a hairdresser’s, it’s part of …’ she nodded, ‘you guessed it. I’ll email you the relevant stuff … Well, it makes sense in terms of Global Enterprises acquisitions, but can you hang on? Don’t go in. I’ll drive Ella over to join you. No … she’s not going into Espionage Escapades tomorrow. Change of plan. We’re going to force their hand.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Pearls and curls unravel
‘Oh, I do love a dramatic entrance.’ The voice was gruff, the intonation playful and, as the inconvenient truth hit home, Clare woke up to the alternative universe she was in.
‘You’re late, Rosie,’ Derreck drawled. ‘Very late indeed.’ He grabbed at one padded shoulder and dragged Rosie forcibly towards the reception area. In response, she cackled and looked across at Clare who snapped her mouth shut. She’d been caught gaping.
‘Rosetta D. Bauchery at your service,’ Rosie said to her, beaming in delight at the drama she was causing. High heels skidded on the floor. ‘Famous for giving gorgeous head,’ the copper-haired woman announced with a swish of her shimmering mane.
Staring, aghast, Clare could think of nothing to say.
Wasting no sympathy, Derreck frogmarched his prisoner towards the steps to reception. The loud introduction continued, unabated. ‘Hair of course, darling - don’t know what your filthy mind was thinking of.’
‘Take no notice of her. Let’s get you shampooed,’ Payson said, aiming his eyes briefly at the Artex whorls on the ceiling. His cultured voice didn’t fit with his looks somehow. There was a mismatch. He was every part the hairstylist until he spoke. Anyone hearing the public-school accent, without seeing him, would’ve guessed he was a solicitor, an accountant or a business manager; anything but a hairdresser. He was standing impatiently next to Clare, towels in his arms, foot tapping a Latin tempo in time with the background music.
Seeing shock still registering on Clare’s face, he took time out to explain. ‘She helps Mr Oliver with the glamour wigs and the theatrical ones. Big business in the run up to panto season.’
‘Oh, I see…’ Clare replied. But for a moment or two she didn’t see. She knew that for once she’d landed herself in a situation so unfamiliar, so alien, she couldn�
�t marshal her thoughts. What was she supposed to say? She’d never been so close to a drag queen before. What could she do to make herself appear more worldly wise, more accepting?
Nothing sprang to mind and yet, much against her professional instincts, she felt compelled to speak, filling the difficult silence. She ploughed on, tripping over words and making a right hash of things. ‘Abi, always has beautiful hair.’
Blundering into another conversation about Abigail’s hair wasn’t going to get her any further than it had before, or so she thought, but Payson seemed to appreciate the polite change of topic.
‘Yes. Her make-up is always perfect these days, and since she’s had her eyebrows tinted, she looks sensational. Don’t you think?’
‘I saw her a couple of days ago. I knew there was something different about her.’
‘She’s come on in leaps and bounds.’
Payson was engaging with the pleasantries. He rubbed her scalp, massaging until it almost vibrated at high frequency, sending goose bumps from neck to base of spine, and in doing so released the tension from Clare’s aching shoulders. She closed her eyes as Payson chatted.
‘I think coming here has been central to the increase in her self-assurance,’ Clare added after a few blissful minutes of selfish indulgence.
‘I don’t doubt it. Considering how things are at home for her, she had to do something.’
‘Quite.’
Clare was stumped. How had things been at home for the woman they referred to as Fab Abi? What an ironic nickname. Clare never found her to be fabulous, - obtuse, yes, but fabulous … never. She’d developed a fantasy about a famous rugby player, tinted her eyebrows, stopped knitting and lost the plot.
Clare took a punt. ‘Especially since …’ and there she left the comment dangling.