A Dangerous Deceit

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘I suppose so,’ Joe said doubtfully. ‘She also kept hinting we weren’t doing enough to find out who he was.’

  ‘Well, keep her at bay. Don’t let her get the idea we’re not doing enough this time.’

  ‘Easier said than done, sir. She might look like the fairy on the Christmas tree but that doesn’t fool anybody. Keeping at bay a panther on the prowl would be easier.’

  ‘You’re mixing your metaphors, Sergeant. Never mind, keep at it.’

  From the Folbury and District Herald:

  Folbury Police were called in yesterday to look into the accidental death of Mr Arthur Aston, fifty-three, well known in the area as the owner of Aston’s Engineering Company, who was found dead in the foundry adjacent to his machine shop on Tuesday morning.

  ‘A tragic accident,’ commented Mr Stanley Dowson, foreman at Aston’s Engineering, who found his employer lying dead when he went into the foundry. Mr Aston, though previously thought to be in good health, had apparently collapsed and fallen into a heap of sand some hours earlier, but as the foundry was not working that day was not discovered until later in the morning. Mr Dowson said, ‘He must have tripped and knocked himself out when he fell into the sand. He was a good employer and will be much missed.’

  The police, and Mrs Lily Aston, the deceased man’s wife, declined to comment. An inquest is to be held next week.

  Dearest Plum,

  I could scarcely believe my luck when Butterworth sent me to cover the sudden, unexplained death of Arthur Aston – because I didn’t exactly clothe myself in glory in his eyes over reporting the Snowman case, did I? I’d raised too many questions for his liking. As editor and owner of the paper, it’s in his interests to keep in with the police, and neither he nor they liked my pieces hinting at incompetence in their failure to discover the identity of the Snowman – or the few bits I’d managed to get past Butterworth when he was ‘hors de combat’. The police blamed their failure on having had so few clues to work on (which I knew meant none!) and it’s fairly evident they’ve now abandoned all hope of solving the case.

  Harold Butterworth doesn’t really approve of women reporters – he thinks they have a disregard for deadlines, not to mention slipshod grammar, spelling and punctuation. As if the Folbury Herald ever had deadlines, and as if his own grammar, spelling etc. is faultless – even when he’s sober! But men who do have those sort of abilities don’t exactly see the Folbury & District Herald as a stepping stone to Fleet Street, so he has to make do with me and young Ernie, who’s only just left school and can’t be trusted yet to cover anything more than WI meetings and then not always. He’s stuck with me and he thinks I’m stuck with the Herald, which is true, in a way. Well, of course, I’m a woman, I have to take what I can get and be grateful for it, have I not? Especially when there’s something more rewarding in the offing.

  All the same, I have to keep myself thoroughly in hand when he’s around. Be a good girl and eat my porridge. There’ll be plenty of better things than porridge if things go as we plan – and I don’t see why they shouldn’t. I am more than halfway there with Felix.

  And ‘stuck’ really doesn’t cover it, does it? I’m here by choice, after all. It fits in very well, working on this provincial rag. It’s given me the chance to become friendly with Felix by getting involved with that group of his, this WSG, Workers’ Support Group – although it amuses me to know that most of them only tolerate me because I occasionally get the odd article into the national press and they realize they need support of that kind more than ever after the colossal failure of the General Strike last year. They are a joke, really, so pathetic, so amateur. Except perhaps for Mesdames Evans, Trefusis and Barton-Smythe, the ex-suffragists. They can’t ever forget that they fought tooth and nail for the vote, chained themselves to railings, were dragged by the hair to police cells, sent to prison, force fed and all the rest of it. And I dare say they’re prepared to do it again for what they see as a cause – courageous women! They despise the men in the group for what they regard as weakness and I must say I see their point. Most of them seem to have lost the heart for fighting – just when they ought to see it’s more necessary than ever before. But that isn’t my problem, since it’s Felix I’m really interested in, not that rag tag and bobtail lot. And when I say interested, I mean interested, Plum. It need not affect our relationship. Try to remember, darling, why I’m doing this.

  Meanwhile, Arthur Aston, dead in his brass foundry. A second mysterious death, barely six weeks after the discovery of the last is juicy, for Folbury, anyway. Harold Butterworth dithered about letting me cover it, but since he didn’t trust me to ‘hold the fort’ either – i.e. sit in the office in case something turned up – and more likely because he obviously had the mother and father of a hangover, out I was sent. It’s more than time he got a grip on himself. Frank, the old stalwart I replaced, now retired, was seemingly content to jog along in the same old rut, but at the same time it’s quite evident that he’d been carrying Butterworth for years.

  The police have to look carefully into any sudden, unexplained death and they are crawling all over Aston’s foundry, which they would not be if they were certain this death was natural. I attempted to speak to Joe Gilmour, the ginger-haired sergeant on the case, but he was cagey in the extreme. I mean, even more cagey than usual for the police, which makes me think they know something more than they want to reveal. I shall have to tread softly, in more ways than one. I had what amounted to a stiff warning from Butterworth last time. It’s in his interest to keep in with the local police – the inspector, Waterhouse, is one of his Rotary Club cronies – and I can’t afford to put his back up again. No one is, after all, indispensable, and it’s vital that I stay here, isn’t it? And not only for the money … though let’s not forget that by provincial standards, the Herald actually pays surprisingly well, which is a bonus in itself.

  I would like to get to know the Rees-Talbots better, but it’s not easy. The family (and I include their cousin Kay Dysart, the doctor, and their aunt Deborah) are very hospitable and have heaps of friends – Felix sometimes even throws Alma House open for the meetings of the WSG – but at the same time, they’re such a tight-knit family I feel that whatever happens they’ll stick together. When anything goes wrong they close their ranks and don’t let their feelings show; they are so well-mannered and restrained, even Felix, whom his family sees as a revolutionary. Really, he is quite a pussycat compared to the rest of the WSG. The violent feelings ritually sounded off at their meetings would horrify Margaret and Co.

  More as soon as I have anything useful to tell you, darling.

  Five

  Lady Maude, widow of Sir Lancelot Scroope, stuck her finger deep into the soil of a small terracotta plant pot, making room for the last of the geranium cuttings she and Heaviside, her head gardener, had been bringing on. She despised anyone who imagined they could garden without dirtying their hands. As far as she was concerned, a finger made the ideal dibber for these tiny plants.

  Tenderly, she coaxed the sturdy little cutting into the hole and gently teased the loam over the roots before firming it down and placing the pot with those already completed – nearly two hundred – in satisfying rows on the greenhouse bench, ready to plant out in the garden in a few weeks. She had a plan for the large lozenge-shaped flowerbed in front of the drawing room windows – a blaze of massed geraniums, edged with royal blue lobelia and white alyssum, patriotic and cheerful. She and Heaviside were in complete accord: neither had any patience with newfangled schemes that sought to make a garden look like a wishy-washy artist’s palette. Or worse, those dreadful all-white gardens that were said to be the latest thing.

  Her task finished, she rubbed her hands down the hessian gardening apron she never neglected to wear over her dresses – once expensive though now doubtless thought dowdy and old-fashioned, a fact which bothered her not in the least – and poured some tea from the Thermos prepared by Mrs Jenkins for what she called her Ladyship’s ‘e
levenses’, along with a plate of the sweet biscuits she knew Maude loved. Sitting on her stool to drink her tea she began to review the present situation – principally, whether or not it was time to face the disagreeable task of speaking to her son Julian next time he came down to Maxstead.

  Lady Maude was small of stature, but what she lacked in inches she more than made up for in presence. She had commanding bright dark eyes and a way of putting her head a little to one side while she considered how best to deal with people or situations. Sir Lancelot had fondly called her his little sparrow, though in fact, running now to plumpness, she more resembled a purposeful thrush, intent upon the juiciest worm for the next meal.

  She was a capable woman, and after the shock of Sir Lancelot’s death she had taken refuge in attempting to run the estate at Maxstead as he had done, and had found that with the continuing help of their excellent land agent, an ex-army officer, she could do it very well. But Giles Frith had just produced a bombshell. His wife, a domineering Scotswoman, had suddenly found that after twenty-five years away from the grouse moors and glens of her old home, she was homesick for them and nothing would do but that he should accept an offer which had come out of the blue to act as the local laird’s factor. Maude was dismayed, but Frith – who was under his wife’s thumb but proprietary about Maxstead and did not really want to leave – had negotiated terms with the laird that meant he could stay here until someone had been found to replace him.

  Which was all very well, but it would not solve her long-term problems. These were worrying times: increased taxation on land revenues had hit the Scroope finances hard, while the house was showing its age and was in urgent need of attention. Amongst a great number of other things the roof needed drastic repairs: damp was getting in and a horde of squirrels had been found nesting in the attics, and though they’d been summarily dealt with, the basic problem remained. Already, shooting rights and two farms on the estate had been sold off. The pictures and works of art in the house were undistinguished, most of them not worth selling. She couldn’t think of anything else she could do alone – her heart was not strong and she had been warned not to overdo things. Scroope blood did not run in her veins, but she loved Maxstead with a passion. In deference to the memory of Sir Lancelot and for those still living, as well as for future generations, the house and estate must be kept up. It would break her heart if Maxstead were to become an insurmountable burden, especially one unshared. It was time – more than time – that Julian gave her some help and faced up to his responsibilities.

  Julian, now Sir Julian after the death of his father, had never expected to inherit, but so it had turned out after Piers, elder son and heir, had died of wounds sustained at Verdun, giving his life for his country and leaving his mother bereft. Julian was a reluctant heir, seldom down here to see to what was rightfully now his property, preferring to live what Maude considered an aimless life in London – aimless apart from some sort of nondescript job in an art gallery, where she assumed he was valued more for his connections than his knowledge – and quite content to leave Maxstead Court and its concerns to her.

  As if her restless thoughts had communicated themselves to Henry, the old dog at her feet, he woke and opened one eye, not lifting his chin from his paws. He was an ugly old animal of uncertain ancestry, born accidentally to one of Sir Lancelot’s retrievers and kept because Piers had pleaded for him. She snapped a chocolate digestive in two and gave him half, but she didn’t encourage his expectations by giving him more. He had moped and grown suddenly old when Piers left to join the army, but now he was attached to her like an old shambling shadow, looking at her with wounded eyes if she spoke a sharp word to him. She had broken Sir Lancelot’s rule of a lifetime and allowed him to sleep in the house – actually, in her bedroom. Old and decrepit as he was, she found him company.

  Well, Julian …

  Lady Maude was not given to illusions about her son, known as Binkie to everyone except her. Binkie, indeed! But it was the name he had acquired at school and never dropped, since nearly all his present friends and acquaintances were those who had bestowed it on him. A slight man with straw-coloured hair brushed straight back from his forehead, not unhandsome but with a sleepy-eyed look and a mouth from which a cigarette permanently drooped. One never knew what he was thinking. Occasionally, those vacant eyes would sharpen and he would confound her with some disconcerting remark that showed he had after all taken in everything she had been saying, but would then pretend he hadn’t. He wasn’t cut out to be a landowner and frequently said so. Opal, it went without saying, was no help at all.

  Maude poured herself more tea. There was something very deep about Julian that she did not understand, and wished she did. She also wished she could bring herself to like her daughter-in-law.

  Opal was a decorative creature who, if she had any brains at all – which Maude doubted – was not prepared to demonstrate them. Although she had done her duty and given Julian two children, twins who were still little more than babies, and unfortunately girls, she had a silly, self-centred attitude to life and moved in circles her mother-in-law could not bring herself to approve of. She was now Lady Scroope, and it behove her to remember that. It was to be hoped she was not going to go the same way as her mother, who was reputed to have been one of the many favourites of the late King Edward. Maude prided herself on being broad-minded, but to anyone brought up within the strict values and codes of behaviour that were expected in Victoria’s reign, as she had been, the behaviour of the succeeding generation, under the old queen’s popular but licentious son, she considered shocking, conveniently glossing over certain occurrences in her own youth. And the moral conduct of the generation which had come next, still reeling from the conflagration of the Great War, determined to forget and do nothing but enjoy itself was not, in Lady Maude’s opinion, much better, its blatancy in many ways worse.

  Opal! Maude gave vent to what, in anyone else, might have been called a snort. Only last week she had attempted to alleviate her daughter-in-law’s undisguised ennui with the short duty visit she and Julian were making to Maxstead Court, hoping to stir up some spark of interest in her future home by soliciting her help with the geranium cuttings. Opal had raised her plucked eyebrows and given her a blank look of amazement, then yawned, not very discreetly, behind her hand.

  Lady Maude divided people into two classes: those who thought as she did, and those who did not. The first were friends, the others were cast into outer darkness. She knew there were those in this world who did not share her own interests, mainly her overriding delight in gardening, though she was forced to leave most of it to her gardeners through having too many other important things to do. ‘Simply too primitive, all that earthy dedication to seeds and things, Binkie, darling.’ Maude had once overheard Opal make this remark, patting her sleek and shiny golden hair, cut shorter than some men’s, into what they called a shingle, which Maude thought had the effect of making her look as if she wore a metal helmet clamped to her head.

  It was all very disagreeable. How different everything would have been had dearest Piers not been so tragically taken, or had Symon been the second, rather than the youngest son! Symon, who was different in every way from Julian, an ideal heir, who had taken the place of her beloved Piers in his mother’s heart. Then there would have been no question of the Church for him.

  The last thing in the world that Maude had expected was the announcement from Symon that he was to take Holy Orders. Symon, a priest? She had never thought him religious. Could he be serious? He loved Maxstead with the same sort of passion she did herself, with his whole heart and soul, but it would never be his as long as Julian, or any future son of Julian’s, lived. Given his elder brother’s disinterest – antipathy even – to his ancestral home, she had always hoped they might have arrived at some sort of accommodation. But it was not to be. That last stormy quarrel between both her boys had put paid to that, when Symon had accused Julian of abrogating his duty to Maxstead, and Julian
had retaliated with sneers about ‘the parson’ which left Symon white-lipped and looking so dangerous that Julian had backed down, saying Symon was welcome to take on both Maxstead and its responsibilities and see if he could make anything of it. Which he knew, of course, would never happen.

  It had been terrible, with undercurrents between her two sons that Maude hadn’t understood. One did not have such rows in the Scroope family. But neither did one question Symon’s certainties; even as a child he had been single-minded with a streak of stubbornness. When informing her of what he had chosen to do with his life, he had smiled his beautiful, disarming smile and, without discussing his reasons, tried to take the smart out of it for her. ‘After all, the Church has always been the traditional role for younger sons. What else is there?’

  Nevertheless, she had received it quite badly and hadn’t yet recovered. She herself was not of a religious nature. She walked across to morning service at Maxstead church each Sunday, sat in the Scroope pew and enjoyed the hymn-singing; she opened the church fête every year – though she had been wise enough never to have agreed to judge the most beautiful baby competition; and she continued to give as generously as her husband had done to church funds. And that was as far as it went.

  However, if the boy had decided he had a vocation … As with most disagreeable things one could not alter, Maude had instructed herself to be reconciled to it, even if she could not do so as gracefully as she knew she ought. There had after all been Scroopes before who had gone into the Church, second or third sons. Two bishops and even one archbishop. And Symon, she was sure, had the gravitas to attain either position, in time. Meanwhile, he was still a lowly curate, and had further confounded her, soon after his placement to Folbury, by announcing that he had become engaged to be married.

  One of the peacocks appeared on the lawn, a flash of blue trailing its tail feathers arrogantly, like a court debutante. They were a great attraction to visitors at Maxstead, until the night became rent with their shrieks, disrupting sleep, or when they dropped unexpectedly from the trees where they roosted. As she watched, the bird strutted haughtily off. She stared into the space it left behind, several moments that left room for that door in the past to open, something she hardly ever permitted – or had not, until the moment of Symon’s announcement, when it had opened of its own accord.