A Dangerous Deceit

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘But that wouldn’t be half as much fun as living with me, would it? Oh, come on, Maisie,’ he said as she still didn’t answer his question. ‘It isn’t because you don’t want to marry me, is it?’

  She turned her face towards him, suddenly full of laughter. ‘If you don’t know the answer to that by now, Joe Gilmour, you’re not going to make much of a detective.’

  Margaret looked around for a more comfortable seat but there were none out here in the garden – and precious few indoors either, at Maxstead, she thought, with a half laugh. It was such an uncomfortable house it was difficult to understand Lady Maude’s passion for it. Perhaps one should try to see it as she did, not as a burden but as an unchanging testimony to a long and honourable family tradition. Yet how could you do that, and not feel that losing it was a personal tragedy?

  Overnight, Symon’s mother had turned into a grey shadow of herself, a woman of fifty who looked seventy. She was occasionally breathless when she spoke, and much less like a plump thrush now. She had a deflated look, almost as if the will which had kept her going had departed, sucking air from her body with it.

  It was the sort of subdued, grey day which induced such depressing thoughts. It might rain, or the sun might break through, she thought, as she watched Heaviside and the garden boy busy planting geraniums. A day that encouraged heightened moods, a day much like the one on the day of the fire.

  The shattering events of that one day were constantly with her. Not only the fire, but what had come before and after it: the revelations about her father – most of all, that – and the paralysing fear that had so suddenly come to her, that Felix might have known more than she thought and taken his resentment to an extreme not to be thought about. And then, Vinnie …

  Vinnie. Vinnie and that girl, Judy. What was to happen to them following the revelations of the two murders wasn’t clear, but afterwards …? Felix and Judy … The way he was sticking up for her. ‘That won’t last,’ she’d told Symon, though more in hope than conviction.

  ‘Probably. But that’s Felix’s worry, not yours. Isn’t it, Margaret?’

  He was right of course, and she had resolved she wouldn’t interfere, that Felix was as he was. She expected too much of people, as she had of her father. If you put someone on a pedestal, they were bound to topple sooner or later. It was something she had to cope with on her own. Symon had been the rock she had leant on, but he had more than enough to cope with in other directions, and Binkie, typically, was being no help.

  The fire had not been as bad as it might have been, all things considered – bad enough, but by no means a complete disaster. They had fearfully watched it taking hold, envisaging the whole of Maxstead going up in flames, powerless to do anything about it, praying for either the fire engine to arrive from Folbury, or the miracle of rain. In the event, the fire engine arrived within half an hour and the rain not at all. It had been due to the combined efforts of her uncle and Major Frith, organizing with military efficiency a chain of buckets and hoses from the large pond, that the flames hadn’t spread any further.

  The snug had been completely gutted, the floor above was presently unsafe, but where it had spread out into the hall it had amounted to little more than the loss of a few of the ancient hangings and a good deal of scorched and ruined panelling. It had left a grey, greasy residue like some scabrous disease over everything and the sour, acrid odour pervaded the entire house. Many of the gloomy ancestral portraits of men and women who had played their undistinguished but worthy part in its history were now unrecognizable, but they hadn’t been destroyed. Like Maxstead Court itself, they would survive.

  Symon and his mother were talking and viewing the damage when she went in – or rather Maude was talking and Symon was listening, with a brooding look on his face. Margaret took a seat nearby, next to the narrow window by to the door.

  ‘Confounded electrics!’ he commented when Maude eventually came to a halt.

  She sighed. After a moment, she said, ‘No, my dear, it wasn’t the electrics. Well, it might have been but I don’t think it was. You see, just before you arrived, I’d been working on the kitchen accounts in the snug, and the day being so dark I’d had the oil lamp lit – the one on the tall stand, you know? When I left the room, old Henry followed. He’s so blind he’s always bumping into things and I thought I heard something, though I wasn’t sure. I was in a hurry and didn’t go back to find out. If I had, all this might have been avoided. It was all my fault. I simply can’t remember whether I turned the lamp off or not—’

  ‘What time did you leave the snug?’

  ‘Oh, just before luncheon, I don’t remember the exact time.’

  ‘Then it couldn’t have been the lamp that started it. It wouldn’t have taken all that time for the fire to get such a hold. It must have been an electrical fault.’

  ‘Must it?’ The relief that spread across her face seemed out of all proportion, but he understood it when she said, triumphantly, ‘Well, of course – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Electricity! Nothing but a fad. What is wrong with a good old-fashioned lamp? Kinder, too.’

  ‘But not always safer, Ma.’

  Symon exchanged a gratified look with Margaret, acknowledging that Lady Maude, despite the dubious logic, was already sounding – and even looking – more like herself as a smile spread across her face. She almost seemed prepared to argue Symon’s point, but then changed her mind, though she had clearly not given in entirely. ‘Yes, well. Perhaps when we have had the snug – and the rest of it – redone, we should place the lamp in a less vulnerable position.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘That’s not the answer, long term. It’s time we faced practicalities.’

  For a long time, she said nothing, searching his face, and then she stumped across to where Margaret sat near the doorway and seated herself in a curious, red leather hooded chair, once a seat for servants who kept watch over the door. It had escaped the worst of the effects of the fire and had been one of the things to be properly cleaned up, its cushion replaced. Her face, hidden in the depths of the hood, couldn’t be seen. ‘You’ve come round to Julian’s way of thinking. You think a little fire like this will mean the end of Maxstead, don’t you?’

  ‘For the Scroopes, perhaps yes. Maybe it’s time. But dearest Ma, there is life beyond Maxstead.’

  ‘Life at The Bothy I suppose you mean?’

  ‘Only if that’s what you consent to.’

  There was silence from inside the chair but then she inched herself forward so that she could look around. Her gaze wandered from one to another of the blackened portraits hanging mournfully above the scorched panelling, faces water-streaked as if they were grieving for the grandeur that had once been Maxstead’s. ‘Blasphemous fables,’ she murmured at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dangerous deceits and blasphemous fables. False pride. Isn’t that what your articles of religion preach against?’

  ‘Ma,’ Symon replied, choking back a laugh, ‘You’re astonishing, sometimes. But you’ve got it all wrong. What you’ve just quoted has nothing to do with pride. It refers to the sacrifices of the Mass.’

  ‘Pooh! Well, the Scroopes have never been short on pride, false or otherwise, and I am about to astonish you more. Margaret, my dear, stop gazing out of the window and come over here and listen to what I have to say.’

  Margaret hid her smile, did as she was bid and stood by the chair. ‘It may surprise you both to know that I have been thinking, long and hard, about what’s going to happen here. Let us face facts and agree that there is no possible way Julian could ever be considered a fit custodian of Maxstead – even if he could be brought to consent to such. But he has at least made a decision, and perhaps for once in his life it’s the right one.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘We should talk about The Bothy, and what will happen when Frith goes. I’ve given it a great deal of thought and I believe it might be possible that the house
could be made presentable … with some of the furniture from here, that is. As for its garden! I can make something better of it. That woman Ailsa Frith has never taken to it and it’s a perfect disgrace, the way she’s let it grow wild. She’ll be much more at home amongst the heather and the thistles.’

  The contrast of the seedling foxgloves and delicate ferns, the pale primroses and other woodland plants that had drifted from the surrounding woods into the garden of The Bothy, and the scarlet geraniums Heaviside was even now planting outside Maxstead’s front door made Margaret blanch a little, but her Ladyship was in full command once more.

  ‘What an opportunity! You and Margaret, Symon, shall come with me to inspect it and see if you don’t agree. Now, I think, don’t you?’