The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  It was a vile and ugly end to a life, but although the state of the body when he’d first seen it hadn’t left much room to speculate on whether she’d been beautiful or ugly, an impression had been set up in his mind of a woman who had once been attractive in appearance. Small and slim, five foot three at the most, he guessed, with that mass of auburn hair which had made her immediately identifiable.

  When she died she’d had on a light coat over her dress, but no hat, and what might once have been a smart but plainly cut dress in a material he’d been told was cloqué, in a colour he couldn’t identify but was sure to have some sort of fancy name; greyish-brown, reminding him of the fur of a mole. The sort of dress Ellen might have described as understated. What the French called chic? Her underwear, too, had made him think: a matching slip and French knickers in delicate eau-de-nil silk crepe de Chine, trimmed with coffee-coloured lace.

  The elegance of her clothes suggested she might even have been dressed for an evening out. Except for the shoes, which certainly gave pause for thought. They looked very odd indeed with the rest of the outfit – sturdy, even clumsy, brown leather brogues with a fringed flap. And more, striking the wrong note even to Reardon, to whom fashion was a closed book he never even tried to open, was a small diamanté brooch in the form of a spitting cat in profile, with a red glass eye, pinned to the shoulder of her dress. He turned it over. It looked tawdry in the bright daylight, as if it might have come from Woolworth’s.

  He picked up the torch that had come from her pocket. Thrust in so hard it had split the seam open a little. It wouldn’t have been much good, since the battery was flat. But carrying a torch at all suggested it had been dark when she entered that building and met her death.

  Who was she? How did she and Phoebe Catherall know each other? Moreover – another constant niggle – where was Phoebe now?

  The telephone rang. Coming at that particular moment, as if tallying with what he’d just been mulling over, it was the doctor, Kay Dysart on the other end.

  ‘We have the results of the PM,’ she told him. ‘Dr Rossiter will be sending it in shortly, but I thought you would like to know now.’

  She’d anticipated his impatience to know before the pathologist’s written report came through, and although it didn’t seem likely that anything would have emerged to contradict her original opinions, he thanked her for the forethought.

  ‘You’re welcome. I know you’re always anxious for the results the day before yesterday.’ She gave him a short summary of the report, which did indeed confirm her own first findings. Only what might have been expected – injuries consistent with falling from a high building, and severe enough to have caused death almost instantaneously. And rather more details than he wanted to know about the horrific damage resulting from landing face down on that treacherous rubble.

  ‘There was nothing to indicate she’d been pushed? Bruises or anything?’

  ‘We got to her too late for anything like that to show, I’m afraid.’

  A silence fell between them. They were both accustomed to death, violent or otherwise. He couldn’t know how doctors felt about that, but it was something he’d never got used to, and hoped he never would. You wouldn’t want to, unless you were completely insensitive. The silence prolonged itself for so long he thought they’d been cut off. ‘Hello?’

  ‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘Your Mlle Blanchard was about three months pregnant when she died.’

  He hadn’t expected that. It gave him a nasty jolt, especially since the likelihood hadn’t even occurred to him, when he told himself it should have done, given her age and her sudden departure from Maxstead. He’d been puzzling over reasons for her to have left, when a pretty obvious possibility had been there under his nose. A young woman, unmarried, finding herself pregnant in those circumstances, it would have rendered her situation there impossible. What else was she to do? Except leave, as fast as she could?

  ‘She wouldn’t be the first to take her own life in that sort of situation,’ Dysart said, sounding tired.

  Was it likely she was having second thoughts, coming round to the idea that suicide might have been possible, after all? That Isabelle Blanchard had jumped from that door? On to that terrible pile of rubble? ‘That’s true, I suppose, and she won’t be the last,’ he said, ‘but I’m finding it hard to accept that she jumped, given the facts.’

  For, even if by some chance she had actually done so, someone must still have been with her. Someone who had reason not to want her secret to come out, who’d hidden her body and banked on her not being found for some time. The door had been fixed for the same reason, so that the body might not soon be found. Not everyone was aware of post-mortem procedures, or that an early foetus might still be detected after so long, and he didn’t give the notion of suicide much credibility. ‘If she had wanted to kill herself, Doctor, why come back to Maxstead to do it?’

  ‘No ideas from me; you’re the detective,’ Dysart said, after a pause. She had sounded quite cheerful when they first began to speak, but now she was sad. Sad for another woman, a sister. Imagining herself in the same situation, maybe, empathizing. ‘Find the one responsible for making her pregnant and I guess you’ve found her killer,’ she said flatly. ‘Killer in one way or another.’

  He saw what she meant.

  ‘One other thing,’ she said before she terminated the call. ‘Her underwear.’

  He thought back to the report he’d just been reading. Green silk and lace-trimmed. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I don’t know whether this might or might not be relevant, but it was hand-made.’

  ‘She made it herself, you mean?’

  ‘Hand-made in a professional way, if that makes sense. Exquisitely stitched. She could have sewn it herself, of course, but if not, there’s a certain cachet in having your lingerie made and embroidered for you, personalized with your name or initials, which this was. Expensive, that goes without saying. I believe it isn’t unknown for nuns to make money for their convents by doing that sort of sewing sometimes.’

  Nuns? Now there was a thought.

  He sat twiddling a pencil after the connection was broken, deep in thought. This new development opened up a whole new field of speculation; not only did they now have a believable explanation of why Isabelle Blanchard might have left the school so precipitately, but also a possible motive for her murder – if an association with anyone likely to be responsible for making her pregnant could be found. Here at Maxfield? Men were distinctly short on the ground in this environment. So far, only old Heaviside, who could hardly be counted, though stranger things happened. And Michael Deegan, who had said he’d known Mlle Blanchard only slightly.

  He learnt from Miss Hillyard that Deegan was living in the house in Folbury which his late employer had owned, and summoned Gilmour to go with him. He decided not to telephone to make sure he would be at home when they called, but to take a chance on it. ‘Let’s surprise him.’

  The house was situated in a short street just off Folbury’s main shopping thoroughfare, a once busy but now quieter and less prestigious area than it had been, at a time when the bigwigs of the town had originally chosen to have houses built there for themselves. As the years had gone by and modern Folbury’s businesses grew and expanded, as traffic increased and the town became noisier, the greener, quieter suburbs had come to have more appeal and the properties here had slid into a gentle, graceful decline. Most of them now looked as though they could do with a facelift. The house where Deegan was living, however, stood out from the others, its tiny front garden neat as a pin and its paintwork pristine, a demonstration to the world, if anyone was interested, of its late owner’s evident competence as a builder and decorator.

  As they mounted the steps and rang the bell, it struck Reardon as a slightly creepy notion that Deegan should occupy the dead man’s house as well as hoping to take over his business. Besides, all Broderick’s assets had been liquidated, hadn’t they? So the house must have b
een sold along with everything else, and when Reardon had first seen him, Deegan had given him to understand that he was having trouble scraping up enough money to restart the business. How then had he been able to afford to buy the house? It was true that the recession meant that property was going absurdly cheap, but it didn’t quite tie up with what Deegan had said, and his obvious need for money.

  The man himself answered the door, and if the element of surprise was the object, they had succeeded. He was visibly taken aback at the sight of them, possibly disconcerted by his own dishevelled appearance – hair all over the place, a collarless shirt with sleeves rolled up, flannel bags held up by braces. None of which upheld the image of the smart businessman he had been anxious to project when he and Reardon had first met; less smooth altogether, but at the same time slightly disarming.

  He led the way into a bay-windowed front room, carpetless and unfurnished except for an empty bookcase and three chairs, apologizing as he waved them to two of them, armchairs which were patently past their best, and took the remaining seat, a straight, hard kitchen chair, for himself. He seemed embarrassed enough to believe an explanation was called for, and grinned ruefully as he gave it. ‘Suits me to park myself here for the time being. I’m just renting the house from someone who bought it as a spec, until he can resell it when times improve. If I get the business on its feet again, as I hope, he’s agreed to resell it to me. I plan to live here and use the place as business premises again, just as Frank did.’

  Fair enough.

  Reardon wasted no time in getting to the point of their visit, and began by telling him straight out what the post mortem had revealed. The effect was more than he’d bargained for. The voluble Deegan was rendered speechless. He turned ashen and dropped his head into his hands. Over his bent head, the eyes of Reardon and his sergeant met. There was little doubt that the shock was genuine, but he was decidedly more shocked at the pregnancy than he had been at the news of her murder.

  As well he might be. He’d obviously been lying when he said his acquaintance with Isabelle Blanchard was slight. But even if he was only guilty of nothing more than making her pregnant, Deegan – Irish, and probably Catholic, lapsed or not – might well be facing a lifetime of remorse and repentance. He couldn’t escape the fact that this was now a double murder – Isabelle and her unborn child.

  At last he found his voice. When Reardon asked him if he had formed a relationship with the dead woman, he made no attempt to deny it. Was this because he was still so shocked to find out that she had been pregnant – or because he knew he’d been found out in a lie, and denial was useless? He had also been the last of the builders to leave the site at Maxstead and, despite his assurances about the safety of that door, he must realize that he was well in the frame for the crime, now that the truth of his connection with Isabelle had emerged. ‘Yes, we had come to know each other,’ he admitted.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

  Deegan shied away from that. ‘I didn’t think it mattered. We were never close.’

  Gilmour shifted on his chair and gave him a hard look that said, Close enough to get her pregnant. His sergeant usually saw three sides to every question, especially where women were concerned. It could be bloody annoying, as Reardon found now when, treading where angels feared even to put a toe down, he pressed on, incredulously: ‘She hadn’t seen fit to tell you why she was leaving, then?’

  ‘No,’ Deegan said, bridling and flushing a dark red. ‘I had no idea. But look here, Sergeant, I hope you’re not implying that I … that I killed her.’

  Reardon decided intervention was called for. Putting the man’s back up wasn’t going to get them anywhere. ‘Where was she planning to go when she left, Mr Deegan?’ He mumbled something Reardon didn’t catch. ‘Speak up.’

  ‘I drove her to the station in Folbury. She was on her way to see that friend in Moseley who was in hospital, the one she’d replaced. I offered to drive her there, but she didn’t want that. I left her waiting for the Birmingham train.’

  ‘But you didn’t see her get on it?’ Gilmour asked. The fact that she’d said she was travelling to Birmingham didn’t mean she had. There was no shortage of trains from Folbury to destinations all over the Midlands, and further possible connections. She could have gone anywhere.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  There was a silence. ‘Tell me what you know about Miss Blanchard,’ Reardon said. ‘You’ve obviously spent some time with her. Getting to know each other, talking about yourselves, as people do. She must have said where she came from, why she took up the position at Maxstead.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And you weren’t curious?’

  ‘She used to say she wasn’t interested in the past. It was only the present that mattered. I didn’t press the point because I had the impression that she hadn’t had a particularly happy childhood, though that was guesswork on my part. She wasn’t easy to read, Isabelle. All I know is she’d lived in France all her life – until she came over to England – and she’d met that Phoebe woman there, when they were children. In fact, I think she stayed with her and her mother in Moseley until she came here to teach. That must have been where she planned to stay, after she’d visited the hospital.’

  Gilmour soon disabused him. ‘She never stayed at Miss Catherall’s home, and she’s not there now. Neither is Miss Catherall.’

  ‘Well, it’s likely she’s still in hospital, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m afraid that was a story cooked up between the two of them, so that Isabelle could come here. We don’t know where Miss Catherall is.’

  This was getting too much for Deegan. He looked bewildered. ‘Why would they do that? And you’re saying Phoebe Catherall’s disappeared?’ In a flash, calculation replaced confusion. ‘Maybe she’s gone for a good reason. You should be looking for her. Maybe she was the one who—’

  Was he really trying to believe that? That Phoebe Catherall might have killed Isabelle Blanchard? An idea so far out it hadn’t even crossed anyone else’s mind? The way the enquiry was going, and if nothing better turned up, perhaps it would come down to that in the end, but they weren’t there yet. ‘Oh, I think you can do better than that, Mr Deegan. Like telling us more about Isabelle Blanchard, what sort of person she really was. Apart from being the sort who didn’t wish to talk about herself.’

  Colour was returning to his cheeks and, though he still looked devastated, he appeared to be recovering himself and giving out signs he was anxious to help. ‘She was lovely, wasn’t she?’ he began. ‘Lovely to look at, I mean.’

  ‘We wouldn’t know that,’ Gilmour said.

  ‘What? Oh God, no.’

  Fortunately the sarcasm had slid off Deegan, who said suddenly, ‘Tell you what, I found a photograph of her the other day. Hang on and I’ll fetch it.’

  ‘Please do.’

  He sloped off and left them in the bare, comfortless room and they heard him clattering along the ceramic-tiled passageway that led to the rear premises, as if glad of some action, or maybe escape.

  ‘Amassing quite a rogue’s gallery, one way or another, aren’t we?’ Gilmour remarked, no doubt thinking of the last photo they’d examined, that of Phoebe Catherall.

  ‘Go easy on him, Joe. He’s had a shock, and he’s being co-operative.’ Perhaps it was suiting him to be.

  Deegan at that moment came back with a small snapshot in his hand. ‘Frank – Mr Broderick – had a box Brownie for taking pictures of work he’d done – to show clients, you know. There was a roll of film in it when he died and I had it developed. He wouldn’t have kept this one, though, because it was no good – useless for what he wanted it for anyway.’ He handed it over and Reardon saw what he meant.

  It was evidently spoilt in the sense for which it had been intended. A few inches square, it showed a view of the reconstructed wing at Maxstead. But the work it was meant to display was obscured by the woman who had evidently stepped into the picture just as it
was being shot, and ruined it.

  So this was Isabelle Blanchard. Looking at it carefully, Reardon decided her beauty was in the eye of the beholder, Deegan in this case. She was a good-looking woman, that was true, smiling as she held a black and white kitten close to her face, but attractive, or perhaps striking, rather than lovely, would have been his choice of adjective. There was something instantly, recognizably feline about her. He wondered if anyone else had noticed the triangular shape of her face, the almond-shaped eyes, and how much she and the kitten resembled one another.

  ‘She loved cats. The kitchen moggy at Maxstead had kittens. This was the prettiest and she pleaded for it to be saved from being drowned with the rest of the litter. She called him Napoleon. Bonaparte was her hero.’

  Reardon thought it best not to comment on that. Some heroes these women teachers had! First Rupert of the Rhine, now Bonaparte. Was it something in the water at Maxstead?

  ‘I hope they’re looking after him, Napoleon, I mean,’ Deegan said sadly. Fetching the photograph had temporarily diverted him from the main purpose of their visit, but now his dejection returned. ‘It would have upset her if they’re not.’

  ‘She was wearing a little diamanté cat brooch when she was found,’ Reardon said. ‘Did you give it to her?’

  ‘A what? No, I didn’t. Maybe one of the girls did. They used to give her chocolates and things, sometimes.’