The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  Longton came in with a cup of tea and placed the thick white mug on the desk. It would be strong, as Reardon liked it, but there would be too much sugar in it. Longton was incapable of understanding that not everyone liked their tea as he did. ‘I take it you brought this in, George?’ Reardon asked him, holding up the envelope.

  ‘Miss Catherall asked me to give it you.’

  ‘And you put it on my desk.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sounded surprised at the accusing note.

  Where someone else had dumped more papers on top of it. Just as well Reardon had had a stab of conscience about them. It could have lain there for another week, gaining more layers each day. ‘All right, thanks. But next time you’re asked to give me something,’ he said, giving the constable a look, ‘hand it to me personally, right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Looking pained, as only Longton could, he left the office.

  The handwriting on the envelope was immediately recognizable. Small, spiky, upright, an unfamiliar style that wasn’t easy to read. The same as on that letter he’d asked Phoebe Catherall about. Tante Mathilde’s handwriting.

  But it wasn’t the unknown Tante Mathilde who was writing to him. The letter was from Phoebe herself, the handwriting only similar because it was French in style.

  She was writing this, she explained, because she feared she would be too emotional when faced with him to be as clear as she ought to be. He raised an eyebrow. He had been très sympathique when they spoke, she went on, and hoped he would forgive her, but it was easier to put difficult words on to paper than to speak personally.

  This was, of course, her way of avoiding direct confrontation. She was prepared to communicate, but she was setting her own boundaries. At least it was one better than keeping her face turned to the wall.

  ‘I will be honest with you because I feel I may have given the wrong impression of my relationship with Isabelle and I would not like you to think that I didn’t love her very dearly.

  ‘I think I must start by telling you how I met Edith once more after so many years, as what transpired then only happened because I was, I have to confess, at a very low point, very dissatisfied with my life. England had drawn me here but I had not found what I had expected. I had hoped it might somehow change my life, but after I had been here some time, I could still see no bright future for myself. Yet what was there for me back in France? A spinster, untrained for anything except to play the piano, though not with anything much more than average competence? And then came the meeting with Edith that I thought would change my life. As it has done, though hardly in the way I expected, or wanted.

  ‘I had already written to my dear Tante Mathilde and to Isabelle to tell them I was coming home. I had never told either of them that I had hoped my visit to England would be permanent, and Mathilde had been writing continually to ask me when I would be returning. So of course she was delighted at the prospect of having me home at last. But now I had to write and tell them both that my plans had changed. I was sure they would be pleased that Edith and I had made contact again and that she had given me a position in her school.

  ‘Mathilde is not well now and had so looked forward to us being together again, and she was sad and disappointed that it was not going to happen. I was sad too, I hated to disappoint her, but I promised I would visit, as soon as the school holidays permitted.

  ‘Isabelle’s response to my news, however, astonished me. She came straight over to England to see me herself, though not to persuade me to change my mind, as I had first thought. She confessed herself delighted that I now had the position with Edith, and she was very happy to hear of her good fortune at becoming headmistress of her own school. I had planned various things she and I could do together before I started work at the beginning of the new term. When she arrived, we met briefly, but after that she wanted to be off on her own pursuits, whatever they might be. Secretive as ever.

  ‘I think you may have guessed now that I was perhaps a little jealous of Isabelle, just a little. I am sorry for it now, that I shall never be able to make up for it. It wasn’t only her clothes and her glamorous Parisian lifestyle. It was more that, although I was my father’s only child, she had always been his favourite, ever since Mathilde brought her to live with us when she was only a year old. In comparison with her I was plain and rather dull, nor could I share his only interest, his lifelong preoccupation with writing that life of Napoleon, his hero. Whereas Isabelle did, or pretended to. She even named her cat Napoleon to please him, although when she found out the Little Corporal had been mortally afraid of cats (a weakness he always tried to hide), she laughed and said she was sure he would be beaucoup amusé by the idea of having one named after him, wherever he was now. My father’s pet name for her was Minou.

  ‘She had been very enthusiastic about the three of us meeting again – Edith, herself and me. When she arrived, I arranged to meet her in the hotel where she was staying. I felt she might despise the modest lodgings where I’d ended up if I asked her to visit me there, although they were quiet and decent and neither I nor my landlady, Mrs Cooper, had anything to be ashamed of. But it was the sort of place which would have caused Isabelle to raise her elegant eyebrows. She would see that I had made a poor job of looking out for myself, as she used to put it, and she always despised anyone who couldn’t do that. I think now that she saw the truth as soon as we met, although she didn’t say so. Over a very English tea of scones and jam, she wanted to know all about Edith’s good fortune, and was eager to meet her, but she said there were things she had to do first. She didn’t say what they were and I didn’t ask. As I said, Isabelle had a passion for keeping things to herself.

  ‘It wasn’t until later, after we had made that arrangement to change places, that I found out what she had been doing, but by then it was too late. The letter had already gone to Edith about my “illness” and my suggestion that Isabelle should replace me before that man Liptrott chose to visit me at Mrs Cooper’s house. He said he had come to make sure I went through with the scheme, that I wouldn’t suddenly get cold feet and feel obliged to give the game away. He tried to threaten me with what would happen if I did. Vague threats but nonetheless alarming. He is rather a stupid man, Newman Liptrott, although he doesn’t think himself so, and I was surprised Isabelle trusted him. I could only believe that her hopes at what would transpire from including him in this exploit overwhelmed her common sense. And it turned out he was half right. Had I known what they were planning, I would never have agreed.

  ‘I was already bitterly regretting having told Isabelle about the money with which Edith had been able to start her school. She had wanted to know all the details, and now I know where she had gone, and that she had found out where the money had come from, and why, and that she had ferreted around until she was led to Liptrott, who was already making Edith’s life a misery with his demands for what he considered his share of the money.

  ‘I didn’t know what was happening then, but I was already feeling I had got myself into a frightening situation and I couldn’t see my way out of it. I went home, back to Mathilde, leaving Isabelle to take up the position at Maxstead. She promised to keep me informed, but when she didn’t write, I wrote to her at an address she had given me in Folbury. No replies came and that worried me, so I came back three days ago and went straight there, to Melia Street, to see what was happening. And that was when I heard the terrible news. I couldn’t go back to Mathilde again until I knew the truth of how and why Isabelle had died. Liptrott said he would help me, and meanwhile I could stay there. And then he disappeared. I was there on my own until you found me.’

  SIXTEEN

  Reardon’s motorbike stuttered to a stop behind the school. He parked, dismounted and removed his goggles, divested himself of his leathers, his heavy coat and helmet and made his way towards the school door and Miss Hillyard’s study, taking his time. He’d become familiar with school routines and knew that this was the time, after breakfast and before lessons began, when the bel
l rang for the girls to assemble in the school hall for morning prayers, hymns and the day’s notices, and he was surprised to see they were still hanging around in disorganized groups outside. They seemed cheerfully normal and looked happy enough, however, and made the disagreeable effect Maxstead was increasingly having on him seem ridiculous, as did the unwelcome, recurring thought that he was beginning not to like the idea of Ellen working here very much. Wasn’t it something of a hothouse, a closed community of possibly neurotic women, with secrets and passions under the surface, resentments, jealousies, that couldn’t be particularly healthy? He tried to laugh it off now. He was the one who was being neurotic. Ellen was showing more enthusiasm for her day’s work than she’d shown towards anything for a very long time.

  Inside, he passed the hall which had been created by knocking together two of the large reception rooms of the old house, and saw the double doors were open wide, and the hall empty. He wondered what had happened to Assembly.

  Miss Hillyard didn’t respond to his knock. The door was ajar and her study empty. Curiouser and curiouser. He left the building and went outside again. The morning was still fresh, before the sun gained strength for what promised to be yet another hot day. This weather couldn’t last. He was passing the music room, near the tennis courts, when he became aware of some sort of noisy commotion coming from the direction of the lake and the woods behind it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He’d come to know by now that this sort of to-do at Maxstead was all too likely to signal disaster. He sprinted across.

  This time the fuss was centred on the lake, where a knot of hysterical women – seeming at first to be made up of every teacher in the school, including his wife, whose day it was here – milled around, but the crowd parted like the waters of the Red Sea to let him through to where Matron and Miss Hillyard were kneeling by the body.

  He was forcibly reminded of another young female he had seen fished from a lake several years ago. Except that this one, contrary to first impressions, wasn’t dead. Jocasta Keith was still of this world. Miss Cash was there too, also very much alive, also fully clothed and equally soaked to the skin.

  The rest of the staff were flapping around her, clucking like a group of mother hens. She had, it appeared, arrived for her daily swim just in time to save Miss Keith from drowning. He let them carry on with their fussing, keeping his ears open, and after a while managed to get some idea of what had happened. Daphne Cash, it seemed, had seen what was happening when she arrived at the lake and – with commendable good sense – had immediately used her games whistle before plunging into the water. It had been heard by one of the daily maids using the short cut through the woods from the village to get to her work here, and she had lost no time in running for assistance. Miss Draper had been the first to arrive on the scene, and it was she who had then hurried back to the school to ring for an ambulance.

  ‘You all right, love?’ Reardon found time to ask Ellen.

  ‘Yes, of course; it’s Miss Draper I’m worried about.’

  Together, they walked across to where she was sitting, a little apart from the knot of people at the water’s edge. She had returned to the scene at the lake once more after making her telephone call, and was now uncomfortably perched on one of the large mossy rocks, some way from the pool, her breathing laboured, her head down. She looked up as they approached. She looked dreadful. ‘Shouldn’t have run like that … had my pill though … my stupid ticker, you know … be all right soon.’

  Reardon and Ellen exchanged glances. What had she been thinking of, rushing around when she had a bad heart? It was only by good luck she hadn’t added to the emergency. But even as they stood there, it seemed that her medication was indeed working: her lips were looking less bluish; her colour was coming back to normal.

  He left Ellen to stay and keep an eye on her and went back to the others. Suddenly, amid all the talk of stretchers and ambulances and who was to fetch the canvas wheelchair that was kept in the sick bay for emergencies, Miss Keith was sitting up, protesting that she could walk, thank you very much, and what was all the fuss about? She wasn’t going into any hospital.

  ‘Of course you are, goodness knows what you’ve swallowed,’ Matron retorted, in a dark reference to the possible proximity of the lake to soakaways for septic tanks, a disagreeable necessity of life in country villages far from town amenities, and which Maxstead Court was sure to have.

  ‘Oh, rats to that!’ came from Miss Cash. ‘The water’s quite safe.’

  Matron bridled, while Jocasta repeated through chattering teeth, ‘I didn’t swallow any water and I don’t need an ambulance. I’m not about to die.’ It didn’t appear that she was and, though she was shaking and her voice croaked, it seemed to be more from shock than anything, and it didn’t prevent her from glaring at Miss Cash and managing to say once again, ‘I just fell in. I can swim and I wasn’t in any danger at all.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, but it’s hospital for you all the same, Miss Keith,’ Matron replied implacably. She ignored the games mistress, stung by her previous remark. If Miss Cash wanted to take the daily risk of swimming there, that was her funeral – and probably would be, her look said.

  Miss Hillyard intervened. ‘The ambulance people will decide what’s necessary when they arrive with the doctor. They should be here soon.’

  Jocasta Keith said crossly, ‘What a ridiculous fuss over a fall!’

  Fallen, had she? Then why was she shoeless, and what was that pair of fashionable, high-heeled, lizard-skin shoes, totally unsuitable for walking in the woods, doing neatly placed together at the side of the pool?

  She tried to struggle to her feet, but halfway there she swayed, and no one was in time to catch her before she fell forward in a faint, which seemed to settle any arguments about hospital, no matter that she came round almost immediately.

  In the end, they managed to get the two women over to the school. Miss Keith was installed in the wheelchair and this time made no protest, while Daphne Cash stalked across on her own two feet, plimsolls squelching. Presently the ambulance arrived and Reardon was pleased to see the doctor accompanying it was Kay Dysart, who told him she had been doing emergency duties at the cottage hospital when it was called out. After a brief examination, Miss Keith was summarily lifted into the ambulance on her instructions. ‘She needs to be checked over, no arguments,’ she said firmly.

  ‘What about Miss Cash?’ Reardon asked.

  ‘She refuses to go, and I dare say it’ll take more than that to hurt her, especially as she swims there every day. It’s not contaminated water I’m afraid of. Miss Keith fainted because she probably bumped her head when she went in. She has a sizeable bump and she ought to be looked over.’ She appeared to be about to say more, but then changed her mind and hurried into the ambulance after her patient.

  Matron had decided to ignore the games mistress’s previous declaration that she was all right, and between them she and Miss Hillyard almost frogmarched her into the sick bay. A few minutes later, Reardon followed.

  Matron’s province comprised a few rooms with three single beds in each, and others where girls could be isolated if any infectious disease was suspected, plus a bigger room, where she had cupboards in which she kept first-aid kits and medicines. It also held a doctor’s couch, a stand-on weighing machine, and a strong smell of disinfectant.

  Here Reardon found Daphne Cash. He had grown accustomed to seeing her bouncing around the place in that well-filled gymslip, but now, divested of her wet clothes and bundled into warm blankets, she presented a very different picture.

  She allegedly swam in the little lake every day, and he would have expected her to have towelled herself off briskly by now and be regarding her fully clothed swim and the rescue of her colleague as all in a day’s work. But here she was, huddled in a basket chair, with a hot-water bottle at her feet. Inside the blankets, the pneumatic Miss Cash looked oddly deflated, with no apologies for the word. She was drying off, but she was pale, an
d she had her hands clasped around a cup of steaming tea which had evidently replaced the cold one standing untouched on the table beside her, but she wasn’t drinking from that, either.

  ‘Drink your tea, dear,’ Matron urged. ‘I’ve put plenty of sugar in it.’

  ‘I don’t take sugar.’

  ‘A hot drink will help you feel warmer, all the same. Drink up, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘I’m not cold.’

  ‘Shocked, though,’ said Matron unarguably as she left them. Miss Cash took a sip of the tea.

  Reardon said, ‘It’s been a nasty experience, but if you can bring yourself to tell me what happened.’

  ‘I didn’t see her at first. I went towards the boathouse to change and I saw her. I don’t know what made me look.’

  ‘So you jumped straight in.’

  ‘You don’t stop to change into your swimsuit before you try to save someone!’ she retorted, some of her pep coming back. ‘Jocasta Keith was fully dressed and, in spite of what she says, she must have been in danger.’ Her indignation was evident, but he was amazed to see she didn’t seem far off tears. She’d been badly shaken by the episode, more than he would have expected of her. Shaken, or maybe humiliated at having been thought to have made such a mistake.

  ‘You’re a brave woman, Miss Cash.’ And he meant it. Not many women would have done what she’d done. He might even forgive her the gymslip.

  ‘There was someone else there before me,’ she said suddenly. ‘I didn’t see anyone but I heard someone crashing through the woods, running away. I don’t think she fell in at all, I think she was – well, I think she was pushed.’

  ‘Pushed? Are you sure about that, Miss Cash?’

  ‘I’m not given to much imagination, Inspector,’ she said tartly, as if that were an asset, daring him to contradict. ‘I know what I heard. It was someone running away.’