The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Too right.’

  Gilmour was already there. ‘In my office, Joe, all right?’ Reardon said. ‘And bring some tea in with you, please.’

  Five minutes later, Gilmour shouldered the door open wider, two mugs in his hand, and kicked it to behind him.

  ‘For God’s sake leave it open.’ The window opposite was wide to allow for a notional passage of air, and it wasn’t making much difference, but anything helped. ‘Sit down, Joe.’

  They drank their tea. Phoebe’s letter was on the desk. Reardon picked it up and scanned it before handing it over to Gilmour. He walked to the window and stared out, hands in pockets, while he thought about what she’d told them the last time they’d seen her. Thought about Maxstead Court school, the teachers and the few pupils he’d spoken to. Watched a cat strolling slowly across Town Hall Square below, luxuriating in the heat, its tail in the air. A pigeon ventured too close. The cat stopped, arched its back, but then decided it couldn’t be bothered and stalked away.

  And it came to Reardon, just like that. That elusive idea he’d been chasing for days. He reached out and grasped it and things began to move into focus. The truth of what had happened had been there, in front of him, all the time. And as he realized the sickening import, he could have wished with all his heart that it had not.

  The school, Eve Draper thought. What my life has meant. Edith. Everything I’ve done, always for her. Has she ever realized how much? She has never said so, nor ever thanked me in so many words, not after that first time, but that’s Edith. She thinks because she said it once, it has never needed saying again, and of course that’s true. Everything she is and does proves that she knows I don’t need to be told that I am the rock she has leant against, always, just as she is mine. Until now.

  She held the photograph of herself and Catherine. My Catherine. The moment I held you in my arms and saw the small, red face, crumpled like a new butterfly’s wings, saw with wonder the little starfish hands with their tiny, perfect nails, looked into the eyes that as yet knew nothing of the cold world you had been born into, we knew each other, you and I. Love. Perfect love. You smiled, or what I fondly imagined was a smile. And all the way from France, when I carried you close to me, wrapped in a blanket, you only cried a little, when you were hungry. I’ve scarcely seen you cry at all since then. You were such a good child, and I used to be afraid you were bottling things up and tried to comfort you with a cuddle, but you always wriggled away from any contact. I had to content myself with the assurance that some people are born not able to let their feelings show.

  We are bound, inextricably, the three of us: you, Edith and myself. Like you, Edith is not one for tears, or regrets. I am the one for that, the one whose heart rules her head in every way. My heart, that unreliable organ, jumping now like a caged bird at the very thought of what is to come. I must not allow myself to be afraid, so terribly afraid, that the shock of what I have just realized is the truth is going to be more than it can sustain.

  But no, let’s not prevaricate, I have known – or at the very least suspected – the truth from the first, but refused to admit it because it is more deeply painful than anyone can be expected to endure.

  The weather had broken at last, and they drove to Maxstead in a thunderstorm of epic proportions. The rain hammered on the roof of the car, slid like a river down the windscreen, making the wipers virtually useless, visibility practically nil. Gilmour drove by instinct, thanking God they were the only madmen out on the road.

  Grey old Maxstead could look forbidding even in the sunshine. Now, with the storm beating down upon it, it stood inimical and impervious to the elements as it had stood for centuries. By the time they had dashed the few yards to the massive front door, they were soaked. Inside, they shook themselves like terriers.

  The school had remained blessedly cool all through the last enervating days of heat, its thick walls acting as insulation, and the air still struck chill on their dampness. No one had bothered to switch on the lights as the morning had darkened, and they made their way through dim, cool corridors that the storm had made even darker, while the rain continued to lash against the windows. Classes had started and murmurs came through the doors as they passed – a mere thunderstorm wouldn’t be allowed to stop the march of lessons. No crocodile to church today, not in this weather, so lessons instead? Poor girls. When they reached the small anteroom to Miss Hillyard’s study, the door was wide open, as was the study door. She wasn’t there. Gilmour raised his shoulders and they went back to the entrance hall, just as she appeared at the top of the steps, Matron beside her.

  Immediately she saw them standing below, Matron said, ‘Not now, Inspector. Miss Hillyard can’t talk to you. Something very sad has happened. It’s Miss Draper. I’m afraid she has just died.’

  Miss Hillyard was almost unrecognizable, tight-faced with grief. But she pulled herself together with an enormous effort of will, enough to say, with authority, ‘It’s all right, Matron. Perhaps you’d kindly find Catherine Leyland and send her to me? She’s with Miss Golding, I believe, just now, Room Seven. Meanwhile, what did you want, Mr Reardon?’

  I had wanted to speak to Miss Draper, Reardon thought, while Matron repeated, her eyes bright with astonishment and curiosity, ‘Catherine, Miss Hillyard?’

  ‘If you please. I’ll wait for her here. We’ll speak later, you and I, about – what’s to be done.’ Matron gave her a concerned glance, but hurried away.

  Another crack of thunder rumbled away into the distance and left the hall oddly silent. The lofty, echoing spaces soared above them as they waited, no one speaking. The bowls of fresh flowers and small groups of easy chairs which had been introduced helped to make it slightly less empty and cavernous than when it had still been the Scroopes’s gloomy ancestral home, but the walls where once forebears had hung looked oddly denuded, washed in a pale stone colour. No doubt awaiting a portrait of Miss Hillyard as founder of the school, and honours boards to record the achievements of past pupils.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the rain stopped. Almost at once the sun burst through and rays of sunlight poured though the great stained-glass window halfway up the stairs, staining the walls with splashes of vivid colour. Still no one spoke. Miss Hillyard, motionless and stunned-looking at the shock she had just received, was evidently waiting for them either to state their business or, more probably in the circumstances, to take their leave politely. But it hadn’t taken Matron long to find Catherine, and now she too stood at the top of the stairs, a dreadful awareness on her face. Miss Hillyard briefly closed her eyes. Matron, no doubt with the best of intentions, had already broken the news.

  The huge staircase was wide and its stairs shallow, rising fifty or sixty feet above the cold encaustic tiles beneath. Catherine walked down quietly, sedately, each foot precisely on each tread until she reached the foot and faced them.

  ‘She’s dead,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Aunt Evie’s dead.’ The coloured light shone on her smoothly combed, fair hair. Her beautiful eyes were gold flecked with green. They were wide, blank, tearless.

  ‘Catherine, my dear,’ the headmistress said. She turned to Reardon. ‘I must ask you to leave us alone for a while, Inspector. I need to speak with Catherine.’

  ‘I understand, but I can’t do that yet, I’m afraid. We need to talk to you, you and Catherine.’

  She drew herself up. ‘At a time like this? No, I’m sorry, it’s not possible, not at this moment.’

  ‘Miss Hillyard, it’s not an option. I must insist.’

  A bell rang and almost at once there were sounds of activity. The girls would soon be in full flow, emerging from their classrooms. Wordlessly, Edith Hillyard turned away, her arm around Catherine’s shoulders, and led them into a small room off the hall. Reardon remembered it had been used as the estate office before Maxstead’s existence as a school; a functional room, then all Victorian sombreness. Like the rest of the school, it had been redecorated. The walls were now a pale biscuit colour and
there were roses on the table, crimson and shell-pink. There seemed to be roses everywhere at Maxstead now.

  ‘Please say what you have to say as quickly as you can.’ Miss Hillyard took a chair for herself and waved a hand towards others. Reardon took one with his back to the window, Gilmour next to him, his role to listen and take notes. ‘I don’t wish Catherine to be any more upset.’

  ‘That’s not my intention.’ Reardon had scarcely ever been in more of a dilemma as to how to carry out what he had to do – or rarely felt so ill-equipped. He began by saying, ‘We’ve recently spoken to a man called Liptrott, Newman Liptrott.’

  Her lip curled. ‘Liptrott. Is that all you’ve come to talk about? If so, you’re wasting your time as well as my own. I’ve nothing to say about that man.’ Her glance went again to Catherine, as if all this was an irrelevance in the face of what had just happened. ‘I’ll say again, it’s not at all a convenient time to discuss such an unpleasant subject. Please say what you have to say, and leave. Catherine and I need time alone.’

  ‘It’s all right, I don’t mind, Miss Hillyard,’ Catherine said politely. She was white as milk and she had chosen to sit in a slightly uncomfortable-looking upright chair, ankles neatly crossed, her hands folded on her lap, keeping her thoughts, and her tears, to herself. For a girl her age, she was taking this in an extraordinarily self-contained way. ‘Should I go?’ she asked.

  ‘I think not, Catherine,’ said Reardon. ‘What I have to say concerns you both.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Gilmour found his place in his notebook and licked his pencil. A bee blundered aimlessly around the room. Miss Hillyard drew in her breath and consulted her watch.

  ‘Mr Liptrott is by no means all I want to speak about,’ Reardon said at last, knowing the man would soon be the least of her worries. ‘I’m aware the timing is unfortunate and very distressing for you. Murder is rather more than “unpleasant”, however, which is why we are here. No, please listen to me. You know we have been looking for the person who was responsible for Isabelle Blanchard’s murder, for terrifying young Josie and for attempting to kill Miss Keith. Yes, kill. She was pushed into the lake, and nearly died, and would have, if it hadn’t been for Miss Cash.’

  ‘Pushed? More mischief by some person trying to ruin the school, then.’

  ‘No one has been trying to do that, Miss Hillyard. There’s been no vendetta. That would have been in no one’s interest, as someone recently pointed out to me. No one wanted your school to fail. Indeed, there was at least one person who was determined it should not.’

  She didn’t answer. The bee was now banging itself frantically against the windowpanes. Gilmour stood up and opened the window, wafted the creature to freedom with his notebook, and closed it again. He’d have done better to leave it open and let the cooler air from the thunderstorm’s aftermath clear its stuffiness.

  ‘Are you by any chance suggesting,’ Miss Hillyard said incredulously, at last, ‘that I, or any of my staff, had anything at all to do with any of that?’

  ‘All of you were concerned with the school’s welfare, especially yourself and Miss Draper.’

  Catherine shifted on her chair and smoothed her skirt across her knees.

  ‘And you think that means … How utterly ridiculous! I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Myself? Miss Draper?’

  Reardon himself was struggling to believe what he now knew.

  Catherine suddenly spoke. ‘Did you know Miss Draper was my aunt?’

  ‘Yes, she told Mrs Reardon she was. I’m very sorry, Miss Catherine, about what’s happened to her.’

  ‘Thank you. But I must tell you,’ she said, ‘you’re quite mistaken if you think she would do anything wrong. She was a good person and she’d never do a bad thing. Not possible.’

  ‘I believe you. And from what I have gathered, she had the interests of the school very much at heart.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s what she was like, always.’

  ‘You were very close to her?’

  ‘Yes. She brought me up after my parents died together in a motorcar accident when I was little. It was really hard for her, teaching all day and coming home at night to look after me, but she never complained. Evie would never do a bad thing,’ she repeated, and then, having said her piece, she fell silent and began to smooth her dress again.

  Miss Hillyard intervened. ‘Catherine, my dear, this has been a great shock. Please don’t upset yourself.’

  ‘I’m not upset, Miss Hillyard, I knew about her heart, so it’s not such a great shock. I don’t mind talking about her. Honestly.’

  ‘Well, for the moment, it’s Mlle Blanchard I want to talk to you about,’ Reardon said. ‘I gather you were quite a favourite of hers.’

  ‘Only because I was good at French.’

  ‘But you and she had a friendly relationship.’

  ‘No, not really.’ After a pause, she added, ‘Actually, I didn’t like her at all.’

  ‘Was there any particular reason for that?’

  She considered. ‘Well, for one thing, she was making Aunt Evie very miserable.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Just that she was forever wanting her to talk about the time when they knew each other in France, years ago. Evie didn’t want to; she said what was past was past. In fact it was upsetting her very much for some reason. I begged her to tell me what it was but she wouldn’t. But I thought I knew, and in the end, I did find out.’

  ‘Find out what, exactly?’

  She was quiet for a long time and he thought she might be going to refuse to say, but in the end she began to speak, flatly and without expression, almost as if she were reciting something she’d been given to commit to memory. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you, not now. You see, Mummy and Daddy were lovely parents from what I remember of them, but I always knew I was adopted. They told me I was born in France during the war, on St Catherine’s Day, just after that big battle on the Somme had finally finished, where my father had been killed. And Evie left off driving ambulances and brought me home to England because she knew her sister longed for a baby. She used to tell me how she carried me all the way, wrapped in a blanket. It was nearly Christmas, and it was a rough crossing, but she took good care of me. Of course, as I grew older, when I was living with her after my parents’ accident, I came to realize that was just a story they’d all made up and that it was Evie who must be my real mother. It was the only logical explanation, wasn’t it? She could never have carried on with her career as a single woman with a baby, but if her sister adopted me, she could be near me always. After they’d died and I was living with her, it was different. Everyone thought she was wonderful, taking me on. And she was. She wouldn’t even have taken the job here if she’d had to make other arrangements for me. Abandoning me, she called it. So I determined to work for the scholarship, so we could still be together.’

  He could well believe this of her. You didn’t have to be long in her presence to believe this girl capable of such single-minded resolve, setting herself a goal, a purpose, letting nothing stop her until she achieved it. If Catherine decided to do something, she would.

  ‘So, what was it you found out about Mlle Blanchard and your aunt?’

  She frowned, as if weighing up how much she ought to say. But then she said, very matter-of-fact, ‘Well, I think you’ve guessed, haven’t you?’

  He was taken aback. Something about her was beginning to unnerve him. ‘Let’s see if my guess is right, then: you found out that Isabelle Blanchard knew what you thought was the truth about your birth, that Miss Draper was your mother, and she was threatening her with it?’

  ‘I thought so at first.’ She frowned again. ‘It didn’t quite fit though. Evie had never admitted to being my mother. But I couldn’t see it would have mattered all that much, anyway, when she was settled here at Maxstead. It seemed to me she believed it would, though, and it was making her ill. That woman was worrying her into her grave, and what was I to do without h
er?’

  ‘So you struck up a friendship with Mam’selle in order to find out if what you thought was correct?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that, could I? You can’t be friends with the teachers, but we did talk sometimes, after class. I suppose she thought she could find out what she wanted through me, because somehow she knew we were related, though I’ve no idea how she found out. She must have eavesdropped on us some time or other when we were talking.’

  That was more than possible, he supposed, given Phoebe Catherall’s assertion that Isabelle always managed to find out things, one way or another.

  ‘All right, Catherine – you say you didn’t like Mlle Blanchard, yet you gave her a brooch, didn’t you? A little diamanté cat with red glass eyes.’

  ‘No.’

  However good she was at not showing her feelings, she was fibbing now. He sighed. ‘I think you gave it to her to gain her favour, to stop her pestering your aunt.’

  ‘I didn’t give it to her. In any case, it was me she’d begun pestering. If she couldn’t get what she wanted from Evie herself, she obviously thought I could, and would pass it on. I let her go on thinking that. I wanted to keep her away from Evie, yes, but I wanted to find out the truth more. And in the end I did.’

  Reardon, who knew which truth she meant, waited. She didn’t elaborate. ‘Would you like to tell us what that was?’

  ‘Well, she told me what had really happened when she and Evie had known each other in France, in the war. My father had been killed at the Somme, that was true, but Evie wasn’t my mother. The woman who gave birth to me wasn’t married to him and didn’t want me.’

  ‘Catherine,’ Miss Hillyard said.

  Something flickered in the strange green eyes. The girl turned and looked at her. Edith Hillyard sat as if turned to stone. Neither said a word.