‘Well, yes, but it was in a road accident. He is still wanted on a manslaughter rap for it, but they’re hardly going to launch a major manhunt . . .’
‘What?’ I barked out the word. I was pole-axed. ‘Road accident? Nobody told me anything about a road accident. I thought the little girl died because Carl had drugged her.’
‘Oh, bloody hell.’ Julie Perry closed both her eyes for a couple of seconds and tapped her forehead lightly with the fingers of one hand. ‘Didn’t anybody explain what happened?’
I shook my head. ‘Rob Partridge told me his version, but he just said that Carl had killed his daughter. With drugs, I’m sure that’s what he said. And DC Carter wouldn’t tell me anything. Said there could be an extradition warrant . . .’
My voiced tailed off. I was still stunned, unable quite to take in the enormity of what I was learning.
‘Bloody typical,’ responded DS Perry. She sounded exasperated, partly at herself I somehow thought. ‘An extradition warrant for a motoring charge, albeit manslaughter, when we already had him banged up for abduction. I don’t think so.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, Suzanne,’ she repeated. ‘I knew I should have stayed in touch, kept my eye on the ball. It’s not easy, though, when you get plunged into a murder. Every minute in the day . . .’
I interrupted her then. My brain had started to work. I leaned forward in my chair. ‘Please tell me everything,’ I asked. ‘Please.’
‘Yes, of course. Everything I know, anyway. You are obviously aware that Carl is really Harry Mendleson from Florida and that his troubles with the law started when his wife threatened to leave him?’
I nodded.
‘He’s an exceptionally possessive, protective man, isn’t he?’ she went on. ‘He likes to keep the people he loves very close, too close sometimes. But you know that . . .’
I nodded again. I knew that all too well.
‘Well, he overdid it, didn’t he? Makes a habit of that, it seems. Wife couldn’t take it. Told him she was leaving and taking the child with her. I understand there was another man involved. There was a terrific row. Carl locked all the doors of the house and told her he wasn’t going to let her go. The wife was on Valium – not surprising, really. While they were fighting the child got into the bathroom and took some of her mother’s pills. She was only five, she was frightened, wanted attention, I suppose, wanted her parents to stop rowing. Didn’t know what she was doing. Who can tell? Anyway, when the child collapsed Mendleson and his wife realised what had happened, bundled her in the car and took off for the hospital.’
That was very different from the way it had been put to me, from what I had imagined had happened. ‘I thought he had deliberately drugged them both, and that the child had overdosed. I’m sure that’s what Rob Partridge told me.’
Julie Perry grunted. ‘No doubt he did. The man deliberately drugged you, so if Partridge had heard of the drug involvement in the previous case, which obviously he had, that meant he’d done it before too. Standard police thinking, villains running true to form. Standard for the PC Partridges of this world, anyway. He wouldn’t have checked it out, it wasn’t his case, just passed it on as if it were gospel.’
She paused. Her turn to have said something she shouldn’t, perhaps.
‘The girl overdosed all right,’ she continued with a small sigh. ‘But there was no question of Mendleson being responsible for that. He was ultimately responsible for her death, but it was actually a tragic accident. He panicked and took off, driving like a lunatic. Just a block or so away from the hospital he crashed his car. Turned off the main drag too fast and rolled the thing. He and his wife escaped virtually unscathed, they were belted in the front, but they’d laid the little girl down on the back seat. She was killed outright. And it wasn’t pretty. She was decapitated.’
I shivered. An horrific picture had instantly presented itself. Then I thought about my one visit to Carl following his arrest. ‘But he told me he killed her. I asked him. “Is it true that you killed your daughter?” He said yes. That’s all. None of the rest of it. Only yes.’
DS Perry nodded. ‘That’s how he sees it, I suppose. And, indeed, he did kill her in a way. But not deliberately – he was trying to save her.’
‘So why didn’t he explain? I accused him of drugging his wife and child. He denied it, yet in such a way that I didn’t believe him – couldn’t believe him. He barely protested. He seemed to accept everything I said to him. He just went along with it. Why, oh why?’
The words came tumbling out.
Julie Perry shrugged but did not attempt to answer. How could she? I suppose I knew the answer, though, even then: ‘If you have stopped believing in me, Suzanne, there’s no point in anything any more,’ he had told me.
Eighteen
I sank into one of my trances after DS Perry left. She had absolutely staggered me. I might be rich. Or at least solvent. That would have been enough to bowl me over. But what she had told me about Carl changed everything. First of all I had discovered that he had not sent me the threatening letters, then that he had not intended to harm his daughter, indeed not tried to harm her at all and certainly not forced drugs on either the child or her mother.
Where did that leave him? Where did that leave us? I wasn’t sure. I was beginning to think again that perhaps he wasn’t really such an evil man after all, that maybe my initial judgement of him had not been so far off the mark.
I reminded myself that he had been so intent on keeping me under his control that he had held me a prisoner against my will. For all those years I had believed that I had killed my husband. I still had no way of knowing whether or not Carl had been aware that I had not done so. I could hardly credit that he would have deceived me so cruelly for so long. But there was no doubt that the life of hiding apparently forced upon us suited Carl only too well. I had been totally dependent on him, and that, of course, was exactly how he liked it.
At best, Carl was a sick man, only I had never known that. At worst? I didn’t know whether I could ever forgive him, but I did know that I wanted to find him, to confront him with my new knowledge and demand that he talk to me properly about his past. I felt I could not get on with my life, with or without Carl, until I had done so. I would search for him all over the world if necessary.
The money I had apparently inherited suddenly took on a whole new importance. Money climbed mountains, I was beginning to learn that. I had never travelled anywhere on my own. I had never been out of the UK. I had never been in an aircraft in my life. I had no passport. If I had money then none of this was an obstacle.
I glanced at my watch. It was two in the afternoon. I rushed to the telephone and called Hall, Fisher and Partners in Hounslow. James Fisher was out at lunch. I left a message asking him to call me back. It was almost three thirty before he did so, by which time I was pacing the floor again.
He confirmed that I was the sole beneficiary of Robert Foster’s will.
‘Am I really?’ I asked unnecessarily.
‘You sound surprised, Mrs Foster.’
It was a very long time since anybody had called me that.
‘In view of the way he treated me, yes, I am a bit.’ I couldn’t help but tell the truth.
‘I have heard something of that from the police. They did investigate your disappearance at the time, you know. A number of people, neighbours and even one or two of his congregation, suspected that Foster had been beating you.’
‘But nobody did anything about it.’
‘No. And when you disappeared after his death it didn’t really make sense to anyone. I know now what happened more or less, of course. Extraordinary story.’
‘Yes.’
Fisher’s telephone manner was relaxed and friendly. He spoke softly, with just the trace of a Scottish accent. He was very chatty, but he hadn’t told me what I wanted to know yet.
‘How much money is there?’ I asked bluntly.
‘It’s around £130,000.’
I dre
w in my breath quickly. To me that was a fortune. ‘When can I have it?’
‘Ah.’ It was the solicitor’s turn to sound surprised.
But then he didn’t know what I wanted the money for, how important it was for me suddenly to find Carl. Harry Mendleson might be the name he was born with. To me he would always be Carl.
‘Well, your husband’s will was quite straight-forward, Mrs Foster . . .’
Each time he used that name it gave me a jolt. I might not be Mrs Peters but I certainly no longer thought of myself as Mrs Foster. I suppose I had never truly considered myself to be Robert’s wife. More his victim, really.
James Fisher was still talking. I made myself concentrate. I had to take control now, to manage things for myself. There was no one left to do that for me and in any case for the first time in my life I did not want anyone to.
‘. . . and the Reverand Foster had made me his executor, which simplified things. I took out probate quite soon after he died and the funds have been invested on behalf of the will’s beneficiaries. In this case yourself. They are almost immediately releasable once the appropriate papers have been signed and I am satisfied of your identity, of course.’
‘Of course.’ I hoped that wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t have that much with which to identify myself. I wasn’t even always sure what my identity was, to be honest.
‘It would be simplest if you could travel up to Hounslow to our offices here. I am sure we could sort everything out quickly then.’
‘To Hounslow?’
The place seemed like another world to me now and not one I had ever wished to return to. I reflected for a moment. Maybe I could lay a few ghosts to rest while I was there. A thought occurred to me. Could Carl have returned to west London, to his first refuge in England, perhaps even to the place where he and I had met?
‘It would be simplest, Mrs Foster . . .’
I was off in my own world. Thinking back. Thinking forward.
‘. . . Mrs Foster? Are you still there, Mrs Foster . . .’
I said I was there all right, just wondering how quickly I could get to Hounslow.
He suggested two days hence. I agreed with alacrity.
Only after I had put down the phone did I reflect that it was all very well inheriting £130,000, but the only cash I actually had in the world right then was about £150.
That night Mariette gave me the solution to the immediate practical problems. First of all I told her about the will. ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘Just as I was wondering where the next penny was going to come from all this has fallen into my lap.’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that, exactly,’ she said. ‘Most of it probably came from your gran in the first place. Foster stole it from you.’
‘We were married, Mariette.’
‘Huh! Some marriage.’
‘Legal, though, which has worked to my good fortune in the end, I suppose. Robert treated me as if he hated me, yet he so carefully left all his money to me. Bizarre!’
‘Guilt, I’d say. Anyway, you were married to him so you’d almost certainly have inherited with or without the will.’
I grinned. ‘Maybe. Anyway I have to go to Hounslow the day after tomorrow. I need to catch the earliest train. How much do you think it will cost?’
‘You’ll have to get the Golden Hind and saver tickets aren’t valid. It’ll be well over £100.’
‘That’ll nearly clean me out. And I have to get out to Hounslow . . .’
Mariette rummaged in her bag and passed me an envelope. ‘Will Jones’, she said with a chuckle, ‘took all the paintings and offered you £600 in advance. I didn’t even have to ask. Perhaps he has got a conscience after all.’
I remembered Will’s unpleasant sexual approach to me in Rose Cottage. The thought of it made my flesh crawl. ‘Wouldn’t bet on it,’ I replied. ‘Amazing the way everyone’s throwing cash at me, all of a sudden, though.’
‘Don’t knock it, maybe some of it will rub off on me,’ said Mariette.
She phoned Great Western Railways and used her own credit card to reserve me a seat on the Golden Hind leaving Penzance at 5.15 a.m. She also nobly offered to drive me there from St Ives.
In spite of the mind-numbingly early start I quite enjoyed the journey to London. I was beginning to appreciate what independence meant – freedom, really. And it’s a sad fact of life that no one can be free in the modern world without financial independence. I treated myself to breakfast – the full fry-up including potatoes, although I did draw the line at black pudding. I had never eaten a meal on a train before and I reckoned I could rather get to like it. At Paddington I planned to take the Underground, changing at Earl’s Court from the District Line to the Piccadilly Line and on to Hounslow Central. I knew it was just three or four minutes’ walk to the High Street offices of Hall, Fisher and Partners.
For once, everything worked like clockwork. The Golden Hind arrived on time at Paddington just after 10 a.m. and tube trains came along quickly for me both there and at Earl’s Court. I arrived at Hounslow before 11 and my appointment was not until 11.30. I knew exactly how I wanted to spend the half-hour.
The manse where I had endured the most unhappy years of my life was only about five minutes or so further on from the Underground station than the offices of Hall, Fisher and Partners.
For some reason I was drawn to it. I felt it was important that I went to look at the place again. I suppose I thought vaguely that I had finally to confront my past in order to overcome it.
So I carried on walking until the big Victorian villa loomed, ugly as ever, before me. It had not changed much although it badly needed a coat of paint. That kind of neglect had never been allowed when Robert had been the incumbent. He had insisted on high standards in almost all directions except his own behaviour, I reflected ruefully.
I stared at the house long and hard. Suddenly and quite vividly I could see Robert’s face in front of me, his towering bulk dwarfing me as he approached, fists clenched, ready to attack me in the way he had done so often. For a few brief seconds it was as if I were transported back through time to the horrific existence I had endured with my monstrous husband. But, to my astonishment, I felt no fear. Inside my head I stood my ground. And, as if by magic, the dreadful image of Robert disappeared as swiftly as it had presented itself. I suppose that was the moment when I realised I had become a different kind of person. I was no longer a victim. I was quite determined that nobody, absolutely nobody, was ever going to hurt me like that again.
I turned away from the horrid old house and began to walk back to the solicitors’ offices. I didn’t look round. I never wanted to see the place again. That part of my life was finally over. A few ghosts had indeed been buried, I thought to myself almost triumphantly.
James Fisher was a short, plump man, nearing retirement age, I imagined, with an easy way about him. He greeted me warmly and promptly at 11.30 in his comfortable but slightly shabby office above an estate agency. And, in spite of his earlier comments about identification, he seemed pretty sure that I was who I said I was. I began to explain that I had no papers with which to identify myself, except a library card in the name of Peters, which I didn’t think would be much help. He seemed unconcerned. He asked me to sign my name on a piece of paper and compared it briefly with my signature on a document that I recognised to be a copy of my marriage certificate. Then I noticed that in the file lying open on his desk there were several photographs of me, including a large wedding photograph with Robert. The unwelcome memories that returned made me inwardly cringe.
My meeting with James Fisher took little more than half an hour. Everything was, indeed, just as he had promised on the phone, quite straightforward.
‘You’ll have access to your money within a couple of days, Mrs Foster,’ he said, after giving me a copy of Robert’s will and asking me to sign various pieces of paperwork.
It occurred to me that I had never even had a bank account. I didn’t think this would
be a problem – not with £130,000 behind me.
I thanked him and left. I knew what I wanted to do with the remainder of my day: bury some more ghosts and begin my search for Carl.
I took the Piccadilly Line back to Hammersmith, from there caught a bus across Hammersmith Bridge to the Sheen Road, and hopped off quite close to the other old Victorian building, which had figured so largely in my life: the one that had been Carl’s home when I first met him.
This time I did not hover around outside as I had done at the manse. I walked straight up to the front door and rang the bell to flat three, the one that had once been Carl’s. There was no reply. I rang the bell beneath.
A big man, wearing grubby trousers held up by a wide belt, eventually came to the door. He seemed to be short-sighted. He leaned forward and peered at me. His breath smelled. ‘Yes?’ he enquired.
‘I’m looking for Carl Peters, he used to live here,’ I said.
‘He did indeed,’ replied the man in a weary sort of voice.
‘I wondered if he’d been back . . .’ My voice tailed off. It sounded a strange sort of query even to me.
‘No, unfortunately,’ said the man, leaning even closer. ‘He left owing me rent. Years ago, now, but I still wouldn’t mind finding Carl Peters myself.’
Ah. I began to retreat, thanking him for his time.
‘Wait, who are you?’
‘Nobody, just an old friend, I haven’t seen him in years either . . .’
I hurried away. I didn’t want to get involved with this unsavoury-looking landlord who somehow didn’t quite match the large, doubtless very valuable property he appeared to own. He called after me again. I half ran down the road, looking over my shoulder. He didn’t follow. Anyway, with his bulk it didn’t seem likely that he would be able to move very fast.
Safely out of sight I found a bus stop and waited for a bus that would take me into Richmond. There I picked up a taxi – a rare extravagance for me, but I believed I could afford those kinds of extravagances now. I asked the driver to take me to the car park by the Isabella Garden and to pick me up two hours later. It was still quite early in the afternoon, not quite three, and I had plenty of time before I needed to make my way back to Paddington to catch the last train to Cornwall at 6.35. I walked down the rough path to the Isabella, through the iron gates and into the gardens. There could not have been a much greater contrast to the bleakness of the grey winter day when I had first met Carl. This was a beautifully sunny afternoon during early June and the Isabella was ablaze with colour. The late azaleas and rhododendrons and all the other shrubs of spring and early summer were in full bloom, and the scent of them alone was quite overwhelming.
A Deep Deceit Page 25