A Charitable Body

by Robert Barnard

  Then he began to think that, judging Lady Quarles simply from her appearance, the tones of her voice, her relationships, he would have thought she should be much more interested in money than in family prestige. She looked healthier than Sir Stafford, almost certain to survive him. Old age was made tolerable by money, as often as not, and a good family tree buttered few parsnips.

  Could it be that Lady Quarles was influenced in all her actions and attitudes by the possibility of discovering at long last some piece of treasure that could be sold in secret and render her last years comfortable to the point of luxury? He couldn’t prove anything, but to him that motivation made a lot more sense than the family obsession with birth. Whoever really prospered on the branches of a family tree without the support of property, shareholdings, or personal art collections?

  Looking back at what he had learned of the progress of the Walbrook Trust since its formation, he could see ample grounds for his diagnosis of money lust. There had been the appointment of the first director, who had had (had been encouraged to have?) an obsession about cataloging the collection. When this had progressed some way, she had been sacked and the cataloging only continued by the haphazard exertions of Mary-Elizabeth Fiennes, who had neither qualifications nor any depth of historical knowledge. The classification of the collection had never got off the ground. Was there the hope that the collection would throw up something of real value, with the corollary that it could be removed from Walbrook (for example as being of dubious authenticity) and a lucrative market found for it?

  And as Charlie resumed his walk, other clues to what had happened came into his head: the photograph in the Daily Telegram; the date of the transfer of Walbrook back to Montague Fiennes; the disappearance of the brief Elgar song . . .

  By the time he was belting himself into the driver’s seat, he was feeling a lot more pleased with himself, and pleased with his conduct of the impossible case.

  CHAPTER 15

  Emergency

  Three days, and a lot of routine inquiries later, the most enthusiastic components of the Trust Board assembled in the little parking area by the stables and waited for the door to be unlocked. Wes Gannett was also there, but was apparently not sufficiently senior to open the door. They had been summoned by a round-robin nowadays called a memo from the chairman of the board, who said that matters of the utmost importance had arisen since the last regular meeting and it was essential that decisions be taken as a consequence of these emergencies. Sir Stafford had sent out the summons, but he had not yet made himself visible. One of the board members had parked her car in the regular house car park and had seen there a car with a youngish black man inside studying papers. It was Maya Tyndale who had seen Charlie, and she said nothing about it to anyone, beyond a glance with a wink in Felicity’s direction.

  At one minute past the appointed hour of ten o’clock the chairman of the Trust appeared from the main door of Walbrook Manor and began the descent to the stables. His walk was like his usual walk—light, commanding, spry for his age—but his descent had a Day of Judgment air that by the time he arrived at the stables ensured that all the ambient chatter had ceased.

  The meeting began with an almost magisterial banging on the table. Sir Stafford’s gavel hand had seemingly gained in power and determination.

  “I declare this special meeting of the Walbrook Trust Board in session. I have asked the museum director to take the minutes, and you have agreed, have you not, Wes?”

  “Provided there is nothing controversial about matters that come within my sphere of interest and for which it would be better to have a more neutral person take them.” Wes sat himself down coolly beside the chairman.

  “Precisely. I think I can assure you that will not happen. This is purely a board matter, not a museum one.” Wes Gannett pursed his lips, as if to reserve judgment on that: complicated spheres of influence did not usually divide themselves so neatly. “The matter I feel strongly about, and about which I would like a stern and clear directive from the board, is the matter of the skeletal remains found in the car in Haroldswater. I don’t think any of you could be ignorant of the fact that Walbrook Manor has been dragged into this police case, where the investigation is in the hands of Inspector Peace. I used the expression dragged into because there is not the slightest reason why we should be involved. I cannot ignore the fact that one of our board members is married to the detective inspector.”

  By now Felicity had foreseen what was coming, had exchanged glances with Maya Tyndale, and knew what she was going to say.

  “Would you prefer me to leave the room, Mr. Chairman? Perhaps everyone would then be freer to say whatever they want to say.”

  “I think that might be wise, Mrs. Peace—”

  “Wait a minute,” came the voice of Ben Hooley. “Isn’t that too much like a guilty verdict being pronounced before a trial has been conducted? Felicity may have information that can help us. She needs to be present to tell us what is true, what is not true, and what her explanation is of how Walbrook Manor has become involved in this police investigation.”

  The chairman looked daggers at Ben Hooley. “I bring this matter to the board because I could not legitimately deal with it myself. The investigation of the Haroldswater remains has led to a preposterous suggestion: that the skeleton in the car is that of my mother, that she did not die in 1939, which has been accepted by everybody for almost the length of my lifetime, but lived on until at least 1947. What purpose she could have had in driving to Walbrook at that date, when the house had been taken over by the Fiennes family”—he gestured toward Rupert, whose face was twisted into a grimace—“I don’t know, but I imagine some suitably impossible reason has been thought up.”

  “It seems to me that rather than Felicity, the person who has an interest in this matter,” said Ben Hooley, “is in fact yourself, Chairman. This must be an extremely painful matter to you, but in the end you cannot lead a meeting which is bound to cover such personal ground for you.”

  “You take it very calmly, this calumny of my dear mother,” said Sir Stafford. Felicity was unable to decide how seriously to regard his anger and sorrow. “My mother came to Walbrook in 1939 as a last resort, and with a terrible and painful illness, which medical science at that time knew very little about, and hardly anything about treatments or cures. So do you wonder at my grief when the suggestion is made, which the police apparently believe and which you all no doubt will hear, that my mother somehow lived on, became a woman of dubious morals on the streets of London, sold herself to politicians and men of influence? I suppose the next allegation will be that she was in the pay of Adolf Hitler.”

  He looked around, outrage written clearly on his face. Felicity did not say that the possibility was not altogether fantastic.

  The meeting began to descend into a cacophony of shouting and banging on the table, and it was not immediately noticed that another figure had come through the door. Charlie advanced on the table, took the one empty chair, and sat down, looking around him.

  The cacophony immediately resumed.

  “This is outrageous behavior,” Sir Stafford spluttered. “Even a policeman has no right to invade a private meeting—”

  “I have not only invaded the meeting, I shall forthwith end it.”

  “You have no right—” began the chairman.

  “I have every right,” said Charlie, taking from his file a sheet of photocopied paper. “It is clear from the Articles of Association for the Trust that special meetings of the board may be called provided that all members of the trust receive advance notice of the meeting of at least seven days. This is to avoid the meeting being surprised into voting on a matter it has not been prepared for. Felicity received three days’ notice”—Charlie looked up; several heads were nodding that they had received the same—“so this meeting has been, from the beginning, illegal, a contravention of the Articles. We can forget about rules and regulations. Let me suggest that we start the informal meeting with the
subject the chairman himself no doubt feels most strongly about: his mother.”

  “There is no call whatsoever to discuss her,” said Sir Stafford.

  “I think there is. The first fact is that your mother finished her treatment at Leeds General Infirmary in July 1939. The family, father, mother, sons—you, Sir Stafford, and Graham, your brother—and daughter, returned home to North Yorkshire, then called the North Riding. A matter of two or three weeks later your mother was back in Leeds. I have consulted the grandson of the surgeon who treated Mrs. Quarles. She had a benign tumor that was known to be such from the beginning of treatment. She was, on her return to Leeds, staying at the surgeon’s expense at the Queen’s Hotel. With the countries of Europe on the brink of war, she subsequently went down to London—rather brave of her, with air raids a certainty sooner or later—and set up a recreation center for soldiers and politicians: in short, a high-class brothel.”

  There was an immediate uproar in the room, through which Charlie could hear Sir Stafford’s outrage: “Not true. A damnable lie.”

  “Not a lie. Everything is confirmed by the police action centering on your mother that Scotland Yard began in November 1947, two and a half years after the end of the war. Her establishment by then was in a rented house overlooking Regent’s Park. The front to the world was respectable, and the woman known as Lady Crécy had two children to give a family feel to what went on there. The so-called Lady Crécy provided high-quality meals, games, conversation to the MPs, civil servants, and servicemen. The police knew the basic facts of her services and turned the other way. MI5 had investigated and reported back that they could see no sign of treasonable behavior in her activities, but they cautioned that Lady Crécy would do anything for money.”

  “Lies! Lies!” muttered the chairman.

  “Now we come to the question of Lady Crécy’s death. A few relevant facts. When the police started investigating her disappearance—off their own bat, not called in by the staff at the establishment—the detective inspector was told that she had traveled to the North, and that it was ‘a family matter.’ Perhaps for that reason she took with her the two unidentified young girls who had lived with her for several years. At some point in the journey to Walbrook the children must have been left somewhere. There has been no trace so far in the investigations of the remains of any other than that of a middle-aged female. So we have two children—two girls that we hope have grown up—unaccounted for. We have noted in the course of our investigation the existence of several women with connections to Walbrook whom we would like to contact but cannot. There is Mr. Rupert Fiennes’s wife, who long ago divorced her husband—”

  “Now married to one of the top brasses in the army, shouldering the burden of our men in Afghanistan. I sometimes see him on the television news and I think ‘poor bugger’—not because he’s married to my ex-wife but because he’s leading the army in an impossible situation.”

  “No contacts between you?”

  “None since I became a civilian.”

  “Right. And then there was Mr. Gannett’s wife, apparently dead.”

  “Not apparently,” came Wes’s voice from a reddened face. “She died eighteen months ago. The worst thing that could have happened to me.”

  “There can be worse things than death. Cases of premature senility bring hideous unhappiness both to the person concerned, and to his or her immediate family. I suggest that the moment the diagnosis was made, your wife pressed you to say she was dying, said she wished to suffer the horror of her condition on her own, so your memories would all be of happiness. That is what has happened, isn’t it?”

  After a pause Wes Gannett nodded miserably.

  Charlie took up his story. “She is now living in the Westcliffe Nursing Home just outside Torquay—moderately healthy in body, nearly disappeared as to mind. I have spoken at length to the lady who owns and runs the place—a notably good, much-praised institution.”

  Wes Gannett groaned, put his head on the table, his shoulders heaving. Then he pushed back his chair and ran for the door.

  “Leave him,” said Charlie. “He’s facing up to the horror of his wife’s situation—maybe really facing up for the first time. Now one last woman, one who had been almost left out of our consideration. I knew little until recently of her existence.” He looked around the assembled board. “Her name is Mary.” His eyes stopped at Rupert and his cousin. “And we have in this inquiry one whose name is Mary, which she changed long ago into Mary-Elizabeth—with hyphen. Is that not so, Mary? You were, until you were taken to London by your mother, the so-called Lady Crécy, a pure and simple Mary, but you added the name of the queen—of the king’s wife, which was also the name of the heir to the throne.”

  Mary’s eyes were still sharp but her voice had a pleading note to it now. “Could we talk about this in private?”

  “Of course. Would you like anyone with you?”

  “My cousin.”

  “Not your brother?”

  “No. No disrespect, but I know and love my cousin. I hardly know my brother.”

  She got up hurriedly and pushed open the doors to the outside world—the real world. Charlie wondered how many of the realities of the world Mary-Elizabeth was aware of. Charlie made his excuses to the stunned board members, and he and Rupert Fiennes followed behind.

  “Our flat?” Rupert queried. “She hates it, but she’ll feel safer there.”

  “Good idea. Should we tell her?”

  “Oh, she’ll guess that I’ve suggested it. We know each other’s minds.”

  And she did indeed lead the way to a three-story Victorian house, heavy rather than dignified, but holding a newly decorated flat with the all-mod-cons of the traditional advertisements. Charlie looked and approved.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” asked Mary-Elizabeth. “Or coffee?”

  They settled for tea and she bustled out to the kitchen. Charlie wondered whether this was the opportunity to discuss what was coming, but Rupert said, “I think you should allow her to tell you her story in her own way. I hardly know anything about it myself.” He then sat in silence till she brought in a tray and passed three cups of strong brown tea. Charlie guessed this was how Rupert liked it. Charlie was glad when the fragile woman started straight in with a sentence she had probably prepared in the kitchen.

  “You never heard of my existence as a child because everyone in the house ignored it. Ignored me. Stafford my brother was three, Graham was one. I was four. Stafford had enough of a presence to be noticeable. People chucked my chin when they passed, but essentially I was not there. Anything I know, I know from local people who were ‘belowstairs’ here, either full-time or just when the house had visitors, such as the seminars. I have no memories of that time.

  “When we left Walbrook and went home to Bassetleigh in the North Riding, I began to note that mother was not with us. It took time, this, because she had never taken any notice of us, to speak of. Stafford she did notice from time to time because he was a marketable commodity: being a boy he established the family’s position as potential chieftains of a Quarles clan. So Stafford missed his mother, and as the war continued, he speculated that she was no longer alive: he toyed with various causes of death—cancer, air raid, crime of passion, variations which he hardly understood. Our father, if asked, said she was very ill and hurriedly showed us out of the door.”

  “What sort of man was your father?” asked Charlie.

  “Gloomy, tight-lipped, reclusive. Things changed as the war limped on to its end. Stafford was going to be sent away to prep school—that was in 1944, when he was eight. He was excited but frightened, not surprisingly. He asked our father about Graham and me, and he made inquiries about a cheap school for Graham and an equivalent school for girls. There were a few, but they were very unsatisfactory. Putting me there would have been the sign of a very neglectful father. Then the letter came—the letter from my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes. The w
oman no one mentioned. It said she was now in a position to provide me with a home which our father surely would see was more satisfactory than present arrangements. He would also know that custody was almost invariably awarded to the mother by the English courts. She was quite willing to relinquish any claim on Stafford and Graham: they were boys, and better kept with their father, at least in holiday times. But me she wanted with her, and she suggested he bring me to London on such and such a date and hand me over at King’s Cross station. It sounds now like a sordid commercial transaction, but I was still too young to understand that.

  “So I left my brothers and my father forever, and when Stafford first came to Walbrook as an adult, we met as strangers. He did not know who I was. It seemed best to keep it that way. I had been described to everyone by Rupert’s father as ‘one of my Fiennes cousins,’ and that I accepted. When I was with my mother, I was kept apart from the business of the house. Now and again I would be taken in to be exhibited to soldiers on leave who missed their own little girls. Often I was in the charge of one or other of the ‘girls.’ Some were rather sweet and protective, some were hard as nails. After a time there was another child in the house, apart from me, called Hazel. I understood she was the child of one of the staff—the resident prostitutes or ‘hostesses.’ Her mother’s name was Rose. Gradually I understood she was also the child of a member of my family. Jokes from my mother when she was in the ‘children’s annex’ as it was called told me that, and frequent jokes told me that Hazel’s father was called Tim, and that he was very hard up. Hazel was kind to me, gave me bits of education I didn’t get from the local school, and became the nearest I had ever got to a friend.”

  “Did you support each other, or were you rivals?” Charlie asked.