An Independent Woman

by Anna Jacobs

  “Why don’t I remember you as pretty?” he said in puzzlement.

  “Because I deliberately screwed up my hair in a bun and made myself as ugly as I could.

  Otherwise he would have married me off to someone as horrible as himself.”

  “Our father?”

  “Your father, not mine.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Oh, yes. It was the last thing Mother told me. She wouldn’t lie, not when she was dying. It means I don’t feel guilty about hating him.”

  “I can’t remember much about him, except that I don’t feel as if I want to remember. I feel as though I was glad to shut a door in my head on something painful. Does that sound foolish?”

  “No. He’s an evil man.”

  “Evil?”

  She nodded. “He tried to have me locked away in the asylum to keep hold of my annuity and he tried to kill my lawyer to stop him pursing the matter.”

  He swallowed and it was a moment or two before he asked in a hushed voice, “You’re sure?”

  “Oh, yes. I want you to stay, Fr—Aubrey, but I can’t help thinking you’d be happier and safer if you left Tinsley and went somewhere he could never find you.”

  “Like Australia?”

  “Yes.”

  He studied her for so long without saying a word she had to ask, “What are you thinking?”

  He pulled her to her feet and went to stand with her in front of a big, gold-framed mirror, one arm round her shoulders. “Look at us. We may be only half-brother and –sister, but we’re very much alike.”

  “That’s because we both take after our mother.”

  “I’m glad of that. Tell me about her, and about yourself. Tell me everything you can think of.”

  “If you’ll tell me what’s been happening to you.”

  An hour later Marcus knocked on the door. “May I come in?”

  Serena turned to him with an expression of glowing happiness on her face and he felt a sudden spurt of jealousy, wishing he’d been the one to put it there. “Come and have something to eat, you two. You’ve not even offered your brother a drink, Serena.”

  “It was more important to talk,” Aubrey said.

  They went into the morning room, eating in style today, served very formally by Gladys. Only as the meal ended did Aubrey say, “I don’t know what to do, whether to go and see my father or not. I’m tempted to leave it till after Christmas, but I’m afraid someone will recognise me and tell him I’m back.”

  “You’ve decided to stay in Tinsley, then?” Marcus asked.

  “For the time being. I have a job I like and I’m making friends. I’m enjoying having my own living quarters.”

  “You’re not lonely?” Serena asked.

  “No. I’ve been craving some peace and quiet for months. When you’re in the Army, there’s always someone ordering you around. I’m expecting a visit from a friend, though, and I will be glad to see him. I wrote to let him know where I was and he’s promised faithfully to visit me. Jim won’t go back on his word. I’ll have to find a bed for him to sleep on, though.”

  “Take one from here,” Marcus said at once. “There are several spare ones not being used. I’ll find someone to carry it into town for you.”

  When Aubrey left, Serena stood at the door watching him walk down the drive, not moving even after he’d disappeared from view.

  “Come inside, woman, or you’ll catch your death of cold,” Marcus said from behind her.

  She turned into the house, wiping away a tear.

  “Happy or sad?” he asked.

  “Both. He never saw Mother again or she him.” She shivered suddenly. “Why do I feel that something awful is going to happen?”

  He shook his head, wanting to dismiss that feeling out of hand, but not able to. He also felt a sense of foreboding and had learned during the War to pay heed to his intuition.

  As a result of that, he sent a telegram the next morning as soon as the local post office opened.

  He didn’t intend to sit and wait for Fleming to attack them again, but take action himself, first to protect his own, then, when a suitable opportunity presented itself, to expose Fleming for the villain he was.

  Chapter 14

  Aubrey walked slowly back to town, feeling happier about the future than he had for a long time.

  To have found a sister when he’d had no one . . . it brought tears to his eyes even to think of that.

  And if it was unmanly to be so emotional, well, he didn’t care.

  As he was walking through the town centre, he was stopped by a man he thought he recognised, but couldn’t remember from where. A stab of pain in his forehead made him guess that some bad memory was returning. The man’s outline seemed to blur and waver in front of him as pain throbbed through him.

  “Excuse me, sir, but are you all right?”

  “Pain in my head.” Aubrey reached out for the nearby lamp post and clung to it while the street wavered around him.

  “Are you ill?”

  “Just—give me a minute. It’ll pass.” Images whirled in his brain and the man’s face seemed to come and go among them. “Hudd.” It was a few seconds before he realised he’d said it aloud.

  “You know my name, then.”

  He blinked and tried to focus on the man. “You’re—Sam Hudd.”

  “Yes. And you’re Frank Fleming.”

  Aubrey took a deep breath, then another, not wanting to confirm his identity, not able to deny it, either. “I need to—sit down. Excuse me. I live nearby.”

  “Do you want to lean on me?”

  He didn’t but the world was still spinning round him, so Aubrey found himself grateful for support from the man who had once brought him back forcibly when he ran away from school and hadn’t been gentle about it, the man who had been his father’s second in command for a long time, a man much hated in the town. The irony of this would have made him laugh if he hadn’t been in such pain.

  It was only when he stopped for a rest that he realised they were heading away from the town centre towards a house he recognised. “I wanted to go home.” He tried to tug his arm away, but Hudd kept tight hold of it.

  “That’s where I’m taking you, sir. Home.” He indicated a side street.

  “That house is not my home!”

  “Of course it is.”

  Aubrey found himself being force-marched for another few unwilling steps. “Let go of me!”

  “I’m only taking you to see your father.”

  After struggling in vain to get free, Aubrey saw a policeman walking along the other side of the street and called out, “Constable! Constable, I need your help.”

  The policeman hurried across to him. “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “Yes. This man is trying to force me to go with him and I definitely don’t want to do it.”

  The policeman looked at Hudd and his expression said he knew and disliked him. “Is this true?”

  “The gentleman was ill, couldn’t stand up on his own. I was taking him to my employer’s house for help.”

  “All I need is help getting to my own home,” Aubrey said. “I work in Bailey’s Bookshop and live above it.”

  The policeman gave Hudd a suspicious look then turned to Aubrey with a smile. “Let me help you home then, sir.”

  Hudd hesitated then stepped back, scowling at both men.

  It wasn’t very far to the bookshop and by the time they got there, Aubrey was already feeling better.

  The policeman looked at him thoughtfully. “Could you spare me a moment, sir? I’d like to ask you something.”

  “Why don’t you come inside?” Aubrey unlocked the door and led the way into the interior, which looked dark and mysterious with the shop’s window blinds down. He switched on the electric lights to dispel the feeling of apprehension that was still lingering inside him. Nothing like bright lights for chasing away the demons of the dark! He saw the policeman studying his face and guessed what was coming next.r />
  “I’ve been thinking I recognised you and then seeing you with Hudd brought it back to me.

  You’re Frank Fleming, aren’t you?”

  Aubrey gestured to the officer to follow him across the shop and subsided on one the chairs near the fireplace, waiting till the other man was seated before admitting, “I used to be.” Once again, he explained how he had become Aubrey Smith. “Sometimes when I remember things it makes me dizzy.”

  “And Hudd was trying to force you to go to your father’s house?”

  “Yes. But I don’t want to face him when I’m feeling under the weather, and even then the meeting won’t be in that house if I can help it. I’m starting to remember living there and the memories aren’t pleasant, believe me.”

  He saw the officer struggling to maintain a calm expression and couldn’t hold back a snort of bitter laughter. “It’s all right. You don’t have to pretend to be impartial. I learnt soon after I got back how people regard my father. And I know now that I wasn’t very fond of him, either, that I was glad to enlist in the Army and get away from him.”

  After a moment’s consideration he added, “I intend to remain Aubrey Smith. I have all my documents in that name now, so it’s quite legal. You’re welcome to check them if you wish.”

  “Well, it might simplify matters if I could tell my sergeant I’d seen them. If you don’t mind, that is, sir?”

  “Why should I mind? I’ll fetch them down. Won’t be a minute.”

  When he got back, he said casually, “I’ve just come back from having lunch with my sister, Mrs Graye she is now. She got married recently.”

  “So I hear. In fact, there’s rather a lot of gossip going on about your family, what with the fire burning down your father’s office and all. I did hear from my colleague, Constable Yedhill, that they’d had an incident or two with your father’s men out at Horton, as well.” The officer hauled himself to his feet. “If you have any more trouble—with anyone—just nip across the road to the police station and let us know, sir. We’re here to protect people.”

  No one liked his father, Aubrey decided, feeling somewhat despondent. He was glad he’d come back because of being reunited with his sister, but he knew he couldn’t postpone the meeting between himself and his father for much longer—even though he wished he need never see the man again. But that would be a coward’s course and he wasn’t going to follow it.

  The next morning Ted came to work looking so blessedly normal and happy that Aubrey found himself cheering up.

  The shop was busy and as Ted had said, the cheap penny books sold well to the poorer customers. Some of the richer folk clearly wanted to buy books that looked expensive as gifts, no matter what was inside them, but the true booklovers didn’t seem to care what a book looked like as long as it was a good read.

  During the afternoon a man came in who didn’t even pretend to look at the stock. He walked straight across to the counter and stared at Aubrey. “Your father said I’d find you here, Frank.”

  Aubrey stared back at him. “Dr . . .” The man’s name escaped him, but he remembered the face, with its high colour and plump cheeks.

  “Don’t you know my name?”

  “As you must be aware, I lost my memory in an explosion and can only remember things patchily, you hardly at all.” Which wasn’t quite true. He was feeling intense dislike toward this man, together with a memory of fear and pain.

  “I need to speak to you privately, Frank.”

  Aubrey didn’t even have to think about that. “No. You’re not my doctor now and I’m busy.”

  “It’s very foolish of you to behave like this—irrational, even.” He pulled out a notebook and began writing.

  A customer who had been hovering, waiting to pay for a book, edged away and put the book down. “I’ll—um—come back later.”

  Ted came across to stand beside his assistant, annoyed by this loss of a sale. “If you’re not here to buy a book, I suggest you leave, Dr Tolson. We have work to do today even if you don’t.”

  The doctor smiled and leaned on the counter. “Oh, but I am working.”

  Aubrey knew there was a threat in those words, but before he could open his mouth to tell the man to go to hell, Ted went and flung the door open.

  “Get out or I’ll bring in the police! You’re upsetting my customers and staff, and I’m not having it.”

  Dr Tolson’s plump face turned an even brighter red and as he stuffed his notebook in his pocket, he said to Aubrey. “You’re definitely behaving irrationally and so I shall report to your father. You need help, young man.”

  When he’d gone, both men looked at one another.

  “I know who was behaving strangely here and it wasn’t you, lad. What the hell did he mean by that?”

  Aubrey sighed. “I’d guess that my father intends to gain control of me again, any way he can.

  He’s already tried that ‘behaving irrationally’ stuff on my sister so that he could lock her away.

  I’m sure it wouldn’t stand up in court.”

  “Trouble is, Dr Tolson doesn’t always go to court,” Ted said slowly. “He’s in charge of the asylum and there are tales of young women from good families ending up there simply because they were expecting babies—and a couple of them haven’t come out again.”

  Aubrey looked at him in horror, then pulled himself together and went to finish tidying a nearby shelf. But he couldn’t concentrate and after a few minutes turned round and said urgently,

  “Look, if my father kidnaps me under the pretence that I’m in need of care, will you do something for me, Ted?”

  The older man nodded.

  “Will you send for my sister and her husband and ask them to get me another doctor, any doctor except Tolson.”

  Ted nodded again. “You can rely on me, though I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Aubrey went back to work. His father wasn’t going to frighten him into compliance. Indeed, such incidents only made him more determined to live his own life. Immediately after Christmas he’d find another doctor and explain the situation. No one was going to pretend that Tolson was his physician.

  That same morning Justin went to see his old friend Marley again. This time he used the rear entrance, hoping none of Fleming’s men had seen him.

  “This is getting serious.” Marley tapped the page of notes Justin had rescued from the fire.

  “Have you reported it to the police yet?”

  “No. Not sure if it’s worth bothering.”

  “It’s definitely worth it.” He studied his old friend. “They’ve got you worried, haven’t they?”

  “Yes. Try nearly being roasted to death and see how courageous you feel.”

  “All the more reason to stop them.”

  “Dammit man, the police have known for years about the gambling and the coercion that’s been going on, not to mention the sharp business practices of a certain group of so-called gentlemen, and they haven’t managed to put an end to any of it! I can’t see this case being any different.”

  “Fleming’s over-reaching himself—and don’t tell me Hammerton isn’t deeply involved because I won’t believe you. If we resist and push them hard, they may make a mistake. Good thing the cab driver had a revolver, eh?”

  “It’s his old service revolver. I don’t think it’s licensed or anything.”

  Marley grinned. “I shan’t pursue that point. I reckon a man who’s fought for England and lost his leg in the service of his country has a right to defend himself.”

  As a result of this conversation, an earnest young constable came round to see Justin and take copious notes on the “incident” for his sergeant’s files.

  “We will look into this, sir,” he said as he left. “But we have to tread carefully.”

  Justin didn’t feel optimistic about Fleming getting caught.

  Later that day, Constable Yedhill puffed his way along the lane to the Hall and went round to the stables, where he found Marcus and Vic chat
ting.

  “Why didn’t you report that incident on the way back to Tinsley?” he demanded of Vic.

  “What good would it have done? And how did you find out about it?”

  “The sergeant in Tinsley is an old friend of mine. Did you recognise the men?”

  “No.”

  “What about the truck?”

  “Not a vehicle I’ve seen round here before.”

  “The sergeant intends to ring all the nearby police stations when we have the necessary information and ask them to look out for a vehicle like that with a bullet hole in it—or find out if anyone has repaired the bodywork of such a vehicle. It’ll all take time, but you’d be surprised what we can come up with if we set our minds to it.”

  Vic didn’t feel optimistic about the chances of finding the men who’d attacked the lawyer.

  They weren’t local and could have come in from anywhere to do the job of frightening Mr Redway . . . or had they actually been ordered to kill him?

  He felt angry every time he thought of what had been going on here for the past few years.

  War profiteering by men like Hammerton sickened him, especially as such fellows had sat safely at home while young Englishmen like himself risked their lives every day—no, every minute!—

  for their country.

  On the Monday afternoon a large Humber, very highly polished, turned into the drive of the Hall and drew up before the front door. Serena, who had rushed to peer out of the window and see who it was, felt her heart start to thump with nervousness when she recognised the vehicle and its occupant—Fleming.

  She hurried into the kitchen. “Mr Fleming is about to pay us a call. Pearl, could you please answer the door and show him into the sitting room? Don’t answer any questions about us. I’m going to change into my best clothes before I see him. Can someone fetch—Oh, there you are, Marcus. Fleming has come to call on us.”

  “I saw the car coming up the drive.” A little breathless, Marcus looked down at himself. “I thought I’d better change my clothes before I see him so ran up to the house. I’ve been going through the things in the Lodge, so that I can offer it for rent.”