A Pattern of Lies

by Charles Todd

  Her concern was evident, but so was her absolute certainty that right must prevail, that her husband would come home again as soon as this unfortunate mistake had been sorted out.

  There was a scratching at the door, and Mrs. Ashton rose quickly to let the spaniel in. It went directly to the hearth rug and curled up with a forlorn sigh.

  “Poor Nan,” Mrs. Ashton said gently, coming back to her chair. “You don’t understand, do you? Well, neither do I.”

  It occurred to me then how very little I knew about Philip Ashton. The gracious host who’d welcomed me might be quite different in other circumstances. I had only the views of others to judge by, and his family, his staff, would wish me to believe the best of him. Yet, to be honest with myself, I couldn’t even be sure he was innocent. But for Mark’s sake and Mrs. Ashton’s sake, I prayed that he was. He’d certainly dealt with his arrest with a coolness that spoke of a strong self-­control. He’d resisted any temptation to argue or struggle or run. And that was a measure of his strength of mind.

  But cool nerves and self-­control could work both ways, as I’d already seen.

  I remembered that one of my friends in Somerset—­sadly dead at the first battle of Mons—­had told me about his time at University. How the town and the gown were always at odds, living together in an uneasy alliance. It was certainly true between Cranbourne and Abbey Hall, and not because of any of the public drunkenness, bawdiness, and outrageous pranks that annoyed the citizenry of Oxford. The question was, what had turned the usually cooperative relationship between the village and the Hall so sour? Was it the recent deaths of so many men, or had it been stewing under the surface for a much longer time, waiting for the right circumstances to burst through?

  But when I tried to approach this idea obliquely, Mrs. Ashton shook her head and told me, “Philip’s father had such progressive ideas about his responsibilities at the mill. It shocked a good many ­people, but his view was that if the workers were to be handling something that could kill them and everyone around them in an instant, they needed to be reasonably healthy. And he took it upon himself to look into their welfare. Philip has felt the same way.” She smoothed the pretty brocade that covered the arm of her chair, small bunches of cream flowers against a blue background. “My father told him once that coddling ­people in the village would only give them an exaggerated opinion of their own worth and lead to trouble. It was the only time I saw Philip lose his temper with my father. They never did agree. Not that my father mistreated anyone, no, it was more a question of letting the villagers get on with their own lives, and helping when it was necessary.”

  The light from the tall windows next to her chair showed only too clearly how tired and distressed she was, and I quickly changed the subject. Before very long she was telling me how she and her husband met—­at a ball at Leeds Castle—­and about a wedding that was all she could have wished for. “The sun came out of the clouds that morning, and it was the most glorious day. Warm enough, but not too warm. A lovely blue sky. I couldn’t believe my good luck. My sister’s wedding day had been rain from morning to night.” And then she was remembering the evening that Mark had been born, and how pleased everyone was with her for providing the family with an heir straightaway. I listened as she recalled other happier times and watched as the tension around her eyes lessened a little.

  Mrs. Byers had just brought in our tea when we heard the house door opening.

  Helen Ashton lifted her head, listening eagerly. Nan rose from the hearth rug, her ears alert, also listening. Mrs. Byers, transfixed, the tea tray still in her hands, stared at Clara. And Clara’s eyes widened with hope. But all we could hear was one set of footsteps coming down the passage. Nan’s tail drooped, and she went back to her accustomed place.

  Mark appeared in the doorway. He looked as if he’d been fighting a battle, and I was sure he had been. Verbally, at least. His face was drawn, his mouth set. And then he smiled for his mother’s sake.

  “Did they allow him to have his valise?” she asked quickly.

  “Yes, and the food. This once.” He took a deep breath. “Groves was allowed to see him. The police haven’t given us all the evidence yet, but this is a start. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Ashton passed him a cup of tea. I thought perhaps he’d have preferred a whisky, but in deference to his mother he took it, drinking it while still standing.

  “I’m sure Mr. Groves knows what he’s doing,” she said briskly, putting a good face on his news. “And we’ll find the best barrister in Kent. In the event your father isn’t released by tomorrow.”

  “I’ve spoken to Groves about that. The man’s name is Worley. Lucius Worley. Groves is arranging a meeting with my father as soon as may be.”

  “Worley,” Mrs. Ashton said pensively. “I know that name. Now from where?”

  “Groves asked my father about him. He said he hasn’t met him.”

  She finished her tea and set the cup on the table. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” Looking up, she smiled. “Shall we dress for dinner, tonight? Bess, I’m sure Clara can find something suitable for you. I know how tired you must be, Mark, dear, but keeping up appearances matters most at a time like this.”

  I saw the flicker of doubt in his face, and then he nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  We came down to dinner at seven. Clara had given me a lovely gown in pale peach, which went well with my light brown hair and dark eyes. I tried to remember the last time I’d dressed for dinner in something other than my uniform, but I couldn’t.

  It was not the happiest of meals. I was amazed by what Mrs. Lacey had managed to do, in spite of shortages of nearly everything. Still it didn’t lift our spirits, and afterward, sitting in the drawing room struggling to make pleasant conversation felt rather odd, without Mr. Ashton’s presence. Nan followed us, as she had done all evening, patiently waiting for her master’s return.

  I think we were all relieved when Mrs. Ashton said with a sigh, “I expect I should go up. I’m rather tired. Bess, do you have everything you need?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Ashton. And my gratitude to you, Clara, for the loan of your gown.”

  “It suits you,” Mark said, lightly. Then he added, “While waiting for Groves to come back to his chambers, I walked over to the railway station. No sign of a train for you yet. The stationmaster is beside himself.”

  “Mark, how kind of you to think about that.” I was both amazed and grateful.

  He turned to his cousin. “And, Clara, I must say I’ve always liked that particular blue gown,” he added with a smile. She blushed at the compliment, but thanked him prettily. “I’ll take a turn outside before retiring. Good night, Mother.” He came to kiss her cheek and then walked with us as far as the stairs. Nan got to her feet, shook herself vigorously, and trotted to the door.

  “I’ll take her outside,” he said. “And put her in Father’s room afterward.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  When I looked back from the landing, I could see the sadness in his face as his gaze followed his mother. And I couldn’t believe that Mr. Groves had given him any news that could possibly be construed as hopeful.

  My window looked over the high wall and down on the abbey grounds. Even in the light of day there hadn’t been much to see. All that was left was the barest outline of what had once been a prosperous community of monks. No tall traceried windows, empty of glass, no great arches and bits of transepts and towers to give a sense of what once had stood there. Not even the stumps of buttresses. Grass had taken over, covering the foundations, which ran as lumpy lines here and there, and an occasional tree growing out of a jumble of stone offered shade. In the distance I could just see flower borders where someone had tried to add a bit of color to the grounds, but the spirit of the place, the heart of it, had long since vanished. All the way to Calais, where the stones had shored up the harbor? Or to som
e house or shed or pigsty that had benefited? In the dark, there was only a vast emptiness, enclosed by the black line of the wall. I heard a fox bark in the distance, but couldn’t conjure up the evensong of the monks.

  The cool night air was refreshing, and I left my windows wide.

  With a sigh I turned away and undressed, washing my face and hands before climbing into bed. Someone had thoughtfully left several books by the carafe of water on my table, but I wasn’t in the mood to read. I set my watch beside them and blew out the lamp.

  For a moment my thoughts wandered to London, where I had lived in lodgings in Mrs. Hennessey’s house since the first weeks of the war. Had one of my flatmates come in on leave? And where was the Colonel Sahib, or for that matter Simon Brandon?

  He now lived in the cottage just through the wood behind our house, and in India he’d taught me to ride and shoot, shielded me from retribution for the worst of my childhood transgressions, and, young as he was, served as my father’s Regimental Sergeant-­Major. That was, until a few years before the war, when my father had retired from active duty. Recalled to special duty in 1914, they were often off on some mission or other, much of it secret. My mother and I never asked where or why.

  Or had my father and Simon spent the evening with my mother? And where was she? In Somerset, or visiting a recent war widow, giving her consolation and support?

  With a sigh, I scolded myself for feeling a twinge of homesickness, and instead thought about the evening here at Abbey Hall.

  I could commiserate with the Ashtons, trying to keep up appearances as Mrs. Ashton had put it. But it had been even more painful for her and her son, I thought, than just giving in to the moment and dining in our street clothes. It had only emphasized the fact that Mr. Ashton was not in his customary seat at the head of the table. Or his usual chair in the drawing room. And Mark had not presumed to sit in either one tonight.

  I turned and tossed for a bit, unable to settle in the unfamiliar bed—­even though it was much more comfortable than my usual hard cot. And the soft down quilt over me was a far cry from the rough, harsh blanket I was accustomed to. The pillow was bliss, compared to what might just as well have been a wool sack beneath my head in France. Very different too from the hotel I’d have had to find in Canterbury late in the day when the stationmaster finally admitted that my train wasn’t coming through. Assuming even the worst rooms hadn’t all been taken by that time. No worries about bedbugs and cockroaches in the Ashtons’ house.

  I drifted into sleep.

  Late in the night, I woke up with a start at the sound of breaking glass. It wasn’t in my bedroom, but it was loud enough that it seemed to come from just below my windows. And that must mean in Mrs. Ashton’s sitting room.

  My first thought was that as a guest in the house, I shouldn’t go dashing down to find out what it was. But I wondered if it was another egg tossed into the room for someone to discover in the morning, a sticky smear on the polished floors or the edge of a carpet.

  I had just settled back against my pillows, on the verge of drifting off to sleep again, when I sat bolt upright, my nose twitching. Surely what I smelled, wafting up from below through my open window, was a strong whiff of smoke.

  Pushing aside the last shreds of sleep, I sniffed the air.

  It wasn’t the odor of tobacco. Something was burning.

  Shocked wide awake now, I whipped the covers off, caught up my dressing gown, and ran for the door, not bothering with my slippers.

  “Fire!” I shouted down the passage as I headed for the stairs. “Hurry!”

  I was halfway down them when I heard Mark calling, “What is it, what’s happening?” He was racing after me, and then I heard Clara’s voice asking what was wrong.

  “The sitting room,” I called over my shoulder, not stopping to explain.

  Mark had caught up with me as I headed down the passage, but I stopped him from flinging open the door. “Wait.” I reached out and put my hand on the wood. It was cool. “Open it gently.”

  He did as I asked, and we could see as the door edged wider that the chair that Mrs. Ashton usually sat in, right by the window, was aflame. Not just smoldering; there were licking tongues of orange flame rising higher and higher as we watched. The draft from the door, drawing air in the broken window, gave the flames something to feed on.

  I pushed past Mark and shut the door quickly.

  In old houses, fire was the dreaded enemy. I ran closer to the chair, saw the tall vase of flowers on one of the tables, pulled out the stems, and threw the water into the seat of the chair, getting as close as I dared to the flames.

  I coughed as the smoke billowed up at me, and then Mark was beside me with the bucket of sand that most houses kept at hand. His nightclothes were dangerously close to the blaze as he threw the sand in a careful pattern across the seat of the chair, smothering the flames.

  Now we were both coughing.

  I turned, realizing that someone had opened the door and was standing there on the threshold. It was Clara, her face as white as the nightgown she was wearing, her robe clutched in her hands. Beyond her, I heard Mrs. Ashton on the stairs, calling to Mark, asking what was wrong.

  He was bending over the chair, looking at something. I went to see what it was.

  A half-­melted candle lay close to the back of the seat.

  “Thank God, it wasn’t the carpet,” he said, and turned to look up at the smashed window. The old glass had shattered, leaving a gaping hole.

  I moved forward for a better look at the candle and stubbed my bare toe on a large stone. “Someone broke the window with this,” I said, reaching down to pick it up. “Then threw in the candle, hoping it would start a fire.”

  “Don’t come any closer,” Mark ordered, and I realized that he was pointing to shards of broken glass littering the floor. And I was barefoot.

  Mrs. Ashton had reached the doorway, and I heard the sharp intake of breath as she saw the still smoking chair. “Dear God,” she exclaimed.

  Mark went to her, saying, “It’s all right, Mother, just an accident.”

  “Accident, my eye,” she said furiously. “That window’s broken. Someone did this, it didn’t just happen.”

  He was trying to calm her down, trying to keep her from hurrying forward to look at the chair for herself. Clara was still by the door, a pale statue with a shocked face.

  Mrs. Ashton was saying, “Who discovered it?”

  “I heard the window break, Mrs. Ashton,” I said quietly. “And then I smelled smoke.”

  Even in the dimness of the room I could see that she too was pale with horror, and disturbed by what this represented. She turned to Mark. “Bess has the only room on this side of the house,” she told him. “The rest of us face the gardens. This would have been a conflagration before anyone knew.”

  “I’d thought of that,” Mark said grimly. He left the room, and in a matter of minutes he was back with a large bucket of water and poured it over the still smoldering seat of the chair. Then he picked the chair up, and trailing the last remnants of smoke, he carried it past Clara, into the passage, and toward the front door. I went after him, got there first, and swung the heavy door wide. He took the chair down the steps and dropped it on the drive, at a safe distance from the house.

  Even if the fire wasn’t completely out somewhere deep inside the upholstery, it could do no harm now.

  He stood there for a moment, staring down at the charred ruin of his mother’s favorite chair, then came back to where I was waiting in the doorway. “Someone isn’t satisfied that my father is already in jail. It isn’t enough.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WE WALKED BACK into the house together, Mark and I. In the sitting room, Mrs. Ashton had found matches and lit the lamp. Clara was sitting on one of the other chairs, but her aunt was stooping to scan the floor around the spot where the fire had been. S
he looked up. “I don’t think any sparks flew off onto the carpet.”

  “No, I think we were in time,” Mark agreed.

  We were all in our nightclothes. Mark’s face was red, where he’d got too close to the flames. Mrs. Ashton, Clara, and I were in our dressing gowns, our hair down our backs. Clara and I were barefoot. But I didn’t think anyone had really taken any notice. There were other worries on our minds.

  “I’ll have the police in, first thing in the morning,” Mark was saying. “We’ll find out who did this.”

  “No,” his mother said firmly. “Let it go. It will only show how agitated ­people are about the claims that your father is being held responsible for the explosion. It will only bring more angry ­people out into the open.”

  Clara spoke for the first time, her voice strained. “I can’t see how burning us alive in our beds would bring any of the dead back.”

  Mark said bracingly, “Nonsense, they were just trying to frighten us.”

  “Well, they succeeded,” she answered tartly.

  “I think it’s best to summon the police,” I said. “And the sooner the better, before breakfast. Or this will just go on happening.”

  Mrs. Ashton was about to protest, then stopped. “Why?” she said after a moment.

  I took a deep breath. Why indeed? “To do nothing tells the person who did this that the family has something to hide.” I pointed to the windows. “Gossip will soon know something happened here. If you bring in the police, it will go a long way toward convincing others that you believe Mr. Ashton is innocent.”

  There was argument, but in the end, Mrs. Ashton said, “Much as I dislike being the center of gossip, Bess is probably right. Bring it out into the open, rather than behind hands and behind our backs.”

  Mark said, “I’ll go as soon as it’s light. I don’t want to leave you alone until then.”