Shadows & Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  Or unless the victim was who Sebastian feared she might be.

  Walking down the sloping avenue between the statues, averting his eyes from the dismal collection beneath the Wellingtonia, he found himself by the lake. The sun was out in earnest now and the stretch of water, serene and untroubled, was dappled by coins of sunlight under the trees that shaded the far end, and sparkled brilliantly in the middle, looking fresh and almost irresistibly inviting. He was a good swimmer and knew the lake from boyhood: where it went deep, where the treacherous underwater reeds were, where one could climb out easily on to the bank. He knew how long it took to swim the lake end to end, or to circle the little islet in the centre, where the mallards nested, and where the old punt, which no one had used for years, lay half-submerged at the edge.

  But he was too old to undress and plunge in without thought, to roll himself dry on the grass like a puppy as he and Harry had done as boys. He hesitated, not for long, but long enough, for in the next moment he looked up and saw Louisa on the far bank.

  “You came by the back way,” he said, hurrying round to join her. “Another few minutes and I might have missed you – I was on my way to see you.”

  “I came that way because I went by the school to see the policeman who’s arrived from London.”

  “What’s he like – the great detective?”

  She laughed. “Not quite what you’d expect. He had a flower in his buttonhole. Quite the swell. He says wants to see you later today and then apparently you’ll be free to go, so I’ll wait and return with you. Another day will make no difference in the circumstances.” She sat on a rustic seat by the lake edge. “Tell me why you wanted to see me?”

  “If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather walk. I can tell you as we go.”

  She took one look at his face and agreed. They set off to follow the dogs, who of their own accord had chosen to lope up the hill behind the house, a path which would eventually join the one he’d taken the previous day. Sebastian let them go where they would, and they seemed to know when they reached the clearing and the Green Man pool that he would pause as he usually did, and ran off on their own pursuits.

  He and Louisa found a rock and sat facing the sun. “Well, Seb, what is it you’re bursting to tell me?”

  He grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”

  “To anyone who knows you, yes.”

  He told her then what he had told his father, except that he did not feel constrained this time to get it out in a few bald sentences and be done with it. Her reception of his news was more than he could have expected or desired: her eyes glowed, impulsively she kissed him on the cheek, though it was only as a sister might.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am. I’ve been hoping for so long that you’d find something worthy of you, someday. I must confess I never thought of you as an architect, though now I can’t imagine why not. It’s so exactly right in every respect. Do tell — what happened, what made you decide.” When she’d had every little detail from him, still smiling, she added, “The mood you were in earlier this summer, I should have guessed. I knew something was up.”

  “Such as what? Did you imagine I was preparing to join the Foreign Legion?”

  “I was prepared to think anything. You’ve seemed almost …desperate …at times. I’m so glad it’s nothing like that.” She paused. “But what about your father?”

  He grimaced. “What would you expect?” She had received his news with such obvious delight that it made him feel no other person’s opinion in the matter counted a jot. He looked down into her glowing eyes. She did not instantly look away, and he felt he could fall into them forever, but he found no encouragement of the sort he looked for there. He almost groaned. “Louisa —” he began.

  She stopped him before he could go any further with a quick look that seemed to say to him in more than words: Take care. Don’t say anything we might both regret. He obeyed the unspoken injunction. What was the use? Like a fool, he’d ignored the dictates of his own heart, and failed to grasp the best thing in his life, his shining star, and now it was too late. Louisa was set on her chosen career, which certainly wouldn’t include marriage, and nothing would deflect her from it. He had heard her say too often that she would never marry, and when Louisa said something, she meant it – did she not?

  The silence lengthened. At last she said, “I wish you and Sir Henry were on better terms – but you know …I wonder if I dare say? It’s hard for you to have lost Harry – but think how hard it is for him to have lost one son, and now, as he sees it —”

  “Harry. Oh yes, Harry,” he said, not liking the bitterness he heard in his own voice.

  He was going to have to tell her what had been going through his mind. It was what he had intended to do all along, yet he hesitated to elaborate, not from delicacy, for he knew he could be as straightforward as he wished with Louisa and she would not be shocked, but because in the cold light of day, what he had begun to imagine seemed outrageous. In the end, he said simply, “Harry had a mistress.”

  “Hmm. Well, that’s hardly the most astonishing thing I’ve ever heard. I might have been surprised if he had not,” she said drily. “Who was she?”

  “That’s just the point. I have no idea. Some married woman, most probably, I thought at first.”

  It was the most likely explanation for what Harry had confessed to him, since unmarried girls were, of course, strictly off limits for anything but the most chaste of encounters – and then only in the presence of someone else. Chaperoned within an inch of their lives, even a snatched kiss was enough to ruin their reputation and leave them on the shelf for ever. All the world knew that a young man expected his wife to come to him pure and unsullied, though no such strictures applied to the opposite sex, quite the contrary: it was almost de rigeur, within a certain set, for a young man, while searching for a suitable wife, to take a lover, quite possibly from among the young married women of his acquaintance, a situation made possible by the women’s husbands turning a blind eye, lest their own extra-marital activities should become suspect.

  Such liaisons were an open secret, and yet …Sebastian had never heard the slightest whisper – even after Harry’s death – of his name being linked with anyone. “I’ve asked around, but no one knew of any mistress – and Harry was hardly the most discreet of men, was he? I had the fact from his own lips, otherwise I might never have believed there was any such woman, disregarding the fact that he was drunk at the time he told me. Unless —”

  “Unless she was not a woman known to his friends.”

  “Exactly. You read my mind, Louisa. Though even so, I would have thought someone would have known. An actress, or a dancer, perhaps? He wouldn’t tell me her name.”

  Not that it had been a matter of any importance at the time – just an amour which he hadn’t deemed it any business of his to pry into. And afterwards – well, it was over and done with and any woman who indulged in these sort of affairs would be well able to take care of herself. If she were indeed a married woman, she would not welcome intrusions from him – and if she were an actress, or a Gaiety girl, or anything like that, as he was inclined to suppose must be the case, then she would soon find someone else to be her protector. One suitor more or less could hardly make much difference.

  “But supposing she was neither, Sebastian. Or had no husband to support her? Supposing Harry had been keeping her and she was left destitute when he died?” With her quick intuition Louisa had precisely followed his line of thought. “If she were in want – and came to seek assistance from his family? If, in fact, she was the woman who was killed?”

  A silence fell. “If Harry had been keeping a woman like that, he would have left provision for her.”

  “Would he? He was still young, he hadn’t expected to die.”

  More than that — would he have allied himself in the first place with a woman such as the one who had been killed here? There had been a distinct whiff of prayer meetings and good works about those c
lothes. Try as he might, Sebastian couldn’t make the leap of imagination required to see Harry taking a mistress who wore a hat like that. In any case, if he had, what could she have hoped to gain from presenting herself to his family? What proof was there that anything between her and Harry had ever existed? What right did she have to claim support from them?

  “Do you suppose I should I tell the police? It’s nothing more than the vaguest of suppositions, after all.”

  “I think we should try to find this woman ourselves. Then if we do succeed, there’ll be no need to tell the police because she can’t be the woman who’s been killed.”

  “We?”

  “You don’t think I’d leave you to do it on your own?”

  “Louisa. No,” he said firmly. “It’s not to be thought of. I believe she must be found before we alert the police, but finding her is up to me.”

  “How are we to start?” she asked, ignoring this.

  “I’ll think of something. But you are not to be involved.” He was very much afraid he might be going to turn over stones and reveal things which might better remain concealed, yet at the same time, a bitterness which he did not like had entered into his memories of Harry, which he desperately needed to have cleared away. Exorcised might be a better word.

  He was suddenly on fire, with a violent urge to set about the search with the same enthusiasm he had lately been giving to his studies. Harry’s mistress must be found, and the idea that the strangled woman had anything to do with his brother put paid to once and for all. And then perhaps he could give undivided attention to his personal life. As to how finding the woman was to be accomplished, he was hanged if he could think how, at the moment. Monty, perhaps, might help. Monty knew everything. But then, the obvious occurred to him. The first person to talk to must, of course, be Sylvia, Harry’s twin.

  At this same moment, he became aware of the dogs making an unusual fuss around the pool. Dizzy was snuffling and barking, nosing around the rock on which the head of the Green Man was carved. Unnoticed before, he saw that the water had almost ceased to pour through the hole, had in fact dwindled to a mere trickle either side of the big rock. The spaniel was excitedly tugging at something from behind.

  “Something’s wedged in the mouth,” Louisa said.

  Whatever it was, Sebastian realised he could not reach it without plunging into the stream above and getting his feet soaked, which he wasn’t about to do. “All right, fetch!” Both dogs immediately began to attack the wedged object enthusiastically, and Sophie eventually had it out.

  Long before that, Sebastian sensed what it would be. When it finally came loose, with a gush of water through the hole, Sophie, wet through, dropped it obediently at Sebastian’s feet, shaking water all over his polished leggings.

  “Good gracious!” said Louisa, “how on earth did that get there?”

  Before picking it up, they stood looking down at the stout, tough-looking object, its chunky, serviceable shape, with its rough-surfaced leather, water-soaked but impenetrable, which appeared to have suffered not at all from the attentions of the dogs’ teeth. A small-sized Gladstone-type bag, about fifteen inches long, just big enough for carrying a few papers, or such as a woman might have used. Sebastian was well aware that he probably should not open it, but hand it to the police intact. His curiosity overcame his scruples. He took it and placed it on the rock upon which he and Louisa had been sitting and opened the clasp.

  The bag was old, its lining torn in places, but the water had not penetrated the tough leather to the inside, where there were two hinged compartments containing very little: nothing more, in fact, than a shabby cloth purse with coins in it that did not quite add up to a guinea. A folded handkerchief, plain white hemstitched cotton with no embroidery, monogram or laundry mark. A tortoiseshell comb and a few hairpins in a pocket. A small oblong card, painted with roses, pathetically scuffed.

  “A scent card,” explained Louisa, sniffing at what was now only a faint memory of the attar-of-roses with which it had originally been impregnated. “To slip into a drawer to perfume lingerie, or rub on your wrists for the fragrance. They’re given away as samples. Poor woman,” she added softly. The card, indeed seemed to say more about the woman than her plain and serviceable clothes had done.

  Sebastian put the card back into the little pocket where it had come from, almost pushing it by mistake behind the torn lining, which had become detached from the frame. As he smoothed the shabby cotton back, he felt something behind it. Cautiously, he drew it out: a blank envelope, sealed but bearing no address or information to indicate what it contained – he could well have in his hands the means, perhaps, of identifying the dead woman, the proof of whether she was or was not the person he had almost come to believe was certainly Harry’s erstwhile mistress. At any rate, once the police had opened it they might be in a better position to discover who could have had a motive for killing her, and that would be that. Belmonde would be rid of this business, once and for all. Suspicion must hang over them all until the murderer was caught, until the police either found the person responsible, or decided that no one in the house had either the opportunity, or indeed a reason to murder.

  He sat fingering the envelope, while Louisa watched him quizzically. A letter? If so, it must be a short one, since there was no thickness to it. “Shall we?” he asked, then shook his head in answer to his own question. His lack of scruple did not extend to letting him open it, though he sat staring at it for some time before replacing it, with the other articles, back in the bag, still puzzling over the questions to which neither he nor Louisa, nor anyone else, it seemed, had any answers.

  Of one thing Sebastian could be quite certain, however. The bag had not been wedged into the mouth of the Green Man when he had visited this spot the previous day.

  Chapter Eight

  “What have we here, then?”

  Crockett studied the bag and its contents carefully, before at last slitting the envelope open. Inside was nothing but a single sheet of cheap paper, seemingly torn from an exercise book, on which was written in a cramped, odd-looking writing, the name and address of a Mr & Mrs Alfred Crowther, Bridge End House, at Bridge End, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

  “We’ll telegraph the police up there, ask them to see these Crowthers and find out if they can throw any light on it,” he announced at last. He did not relish the prospect of a journey up to Yorkshire, having been there once before and having no desire to repeat the experience. He hadn’t been warm from the moment he’d stepped from the train. Those damned winds, whistling down the Pennines! Siberia could be no worse. Admittedly, it had been winter then, but still the prospect of a visit did not fill him with joy.

  Enquiries conducted by the electric telegraph, however, elicited no more useful information from the West Riding Constabulary than the fact that Alderman Alfred Crowther of Bridge End House was a respected and well-to-do woollen manufacturer of that town, and that neither he nor his wife, when questioned, could conceive of any reason why their address should be in the possession of a woman apparently quite unknown to them. At this, Meredith suggested sending on to them by post the pencil sketch Sergeant Palmer (who fancied himself as an artist) had made of the dead woman. He had produced a very creditable effort that gave a good impression of what she might have looked like in life, and the idea bolstered Crockett’s hope that he might yet avoid a visit to that benighted part of the world. All the same, he hesitated …a dead face was a dead face; it wasn’t possible to convey a typical glance, to know whether her features had usually been animated by laughter, frowns, fears or hopes. Miss X had not been possessed of any distinguishing or outstanding features. Just an ordinary woman, with brown hair and dark eyes – but if you had known a person when they were alive, you would surely recognise the contours of their face, the shape of their nose, the way the mouth was set.

  “Capital idea, Meredith,” he said. “Ask Sergeant Palmer to copy it, and we’ll have it posted immediately.”

&n
bsp; He did not feel hopeful of success. And indeed, word came by return of post that the Crowthers had carefully examined the sketch, had shown it to the rest of their family, but all of them were prepared to swear she was a woman they had never seen before in their lives. No arguing with that, the answer was unequivocal. Nor could the Crowthers, though intrigued and slightly alarmed, put forward any suggestion as to why a stranger to them should be in possession of their name and their address.

  It was raining again in London, as Sylvia Eustace-Bragge emerged from the black-painted door with the shining brass plate in Harley Street and hurried down the steps to where a motor-cab was waiting. Her heels tapped smartly and her voice, which she did not normally allow to betray her, was sharp as she rapped out a peremptory order for the driver to take her straight home. Once inside the cab, she threw back her veil over the confection of tulle and feathers which surmounted the huge, fashionable hat perched on her hair, and sat rigidly straight-backed on the cushioned seat, her thin, heavily-ringed hands, white to the knuckles, clenched on her small kid pochette.

  She had long ago decided she did not like Dr Mortimer; now, after this last humiliating examination, she knew she detested him – personally, and for the contribution he made to her general misery. The thread of her life felt to be unspooling from the bobbin on which had been tightly wound, there was nothing she could do to stop it, and Dr Mortimer’s unequivocal remarks had emphasised this. Nothing physically wrong, he had told her, yet again, eyeing her as she extracted the necessary twenty-pound banknote from her purse to pay what she considered the exorbitant fee. (She dare not write a cheque, for Algy would find the stub when he went through her cheque-book, and demand an explanation) When the doctor took the note from her, he patted her hand. His own hand was large and white, revoltingly freckled, like the first signs of mould on a piece of cheese. No reason why you shouldn’t yet have half a dozen babies. Nothing wrong with you, m’dear.