Shadows & Lies
Page 34
It was Meredith, hitherto silent in the background, concentrating on following where the story was leading, who was the first to realise what had happened. He reached out for the door, and was clutching the knob when the door was pulled sharply to from the other side and it slipped from his grasp. He wrenched the door open again and rushed after Monty into the hall.
But Monty was faster, and fitter – and moreover knew where he was headed. Meredith, confronted in the big hall with corridors and doors leading he knew not where, came to a baffled halt.
Sebastian was propelled by instinct. The instant Monty left the room, knowing the French window was kept locked in the winter, he went for the side window. The sash was stiff, but he used the heels of his hands, and it shot open. He climbed easily out on to the sill and dropped down on to the soft earth below. He sprinted diagonally across the parterre at the front of the house towards the wing where the business room was.
The gun-room, through the door behind his father’s desk, was locked from the other side. “Monty!” he shouted, rattling the knob.
There was no answer. With rising panic, he shouted and rattled again, put his shoulder to the door, but it wouldn’t give. He could hear sounds of movement in the room beyond … And then, finally, the single shot. And after that, silence.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Crockett, back at Scotland Yard, looking through the statements made by Sir Henry Chetwynd and his wife prior to writing up his report, thought the solution to Rosa’s murder had, after all, been simple enough.
Sir Henry’s statement was laboured and short to the point of brusqueness, Adèle’s a more longer exposition of what she’d first, haltingly, told him, as soon as she was able after the first shock of her brother-in-law’s death.
She had affirmed that Monty had indeed arrived at Belmonde some hours before his admission to the house by Blythe. He had left his motorcar hidden under the trees and walked along to the house, letting himself into what they called the fernery, a gloomy little corner wedged in between two wings of the house, where she was waiting. Henry had been keeping watch for Rosa Tartaryan from the business room window, in order to intercept her before she could announce herself at the door, ready to bring her into the fernery by its front entrance. After they arrived, both doors of the windowless room were locked – which was fortunate, because while they were there someone who later turned out to be Blythe had made strenuous efforts to open the notoriously badly-fitting door (which he had, in fact, had repaired the following day).
Rosa had been brought down to Belmonde on the pretext of meeting Sir Henry and coming to some arrangement regarding Hannah and her child. But it was evident from the first that she had been lying about acting for her mistress, Lady Chetwynd had said contemptuously. Monty accused her of wanting the money for herself, and told her she would not get another penny from them.
“She went for him like a little cat. She would have scratched his eyes out had he not taken hold of her. It was only a little shake. But when he let go, she fell and hit her head on the basin. She was hanging over the water and seemed to have fainted, and I said, ‘Splash her with water, that’ll bring her round.’ He took hold of her, he had his back to me, and then …then he turned round and said, ‘She’s dead.”’
“Dipped her head in the water – but put her too far in, don’t you see?” said Sir Henry flatly. “She drowned.”
“Let me tell you she didn’t drown,” Crockett had said, “she was dead before she was ever pushed into the water – and not from the wound she got on her head when she fell, but because that ‘little shake’ your brother gave her – with his hands around her throat – had already killed her.”
Henry had rested his eyes on his wife with a look Crockett could not fathom. “Oh, my dear God,” she said.
“Well, we weren’t to know that, Adèle,” said her husband. He turned to face Crockett. “All I thought of was getting her out of the house. It was Monty who suggested we put her in the stream, to make it look as though she’d fallen in and drowned there. Medical people can tell how somebody died, can’t they? We couldn’t carry her to the stream in daylight, so we left her where she was with the doors locked, and waited to do that until about midnight.”
Crockett thought about how the case might be presented.
Chetwynd had taken care to conceal the true time of his arrival at Belmonde – did this mean he anticipated the murder? Probably not. The statements of Lady Chetwynd and her husband, when put together, rang true enough to confirm that it was not premeditated. That it was murder, however, was clear enough in Crockett’s own mind. All the same, he thought Monty might have got away with a plea of manslaughter. A little distortion of the true facts by the two witnesses, combined with his otherwise unblemished reputation; his knowledge of the law and how to get round it, and Chetwynd would not have hanged. But it would certainly have put an end to his career. He had preferred to take the way out which he had done, and by an impulsive and unnecessary action, defeated the gallows, rather than face a trial where all the dirty washing would have been brought out for public inspection.
The statements of Sir Henry and his wife supported one another. They had been the only witnesses to the crime. But there was nothing to say the statements had provided the whole truth. Collusion was a word which had crept into Crockett’s mind and stayed there. Collusion between Sylvia and her uncle, between Sir Henry and Monty in enticing Rosa to Belmond, in getting the body to the place where it was found. Something had passed between husband and wife when they were describing the murder. He thought of the indomitable will he had sensed in her. He thought of those strong, piano-playing fingers. He thought of the confession she had been about to make which Monty had prevented by what he had done. Perhaps Monty’s action had not been as cowardly as might have been supposed. Perhaps, in the end, he had been a hero.
But only Sir Henry Chetwynd would ever be able to prove otherwise, and he would never tell.
Crockett finished his report and put it aside. He had in a way been deprived of his quarry, but that was a disappointment he had to swallow. He was going to see Agnes tonight, take her to the theatre and to supper afterwards. He would have the little pearl and garnet ring in his pocket, and this time he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She at least wasn’t going to be allowed to slip through his fingers.
“But my dears,” said Lady Emily, taking charge of the situation as usual, “your mother has done the best thing by going home to her father in America for a while. Taking Sylvia with her, what’s more. Sylvia can be of an ungovernable and headstrong disposition if she doesn’t have her own way, and it’s a pity they haven’t got on better – they need to be together for a while. And when they come home, everyone will have forgotten.”
“Not everyone,” said Sebastian. “What about us?”
“We shall not forget, my dear, how could we? But we must not permit our lives to be ruined by what has happened. Remember why your mother wanted it all brought out into the open? A family life founded on lies – that is what she said, did she not? — is a life not worth living. Monty …” Her voice almost broke, her shoulders sagged, just a little. Then she pulled herself together and sat up straight, looking wonderfully regal in her pearl choker. “Monty did what he had to. There will be gossip, a great deal of talk as to why he – did what he did, but he saved the family from so much worse than that.”
She met Sebastian’s eyes. She had known about Monty and his mother. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the cuff-link. He hadn’t handed it over to Crockett; he hadn’t thought it would prove anything, but it didn’t matter now.
I did not imagine there would ever be such joy again for me. When Dr Harvill suggested that my long memory lapse was in fact a retreat from reality, a refusal to accept painful truths, I didn’t want to believe him, but I think now he was right. I feel free, at last.
We are to go to Yorkshire for a while. I shall meet Lyddie’s mother and father again, and perhaps they’ll
forgive me for my lack of courage in refusing to see them before now. Ned says there is no perhaps about it, and in my heart I believe what he says. I am not yet quite as confident as I was before, and I’m coming to realise I can rely more and more on his judgement.
I have not yet found the courage to meet Harry’s family, other than Sebastian – and Louisa, who is the only one who remembers the grief and terror of Mafeking.
Harry’s father, especially, wishes to meet Ludo. He has written me a short, and on the face of it curt, letter, but Sebastian laughed and said one must learn to read between the lines of anything his father writes or says, and that he is more than ready to welcome Ludo with open arms. Sebastian, relieved now of the burden of being the heir to the Belmonde title and estate, welcomes the idea even more, but I view the prospect with not a little alarm. Whatever happens, though, I will not let him be taken from me.
Meanwhile, there is Bridge End again. It’s spring, and the forsythias will be in bloom.
Marjorie Eccles was born in Yorkshire and spent much of her childhood there and on the Northumbrian coast. The author of over twenty books, serials and short stories, she is the recipient of the Agatha Christie Short Story Styles Award. Living on the edge of the Black Country, where she taught creative writing, inspired the acclaimed Gil Mayo series. A keen gardener, she now lives with her husband in Hertfordshire.
Also by Marjorie Eccles
NOVELS
The Shape of Sand
Killing a Unicorn
Pandora’s Box
Echoes of Silence
GIL MAYO SERIES
Cast a Cold Eye
Death of a Good Woman
Requiem for a Dove
More Deaths Than One
Late of This Parish
The Company She Kept
An Accidental Shroud
A Death of Distinction
A Species of Revenge
Killing Me Softly
The Superintendent’s Daughter
A Sunset Touch
Untimely Graves
COLLECTED SHORT STORIES
Account Rendered
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
SHADOWS & LIES. Copyright © 2005 by Marjorie Eccles. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
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First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby Limited
under the title Shadows and Lies
eISBN 9781466821538
First eBook Edition : May 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eccles, Marjorie.
Shadows & lies / Marjorie Eccles.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36896-8
ISBN-10: 0-312-36896-8
1. Women—England—Shropshire—Fiction. 2. Amnesia—Fiction. 3. Upper class—Fiction. 4. Country life—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Shadows and lies.
PR6055.C33 S53 2007
823’.914—dc22
2007014100
First U.S. Edition: August 2007