Jane Hetherington's Adventures In Detection

by Nina Jon

“Good God!” Jane said. “To have fooled so many he must be an even better forger than you were.”

  “The sketches aren’t fakes, Jane. They’re genuine. It was the man who sold them to me via you, who’s the fake. Believe it or not, the original of this,” James said, waving the postcard again, “was sold last week at auction in the far east. A white European man bought it. He paid cash.” He picked up a tumble of whiskey and knocked it back in one, before slapping his thighs and reluctantly getting to his feet. “We’d better pay a visit to the police, I suppose.”

  “Yes, we must James,” Jane said. “I think I’m also in possession of a forgery.”

  He shrugged and said, “the reason I gave up forgery was to spend more time with my family and less with the police.”

  The two walked over to the door.

  “It’s poor John Stem I feel sorry for,” James Haley said, as the two walked down the stairs. “He’s been dining out on his discovery, big time. He’s even sent out invitations for an exhibit of the sketches.” He laughed. “When this comes out, he’ll be the art world’s equivalent of the groom jilted at the altar!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY- SIX

  The Letter

  I

  Once home, Jane immediately checked her messages and found one from Mirabella.

  “I don’t know what’s happened Jane,” Mirabella said, after Jane returned her call. “I’ve called and called but they’re not answering their phone. I even called their great-niece – the lady who was going to run the shop for them while they were away – but even she doesn’t know why they’ve changed their mind. She just got a call from them late last night, telling her not to come down at all.”

  “How puzzling,” Jane said. “I’ll call on the wool shop now and see if they’ll let me in.”

  II

  But they didn’t.

  “We’d rather not speak to anyone at the moment if it’s all the same to you Mrs Hetherington,” Dotty Bailey said through the letterbox.

  “I understand,” Jane said, although she didn’t. Just as she straightened herself up, she heard a voice in the background.

  “Dotty – the letter!”

  “Oh yes,” Dotty said. “Would you mind posting a letter for us Mrs Hetherington?”

  Jane bent down to the letterbox again and said that of course she didn’t. “I think we’ve missed today’s post,” she added.

  “Tomorrow will be more than adequate, thank you,” Dotty said, passing a handwritten, stamped envelope through the letterbox to Jane.

  She took it and and read the name and address on it, recognising the name. As there was nothing else she could do, she bid the ladies a good night, put the letter in her handbag and returned home to telephone Mirabella.

  “What exactly happened when the Rolls-Royce turned up to take them to the airport?” she asked.

  “Well,” Mirabella replied, “it was very strange indeed.”

  III

  After Jane came off the phone to Mirabella, she immediately telephoned the wool shop, but the Bailey sisters declined to answer. In that case there is only one thing for it, Jane said to herself, walking to her study and taking out some writing paper. She wrote a note to Lettice Bailey and slipped it into an envelope. She wrote Lettice’s name on the front of the envelope and drove to the Market Square. After parking nearby, she pushed her note through the letterbox of the wool shop – then made her way to the cafe of a nearby supermarket. She was on her second coffee when her telephone rang. It was Nellie Bailey.

  “Maybe you could call on us Mrs Hetherington?” she said.

  “I’m on my way, Nellie dear,” she said.

  IV

  The Nellie Bailey who answered the door was the most sombre Jane had ever seen her. Without saying a word, Jane embraced her and followed her into the shop. As they made their way through the shop and into the building’s living quarters, Jane couldn’t help noticing mail sacks leaning against the walls. “They’re from well-wishers,” Nellie said, matter-of-factly. “People are so kind. My sisters are waiting for you in the parlour,” she added. Jane could see she was close to tears.

  When Jane reached the parlour, Lettice and Dotty stood to greet her, both as sombre as their sister. Dotty motioned with her arm towards one of the chairs. “Please do take a seat, Mrs Hetherington.”

  The three sisters sat down on the Chesterfield, with Lettice in the middle. It was she who leant forward – Jane’s letter in her hand. This she lay down on a small table, its contents exposed to everyone in the room.

  My dear Lettice,

  Please forgive my impertinence in writing to you. If anything I suggest in my note is untrue, or in any way offends you, then please accept my heartfelt apologies. I know you told the Reverend that your decision not to travel to America and appear on television there was because the publicity was all becoming too much for you. This we all understand. However, I do remember you saying how much you were enjoying the experience.

  What I write next is merely a suggestion and yours to contradict or ignore completely, I will never raise it again.

  Might the real reason for your change of heart be something else? Might it be your sudden realisation that with worldwide fame comes scrutiny? Maybe your real fear is of someone prying into your past and coming across something which happened many years ago? If I’m correct, and I think I might be, I can’t believe anyone will think the less of you, because of something which happened when you must have been a very young woman – not after all this time.

  If what I suggest is true, please let me help you, if I can.

  Jane Hetherington

  PS: I shall be in the town centre for the rest of the afternoon should you wish to call me on my mobile phone. Its number is…

  “What makes you think this?” Lettice asked.

  “You felt the urgent need to write a letter to your great neice, after suddenly cancelling your all-expenses-paid holiday to the United States, which I know you were looking forward to. I thought…” Jane stop talking. She could feel myself blushing – an unusual sensation for her.

  “That our great-neice Andrea, is actually my granddaughter, the child of my illegitimate child, who I gave up to be raised by my brother, and the letter we asked you to post, was some type of confessional to her and her mother?” Lettice smiled gently when she said this. Jane realised immediately from the tone that she was mistaken. “Andrea is our brother’s granddaughter, his daughter’s daughter, nothing more,” Lettice said.

  “I’m so sorry Lettice. Since I’ve become a private detective my imagination sometimes runs away with me. I’ll show myself out,” Jane said, hurriedly getting to her feet.

  “You will do no such thing Jane,” Nellie said.

  “We were ridiculous to think we could take such a secret to our graves,” Dotty said.

  V

  In the wool shop’s kitchen, Lettice calmly unlocked the cellar door and turned the overhead light on. She turned to Jane and said, “Come, please.”

  Jane followed Lettice through the open door, with Dotty and Nellie taking up the rear.

  They made their way down the steep steps in single file. The cellar was brighter and less musty than Jane had imagined it would be. At the bottom of the stairs, Dotty and Lettice stood on either side Jane, while Nellie removed a small partition made from a curtain draped over some kind of frame, to reveal a small vase of fresh flowers. Something was written on the paving slab underneath it, but Jane couldn’t make it out. She moved closer.

  Harry Foraker - who lived for not a minute on earth but who will live in Heaven for ever

  “We had to wait for Papa to die, before we were able to give him a gravestone,” Lettice said.

  Jane looked down on the grave of the child and, to her surprise, began to cry. She embraced Lettice with the words, “Oh Lettice. Your poor baby died.”

  Lettice gently shook her head. “Harry wasn’t my baby, Jane.”

  Dotty lay her hand on Jane’s shoulder. “Please don’t cry Jane.
My grief has deadened with time.” To Jane’s rather puzzled look, she said, “Lettice wasn’t the only one of us with a boyfriend.” She motioned towards the grave. “I named my son after his father Harry Foraker.”

  “Harry was my fiancé’s elder brother,” Lettice said.

  “I genuinely loved Harry,” Dotty explained. “He’d separated from his wife, but in those days divorce was a rich man’s privilege. I only spend one night with him. He was going to war and I thought I might never see him again, which I didn’t. I discovered I was pregnant after his death. I was unmarried teenager carrying a married man’s child, which sixty-eight years ago Jane, wasn’t an enviable situation to be in.”

  “Who else knew?” Jane asked.

  “Outside this room, nobody,” Dotty said. “Our mother was dying of cancer at the time. Our father spent most of the time with her at the hospital, or trying to keep his business running. When I became larger, I concealed my pregnancy through layers of clothing and kept out of Papa’s way.”

  “A few times he even asked if Dotty was avoiding him, and we just told him not to be so silly,” Nellie said.

  “Our brother was only twelve years of age and away at school most of the time. He passed away last year, none the wiser,” Lettice said.

  “As I approached full-term, I simply didn’t step outside. Nor did I help in the shop. Few could tell us apart even then, so I doubt anybody even noticed. The most painful thing was being unable to visit my mother in the hospital.” She stopped to compose herself. “When my time came, I gave birth down here, to mask the noise, while Nellie and Lettice ran the shop.”

  “It wasn’t just Dotty we had to protect Jane,” Lettice explained. “There was Harry’s widow and his children to consider.”

  “And Mama and Papa,” Dotty said.

  “You were alone?” Jane asked, horrified.

  “For most of it, yes. Nellie was there for the end. At least we thought it was the end.”

  “We hadn’t made any plans about what to do when the baby came,” Nellie said. “I decided there and then to leave it on the church steps. I smuggled the baby out of the house wrapped in a blanket.I was in a blind panic. Luckily it was dark. I’d nearly reached the church, when a voice called out to me, ‘Nellie Bailey – is that you – out at this time of night?’ My heart nearly stopped. I spun around and saw Lady Jocelyn.”

  “Lady Amelia’s mother,” Lettice explained.

  Nellie continued with her story. “She was taking one of her night strolls, accompanied by her maid. She hastened me over. I tried to conceal the newborn in my arms but she saw immediately what I held. She stared at the tiny bundle in my arms. ‘Why this child is barely a few hours old,’ she said. ‘How have you come by a newborn?’ In my terror, I did no more than blindly shake my head as though I didn’t know. ‘Is it a girl or boy?’ she asked. ‘Girl,’ I managed to reply. ‘She can’t be yours. One of your sisters?’ Lady Jocelyn asked. Again I shook my head, I remember the tears streaming down my face. ‘What on earth are you intending to do with her?’ she asked me. I remember my reply to this day. ‘Oh ma’am, I have no idea.’ She and her maid looked at each other. ‘Give her to me,’ she said. I hesitated. ‘Hurry up girl or you’ll be seen.’ I did as I was bid. Lady Jocelyn took the baby and handed it to her maid who wrapped her under her cloak. ‘We’ll look after her tonight and tomorrow I’ll visit my solicitor. He’ll find her a good home.’ As she spoke, her maid slipped away with the baby. ‘It’s for the best, Nellie,’ Lady Jocelyn said and I knew that it was. ‘This will be our secret. We’ll say no more about this.’

  “When I returned home, Dotty was cradling Harry in her arms.”

  “I’d fallen pregnant with twins,” Dotty said. “Just my luck! I wasn’t as lucky with the second one as with the first, and little Harry was born dead.”

  “I was serving in the shop the whole time,” Lettice said. “We had to keep up appearances.”

  Jane closed her eyes at the thought of it. She’d given birth in a hospital and even then it had nearly been a disaster. For the girl of just nineteen to give birth in a cellar, the second time alone – it was almost mediaeval! She put her hands on Dotty shoulders and held her close. “Dotty, you poor dear thing. All those years. Watching me with Adele. It must have been agony for you.”

  “The decades had passed, even then Jane,” Dotty said. “I recovered quickly. I was only nineteen. Mama eventually passed away. Papa lived for many years afterwards, although he was never really the same again. We carried on with our lives. Neither Papa nor our brother, ever knew what happened.”

  “And you don’t know what happened to her after that?” Jane asked.

  “A year later, Lady Jocelyn called at the shop with her maid on the pretext of buying wool,” Lettice said. “She asked if we were alone in the house and when we said we were, she produced a lock of hair and a photograph of the baby. She told us her new family had called her Rose and promised Rose lacked for nothing. Other than this we know nothing about what became of her. We don’t even know if she is aware she’s adopted.”

  “I think I need a cup of tea,” Jane said.

  VI

  Upstairs in the kitchen, Lettice pressed a mug of tea into Jane’s hands, while Dotty laid a photograph out on the kitchen table. Jane picked it up. It was a black-and-white photograph of a smiling child of about one year of age, a ribbon tied around her head. Jane put the photograph down. So, Hugh had been right all along. The sisters had been nursing a secret, a secret they’d had to cut themselves off from the world to keep and, as a result, had come to be seen as increasingly eccentric, something they didn’t play down. Just one of the many prices they’d paid.

  “You were wrong about one thing Jane,” Lettice said. “It wasn’t the publicity we feared, for there are few alive who even know what happened that night.”

  “What caused us to panic and threw up the drawbridge was the call we received from English Heritage,” Dotty said.

  “They asked if they could begin their survey of the wool shop when we were away,” Nellie said. “I asked what they meant by survey and they said nothing much more than walking around the place, although they might need to dig outside or in the cellar.”

  “We realised then that we couldn’t keep our secret hidden any longer. If English Heritage can’t inspect our property as they wish to, it won't be listed and the council will demolish it,” Lettice said. “After reflection we decided to write to Andrea setting out the bare facts of the matter. Sometimes it’s easier to put these things in writing.”

  “I also realised something,” Dotty said. “Not only can’t I keep my secret any longer, I don’t want to. If she can be found, Rose has a right to know her providence and that she had a big brother. Her father’s other children also have a right to learn about her; and my son deserves a Christian burial.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY- SEVEN

  Read All About It

  The following Sunday, Jane received a text from James Haley: ‘Read today’s Sunday Era!’

  She’d need to go into town to buy one she realised, and so, at just before nine in the morning, Jane closed the door of her cottage behind her. With the sky grey and a thick, morning mist still shrouding the stand of trees at the neighbouring field’s far end, it was hard to tell where the land ended and the sky began. She walked along Cuckoo Tree Lane towards town. The crisp frost had petrified the spider’s webs in the rosehip bush, iced its blood red berries, and turned the crops in the field white. It also made the ground slippery and more than once Jane nearly slipped on the icy path.

  In the market square, she bought a copy of the newspaper and took it with her to a nearby coffee shop to read. On the supplement’s front page was a photograph of James Haley, pictured outside his London art gallery, under the words: ‘It takes a thief to catch out a thief!’

  The caption invited readers to read an interview with (as the magazine put it) ‘A swindled swindler.’

  The article was written in the first per
son, confessional style and began with James Haley boasting about his early successes as an art forger, including a very detailed account of his deception of ‘Graham Burslem’, whom he referred to throughout as Jim Grady. ‘I couldn’t visit the southwest coast for a very long time after that!’ he quipped. ‘I was one of the very best, if I say so myself,’ he told the readers, warning them never to underestimate the number of forgeries there were out there. He bragged about his long career and how he had pulled the wool over the eyes of many an art critic, art gallery, museum and private collector. ‘Now, I can’t name names or anything, but there is one very rich and famous rock musician, whose art collection isn’t quite as valuable as he thinks it is!’

  James Haley recalled his time in jail. ‘They were mostly open jails, so it wasn’t a big deal. When I got married and had a kid, I didn’t want my boy to have a jailbird as a dad, so I packed it in and went legit. I became quite a successful art dealer. I knew who to trust,’ he declared, before dramatically informing the readers that, although he didn’t know it: ‘There was one crime, I still hadn’t done my time for. I’d made an enemy, and one with a long memory at that. My past was about to catch up with me big time. The fates were to throw me and him together and that was that. I always thought I’d be able to tell a fake from a real ‘un. But it turned out, I couldn’t!’

  He added that although police investigations were underway, he personally doubted he would ever see his money again, or anyone jailed for the crime.

  The interview ended humbly. ‘If you’re reading this, old fruit, then hats off to you, mate, you’ve pulled off your coup brilliantly. Let’s just call it quits, eh?’

  Jane laughed out loud at James Haley’s cocky honesty and self-effacement. She couldn’t help but admire his attitude. He accepted he’d been duped with good humour, and rather than vowing to avenge it, he’d put the whole thing down to experience, unlike his foe. The world, she decided, needed more people like James Haley in it. The older, wiser James Haley, not the young forger, obviously.

  James Haley’s sketch of ‘Graham Burslem’ appeared at the bottom of the article alongside the name and number of the police officer in charge of the investigation, for any who had more information. Jane ripped the article out of the magazine, and put it in her handbag. The next time she felt low, she’d take the article out and reread it.