A Time of Hope (Part Five of The People of this Parish Saga)

by Nicola Thorne

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “But it is what you want, Solomon?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “It’s what I want too,” she said. “I can’t envisage spending the rest of my life with Bart.”

  Solomon pressed her hand to his lips.

  “Darling we must be thankful for what we have. Neither of us is in the position at the moment to change things. Let’s live for today. I love you.” He bent and kissed her.

  “I love you too,” she called after him, blowing a kiss.

  Solomon always left by a side door on the lookout for staff about their business in the early morning, and then skirted the grounds to the lane about half a mile away where he left his car in the trees.

  But of course they knew, the servants all knew. In many ways, he thought, it was just a matter of time before Bart found out. And what then?

  The body lay, face upwards as though the sightless eyes were gazing at the first rays of the sun. The sea gently washed over it. It was impossible to know whether it had been brought in by the tide or had lain on the beach overnight.

  The early morning runner gazed at the body in shock as the water lapped over it. At first he had thought it was a swimmer out for an early-morning dip. The nearer he got the more apprehensive he had became at the stillness.

  The woman was about forty-five, maybe fifty. She could have drowned at sea and been brought in by the tide, or she could have collapsed in the sand, the victim of a sudden seizure, perhaps, a heart attack.

  But no. The man, despite his horror and confusion, couldn’t fail to see that her face was a curious purplish colour and contused, the tongue protruding from her slack mouth – a ligature tied tightly round her neck.

  ***

  Solomon got to the office early, had a bath, changed into a clean shirt and ruffled the bed to make it look as though he’d slept there all night. When the secretaries came in they could draw their own conclusions.

  He still felt unhappy and uncomfortable, as though the day had got off to a bad start. He worried about Debbie because he thought that one day she might do something foolish and betray them. Despite being a daughter of the rectory she had a reckless streak, as her past had demonstrated. She seemed unaware of the value of money or the penalties of not having any. She also didn’t seem to take quite seriously enough the threat posed by her husband should he discover their liaison, or the fact that he, Solomon, was possibly James’s father.

  But what to do? He couldn’t give Debbie up and he didn’t want to. Yet to meet in a hotel room was sordid. Besides she was very well known locally so it would have to be some distance away. It couldn’t be Bournemouth, for obvious reasons. He felt they’d got careless with Bart being away such a lot. The fact that the servants knew could also make them open to blackmail.

  Yet they couldn’t run away because they hadn’t any money. Knowing Bart, Solomon was certain they would be pursued to the ends of the earth and a terrible vengeance extracted. Solomon really feared Bart’s wrath.

  When he’d had his affair with Sarah Jane the servants had also known. They always found out, servants did. Only then neither of them were married, they were both free and it didn’t really matter what the servants saw or thought. What had mattered in the end was what her children and local society thought. That had banished them into exile, caused their foolish marriage and precipitated the eventual collapse of their relationship.

  Solomon spent all day wrestling with this problem, this fear. In the afternoon he had to go to Dorchester and, at the end of his meeting, instead of going back to the office he decided to go home. In the car he turned from the problem of Bart to the problem of Sarah Jane and what to do about their disastrous marriage.

  What could he do about her, a helpless alcoholic? He felt a kind of pity for her, and remorse. He had ruined her life; because of him she had turned to drink. Without him she could still be living in Wenham, at Riversmead, surrounded by her family and friends, although she’d always told him she wasn’t happy until she met him, that he had made her come alive again.

  Solomon had been, still was to some extent, a shy, quiet, withdrawn young man, the victim of a rather unhappy home life as a child with a remote father and a mother who didn’t know how to show love. He had craved love and when he met Sarah Jane he thought she was as wise as she was sexually attractive – that she could be at the same time a mother and a mistress to him.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way. Now, well, frankly, life was a mess.

  Solomon got home at about five. The house was empty. He wasn’t surprised. He didn’t know what Sarah Jane did with her day, only that when she came home she’d been drinking. She used to talk about a bridge club and meeting friends at various charity functions. He didn’t ask too many questions. He wasn’t really interested what she did with her time or where she went.

  The cleaning woman had been and the house was tidy. It usually was. Yet it had an uncared for, unlived-in feeling as though its occupants spent little time there. Sarah Jane, who had once been proud of her domesticity, her abilities as a homemaker, took little interest in the new house, possibly because, like the last, it was rented until something better came along. If Solomon had cared about saving their marriage he supposed he would have designed and built them a house, but he had neither the interest nor the time, nor the money to pay for it.

  He looked in the Frigidaire for some food and found cold pork which they’d had for lunch on Sunday. If he was at home Sarah Jane would cook a meal. She was a decent cook, but he often came home late or not at all, pleading business appointments, trips to London and so on. Sometimes they were genuine and sometimes it was when he stayed with Debbie. Altogether they didn’t have much of a home life and, really, in many ways it was high time it was ended. But how? That was the problem.

  Solomon made himself a drink. He switched on the wireless to listen to the news.

  Nothing much. France had followed the example of England in lifting sanctions against Italy over its conquest of Abyssinia. After all, the King of Italy had now been declared Emperor of Abyssinia. It was a fait accompli. International politics was a very cynical business. One moment they were all condemning Italy for crushing poor little Abyssinia, the next everything was forgiven. The same was happening to Hitler. Excuses were being offered for every aggressive act perpetrated by him, whether against neighbouring countries or the Jews.

  Solomon switched off the news and read the evening paper. By seven o’clock he began to wonder where Sarah Jane was. He helped himself to cold pork, had a beer and then wandered out into the garden. The neighbour was mowing his lawn and Solomon went over to the hedge that divided them, and asked if he happened to have seen his wife.

  The neighbour, who was not very friendly, shook his head and went on mowing.

  Eight o’clock came, nine and then ten.

  Maybe she’d gone to stay with somebody? Shouldn’t he call the police? No, that was fanciful, stupid. She was possibly paying him back for all the nights he spent away from her. Only he always let her know that he wasn’t coming home. Spiteful of her not to do the same.

  Solomon slept fitfully. He woke up constantly, thinking that he’d heard something. But there was nothing, no one there. He fell into a deep sleep just before dawn and woke at eight, realising that he had a meeting at nine and he had an hour to shower, dress and get to Blandford.

  He turned on the radio as he shaved. He listened to the morning news and was just about to switch off when the newsreader said, “The body of an unidentified woman has been found on the beach at Bournemouth. The police file of missing persons is being scrutinised ...”

  Sarah Jane looked very peaceful, as though she’d fallen asleep, although her flesh was discoloured and her mouth swollen, as if she’d been in an accident.

  “It is my wife,” Solomon said.

  “You’re sure, sir?”

  “Quite sure.” Solomon looked at the policeman who was staring at him rather tha
n at the corpse. “How did she die?”

  “She was strangled, sir, with a ligature.”

  At a sign from the policeman the attendant lowered the sheet covering the body to reveal an ugly, deep purple mark that made it seem as though an attempt had been made to sever her head.

  Solomon felt a surge of emotion that was partly grief and partly revulsion and turned away, covering his face. The policeman put a hand on his arm and gently steered him out of the room.

  All Wenham was in shock. Disasters, scandals, misfortunes of all kinds had afflicted the Woodvilles and families connected with them, but never murder.

  Sarah Jane had been found dead on the beach at Bournemouth and the police wasted no time in arresting Solomon for her murder. He had no alibi but had an apparent motive, as it was known that the marriage was not happy. What was more plausible than a discontented husband, shackled to a much older woman, strangling her and dumping her body on the beach, then reporting her missing?

  Bart Sadler drove home after seeing his sister’s body. He was shocked and saddened at what had occurred in his absence in Germany. He arranged for a solicitor to represent Solomon, but had no desire to see him. Like the police he couldn’t think of anyone else who would wish to kill his sister, although he found it extremely difficult to envisage the gentle, cultured Solomon as a murderer pulling that ligature, a length of piano wire, tightly round Sarah Jane’s neck, probably as she slept, and carrying her body to the beach in the dead of night. The time of death was estimated at late afternoon or early evening when Solomon would apparently have, on his own admission, been home alone with his wife.

  The police would not release her body for burial. Already Martha and Felicity had come down from London, but Bart didn’t wish to see his nieces either. They’d done their mother few good turns in recent years.

  Bart felt a wave of pity for his sister. He knew what it was like to feel rejected by the community, to be an exile. That, probably, in the end was what brought them together, and now that she was no longer there he wished he’d done more. He’d known she drank too much, and he should have made an effort to find out why. Instead he had tried to pretend that it wasn’t a problem and had pushed it under the carpet, out of his mind. He pleaded business pressures as an excuse for everything, even the little he saw of his children except to kiss them good-night. He neglected Debbie. He was away far too much and he took an acceptance of his lifestyle for granted. He adored his family. But, in truth, it was from afar.

  It was an angry and bitter, but also chastened, man who arrived back at Upper Park. But as he entered the house a chill wind seemed to greet him and, imagining it still to be the influence of the morgue, he hurried upstairs calling for his wife.

  “And the children? Where are the children?” he asked, seeing Harold standing in the hall below.

  “They have gone out with their nurse I believe, sir. Madam had a headache and is lying on her bed.”

  “I won’t disturb her then.”

  Harold gave a discreet cough. “May I say, Mr Sadler, on behalf of the staff, how distressed we all are ...”

  “Thank you,” Bart said curtly. “You could bring me a whisky and water in the drawing room please, Harold.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bart hesitated outside the drawing-room door, wondering if after all he should go and see Debbie. He was aware of an emotion he seldom felt: loneliness, desolation, a need to be comforted. He knew he had few real friends. He thought Solomon had been one, his sister another. Most people pandered to him because they were afraid of him. None of the Woodvilles liked him, Abel wouldn’t speak to him. Eliza avoided him. Alexander, though polite, wasn’t a friend. The immediate members of his own family, many of whom he had helped financially, had little to do with him. They received but they did not give. There was no love for him, no warmth.

  He was overcome by self-pity, and felt desperately in need of the love and comfort of his wife, the one person on whom he felt he could really depend.

  He went into the drawing room and after Harold had brought him his whisky he stood by the window looking out across his land. All of it was his, as far as the eye could see, mile upon mile of lush Dorset countryside which, one day, his son would inherit.

  A sense of peace and joy began slowly to infuse him. After all, the future did lie in one’s children. The mistakes that one had made in the past would be obliterated by the generations that came after him. He would leave land, property, a colossal fortune to make the name ‘Sadler’ one, not only to reckon with, but to be proud of. He was the first Sadler – farmers for generations in Dorset – to achieve something, to make real money.

  Bart replenished his glass of whisky just as the door opened and Debbie came in, or rather she crept in. She looked terrible, her face ashen, and he thought he detected signs of tears.

  “My dear,” he said anxiously, going up to her, “you look ill. You should not have got up on my account. You must go straight back to bed.” He put a hand on her forehead. “Have you a fever? Shall I call the doctor?”

  Deborah shook her head, then taking Bart by the hand, drew him down on to the sofa, sitting him next to her.

  As he gazed at her in alarm she put her other hand over the one that she held. Bart could feel how cold she was, in a contrast to her burning brow and, remembering that sad corpse in the morgue, the awful chill of death, he was suddenly filled again with fear.

  “Debbie, my darling, what is it? You’re afraid of something. What?” He wanted to stroke her head again, but fear held him back.

  “Bart.” Debbie pressed his hand between hers and, somehow, found the courage to gaze straight at him. “It is not easy to tell you this. I have wrestled with my conscience, but there is no way out for me. Even if it ruins my life I can’t let a good, an innocent, man die.”

  “What is it Debbie?” Bart asked urgently. “What are you trying to tell me?” For one of the few times in his life Bart suddenly felt real terror, an awful premonition that disaster was about to strike.

  “Bart ... Solomon did not kill Sarah Jane. He couldn’t have. He was not with her the night she died. He was with me.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  August 1936

  “Man that is born of woman ... ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  As the rector’s voice echoed round the churchyard Carson thought this sad and familiar phrase from the burial service had occurred too often in the past few years – Nelly, Mary, now poor Sarah Jane laid, finally, to her rest.

  There had been some dispute about the funeral as Bart had wanted to have her body cremated at a private ceremony in Bournemouth, but family wishes had prevailed. Her son and two daughters were strongly of the opinion that she should be buried beside her first husband who had so long predeceased her.

  Eliza, who so seldom cried, found it hard to restrain her tears. Sarah Jane had been her son, Laurence’s, wife, and though she had changed after his death, Eliza recalled the many happy years the couple had together early in the century. Then the sun had always seemed to shine on the healthy, handsome, loving couple with their three happy children who now, dressed in deepest mourning, stood next to her watching in silence as the coffin was gently lowered into the grave.

  What were their thoughts, Eliza wondered? She stole a look at Martha, who was trying with difficulty to hold back tears. Eliza surreptitiously took her hand. Solomon, a little apart from the rest, was a lonely figure apparently ostracised by everyone. The townspeople were divided about his release from police custody because of Deborah’s evidence that he had spent the night with her. Half of them thought she was trying to cover up for him and that he probably had murdered the wife with whom everyone knew he wasn’t happy. The other half gave him the benefit of the doubt, but they still regarded him with suspicion. So little was known about him: where he came from, who his parents were. His effect on the small community in a short time had been devastating, first for having run off with Sarah Jane and then for having come under suspici
on of killing her. For a mild-mannered, soft spoken, almost self-effacing young man, this was no mean achievement.

  His former employee having been summarily dismissed from his service, Bart stood well away from him, even turning his back on him as the coffin sank out of sight.

  When, at last, it came to rest the rector stepped forward, took a handful of earth from the mound by the side of the grave and let it fall upon the coffin. Then he looked around him. No one moved. Solomon had his eyes cast to the ground; Bart seemed to be studying the sky. Then Eliza bent down, took up some earth and gave it to Abel who, as the first-born, impassively threw it on his mother’s coffin. He was followed by his wife, Ruth, then his sisters, Martha and Felicity. Eliza stood for a moment, thinking of that year in 1912 when Laurence had been laid to rest, reflecting on the awful irony that husband and wife had both met death by violent means: one by his own hand, the other by that of someone else.

  The family formed a small queue to perform the last rite before the ground closed over Sarah Jane’s earthly remains. First came the many members of the Sadler family, Sarah Jane’s sisters and brothers, the last of whom was Bart. They hurried about their task, not lingering by the coffin. The Woodville family came next: Carson, Sally, Alexander, Lally, Sophie Turner, her sons Sam and Timothy, Dora, and Agnes. Last of all, belonging to no one really, Solomon.

  He stood for several minutes, his eyes closed as if he was saying a prayer – perhaps asking for forgiveness? Then he moved away. After him sporadic members of the public came to cast earth upon the coffin, mainly to see as much as they could before it was covered up for ever.

  As the gravediggers set about their melancholy task, the churchyard slowly emptied. Everyone moved towards the gate, some stopping in little groups en route to chat.

  Sarah Jane had never been very popular in the town. Few had memories as long as Eliza and could not recall the happy, laughing, wholesome sort of girl she had been when she was a young married woman full of energy and laughter. They could only remember the rather bitter widow she had become. Although a member of the large and well-known Sadler family, prosperous farmers in the locality, she had withdrawn from the community after Laurence’s death and taken no part in the life of the town, unlike her mother-in-law, Eliza who was into everything. Sarah Jane had then achieved notoriety by having an affair with a man twenty-three years her junior, and running off with him. Some of the more censorious might have unkindly thought that she deserved her fate though, if they did, they were careful not to say so.