Mrs. Malory and Any Man's Death

by Hazel Holt

  “A daughter?” Rosemary said inquiringly.

  “From his first marriage. He married Susan Blakemore—do you remember her? Younger than us—Lydia Blakemore’s younger sister. She was in the same form as Phyll.”

  “Oh yes, I think I remember her, vaguely,” I said. “A rather tall girl with red hair.”

  “Oh, not red,” Phyll said. “It was that sort of reddish gold color. She was very pretty.”

  “They were very young,” Rachel said, “and both lots of parents were against it, though they came round in the end. But it wasn’t a success. Lewis was still a medical student and there was very little money, and when the baby came it got even worse. She couldn’t cope and Lewis was studying all the time, so in the end she went back to her parents and they split up.”

  “That’s very sad,” I said.

  “I suppose so. But she married a rather nice French-man, much older, and now they live in France,” Phyll said. “I hear from her sometimes, Christmas and so on. She sounds very happy. She has two sons as well as the daughter from her marriage to Lewis.”

  “And poor Lewis,” Rachel said, “got lumbered with Naomi and no children.” She broke off as the doorbell rang. “That will be Martin—he had to go into Taviscombe and see somebody about the will.”

  She went out to answer the door and I noticed with amusement that Phyll instinctively put up her hand to tidy her hair, and it was noticeable that her eyes lit up when he entered the room. He greeted us with a kind of easy charm and I saw how he would be good at his job, placating difficult tourists and smoothing away any little difficulties.

  “Are you down here to see about the cottage?” Rosemary asked. “Are you putting it on the market?”

  “No, I don’t really want to sell it,” he replied. “I’m retiring soon and, as I think I may have said, I’m considering moving down here. Well, when I say retiring, my firm has asked me if I’d consider doing a few trips occasionally, when they need me.” He laughed. “It’s nice to be asked, and the money will come in handy!”

  “It sounds like an excellent arrangement,” I said, “and I’m sure you could make the cottage really nice. Annie never really changed anything after her mother died—it’s like a sort of time warp! Which reminds me, I must give you back your key.”

  I felt a strange reluctance to hand it over, but there seemed to be no valid reason for asking to keep it. I felt in my handbag for it and passed it to him.

  “I’ll need to keep the papers and photos and so forth,” I said, “until the Book is published.”

  “Oh, that’s fine,” he said. “Keep them as long as you like. As a matter of fact I don’t really know what to do with them. That’s the difficulty with family things; you can’t throw them away, and they’re not valuable or unique enough to give to a local museum or anything, and I’ve no one to pass them on to.”

  “You have no family, then?” Rosemary asked.

  “Alas, no. My wife died two years ago and we had no children.”

  There was a short silence, a tribute to his bereavement. Then Rachel said briskly, “Shall we go into the dining room? Supper’s quite ready.”

  The food was delicious, and I noticed (as I saw Rosemary did) that Martin poured the wine. He certainly seemed very much at home there and I wondered what Rachel thought about the obvious attraction there seemed to be between him and Phyll. Now that it was established that he was a widower, perhaps something might come of it.

  There was the usual conversation about the Book and I gave my usual response about carrying out Annie’s wishes, which brought me a sardonic glance from Rosemary.

  “She certainly seems to have left her mark on things,” Martin said. “Everyone I speak to tells me how much she did in the village.”

  “You might say that,” Rachel said.

  There was an awkward silence and I suddenly remembered that Phyll’s initials were on Annie’s list, and for a moment I wondered what her secret could have been and if Rachel knew how Annie had used it.

  “She’ll certainly be missed,” Phyll said. “Now, who’d like some cheese? There’s a Brie and a rather nice local goat’s cheese.”

  “So,” Rosemary said when we were on our way home, “what’s going on with Phyll and Martin Thing? I thought they’d only met briefly in Madeira. Was it a holiday romance?”

  “Hardly,” I said. “Phyll was with her father and he was married.”

  “Well, they certainly seem very cozy now.”

  “I know—so unlike Phyll, really. She’s never been one to make friends easily. I wonder what Rachel thinks?”

  “She must be all right about it—I mean, she invited him to stay.”

  “Or Phyll did.”

  “Mm. Though I’ve never known Phyll to do anything like that without asking Rachel. Oh well, good luck to them. Poor old Phyll deserves a bit of luck, after all those years looking after her father.”

  “Well, she did adore Dr. Craig, so it wasn’t exactly a hardship for her. Anyway, it may not be a bit of luck. After all, we don’t know anything about Martin.”

  “We know he’s a widower and we know he now owns a cottage—two pluses. Oh, come on, Sheila, she could do with a bit of romance in her life!”

  But when I got home I was still uncertain how I felt about Martin Stillwell. There’s something about lost heirs turning up out of the blue—all very well in Victorian novels or modern soap operas, but not the stuff of everyday life. I thought again about how Phyll’s initials were on that list and I wondered if Annie had suspected there was someone in Phyll’s life that had to be kept a secret. Because they were having an affair? Because he was married? And all the time he was Annie’s cousin and she didn’t know it? That would be a charming irony. And what if he did know about Annie’s will and was short of money? What if he seized the opportunity of a chance meeting to ensnare Phyll so that she fell in love with him and killed Annie for his sake? Now, that really was total fantasy. I was allowing my imagination to run right away with me. One step from a mild attraction to a murder!

  The animals who had been waiting more or less patiently for their supper decided that enough was enough and my sitting at the kitchen table lost in thought wasn’t going to get any tins open. A concerted approach of pleading whines from Tris to peremptory bellows from Foss recalled me to my duty. I was just rinsing out the tins for the salvage when I suddenly said aloud, “Anyway, it couldn’t have been Phyll. She and Rachel weren’t even in the village when Annie was taken ill!”

  “Do you remember Greg Thomas?” Michael asked. “He was at the College of Law with me and came down to stay that summer.”

  “Yes, of course I do. He was rather nice. Didn’t he join a rather grand firm in London—tax specialists or something?”

  “That’s right. And he was—and still is—nice. So nice, in fact, that he left that practice and went into some sort of community law firm, helping the underprivileged, that sort of thing.”

  “How splendid.”

  “He’s staying with us for a couple of days—he had to come down to Bristol about a case—and he was asking after you, so I wondered if you’d come to dinner tomorrow.”

  “That would be lovely. I’ll look forward to seeing him again.”

  Greg Thomas had put on some weight and grown a beard since I last saw him, but he was still the same eager, enthusiastic person I had known and liked.

  Conversation was difficult at first because Alice, like a lot of eight-year-old girls, liked to be the center of attention and was, I regret to say, showing off. However, Thea soon scooped her up and took her off to bed on the understanding that I’d go up and read her a story when she’d had her bath.

  “Though she reads very well herself,” I said, “and quite advanced things. But it’s a sort of ritual that I read to her when I come.”

  “Doting grandmother,” Michael observed dispassionately.

  “Yes, I know,” I said, “but, as they say, grandchildren are your reward for having had children. How
about you, Greg? Do you have a family?”

  “Yes, Martha—she’s my wife—and I have a little girl, Milly. She’s five, and there’s a boy and a girl, Will and Hannah, both teenagers, from Martha’s first marriage.”

  “Goodness, quite a family. They must keep you busy.”

  “Oh, it’s really good. I came from a large family myself and it’s great to have the house full of life. Actually, having teenagers around does help me understand some of the cases I have to deal with at the law center.”

  “Whereabouts is that?”

  “It’s in Reading, which I suppose is no more full of problems than anywhere else, though we do seem to have our share. A great deal is drug related so we work a lot with the social services.”

  “I suppose,” I said tentatively, “that it’s worse where you get large housing estates and unemployment?”

  “That’s a lot of it, but we find that more and more young people from middle-class backgrounds are getting involved.”

  “Oh, the drug thing isn’t limited to big cities,” Michael said. “We’ve got it here in Taviscombe.”

  “Exactly,” Greg said. “Well-brought-up young people with loving, caring parents can get involved—a friend of mine had a case a couple of years ago. A nineteen-year-old, good school, university, excellent prospects, went on a gap year to Thailand—you know the sort of thing; they all do it. Got caught up in the drug scene there and formed the habit. Back here he began to deal to pay for his habit and got involved in a drug war and shot someone and is now in prison.”

  “How dreadful,” I said. “His poor parents, what they must have gone through.”

  “Exactly. Very conventional, highly respected. He was a bank manager and she had some sort of responsible job, and in a quiet town—Farnham, Farnborough, somewhere like that. It was devastating for them. He was their only child. The mother had a nervous breakdown and they felt they had to leave everything behind them and move right away. I don’t know what happened to them, but it must have ruined their lives.”

  Thea came in then and said that Alice was calling for me, but I’m afraid I didn’t read very well and Alice complained several times that I was going too fast. But my thoughts weren’t on the adventures of the boy wizard and I found it difficult to concentrate. Though when I’d finished the chapter and said good night to my granddaughter, I was reluctant to go downstairs to join the others. The words “bank manager” and “Farnborough” kept echoing through my mind and I had to make quite an effort to pull myself together and contribute naturally to the conversation when I rejoined the others.

  It was, of course, ridiculous, I told myself when I got home and could think a bit more coherently. There must be hundreds of cases like that, thousands, probably. And it might just as well have been Farnham and not Farnborough. It would be just too much of a coincidence that this particular case might be about the Fletchers.

  I’d put together a sort of rough draft of how the material for the Book might look and in what order it could be presented, so I had, as it happened, a perfectly valid reason for seeing Mary Fletcher to ask for her help. So the next day I arranged to take the draft and some of the material for her to look at.

  The Fletchers lived in one of the cottages in the main street, like Annie’s from the outside, but inside very different.

  “How lovely and warm!” I exclaimed as I stepped from the cold, windy street into the main room.

  “We had a wood-burning stove put in,” Mary said. “It was dreadfully drafty and miserable before, and it fitted quite well in the old fireplace.”

  “It looks lovely,” I said, moving towards it.“ Oh, and you’ve got the bread oven at the side—how splendid!”

  “We tried to keep the original features. Actually, when we were redecorating, we stripped one wall right back and found the old cob wall. If you look over here, we kept a small section of it under glass. There you are—you can see the bits of horsehair.”

  “Isn’t that fascinating! You really have got the best of both worlds—a real feel of the period and all the modern comforts.”

  “It suits us,” she said, “and, of course, I’ve always been interested in old things. Now, do sit down and I’ll go and get the coffee.”

  When she had left the room I got up and went over to the fireplace. On the mantelpiece above it there were several framed photographs. One of their wedding (both Jim and Mary instantly recognizable in their youthful selves), one of a small boy, about five years old, on a swing, and one that I studied intently, of a young man standing in front of the Sydney Opera House. He was half turned towards the camera, bright-faced and laughing, his hair ruffled by the breeze off the water. A son, indeed, that any mother would be proud of.

  When Mary came back into the room I said, “What a nice photo! Is it your son?”

  She went over and put the tray with the coffee down on a table.

  “Yes, that’s Rick—he’s living in Australia now.”

  “Oh yes,” I said, gesturing towards the photograph, “the opera house. Does he live in Sydney?”

  “Yes. His work is there.”

  “You must miss him. Have you been out there to visit?”

  “No. I’m not very happy flying.”

  “What a shame. Still, I expect he’ll come home to visit you—the young don’t seem to be bothered about distances nowadays, do they?”

  Although her answers had been quite easy and natural, there was something about the way she was standing, a hint of tension. It seemed unkind to persist, and as I turned away from the fireplace and got out the things I’d brought to show her, I sensed rather than saw that she relaxed.

  As I went through the material, I found that she was very competent and was going to be a great help. In that warm, comfortable room, drinking our coffee and discussing practicalities, I felt sympathetically drawn towards her and guilty that I had caused her discomfort, however momentarily.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As I drove home it occurred to me that the young man in the photograph had looked very young—more like a student, in fact. Perhaps the photograph had been taken when he was on his gap year and he wasn’t in Australia at all. Perhaps he was the young man in Greg’s story—but, really, what did it matter? And even if he was, making sure that particular secret was safe wouldn’t be sufficient reason for the Fletchers to kill Annie. I knew now that finding out about Annie’s death must be my only excuse for prying into people’s lives and I must keep anything I might discover strictly to myself. William had made it plain that he didn’t want to know any details, and Rosemary would understand.

  Rachel brought round the photographs that she’d promised me.

  “I can just remember Davy,” she said, pointing to a picture of a sturdy Welsh pony. “That’s him there with the trap. I was allowed to have rides on him, but Mother said Phyll was too young. Poor Phyll, she used to be so upset. She always wanted to do everything I did. I can see her now, hanging on to the gate of the paddock, watching me going round on Davy, her face screwed up trying not to cry!”

  “How sad.”

  “A few years later, Mother decided that it was the thing for girls to ride so we were sent off every Saturday to the local riding stables, but Phyll never got over Davy.”

  I turned over the rest of the photographs.

  “The ones of Higher Barton, when it was just built, are splendid,” I said. “And, oh, look at this wonderful one of your grandparents having tea on the lawn—goodness, complete with a maid in a cap and apron standing in the background!”

  “I know. It’s like another world—which I suppose it was. No more maids now—Filipino couples, I suppose, if you’re rich. Daddy had a sort of housekeeper after Mother died, before Phyll came home, and then they had dear old Mrs. Fenn from the village for a few mornings a week. Now, of course, we mostly manage by ourselves, with a little help from Mrs. Bradshaw. Though it’s a big, inconvenient house and takes a lot of keeping in order. Still, it means that Phyll and I aren’t on t
op of each other.”

  “So it’s working out all right?” I asked.

  “By and large, yes. It’s not the same, of course, especially for me, but, as life goes on you have to adapt. We’re both out quite a bit. This week especially, now that Martin’s with us. Phyll’s been taking him round all the local beauty spots.”

  “He’s really going to live in the village, then?”

  “He seems quite set on it.”

  “For any particular reason?” I asked.

  Rachel laughed. “Because of Phyll, you mean? To be honest I really don’t know. I must say I’ve never known Phyll so comfortable with a man before, and he seems to be very relaxed with her. They might be old friends who’ve known each other for years.”

  “What does Phyll say?”

  “Well, I can’t exactly have a heart-to-heart with her while Martin is in the house, and, as I say, they’re out together most of the time.”

  “More than friends? I asked tentatively.

  She shrugged. “I think Phyll would like it, but he’s so easy and friendly with everyone it’s hard to tell.”

  “Would you mind if they did—you know—get together?”

  “Good heavens, no—if that’s what she really wanted. Dear old Phyll, she deserves a bit of happiness.”

  “Do you know anything about him—his family and so on?”

  “Not much, without actually cross-questioning him! His wife, Moira, her name was, died, of cancer probably (he hasn’t gone into details), but it was a long illness and I think he felt bad about having to be away so often with his job when she was ill. No children, no aged parents—that’s about it.”

  “That and the fact that he’s Annie’s cousin. I wonder why they never really met.”

  “I did ask him about that and it seems to have been some sort of family quarrel, generations back, which sounds about right.” She looked at her watch. “Goodness, is that the time? I must go.”