‘According to the servants, they argued about the move to New Zealand, though,’ said Jack.
Mrs Shilton gave a snort of disgust. ‘That was said time and time again, because it was the only disagreement they ever had and the only so-called reason for her disappearance the police could find. Caroline was nervous about the move, but that was all. That’s natural enough, surely?’
She looked at Jenny earnestly. ‘Believe you me, she would have never have left Michael and she certainly would never have abandoned you. Michael suspected the worst right from the start but those idiots of police refused to take him seriously.’
‘The evidence,’ said Jack, ‘if you’ll excuse me saying so, seemed pretty strong.’
‘Then the evidence, Mr Haldean, is nonsense. You know Michael received a letter supposedly from Caroline?’
Jack, Betty and Jenny nodded.
‘It was Michael who took that letter to the police and, what’s more, he told them that it wasn’t from Caroline.’
‘He told them?’ asked Jack in surprise. That hadn’t been in the official record. Bill would’ve mentioned it if it had been.
‘Indeed, yes,’ Mrs Shilton agreed vigorously. ‘It was to prove his own theory, that poor Caroline had run away of her own volition, that the police inspector had the letter looked at by experts.’ Her face twisted. ‘You can see, Mr Haldean, why I have such a low opinion of the police.’
‘What about his diary?’ he asked.
Mrs Shilton’s sniff threatened to rattle the windows. ‘A forgery, as I believe. Yes, it was my brother’s diary, but it was an old one that he hadn’t seen for months. My brother was innocent. He was liked and respected by everyone who knew him.’
Jack thought of some of the respectable villains that he’d come across. Bill could add to that list. They’d all been respected until the truth was out. But if it was Michael Trevelyan who had insisted on the letter being analysed though, that really did cast a fresh light on things. The trouble was, there was no way of knowing, twenty years on, if the official record was correct or Mrs Shilton had the rights of it.
Betty thoughtfully rolled a few muffin crumbs round her plate. ‘Someone must’ve written that letter,’ she said. ‘Have you any idea who it could’ve been?’
Mrs Shilton drew herself up, then her shoulders sagged. ‘None at all,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘Michael discussed it with me, naturally, but he could think of no one who would either want to harm Caroline or bore him any sort of grudge.’
But there must have been someone, thought Jack. Someone who not only wished Caroline and Michael Trevelyan harm, but someone who had access to the house. On the other hand, Mrs Shilton had clearly been devoted to her brother and, as such, he had to treat her account with caution.
‘I wish I’d known my parents,’ said Jenny sadly. ‘It’s horrible to think that I’d actually forgotten them.’ She turned to Mrs Shilton. ‘What was my mother like, Aunty Gwyn?’
‘She was a lovely woman,’ said Mrs Shilton. ‘She was – well – a happy person. She loved music and could play the piano well. She was kind, too, with lots of friends.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I’m glad to say she thought the world of her sister, Sheila Langton, although they only saw each other rarely, with Sheila living so far away. She would’ve been happy for Shelia to have looked after you.’
‘Is there anyone else who knew her?’ asked Jenny. She shook herself. ‘It seems so silly I can’t ask Mum about my mother.’
Mrs Shilton frowned. ‘I can’t think of anyone. Not now, at any rate.’ She looked at her apologetically. ‘You see, what with the war, and then that terrible – truly terrible – Spanish flu, so many people have either moved away or passed on, it’s hard to think of anyone, as a matter of fact. I did hear that poor Violet Laidlaw lost her little boy to the flu. Violet was your mother’s cousin and they were very close friends into the bargain.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Poor Violet’s passed away too, of course, otherwise she’d be just the person to ask.’
‘Laidlaw?’ said Jenny. She looked at Jack. ‘Is that our Mr Laidlaw, so to speak?’
Jack nodded. ‘I saw him the other day,’ he explained to Mrs Shilton. ‘I was trying to find out who the Trevelyans were,’ he explained, rather awkwardly.
‘I asked Jack to find out as much as he could,’ put in Jenny quickly, seeing her aunt’s expression. ‘This is before we knew who I really was, of course. I don’t suppose,’ she added, more to Jack than to her aunt, ‘that he’d be able to tell me about my parents, would he?’
‘Not anything more than you already know,’ said Jack hastily. With the memory of what Andrew Laidlaw had said about Michael Trevelyan fresh in his mind, he didn’t want Jenny chatting over old memories with him. Mr Laidlaw might be right or might be mistaken, but his opinion wasn’t something Jenny Langton would want to hear.
‘I agree, dear,’ said Mrs Shilton. ‘He knew your mother, of course, but I don’t think he knew her at all well.’ She looked at Jack with interest. ‘Is he still a good-looking man?’
‘I suppose you could call him good-looking, yes,’ agreed Jack.
Mrs Shilton’s eyes twinkled. ‘He’d be in his fifties now, I suppose, but he was rather dashing and very up to date in his ideas. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he cared very much for the house. Saunder’s Green, I mean. It was too old-fashioned for him. There were improvements, of course, but he was all for starting from scratch. He wanted to build new houses, with modern conveniences, such as electricity and a bathroom that was all plumbed in, so the servants wouldn’t have to carry the water upstairs. I thought it was all very advanced. I must say I used to enjoy having a bath in my room in front of a cosy fire, but I can’t deny plumbing is easier for the servants. I doubt if many girls would stay long in a place where they had to carry cans of bathwater these days.’
‘You can see their point of view,’ said Betty, who’d had to carry more than a few cans of water in her time. And very heavy they were, too.
‘I suppose I can, my dear,’ agreed Mrs Shilton. ‘But I can’t tell you how advanced it all sounded at the time, but that was Andrew Laidlaw. He was one of the very first men I knew to drive a motor car. You’d probably laugh at it, Mr Haldean, but we all thought it was splendid.’
Jack shook his head in polite disagreement but Mrs Shilton laughed. ‘I saw you drive up to the house from the window. Your car makes the cars we had before the war look like museum pieces.’ Her smile broadened. ‘Not that we thought so at the time, of course.’
‘The speed limit was fourteen miles an hour,’ threw in Jack. ‘Not terribly fast. I remember my Uncle Philip had a car before the war. I thought it was marvellous when I was a kid.’
Betty gave a gurgle of laughter at the thought of Jack being restricted to driving at fourteen miles an hour.
‘Cars became terribly respectable after Queen Alexandra took to motoring,’ said Mrs Shilton. ‘Even if they were slow.’
‘How on earth could Mr Laidlaw afford it?’ asked Jack, struck by a sudden thought. ‘After all, cars were a real luxury before the war. I wouldn’t have thought a young architect could have run to a car.’
Mrs Shilton knowingly tapped the side of her nose. ‘Ah, but he had connections, you understand. He worked for Violet Wild’s father who thought the absolute world of him. Old Mr Wild was a great motoring enthusiast and used to let Andrew drive his cars.’
Jack nodded. That was, he thought, Caroline Trevelyan’s Uncle Arthur who had let the Trevelyans have the house at a peppercorn rent.
‘From what I could gather,’ said Mrs Shilton, ‘old Mr Wild had very strong views about women and the home. I remember your poor mother, Jennifer, saying that the one subject they must never mention was votes for women. He thought it simply wrong that any woman should want to move out of her proper sphere and into the hurly-burly of public life.’
She looked at them over the top of her spectacles. ‘I must say, I do have some sympathy with that view.’ She sigh
ed wistfully. ‘Things seemed to be so much simpler before the war.’
‘How did that affect Mr Laidlaw?’ asked Jack politely.
Mrs Shilton opened her eyes wide. ‘It changed everything, Mr Haldean. Old Mr Wild owned the firm, you see. Violet was his only child and he was completely opposed to the idea of any girl, even if she was his daughter, inheriting the firm. When she took a shine to Andrew Laidlaw, that was old Mr Wild’s problem solved. And, as I say, we all thought Andrew was very dashing. I haven’t thought of him for years,’ she added with a little sigh. ‘They were happy days. Did he respond to your advertisement, Mr Haldean?’
‘No, Betty and I went to see him because he owns Saunder’s Green. A Mrs Amelia Rotherwell answered my advert, though. Did you ever come across her? I understand she had lunch with Mrs Trevelyan the day she disappeared.’
‘Mrs Rotherwell?’ said Mrs Shilton brightly. ‘She’d remember your mother, Jenny, my dear. She slipped my mind for the moment, but I wrote to her the other day. Your advertisement was the reason for that, Mr Haldean. She wanted to see if I knew who was enquiring about the Trevelyans. I haven’t actually met her since … well, since it all happened, but we always kept in touch with a card at Christmas and so on. I knew her years ago. She was Amelia Hawkins then. She’d been Caroline’s governess, but she was only a few years older than Caroline and they became good friends. She married a man who planted sugar or tea – or was it rubber? Or indigo, perhaps. It was in Ceylon, that I do know. Her husband passed away a couple of years ago. One of her boys took over the estate and she stayed on for a time, but the climate must be very trying. Her other son lives in London, I believe, but I don’t know where exactly. She only got back a few weeks ago. She was a nice woman, as I recall, if inclined to be a bit on the stiff side. I think teaching does that to people. Are you going to see her? I can’t think what she’d be able to tell you about Caroline’s disappearance. After all, she’d left the house before it happened.’
Yes, thought Jack, but she had been there. ‘I want to see what she remembers of Mrs Trevelyan’s mood that day,’ he said. ‘She made a statement to the police at the time, but you never know. She might be able to add to that.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Mrs Shilton dubiously.
‘What you’ve got to understand, Aunty Gwyn,’ said Jenny, ‘is that when Mr Haldean—’
‘Jack,’ he corrected with a smile. ‘If I’m to call you Jenny, it’s only right you should call me Jack.’
‘When Jack,’ she said, returning the smile, ‘put that advert in the newspapers, we had no idea who the Trevelyans were.’ Her smile faded. ‘We certainly didn’t know it was my family we were enquiring about.’
Mrs Shilton nodded. ‘Yes, I can see that, but now you have found out, I honestly think you’ve done enough. It’s such a pleasure to see you again, Jennifer, but your poor mother is gone and nothing can bring her back.’
Betty cleared her throat. ‘But you believe your brother was innocent, Mrs Shilton. Wouldn’t you like Jack to try and find the truth?’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Mrs Shilton sharply, her kindly face suddenly stern. ‘I know the truth and anyone who knew my brother knows the truth as well. I don’t require any proof, as you call it, to convince me of that.’
Jack, Betty and Jenny swapped glances, startled at Mrs Shilton’s vehemence.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to know all of the truth, Aunty Gwyn?’ asked Jenny tentatively. ‘After all, I saw my mother being – well …’ She swallowed, screwed up her eyes and said the word. ‘Murdered.’ Mrs Shilton gave a little gasp of horror which Jenny ignored. ‘Don’t you want to know what actually happened?’
Mrs Shilton shook herself in irritation. ‘No, Jennifer, I don’t.’ She shook herself once more. ‘I don’t know what you saw, but you can’t have seen that.’ She held up her hand to stifle Jenny’s protests. ‘I know what Mr Haldean said about why you were quiet, but, quite frankly, I don’t believe it. I arrived the following day and you were as good as gold. If you really had seen what you think you saw, I would have known.’
‘Nevertheless—’ began Jack, but Mrs Shilton interrupted him.
‘I must insist on this, Mr Haldean. Jennifer, listen to me. You have no idea how horrible it was to live with all that suspicion and talk. Once the news got out, the newspapers had a field day. We were virtually besieged with reporters and ghastly men taking photographs. I couldn’t bear to look at a newspaper for weeks. It was a dreadful time. You must see how terrible it would be to have all this dragged up again. For years afterwards, if I ever mentioned my maiden name, someone was bound to make the connection to my poor brother. We would all be much better to let sleeping dogs lie. The past is the past. You must let it remain so.’ She looked at them severely. ‘That is my final word upon the subject.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Please don’t stir things up again. You have no idea of the harm you could do.’
‘Do you want me to let sleeping dogs lie?’ asked Jack as he, Betty and Jenny walked to the car. ‘Your aunt wasn’t very keen on us taking this any further, to say the least.’
Jenny hesitated. ‘No, she wasn’t,’ she said eventually. ‘To be fair, I can see why. By the sound of it, it was a pretty tough time, but I want to know. Of course I’d like my father to be innocent, but what I’d like is neither here or there, is it?’
She looked so wretched that Betty took her arm, comfortingly. ‘If your aunt was right, and it was your father who told the police that letter was a phoney, that more or less proves he’s innocent.’ She glanced at Jack. ‘Doesn’t it?’
Jack geared himself up for a reply. In his opinion, it didn’t prove anything of the sort, but he was saved from saying so by Jenny.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said desperately. ‘Don’t you see, Betty? Aunty Gwyn was in the house when that letter arrived. She’s bound to have seen it. All she’d have to say is that the writing didn’t look like my mother’s for my father to have realised his scheme hadn’t worked and the best thing for it was to tell the police. Then he could make out the letter was sent by someone else. That’s at least possible, isn’t it?’ she added miserably. ‘You think so, too, don’t you?’ she added, looking at Jack.
‘Yes, I do,’ he agreed reluctantly.
Jenny squared her shoulders. ‘So there’s only one thing for it. I’m sorry for Aunty Gwyn, but we have to go on. I want to know what happened to my mother.’
‘So you want me to carry on?’ asked Jack.
She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. There’s nothing else for it, now. There’s something else, too. When I first talked to you, Jack, you mentioned ghosts. Well, I still don’t believe in ghosts, but my mother was there. Somehow – and yes, it might be just a memory – my mother reached out to me when I touched the cedar tree. For her sake, we have to find the truth.’ She looked at him hopefully. ‘Can you do it?’
‘I can try,’ he said, ‘but it’s a pretty tall order.’
Betty smiled at him encouragingly. ‘You’ll do it,’ she said confidently. ‘I know you will.’
EIGHT
Bill left Jack and Betty’s house and turned down Chandos Row, heading for the Embankment and Scotland Yard. He needed to complete the paperwork on the Oxenholme case, but despite the knowledge that he should concentrate on the here and now, he was intrigued by Jennifer Langton and her affairs.
It was extraordinary, when he came to think about it, that this whole story of a forgotten murder – Bill had no doubts it was murder and who the murderer was – should come to light because of Jennifer Langton’s dream or vision or whatever the best word to describe it might be.
He felt a rush of sympathy for Martin Langton. Maybe, as Langton obviously thought, it would’ve been better to let the dead bury the dead, as it said in the Bible somewhere. Leave the matter to rest in the past, where it belonged. It couldn’t have been easy for Martin Langton. He hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell her that the mother and father she’d always known and, obviously, loved, weren’t her
real parents.
He’d done his best to carry out his parents’ instructions and acted in what he clearly thought were in Jennifer’s best interests. Dr Langton might have been a bit heavy-handed but his heart was in the right place.
Jenny Langton though, had wanted the truth. She had no end of spirit. She clearly did think the world of her brother – it was easier to think of Martin Langton as her brother – but she wasn’t going to be pushed round by him. Or by anyone else, he thought.
She had very nice eyes, Bill thought inconsequentially. They had sort of sparked when she was arguing with Martin. What would her eyes look like when she was happy? The thought gave him a warm glow.
A buzz of conversation and laughter drifted across the pavement and mingled with the sound of the traffic. He was near The Heroes of Waterloo, Jack’s local, and, because of its closeness to Scotland Yard, a favourite with off-duty policemen. The door and windows, on this warm autumn afternoon, stood invitingly open.
He hesitated at the door. He had the Oxenholme paperwork to tackle but a pint of bitter would go down a treat. However, Jack and Betty had asked him to drop in for a drink that evening, so he could hear what Jenny Langton’s aunt, Mrs Shilton had had to say. No. He really had better get on with some work, he regretfully decided, when he heard his name called.
‘Is that young Rackham?’ It was Charlie Church, standing with his elbows propped on the windowsill. ‘Come in and I’ll stand you a drink.’
‘Hello, Mr Church!’ said Bill, genuinely pleased to see him. Charlie Church was retired now, but he had been his inspector when Bill was just a sergeant. Paperwork be blowed, he thought. It was a poor show if he couldn’t find time for Mr Church.
‘So what brings you up to town?’ asked Bill when, comfortably into the second pint, they had shared all the gossip about who was doing what from the old days. Mr Church, he knew, lived in Guildford.
‘Ethel and I are staying with our Winnie and her husband, Ted, for a few days. They’ve got a new flat in Kensington, just off the High Street. It’s a nice place. Roxborough Mansions. Do you know it?’
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