by Amy Myers
‘Fanny told Olly’s father she’d forgiven the guy who did it.’
‘Doesn’t that imply she at least met the man who raped her? Josh is convinced it was Ron Gibb.’
‘Old Ron?’ Oliver looked surprised – no, relieved, she realized uneasily. ‘He was a nasty piece of work, but if he’d attacked Fanny, or even lusted after her, she’d have told me when we talked about her parents coming to the show.’
‘If not Ron, who was it?’ Georgia persisted. ‘Toby?’ Too late she remembered Liz had been married to him. She need not have worried about being tactless, however.
Liz snorted. ‘Rape? No way. He’s a voyeur, not a doer. I should know.’
‘Brian?’ Georgia hazarded.
‘Of course not,’ Liz snapped.
They were all looking at her strangely – even Luke. Why? And then she knew the answer. ‘It was Michael. That’s why Fanny was reluctant to tell you, Oliver, and so reluctant to return to Downey Hall.’ Michael Ludd, she thought. Always just out of the frame, and now firmly in it. Oliver’s silence confirmed it. ‘Did Henry know?’
‘Sheila did,’ Liz answered. ‘Fanny told her. Sheila was crazy over Michael, even in 1961, so she was all for Fanny getting out of town. She kidded herself that if there was any rape involved then Frances had provoked Michael into it.’
‘And did she, do you think?’
‘No. I had a lot of time for Frances. She exuded sex but not purposely. A real sweetie.’
She was giving Oliver time, Georgia realized, and Luke obviously agreed, for he indicated it was now time to push.
‘And Henry, did he know?’ she asked again.
‘Yes,’ Oliver shot back at her. ‘I told him, because Fanny wouldn’t. I’m not proud of it, but I still think it was right. With the proviso that—’
‘It could have led to her death?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said wearily. ‘And out here I didn’t have to think about it, until the mighty Josh put the word out. He cared for Fanny, so I listened and you’re the result. I told Dad on the day Fanny died. He went straight to have it out with Michael. That would be just before drinks began. Fanny found out what I’d done as soon as Michael rejoined the group after his tongue-lashing from Henry. Fanny was not pleased with me, I can tell you. I tried to find her after dinner to make up, but there was no sign of her.’
‘And Michael? How did he take it?’
‘Michael believes in keeping on the right side of Dad. When I opened my big mouth that day he had some deal he was hoping Dad would finance, but my father was naturally sticky about it in the circumstances. Wouldn’t make his mind up, though he did agree eventually. He’s a funny old bird, very correct, believes in family and all that, but still hasn’t made the house over to Michael and Sheila. He holds the purse strings tightly. Last time I saw him he joked about their wanting power of attorney and the house in their name, because Mike’s pension from the company has gone up the creek, like so many others. It would be in his interests, they blithely assured Dad, to avoid inheritance tax. He said he’d rather give the house to Toby Beamish.’
Georgia blinked. Black humour indeed. ‘He’s a fair age, so I suppose Michael and Sheila have a point, however crass it seems.’
‘I’m quite sure he has his will tucked away, and won’t be telling anyone what’s in it until he’s tucked away himself, which I hope won’t be for a long time yet. Michael and Sheila can stew in their own juice till kingdom come, as far as I’m concerned. All Michael was worried about that day when I put him in the spotlight was the threat to his business deal. I tackled him later about the rape but he shrugged it off. Tried to slag Fanny off even when she was dead. He took the same line as he probably fed to Sheila. Fanny provoked him into it, he said, and she enjoyed it as much as he did. I never forgave him for that.’
‘You never got near the point of loving Fanny yourself?’
He and Liz exchanged glances. ‘No.’
‘Yet you were so close to her.’
‘Are you trying to stitch me up for murder?’ he demanded.
‘Trying to eliminate you.’
He sighed. ‘I tell you about Michael and you suspect me?’ Why should I be involved?’
‘You were part of Tom.’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘Toby, Oliver, Michael,’ she reminded him. ‘Tom. She was scared of all three of you, so Josh said.’
Oliver groaned. ‘Do you know, I’d completely forgotten. But you’ve got it wrong, Georgia. Toby, yes, he was after her, so was Michael. But I was her O in the middle; I protected her. I might only have been fifteen, but I packed a hefty punch. I was the one between, she said. That’s why she called us Tom. A great protector I turned out to be. My own brother rapes her. I idolized Frances as a kid, and as an adult. It was great when we met again, but we just slipped back into friendly ways. She loved Adam, she really did.’
‘Powell said at first their relationship wasn’t sexual, then changed his mind.’
‘Wishful thinking. It was.’
Georgia was still puzzled. ‘It seems an odd quartet,’ she said. ‘Jonathan Powell loved Adam, who loved Fanny, who loved him in return – with you on the outside. Are you sure, whatever your feelings for her, that she didn’t love you?’
‘Absolutely sure.’ He looked at Liz. ‘Shall I tell her?’
‘Go ahead,’ Liz replied. ‘Friday Street has to be straightened out one way or another. We might as well fire the starting pistol.’
‘Okay. Yes, Georgia, I know Fanny only loved me as a friend.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because she was my half-sister.’
Chapter Twelve
Henry welcomed them in almost like old friends. ‘I had wondered how long it would take,’ he greeted them genially.
It had taken Georgia three clear days after returning early in the week to digest where the Fanny Star case now stood, and Suspects Anonymous had taken on a new look.
‘News travels quickly,’ she said wryly. Save for Josh (of course), she had not told anyone, and so had been surprised to find when she telephoned Henry last night that he already knew of her visit to the US. Josh had obviously spread the news, although she didn’t count him as one who passed on gossip for gossip’s sake. Which would suggest that he had felt Oliver Ludd was a special case. And that would suggest that Josh too knew about Fanny’s parentage. Something else he didn’t consider relevant?
Peter had announced he was coming with her to see Henry. He had also added casually that at last he had the autopsy report but that it would keep. Good, because there was quite enough to think about where Henry was concerned, without details of last meals and so forth. There was some difficulty in manoeuvring the wheelchair through Henry’s hall, but between herself, Henry and Henry’s cleaning lady, they managed, with Peter delivering a non-stop commentary on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cartoons which adorned the walls.
Luke had had to return to South Mailing and Frost Publications, complaining bitterly about the hard life of publishers who were excluded from really interesting matters by such necessities as marketing and budget discussions. Having sat in on several of these laid-back affairs in the past, Georgia was not inclined to feel too sorry for him, though she promised him a verbatim report this evening as compensation.
There had been some good news to return to. There were cautious signs for optimism over Dana, Peter told her, although she was still in a coma, and there were major question marks over what might transpire if and when she returned to consciousness.
Georgia had thought it right to explain to Henry on the telephone what Oliver had told them. He had greeted the news with a resigned, ‘Ah.’
‘I take it,’ she now said, as they manoeuvred the wheelchair through his living-room door, ‘that the fact that you are Fanny’s father is not generally known here.’
‘Only on a need-to-know basis,’ Henry replied, as he ushered her towards the sofa, while himself selecti
ng an upright chair. Good business tactics, she thought, amused. He intended to remain in charge. ‘Over the years my immediate family has been told; the Winters know, and the Perrys. I suspect our chum Toby Beamish is also in the picture, if only because his nose twitches at anything to do with the Ludds. It’s quite flattering.’
‘When did Fanny herself find out?’ Peter asked. This was a crucial question, she and her father had agreed. Her statement to Josh, that the rape had been a ‘family thing’ now appeared in a new perspective, and Oliver’s belief that it was Michael looked all too probable. Did Michael know about the relationship between himself and Fanny when he raped her? That was a terrifying thought.
‘When she was about fourteen,’ Henry replied promptly. ‘Ronald Gibb knew about my . . .’ He paused. ‘I hate the word “affair”. It doesn’t describe the situation at all. My love for Doreen Gibb. Not unnaturally, although he seems to have been infertile himself, he resented Frances, and of course myself. He took his fury out on both Doreen and Frances, despite the fact that faithfulness had hardly been one of his virtues as a husband in their early married days. I believe in later years his relationship improved slightly, so far as Doreen was concerned, but hardly to the point where she could be said to lead a contented life.
‘You will want to know what Frances’s feelings were about it,’ Henry continued. ‘I can tell you that very simply: relief. She hated – no, too strong a word – heartily disliked Ronald Gibb, who made no attempt to act as a father towards her. I like to think that, limited though our association was, she valued it, though I doubt if as much as I did.’
He must be wrong there, Georgia thought. Fanny had come back, and to see Henry and perhaps her mother must have been the reason.
‘Was it known in your family at the time, or only afterwards?’ Peter asked, to her relief. She had been dithering about asking the question.
‘My late wife Joan knew about Doreen and myself during the war, and about Frances. She did her best not to blame Frances, and Joan and I had long since sorted out our private differences. And as for Michael and Oliver – they knew after Frances had left the village, but before the day of her death. In any case, her parentage is hardly relevant to that.’
Georgia strongly disagreed. It seemed to her that 22nd June, 1968 could have been the boiling point for emotions on both sides. Fanny’s predicament must have been terrifying. She had known she was being raped by her half-brother, even if Michael wasn’t aware of the relationship. It didn’t lessen the crime, but most certainly must have increased the anguish for Fanny, particularly when she discovered she was pregnant. No wonder she wanted a quick abortion. The comment she had made to Josh now had even more relevance. Had he realized the significance of ‘the family thing’? Had he just assumed that she meant Ronald Gibb, because he didn’t yet know about the other family connection in the form of Michael? Or had he been deliberately misleading her in the hope it would deflect her from the affairs of Friday Street? There was only one way to find out.
‘When did Josh discover your relationship to Fanny, Henry?’
‘Not, I believe, until much later, when Adam Jones called here. Frances had told Adam the truth, and that is why he came to see me.’ Henry answered obligingly enough, but she still sensed he was keeping his distance. It must be hard for him to talk about such matters, and distancing them, in answering by the book, might be one way of dealing with them.
The silence that followed made Georgia fear that Henry was going to clam up, but he seemed to have come to a decision, because he continued, ‘I told you Adam came to play me a song, “The Banks of Allan Water”. It was a particular favourite of Frances’s and of course became the basis of one of their great successes.
‘Adam explained to me that Frances believed that through their music they could lead the world to peace. Her wildness was her rage against the forces of the world that prevented it. She sought peace through the LSD drug and that had failed. She sought it through her love for Adam, and he told me that hadn’t worked because someone had come between them. Music was her pathway. The folk songs she and Adam adapted, such as “The Banks of Allan Water”, represented the past; she sought a future that the past had failed to attain.
‘What Adam played and sang to me, however, was the original folk song. You know it?’ He began to sing with cracked and uneven voice:
‘But the miller’s lovely daughter,
‘Both from cold and care was free,
‘On the banks of Allan Water . . .
‘That was Frances’s pet name for me, The Miller, owing to my family firm.’
Free from cold and care. Georgia remembered. ‘The words on the memorial stone,’ she said. ‘Didn’t the verse continue, “There a corpse lay she”?’ She shivered. No wonder Adam chose that song. It was a message to Henry not to forget. As if he could.
‘Indeed,’ Henry replied. ‘What happened here was so devastatingly terrible, both the murder itself and in what it did to me, that I felt I had to mark it. Where else should it be than where she died, in Owlers’ Smoke? When I told Josh, he insisted the former gang should contribute. They were all involved, he said. Free from cold and care. My lovely Frances.’ Henry’s eyes were moist, but he continued briskly, ‘When in the 1980s Josh began to realize that Adam might have been innocent, he tried to convince himself Powell was guilty. I’m not sure he succeeded. How, after all, would Powell know about the place? He was an outsider.’
‘Fanny might have told him,’ Georgia said. Chillingly, Friday Street was beginning to exert its power again now. Even she was beginning to see Powell as an all too convenient solution.
‘I would prefer to think that,’ Henry said quietly.
The name Michael was shouting itself in her mind, but she forced it to remain there. She could not expect the truth from his father, and how could she hurt a man of his age by even mentioning the possibility that the rape had anything to do with Fanny’s murder?
‘You know that Fanny was raped before she left Friday Street?’ Peter said matter-of-factly. The ground where Georgia had feared to tread was now open territory.
Henry’s face did not change. ‘I feared we would come to this. I could lie to you, but I have a duty to my dead daughter. Nevertheless, without proof it would be defamatory, and I cannot see how that proof would be obtainable today.’
He was challenging them, but they had no answer, and so he continued: ‘I learned about the pregnancy and the rape only on the day that Frances died. I asked Frances why she had left the village without a word to me and disappeared from my life. She told me about the pregnancy then, but would not name the father. She had come in a spirit of forgiveness, she told me. Peace was all that mattered. Perhaps she was right, but I did not see it as such then. I contained myself, but I was in a rage. I demanded the truth of Oliver, knowing they were close friends. I hardly expected his answer that it was Michael, but Michael confirmed it himself. He claimed Frances had led him on, and at the time he had no idea that he was her half-brother. Frances had forgiven him, I told him, and I would show the same attitude. Then we went to join the company for pre-dinner drinks. Three hours later my lovely Frances was dead.’
‘Thank you,’ Peter said gravely. ‘I appreciate it can’t have been easy for you to talk to us about this.’
Henry looked at him uncertainly as if expecting further questions, but none came. Georgia was too well schooled in Peter’s ways to take over at such a point. If he fell silent, there was a reason. It left the pressure on Henry to speak again, and he did.
‘No account could be the whole truth, in my view, for that is known only to God. Fortunately I cannot see that a rape seven years earlier could have anything to do with my daughter’s death. Frances was presenting no threat, and I had told Michael so. At the time Adam Jones’ guilt appeared both to us and the police incontrovertible. You will have read our statements to them about our movements in that context. The period during which Frances could have been killed, I recall, is between
approximately a quarter to eight and an hour later, if we assume that Adam is innocent. During that period my son was either with me or with other guests until Jonathan Powell came to say he could not find Frances.’
‘At a party, of course . . .’ Peter murmured. He had a knack of making strong implications acceptably. How could Henry be certain that Michael was busy circulating? He would have been doing the same.
‘That is true.’ Henry took the point immediately. ‘I kept an eye on him, however, because he was in a high state of excitement when we talked briefly after the dinner. Not only was it his engagement party, but he was planning to buy a new business, a printing company, over which I had decided to help him financially to a crucial extent. I admit I had been dragging my heels over the previous weeks, largely because I was aware that I would shortly be seeing Frances again. I told myself I had two other children to consider besides Michael. Oliver was determined to stand alone, but Frances was more fragile. She had plenty of money at that time, thanks to her singing, but it was a volatile calling, and that might easily change. When we talked before the dinner, I had been in two minds about going forward in assisting Michael, in view of his admission of the rape. However, seeing Frances in an inebriated state, clearly doing her best to upset the party despite what she had said, I decided to have no more hesitation over Michael. He asked to talk to me again, and we duly had a brief talk, I suppose about eight fifteen, for a few minutes before we rejoined the party.’
Henry’s objectivity about his son was remarkable, Georgia thought, but if he spoke the truth it did away with any motive Michael might have for murder. ‘Did you discuss money with Fanny?’ she asked.
‘No. I merely longed to see her again. When I did, I saw the dear child I had known, even in that one brief talk with her. I wanted to tell her more about her mother’s life and about why she and I had come together. When Frances left the village, she was still a child; now she was mature. I hoped she would understand, and if she had not already done so, forgive. She listened, but I could tell she regretted coming back at all, because we had invited both Ronald and Doreen. It wasn’t possible for her to see Doreen without facing Ronald, and she blamed him – not me, you notice – for much that had gone wrong in her life.’
