Pieces of Justice

by Margaret Yorke

  It seemed that they had run out of money. Daisy had written to me through the years, and I knew that Maxwell had tried several methods of raising funds, investing in various ventures and speculating on the Stock Exchange, but the upkeep of the place had drained the available cash, and his attempt at marriage had ended in an expensive divorce on account of Trevor. Now he intended to sell the estate to a development company which planned to build an entire town with schools, shops and even light industry in a beautiful piece of country, destroying forever the water meadows, which would be filled in and the flood water presumably diverted elsewhere, into, perhaps, the village. How could an ageing, childless man be so greedy?

  Daisy, a widow now with three children of her own and seven grandchildren, lived with her elder son and his wife in the old forge, which had been renovated, extended and modernised. Her son was a smith, like his father, but he made wrought ironwork, gates, weathervanes and the like. The other son was an accountant, and the daughter was a doctor. They had moved up the social scale. Daisy herself had white curls and the same deep blue eyes in a face that still smiled though it was wrinkled. She gave me a hug as warm and as welcome as when I was a lad.

  I had offered to buy the estate from Maxwell, but he would not accept my bid. He would make millions from the developer if it went through. Now I was going to see him, to make a final appeal.

  Sitting by Daisy’s fireside, I asked her to tell me all that she knew or could remember about my mother’s death.

  Daisy screwed up her face and touched her eyes with a handkerchief, moved, still, by that experience when, on New Year’s morning, she had taken in my mother’s breakfast tray and found her still asleep, as she thought. But the sleep was the sleep of death.

  ‘It was diabetes she had, poor lady,’ said Daisy. ‘She’d been ill in India, but when she came home Dr Pitt found out what was wrong and she gave herself injections every day. She must have forgotten her dose, that night, or perhaps something went wrong because she had eaten things she shouldn’t have had. Dr Pitt said anything like that could have happened. There’d been a big party that night. You’d been watching the guests arrive. Then I put you to bed.’

  ‘I got up again,’ I told her. ‘I heard the music and crept down to the hall to see the musicians when Fitch opened the drawing-room door. I fell asleep down there, hidden behind the Christmas tree. But I saw them, in their silk coats and their breeches and their white wigs. Regency minstrels.’ I could conjure them up, even now. ‘One of them went through the hall alone – he went into the study – to have a quick nip of my father’s brandy, I suppose. He had come down the stairs.’

  ‘Funny you should have remembered that,’ Daisy said. ‘There was a whole suit of those fancy clothes, and a wig, pushed under the big leather chair in there when I went in to clean in the morning. I took them upstairs and put them away, meaning to mention them to my poor lady.’

  ‘What happened to them?’ I asked. ‘Were they reclaimed?’

  ‘No, they weren’t. I think they may have been all packed up with your mother’s things,’ said Daisy. ‘It was odd, though, I thought at the time, because the musicians all got dressed in one of the bedrooms, and changed there again before leaving. Why should one of them leave his clothes in the study?’

  ‘Was it a green coat?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Daisy, surprised.

  I’d seen Mrs Fox go into the study, too, but I must have been asleep when she and the musician came out, for surely, I thought now with hindsight, they must have had a rendezvous there? But why was the suit left behind?

  ‘What happened to all my mother’s things?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re here, in the attic,’ said Daisy. ‘Your father gave orders that they were to be got rid of, but somehow it didn’t seem right to throw them away. They were all that was left of your poor mother, and rightly the whole place should have gone to you, not that Maxwell and his mother. Trotter and I decided to keep everything safely so that you could look through them when you grew up. But the war came, and then you went to Australia. There were papers, photos, diaries. Mrs Giles at the farm kept them first – all packed in trunks, they were – and later we brought them here.’

  She paused. ‘Trotter and I took a few woollies for ourselves, they’d only have got the moths, otherwise, but nothing’s been touched, since. Funny how moths don’t seem a problem now, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’d like to look at them before I go up to the Manor,’ I said. I hadn’t announced my visit: I wasn’t expected.

  First, I telephoned Daisy’s daughter, the doctor, and asked her some questions. Her replies made me very thoughtful. Then Daisy’s son helped me bring down the trunks and we unpacked them in a bedroom, laying the things we removed carefully on the bed. We found the frock coat, packed in tissue paper, and the breeches and silver-buckled shoes, and the wig. We laid them aside, careful not to disturb them.

  ‘If a murder was done,’ I said quietly, ‘there might be evidence, even after all this time. The old woman is still alive, after all. Her blood can be tested. I think she wore the suit so that she could move round the house without being recognised. People seeing her would take her for one of the minstrels.’

  Daisy’s daughter had said that it was possible, if my mother’s insulin had been replaced with water, for her to have injected herself and then gone into a coma and died. She might have felt dizzy and thirsty, but as she was alone in her bedroom, no help would be at hand. Without knowing what dosage she was on, and more details, it was impossible to say what the effect might be, perhaps not fatal at once; that would depend on all sorts of things. Such a death might raise no suspicions in a doctor regularly attending; he would assume she had forgotten her medication and if there had been an inquest, accidental death was the likely verdict. These days, stringent rules might make such a means of murder easier to detect, and today there were tests which could prove whether Mrs Fox—Lois—had handled or worn the garments, for she would have left traces – a hair in the wig, perhaps – of herself on them. She could have hidden the suit in the house earlier: suddenly I remembered her call that morning, and how Maxwell had wanted to ride my bike but there wasn’t time. She knew her way round; she could have made the opportunity while we boys were having milk and biscuits in the schoolroom.

  The law could not permit gain from the result of murder, if it were detected. My mother’s will, leaving everything to my father, had been made in London after her marriage, a year before my birth, and she was her parents’ outright heir. If Mrs Fox had killed my mother in order to marry my father, her right to his estate must surely be invalidated.

  I am waiting at Daisy’s for a senior police officer to arrive and accompany me to the Manor. An experienced forensic scientist has already taken away the wig and the garments.

  He saw a small bloodstain on the breeches, and muttered something about it possibly being menstrual blood.

  ‘It will be interesting to test it, after so long,’ he said with enthusiasm. ‘Genetic fingerprinting is making positive proof much easier to obtain.’

  Had my father known the truth? Had he been a party to the crime? He and Lois had known each other in India. I remembered the story about Captain Fox’s broken girth and wondered if that had really been an accident. In those days divorce meant social disaster and would ruin an army officer’s career; she and my father could not have got married without being ostracised and rendered penniless, since neither had private means. As it was, they enjoyed prosperity for many years. During the war they had stayed at the Manor, which had become a convalescent home, with Lois in Red Cross uniform carrying out some administrative function. My father, re-commissioned, had had a desk job at a supply depot nearby. I didn’t want to believe that he was her accomplice; only one of her victims. If he’d been involved, he would have made certain that all proof was obliterated – the disguise, for instance, and the bottles of insulin. Three had been found among my mother’s things; perhaps all had been tampered with,
in case one negative dose was not enough. Lois, however, would not have wanted to draw attention to herself by searching for the clothes or the drug; she must have assumed they were destroyed, perhaps had suggested to my father the very action he had ordered.

  Unlike Maxwell, I have children, and one of my sons, daughters, or grandchildren might like to run the Manor estate once the law has returned it to me. For certain, it will not be sold to a speculator, and as there’s a nearby motorway already, it shouldn’t be subject to compulsory purchase.

  I can see a car drawing up outside, a Jaguar with three men in dark suits inside. There’s another car, too, with uniformed officers, two of them women.

  They may need a doctor. The old lady may die of shock. Still, that won’t prevent tests being carried out.

  It’s too late for vengeance, but it isn’t too late for justice.

  A Small Excitement

  I’d forgotten the strong, harsh tang of seaweed, borne inshore on the wind. It smelled of iodine, and I sniffed it sharply, standing on the rocks below the big, gaunt house built like a fortress on a grass patch above the beach. There were no flowers around it; nothing would survive there, unless nurtured tenderly; only some sea-thrift, in summer, grew among the stones on the path to the main door. This had been the holiday residence of a wealthy confectioner from the Midlands and was known irreverently as Candy Castle. Now it had been turned into flats: SEA VIEW HOLIDAY RENTALS proclaimed a notice-board, blue script on white paint, faded by the salty air.

  Things had changed since those days long ago when the sweetmaker was in his prime, and I was young. The resort had grown to encompass wind-surfing, even pedaloes, as well as sailing. Then, small boats would stud the bay beyond the house, their blue or red sails dipping to meet the water as they heeled over, steeply tacking. On regatta days, flags flew from the flagstaff beside the Sailing Club’s modest headquarters on the headland; no boat here was large enough to be called a yacht. At that time, before the resort’s expansion with its caravan parks and small houses built especially for tourists, all the annual visitors whose families could afford some sort of boat sailed, and exclusion from this fraternity meant social oblivion ashore.

  When not sailing, the boats were moored in several sheltered coves around the shoreline. I could remember the sound of water slapping against their hulls, the clack of the wind in their stays. That was another life, I thought, as I watched some seagulls swoop down over the rocks. What were they hoping to find? Food of some sort, of course: and what was I seeking here, after so long? A solution? An answer?

  It was October, the season over, and nearly all the boats were up, stored away for the winter in local yards or towed home on trailers to rest proudly in suburban gardens, the envy of neighbours, until next year. Today, the sea was grey, riffled with white crests, and further out, beyond the shelter of the cliffs which curved around the bay, the water was really rough, with big waves crashing against the rocks, scattering spray and spume.

  This was where Philippa and Hugh had walked together, slipping away from groups, or from houses where their children slept. They had clung to each other in crannies among the rocks, in boathouses, even in her own bed when her unsuspecting husband was away, for though she and the children spent most of August here, he came only for weekends and the final fortnight. Their affair had gone on for years, blossoming every summer and kept alive meanwhile by rare snatched meetings in London or elsewhere. They spoke of permanence when the children were grown up; she had two and he had four. He had not wanted to hurt his wife, who, after all, had done nothing wrong; indeed, she was loyal and affectionate, and an excellent mother. Philippa’s husband had a short temper and was a workaholic, but he was generous, and was prospering in a plastics business he had started in an outhouse and which was now housed in a large modern complex among carefully sculptured acres and which did business worldwide.

  The children had enjoyed their summers here. For toddlers, the sand was fine and clean, washed by the tide. There were pools in which to catch shrimps, toy boats could be sailed at the water’s edge, and young mariners were initiated early into the lore of the sea. Like their parents, their social life was active, with barbecues and sailing picnics when several boats would set off for another bay along the coast. Small children and the food would often go by car, with any spouses who did not like the sea: there were a few and they were teased, but they were useful so their idiosyncrasy was tolerated. Hugh’s wife, Marjorie, was among them; she was always willing to look after any number of children at home or to drive them to a spot where bigger boats would drop anchor and their crews row inshore by dinghy, and where smaller ones, centreplates up, would be beached. Hugh and Philippa’s affair had begun at such a picnic, when he had helped her haul her little boat ashore and joked about the need to watch the tide lest it be swept away. A sudden glance, an unexpected touch – something very slight was all that was needed to make them first aware of an attraction that soon, with opportunity, turned into a demanding passion.

  The fortress on the cliff became his when his father died and he inherited the confectionery empire, but his heart was never in the business; he had wanted to be a painter. This had caused conflict with his father, who said he could paint for pleasure but must follow the family tradition. National Service had brought a reprieve, but at a price: he had been involved in an accident when a rifle was fired in error; his right hand had been badly damaged and he never regained full muscle control, so that he could no longer paint or draw with his former skill.

  Unless he made that excuse, I thought now, remembering how awkwardly he had clenched his pen or brush between his thin, weak fingers. Would that have restricted real talent? He had produced pretty seascapes of this bay and had painted other places where he had travelled later, after the house here was sold and he and Marjorie had spent holidays abroad where it was warmer, but the pictures were no more than pleasant; perhaps that had always been the limit of his talent.

  His father had been no philistine. He had contributed towards the restoration of a museum in his Midlands neighbourhood and he had taken an interest in an amateur orchestra in which his wife, Hugh’s mother, played the violin.

  Hugh should have become, in due course, chairman of the firm’s board of family directors, but he lacked innovative ideas as well as drive. His sister’s husband, ambitious and discerning, jockeyed for power and eventually out-manoeuvred Hugh, being appointed in his place. Hugh, fobbed off with the post of publicity director, was content enough: such a role suited him; he was spared major decision-making, and could occupy himself in an area he understood. He enjoyed initiating advertising drives and redesigning wrappings and packages. He would seek out new artists and copy-writers and use excursions to meet these people as opportunities to see Philippa, spicing up his travels with intrigue. She would go anywhere if there was the promise of a meeting, making arrangements for her children, setting off in her little car.

  Businessmen had to be away from home and Marjorie did not query Hugh’s absences. They lived contentedly enough, never arguing, discussing differences amicably and making joint decisions about the children’s schooling, their later studies, the eventual purchase of a holiday cottage in France. Two of the children continued sailing, joining clubs – one at a reservoir, the other on an estuary near his university.

  Philippa’s children grew up too, and then she begged Hugh to leave his wife. She pressed him, and he kissed her with as much ardour as ever while requesting further patience. It was true that over the years they had dreamed of being together always, often talked of it and fantasised about where they would live, but that was always safely in the future; now she wanted her dreams realised. Philippa liked her large house in Surrey and her comfortable lifestyle, but she did not love her husband, merely, as she told Hugh, tolerating him. She had found consolation in her garden, her children – one now touring Australia, the other in America on a course at Harvard – and most of all in Hugh, living for their meetings. He knew she me
ant it when she said she loved him. Their affair had endured for more than twelve years, and no one knew about it, or so they believed. There had been no gossip because their circles no longer overlapped as Hugh did not go to the seaside resort where it had begun. Philippa and her husband went there still; now they owned a new white house above the bay and quite a splendid boat in which Derek annually won races. They went skiing, too, each winter, spending Christmas at a high mountain village where snow was nearly guaranteed.

  Then the letters began arriving.

  Lying in Hugh’s arms in an impersonal hotel bedroom, Philippa told him about them. Her husband had shown her one at breakfast the previous Saturday, telling her that there had been others which he had destroyed.

  ‘It can’t be true,’ he’d said, dangling the sheet of ordinary typing paper on which had been pasted accusatory sentences composed of words cut from newspapers. The allegation was that she had been deceiving him for years.

  ‘I denied it, of course,’ she told Hugh. ‘But what if he decides to have me watched?’

  She waited for Hugh’s answer. Surely, now, he would declare it didn’t matter, that they would, at last, begin to live together.

  But Hugh’s reaction shocked her.

  ‘He might,’ he said. ‘We’d better take care – stop meeting for a while.’

  She protested, even wept. She would leave home and go with him anywhere he liked.

  ‘I don’t care if Derek knows,’ she said. ‘Now you can tell Marjorie and we can stop pretending.’

  But Hugh’s elder daughter was getting married in the summer. She was to have an expensive wedding, a marquee on the lawn, all the trimmings. This was no time for scandal.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Please, Philippa. Be patient.’