by Granger, Ann
‘Yes!’ agreed her solicitor fervently. ‘Say absolutely nothing more, please!’
Chapter 20
‘So,’ said Jess into the phone, ‘I owe you a dinner, Tom. That magazine photo you remembered and dug out for us, gave us the link that took us to Tansy, and then to her mother.’
‘You don’t owe me dinner,’ said Tom’s voice in her ear. ‘Glad to have been of some use. You can buy me a drink, if you like. Are you free this evening? We could drive out into the country and find a decent pub, one that does steak and chips. I have a hankering for steak.’
‘That would be fine,’ Jess told him.
‘Then I’ll stop by your flat and pick you up at, say, seven thirty tonight?’
Jess confirmed that would suit her perfectly, as Morton appeared in the doorway. ‘See you later,’ she told Tom in farewell.
‘One of us,’ Morton said gloomily, ‘has to go and see the old fellow at Balaclava House and give him all the lurid news about his family. What’s he going to make of it all? He’s already had to be told two of his family are murderers. Now we’ve got to add in to the mix his father’s fling with a neighbour – and a neighbour who ended up as Monty’s own mother-in-law. Then you’ve got a brother and a nephew, neither of whom he had the slightest idea existed. The nephew was the man he found dead on his sofa. What’s poor old Monty going to make of all that? His head will be spinning. They talk about dysfunctional families nowadays. What was that Bickerstaffe bunch like, if not dysfunctional? It’s like a blooming soap opera; they ought to put it on the telly.’
‘It’s going to be a lot for Monty to take in,’ Jess agreed. ‘And it’s a real tragedy, however you look at it.’
Morton shook his head and then looked at her desperately. ‘It’s not going to be my job, is it? To go and tell him? Not only does that house give me the creeps, but I can’t play the agony aunt. There’s a load of other work on my desk, as well.’
‘I’ll go,’ Jess said briskly and Morton looked relieved. ‘I’m not an agony aunt, either, but I agree he has to be told as soon as possible. As you say, he knows Tansy’s under arrest and Bridget, too, even if she’s still in hospital. He’s got to be bewildered and wondering why on earth it’s happened. He’ll have to be told exactly why and what the motive for it all was. I’ll go there now, this morning. I’ll ask the superintendent if he wants to come with me.’
‘Good idea,’ agreed Morton and took himself off before Jess could change her mind.
‘No, I don’t think so, Jess,’ said Carter when she relayed her question. ‘The old chap likes you and I think you’ll handle it better than I would. I’d be in the way. Besides, there’s a mountain of paperwork to do and get off to the Crown Prosecution Service. I haven’t the time.’
‘Men!’ muttered Jess to herself, as she drove to Balaclava House. ‘As soon as it’s got to do with emotions and love affairs and babies, they’re suddenly all too busy!’
It was a fine, bright day, if a little chilly. As she passed Pascal’s garage, she saw Seb standing by the petrol pumps talking to a spindly youth in overalls. Alfie’s replacement, Jess supposed. At least Pascal had got over his fear of reappearing at his place of business, even though Pete Sneddon was now out on bail, awaiting his trial date at the Crown Court. Pete no longer had a gun, and his licence to own one had been revoked, but there were plenty of other objects around a farmyard that would make a weapon. Sneddon, however, was banned by court order from approaching Pascal or his garage. He had given assurances that he wouldn’t and seemed to have lost the urge to take any action. The police were confident there would be no repeat of the earlier drama. Jess hoped they’d judged it right. Sneddon was busy working about his farm and Rosie was coping somehow. One of her married daughters had come to stay and lend a hand keeping an eye on her father.
Balaclava House, however, had a visitor. A yellow Renault Megane hatchback was parked outside the gates. Jess parked alongside it, and walked up the drive to the front door. It was ajar. Now that Monty was back in residence, it seemed he had reverted to his old bad habit. She walked in and stood for a moment, listening and looking up the staircase to where the sun threw patches of red and yellow across the wall from the stained-glass Jezebel window. She could hear voices in the drawing room. The driver of the Megane. Now, who could that be? Jess set off towards the sound.
The drawing room was in an even greater state of disarray than it had been originally, difficult though that would have been to imagine when Jess first saw it. Now it looked as though a whirlwind had hit it. The air was full of the disturbed dust of years and Jess had to pinch the bridge of her nose to stop herself sneezing. Cupboards and drawers were open, their contents spilled on to the faded carpet. What on earth was going on? Was a desperate robber ransacking the place?
Then she saw that, in the middle of this chaos, Monty was sitting in an armchair, gripping the arms so fiercely that the veins on the backs of his hands stood out like cords. He was glaring at an unknown, middle-aged woman who looked reassuringly normal and non-threatening. Nor was Monty exhibiting alarm, just simmering resentment. His visitor was moving around, picking up items and putting each into whichever she considered appropriate of several wooden crates. As she did so, she carried on a one-sided conversation with Monty under the guise of consulting him.
‘What about these?’ She held up a pair of china shepherdesses. ‘Would you like to take these, keep them to remind you? They’re very pretty and would look nice in your new home.’
‘Chuck them out!’ growled Monty.
‘Nonsense, of course not! I’ll put them in the box going to the auction rooms. They’re too good for Oxfam and probably worth quite a bit. They should be valued properly.’
She became aware of Jess, standing by the door, and paused in her activity. ‘Hello?’ she said, managing to make the work both a greeting and a question.
‘Inspector Campbell,’ Jess told her, taking out her ID. ‘I’ve just called by to see how Monty’s doing.’
‘I’m not doing at all,’ said Monty loudly before the woman could answer. He pointed at his helper. ‘Her name is Hilda and she’s married to someone in the family.’
‘I’m Hilda Potter,’ explained the woman. ‘My husband’s mother was a Bickerstaffe.’ She made this claim with pride.
‘You’d think it was something special, wouldn’t you?’ snarled Monty. ‘Well, it is, in its way. It’s specially awful – a curse!’
‘Now, Monty,’ began Hilda. ‘You don’t mean—’
‘What would you know about it?’ Monty interrupted her rudely. He turned back to Jess. ‘They’re packing me up, too. Packing off, more like it! I’m going to some damn sheltered flat.’
‘You’ll be very comfy there,’ said Hilda, undaunted. ‘Do you want to keep some of those books over there?’
‘No,’ snapped Monty. ‘No one’s opened any of them for fifty years. I’m not going to start reading them now!’
‘I think we’ll get an antiquarian bookseller in to look them over. You never know.’
Monty hauled himself up out of his armchair. ‘Come into the kitchen,’ he invited Jess. ‘She’s driving me barmy.’
‘Oh, I can take a hint!’ said Hilda breezily. ‘You stay here and have a nice chat with the inspector. I’ll go upstairs and see about making a start up there.’
‘You see what it’s come to?’ Monty asked Jess, when Hilda had gone. He sank back into his armchair and gestured at another. ‘Sit down, m’dear. Like a drop of whisky? The bottle’s hidden in that coal scuttle there. She hasn’t found it yet.’
‘I won’t have a drink, thanks, Monty.’ Jess took a seat facing him. ‘I am very sorry for everything that’s happened. I deeply regret Mrs Harwell is so badly hurt. But the hospital says she should recover in due course. There are thankfully no significant internal injuries. As for Tansy, I do understand how you must feel. I know how fond of her you were—’
‘Still am!’ snapped Monty.
‘Oh,
good.’ There didn’t seem to be much more Jess could say about that. She indicated their surroundings and went on, ‘I’m particularly sorry you’re leaving Balaclava. I know you don’t want to go. But the new flat will be warm and comfortable and I dare say you’ll be much nearer the shops. You won’t have to walk all that way to buy – er – groceries.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Monty mumbled. ‘I know I’ve got to go. In a way I’m not sorry to be rid of the place. It’s caused nothing but trouble. Truth is, I should have sold it years ago. I can’t think why I was so keen on staying on here. It’s not as if it holds any happy memories. The whole place is jinxed.’
‘Is it to be sold, then?’ Jess asked him.
‘Yes, and there’s already a buyer, believe it or not. Some property developer by the name of Hemmings. Good luck to him. I don’t care if he pulls it down. He’s paying a fair price. There’ll be enough money to set me up in the new flat; and there will be a nice little bit left over in the bank for young Tansy, when she gets out of gaol.’ He looked up at Jess. ‘She will go to gaol, I suppose?’
‘I can’t second-guess the verdict, Monty, but it was a cold-blooded, carefully planned murder, carried out by both women. Bridget may be in hospital now, but she’ll stand trial too, eventually. Tansy didn’t have anything to do with the dead man being left here on your sofa. You should know that. But she plotted together with her mother, was present at the fatal lunch, even gave a hand helping prepare it, and she watched her mother drive away with the dying man. She could have rung the police, rung an ambulance, anything, if she’d wanted to save Taylor. She didn’t.’
‘Of course she didn’t,’ Monty said calmly. ‘He betrayed her. Bickerstaffe women don’t take kindly to being betrayed. Bickerstaffe women kill.’
This seemed an over-the-top statement to Jess but she let it go. She had to tackle the duty that had brought her.
‘I’ve come to explain some things, Monty, things you might not know about. Some of it may come as a shock. But you need to know because, among other reasons, you’ll understand why Bridget and Tansy plotted together as they did. You must be wondering. Not that anything can excuse them, murder can never be excused, but they had what they considered a motive.’
Monty said nothing, avoiding Jess’s gaze, and staring meditatively into space. He was listening; Jess knew that. Tentatively she began to unfold the details of that old doomed love affair and its consequences. She told him of his father and Elizabeth Henderson, of Lionel’s birth, the adoption, Jay’s discovery of the truth and his belief he had a claim on Balaclava. She went on to explain how he hoped to use Tansy, once he’d learned she was to inherit the house, by marrying her and in time persuading her to sell off the whole estate. When Tansy indignantly refused to go along with his plan, he had been prepared to tackle Monty directly, claiming to be a nephew. Not knowing how this would play with Monty, the two women had panicked.
At this point, Monty muttered, ‘No, no . . . Wouldn’t have changed my will in favour of a complete stranger!’ Otherwise he made no comment.
When she had finished, they sat again in silence for a while. In the quietness she heard Hilda Potter come down the main staircase, go out of the front door and almost at once re-enter. She began to puff her way up the staircase again. What had she taken out to her car, wondered Jess, that couldn’t be put in one of the waiting crates?
Monty stirred in his chair. ‘Secrets are buggers,’ he said. There was another long pause, before he went on, ‘The only place for them is out in the open where they can’t muck up anyone’s life. There was I, all those years thinking I was the only one who knew. The truth was they all knew, but they thought I didn’t.’
‘You knew about this?’ Jess asked incredulously.
‘What?’ Monty looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was there and the words he’d spoken had been an observation made to himself. ‘Oh, no, not all of it, not by a long chalk. I didn’t know Mrs Henderson, Penny’s mamma, had a baby. Lionel, you say his name was? I had no idea that fellow sprawled on my sofa over there . . .’ Monty pointed at the piece of furniture in question. ‘Was in any way related to me. But I knew about the affair between my father and Penny’s mother. I came across them in Shooter’s Wood, in flagrante delicto. I was twelve at the time. They didn’t see me. They were too busy! I crept away. But there was no disguising what was going on. Young as I was, I knew what it must be. I went to a boys’ boarding school, you see. We eavesdropped on the older boys and they seemed to talk of almost nothing else. It fired our curiosity and made us precocious little brats. But I never told my friends at school about Shooter’s Wood. I couldn’t speak to anyone of what I’d seen. It was my secret and I’ve kept it for over sixty years.’
‘Oh, Monty . . .’ Jess said sadly.
He sighed too. ‘Later on, I had reason to believe my mother knew of the affair, though possibly not about the baby. There’s no way of finding out now, but if she had known it might have been enough to push her – but there’s no use in speaking of that now, either. Nothing can be changed about any of that. It’s all water under the bridge, as they say, ancient history. The main thing is, I never spoke of it. I think that drove the first wedge between Penny and me. It wasn’t the only reason our marriage hit the rocks. There were plenty of others and most of them down to me. But Penny was shrewd and knew me well. She realised I was keeping something from her and it rankled with her. As the years went by and I still didn’t speak, she became angry. “I never know what you’re thinking, Monty!” she would say to me. “But whatever it is, it always comes from the same place. You’ve got something on your mind, worrying you, and you don’t trust me enough to share it.” So she kept tapping at that wedge, and eventually the tree trunk that was our relationship split clean in two, right down the middle. Of course, I couldn’t ever have shared it, not with her. I couldn’t have told the poor girl the truth, could I?’
Monty turned his head sharply in Jess’s direction and stared at her. ‘Could I?’
‘No, Monty,’ Jess said quietly. ‘No, you couldn’t.’
Monty looked relieved. ‘Thank you for that, I’m glad to hear you say it.’ He made to struggle up out of the chair. ‘You may not want a drink, I certainly do.’
‘I’ll get it,’ Jess said quickly. She got up and opened the brass lid of the coal scuttle. The whisky bottle lay in it, nestling in ancient coal dust. She found a glass in the sideboard and poured a generous measure. The poor old fellow deserved it.
‘Monty,’ she said when she had retaken her seat. ‘There is one thing that may not have occurred to you but I must warn you about.’
‘What’s that, then?’ asked Monty over the rim of his glass.
‘It is quite possible that Lionel could still be alive somewhere. He would be younger than you, a good eleven or twelve years younger. He turned out a bit of a rotter, I’m sorry to say, deserted his wife and baby and disappeared. He would have been afraid of being found for a long time after that. He might have left the country or at least moved hundreds of miles away; he might have changed his name by deed poll. But, well, after all this time he may think there’s nothing to fear any more. Jay tracked you down and who knows? One day Lionel may turn up. I don’t want you to worry about it but you should be prepared. There will be a lot about all this in the newspapers, I’m afraid. All of the story will get out. Wherever he is now, and whoever he is now, Lionel may read it.’
Monty scratched his ear. ‘I suppose so. Can’t be helped. Much good it would do him, anyway.’ Monty looked at her quite mischievously. ‘It’ll be too late for him to get his hands on Balaclava!’ He grew sober again, shaking his head. ‘Not, I repeat, that I’d ever allow that.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘Funny thing, when I was a youngster I’d have quite liked to have a brother. But not now, I couldn’t be doing with complications now.’
He brightened. ‘See here, the fellow has never tried to find me yet. He may have popped his clogs. If he’s alive he could be living anywhere in the wo
rld. He may know nothing about his true parentage or Balaclava. He’s a happier man for it, if so. It would have been better for his son if he’d learned nothing, poor devil. If this Lionel chap reads the newspapers, he might be more afraid I’d find him, than I’m afraid he’d try and find me. He deserted a wife and kid, you said. He’ll still be lying low.’
Monty waved a hand at their surroundings. ‘By this time next year, Hemmings will have pulled this place down, every last damn brick. That’ll be the end of it, at last . . .’ His voice trailed away into a whisper. ‘Yes, at long, long last, it will be an end to it all.’
This was true, thought Jess. What Jay Taylor had discovered had led inexorably to his death. Lionel had his own guilty secret to keep, wherever he was. He might not even know his abandoned wife, Deirdre, was long dead. He might just be frightened of her sister, the acid Miss Bryant.
