Heirs and Assigns

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Where is Ellen?’

  ‘She’s gone for a walk. She wanted to blow the cobwebs.’

  ‘It’ll do that all right, today.’ He managed not to ask if his wife was warmly wrapped up and if she was wearing a scarf. He guessed she’d gone out because she was trying not to embarrass him with her presence, which was what they’d tacitly agreed on, but he’d have given a lot to have seen her, all the same.

  ‘Go in and see if you can make the child see sense, Carey,’ Kate said, ‘while I have a word with Mr Reardon.’

  Carey hesitated. ‘I’m not sure she’ll listen to me.’

  ‘You can always try.’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed after a moment, and disappeared into the house.

  Kate looked slightly distracted. ‘I don’t know how to deal with Verity in the mood she’s in, and that’s the truth. Running off like this is only making whatever it is that’s bothering her much worse, though I can’t get her to say what it is.’

  ‘I’ve no authority to make her go back.’

  ‘I realize that, of course, but I thought you should know she was here.’ She paused. ‘It was Ellen who volunteered to go down to Bryn Glas to let them know that. She spoke only to your sergeant, and instructed him not to tell them she has run away.’

  So much for Ellen keeping her nose out of the case, however helpful it might be in this instance. ‘I’m not sure that’s going to fool them, especially her mother.’

  ‘I’m not sure, either, but it’ll give Verity time to think again. She’ll have to go home, you know.’ She frowned. ‘She’s dreadfully upset and I can only think it must be something that happened the night Pen died, so I thought if you can get her to talk, away from all the rest of the family …’

  Years of experience in interviewing people who were determined not to open their mouths had given Reardon a jaundiced view of that sort of situation. Not having seen Verity yet he wasn’t in a position to judge how easy or otherwise it would be in her case.

  ‘I’m very fond of her, you know. I’ve known her since she was a child and … her attitude lately has made everyone impatient with her, but it’s only an act. I think she’s very unhappy, and something will have to be done about it, really it will. Be careful with her, won’t you?’

  He smiled at the idea that he had any choice, or indeed wish, to be anything else.

  She paused to take off her gumboots before they went into the house, and he followed her as she padded into her sitting room in stockinged feet. A person he assumed was Verity, dressed entirely in shapeless dark garments, was standing at the far end, her back to the room, in the same position as her mother had stood earlier, worrying about her. She didn’t turn round when they came in. Carey spread her hands in a helpless gesture that said she’d been unsuccessful in persuading Verity to see reason.

  Kate said, ‘Verity, this is Mrs Reardon’s husband, the detective inspector. I think he’d like a word with you.’

  The girl spun round. ‘I won’t go back!’

  ‘Well,’ Reardon answered mildly, ‘the choice is yours. I haven’t come to clap you in irons and force you back.’

  He could discern no traces of her mother in Verity Lancaster’s face. It was a rather striking one, pale but with large, hazel-green eyes, and she might have been almost beautiful, if she hadn’t looked as though she was determined never to smile again. Her gaze was very clear. She immediately gained a plus point, as far as he was concerned, when she looked him directly in the face, not embarrassed or avoiding looking at his scars. The sombre clothes, he guessed, had been the nearest she could get to mourning, which was something the other women in the family hadn’t been able – or maybe hadn’t wanted – to achieve. ‘A few words with you is all I need, Miss Lancaster.’

  ‘Kate had no right to send for you,’ she said, ungraciously in view of the fact that she was trying to persuade Kate to be her hostess. ‘Because I don’t have anything to tell you, despite what she says.’

  ‘In that case, perhaps we can confine our conversation to you answering a few questions?’

  ‘If it’s about my uncle, I can’t help you.’ Her glance went to the other two women and she looked mulish.

  ‘If you’d rather we weren’t here,’ Kate said, ‘Carey can come and help me with the leaves in the garden.’

  Carey looked taken aback but after a moment she said, ‘Oh, yes, rather.’

  As far as Reardon could estimate, there was nowhere else the two of them could go, if he and Verity were to be left alone. Apart from this living room, there was only the tiny scullery-kitchen downstairs, the extent of which could be glimpsed through its open door, too small to house even one chair. Upstairs would be the two bedrooms Kate had mentioned, both icy, he imagined, given today’s temperatures.

  ‘I don’t think that will be necessary, Mrs Ramsey. I suggest you slip a coat on, Miss Lancaster, and we can take a turn outside, in the lane. We can talk as we go.’ It wasn’t satisfactory but he couldn’t turn the other two women out.

  Verity looked as though she was about to refuse. Carey went up to her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘If you don’t want to go home you can come and stay with me, love. If you don’t mind the mess, that is … I’m in a frightful muddle, sorting out all my mother’s old things, that’s why I haven’t been to see you. But do talk to Mr Reardon first. They’re going to find out the truth about your uncle, you know.’

  Considering the clearing-up chaos Carey was so embroiled in, Reardon thought this was a heroic offer. And, despite herself, Verity clutched at the offer like a drowning person at a straw. ‘Do you really mean that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.’

  ‘All right – and thanks, Carey.’

  A few moments later, she had donned an old-fashioned musquash coat that must surely have once belonged to her mother, thrust her hands into woollen gloves, and pulled a felt cloche well down on her head as extra protection. So bundled up was she that her eyes were practically all that was visible. Cold as it was, this seemed excessive; he couldn’t help thinking of a furry animal trying to hide.

  Once outside, she declined to take a walk and insisted they sit in her motor, a vehicle once smartly painted but now much in need of a touch up. He hesitated and suggested the police Wolseley, where there was more room, but she shook her head stubbornly. He was beginning to understand why people found it so difficult to cope with her. After a moment, he agreed, unorthodox and unsuitable as the Baby Austin was for the purpose. It wasn’t known as that for nothing. Its dimensions meant being squashed too close together for comfort, or at any rate too close to be able to study her face as he attempted to draw her out. They’d have been better walking up the lane.

  ‘What about these few questions you want to ask, then?’ she asked, staring at the stuffed frog – Mr Fred presumably – which sagged on the dashboard, a small, somewhat pathetic creature after all his years of being loved. His bright green plush was worn bare in parts, one of his glass pop-eyes was missing and the stuffing seemed to have leaked from one leg. But his great wide smile had been re-embroidered in scarlet wool. She had asked the question quietly, the childish petulance abandoned now that she was faced with the inevitable. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Well, we’ve asked everyone else if they heard anything during the night, the night your uncle was killed. But none of them did.’

  ‘I slept very heavily.’

  ‘And you heard nothing? Your room isn’t far from your uncle’s, and it’s an old house. The floorboards creak.’

  ‘I’d taken a pill.’

  ‘A pill? Yes, of course, you weren’t well. They said you were feeling sick that night.’

  ‘Well, they were wrong,’ she answered quickly. ‘I wasn’t sick, I just had a splitting headache.’

  This was a different version to that recorded in Kate’s journal; she’d told Kate it was something she’d eaten. A headache wasn’t what Dr Fairlie had thought either. ‘I see. So you didn’t hear anything.
’

  She hesitated and though he couldn’t see her face the silence told him she might be calculating how to answer. In the end she said, ‘Well, I went to bed and fell asleep. Then I woke up very suddenly – why, I don’t know. Noises, perhaps. It flashed through my mind that something might be wrong with Uncle Pen but then I heard Dr Fairlie leaving, saying goodnight, telling him to sleep well and he’d be right as rain in the morning. After that … I suppose I must have fallen asleep again.’

  ‘But you woke later and heard something again?’ he hazarded.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted at last. ‘I did think I heard someone go along to the bathroom at one point. That’s probably what woke me.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you noticed the time?’

  ‘Well, after a bit I heard the clock downstairs strike three. So it must’ve been about then.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  She nodded without saying anything, then took her gloves off, reached out for Mr Fred and held him in both hands. Caressing the top of his almost bald head with her thumb, staring out of the windscreen, she said at last, ‘I meant it when I said I’m not going back, you know. I left because I couldn’t stand the atmosphere, everyone pretending to be sad about Uncle Pen, when all the time, they’re rubbing their hands. I just had to get out.’

  ‘Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, eh?’ he asked her invisible profile.

  She half turned her head then, giving him a swift glance, a gleam of understanding, and a quick response: ‘Well, they’ll have to stay packed up, won’t they, since I’ve nowhere to unpack them? Nobody wants to have me to stay, not even Carey, really.’

  He wondered if playing the tragedy queen was part of her natural personality, or if it was just due to the present circumstances. She knew more than she was saying, that was obvious, and something was evidently troubling her deeply – more, he was inclined to think, than her unfeeling relatives. Yet, despite what she thought of them, the fact that they were all under suspicion for killing her uncle must hang heavily on her. One of them, after all, was her mother.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve nothing else to tell me?’

  She shook her head and stared mournfully through the windscreen. He was beginning to get cramp and there wasn’t the space to stretch his long legs. ‘Look, I know how you must feel about going home but,’ he ventured to suggest, ‘it might really be time to have another think about it.’ He felt her stiffen, and added, ‘It would put your mother’s mind at rest, she’s really quite worried about you.’ She still said nothing and he wondered if he’d got through to her. ‘You know, I talk to a lot of people in my job and I’m not slow when it comes to seeing people finding reasons for avoiding something they don’t want to admit.’

  He expected her to jump out and slam the door behind her, but she only mumbled, ‘I can’t go back.’

  ‘You don’t have to listen to them, your family.’ She was facing him now, not turning away. Framed by the close-fitting hat, her face was sad, really sad, not the drama queen act she’d been putting on before. ‘Take your time, Verity. Never make a decision in a hurry.’

  He sensed, before she spoke, that she was about to give in. ‘I know, really. I suppose I’ve got to face up to it and go back some time. But I can’t do it now … when I said I can’t, I meant it.’

  ‘Why do you feel that?’

  ‘It’s not what I feel – I mean I can’t anyway. Literally.’ The corners of her mouth turned down. ‘Oh, lordy, I can’t even do this right, can I? The great escape foiled by … I should look such a fool!’

  ‘No one ever said it was foolish to admit you’re wrong.’

  ‘I’m not saying I’m wrong – I’m saying I’ve run out of petrol.’

  He knew he must not laugh. Humour didn’t appear to be one of Verity’s strong points, at any rate not at this moment. Clearly it had become more important to her that she shouldn’t look ridiculous than give in. But after a minute she did begin to smile, and he saw he’d been right in what he’d thought when he first saw her. Here indeed was beauty in the making.

  ‘I don’t see any problem with that,’ he said. ‘I have transport here, and I’m on my way to Bryn Glas to collect my sergeant. We can bring some petrol up here later.’

  ‘There’s nothing else I can do, is there, but go back with my tail between my legs?’

  ‘It takes courage to admit you’re wrong.’

  She gave another sad, tentative smile. But in those beautiful eyes he thought he still saw a shadow. She still hadn’t told him the whole truth.

  He went back into the cottage to report and explain the situation. ‘She’ll go home with me. Give her a few minutes and she’ll come in to see you.’

  ‘Before she does,’ Kate said, ‘there something I ought to tell you.’ Carey tactfully left them, saying she would help Verity transfer her belongings from her car to Reardon’s.

  Kate began as soon as the door closed behind her ‘This doesn’t really reflect well on me as a sane, rational being, but well … you see, I sometimes have these … I imagine I see … someone,’ she said in a rush.

  Someone. He had no difficulty in understanding who she meant. Missing, presumed dead, he remembered Ellen saying. The cruellest of all outcomes, he had often thought, that allowed hope, however fragile, to persist, that a loved one might somewhere, somehow, against all odds, still be alive.

  ‘I know worry can make the mind play tricks, and I’ve had a lot to think about recently … debating whether or not to leave here and take the position the NCW have offered me in London. But,’ she went on, her voice gathering strength, ‘on the night of the party, just as I was going to bed, I thought I saw this … person, walking along the lane. It wasn’t much more than a shadow, but thinking about it, I’m sure it was someone real, not a … not a hallucination.’

  ‘Could you put a name to who it was you saw?’

  ‘I didn’t see clearly enough. I wouldn’t even like to say whether it was a man, or a woman. But the thing is, this lane doesn’t come from anywhere except Bryn Glas … not unless you’ve walked from Wyvering, five miles away.’

  Within half an hour, Carey had been deposited back at home, and Verity returned to Bryn Glas. Her mother, admirably controlled in the circumstances, was seemingly prepared to subscribe to the fiction that nothing untoward had happened, and was ignoring the suitcases which had stayed in the Wolseley until they could be carried discreetly upstairs.

  Reardon left them to it and in the study found Gilmour and Sadie Bannerman who, at last divested of the tiresome scarf, had donned a pair of horn-rimmed, secretarial glasses, and was demonstrating undoubted efficiency. Looking slightly punch drunk, Gilmour exchanged who-would-have-thought-it glances with Reardon over the neatly stacked piles of papers covering the surface of the desk and the earnestly bent head of Miss Bannerman.

  She raised her eyes when he came in, consulted her watch and then removed her glasses. ‘Well, we’ve made a start, anyway,’ she said, scraping back her chair. ‘So if it’s all the same with you, I’ll love you and leave you, for now. But I can come back tomorrow, if you like.’

  ‘Thank you. I think Sergeant Gilmour would be happy for you to do that, eh, Gilmour? We’ll let you know if we need you, Miss Bannerman.’

  She had kept on her enchanting little hat while working, and in a moment or two re-donned the olive green coat, fastening its big fur collar high around her neck and with another ravishing smile, turned to go. Then paused with her hand on the doorknob. ‘By the way,’ she said, pointing to the sunflower painting on the wall, ‘that’s mine.’

  ‘You mean Mr Llewellyn was going to leave it you in his will?’

  ‘No, I mean it belongs to me already. There used to be a picture of his wife hanging there but it’s away being cleaned, so I offered to lend him this. The place needed brightening up. I’m a Pisces, and miserable surroundings depress me. It’s only a print,’ she added, as if it might have been in their minds that it was a Van Gogh original. ‘
I only mentioned it, just so’s it doesn’t accidentally go to anyone else. Bye!’ She wiggled her fingers and left.

  Gilmour wiped imaginary sweat from his brow. ‘Jiminy!’ he said feelingly.

  Reardon grinned. ‘Been giving you a hard time, has she?’

  Gilmour ran a hand through his coppery hair, his face red. He was tenacious and didn’t like having to admit defeat but … the undoubted truth was, he’d been upstaged by a young woman who had at first seemed nothing more than a decorative office girl who had then knocked him into a cocked hat with her expertise. Miss Bannerman – or Sadie, as she would have it – had been more than willing to help him understand, but as the piles of papers – copies of contracts, copies of agreements and details of mergers, takeovers, goodness knows what else – grew in height on the desk, Gilmour had felt himself to be a ship foundering in uncharted seas. He’d never precisely shone at school though he’d never considered himself slow on the uptake either. But she was too quick for him, expecting him to absorb and remember complicated explanations without needing them to be repeated.

  ‘Not my territory, sir, all this,’ he admitted, knowing the explanation didn’t even begin to describe his inadequacy.

  ‘Well, it’s not mine, either, if it comes to that.’

  ‘No, sir. The thing is, though, we might be missing something crucial. We’re going to need someone else on this job. Someone who knows what it’s all about,’ he finished hopefully.

  ‘Isn’t that what she was supposed to be doing?’ Gilmour shrugged helplessly and Reardon gave him an appraising glance. ‘She couldn’t be pulling the wool over our eyes, could she, our Miss Bannerman? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘She could be pulling it over mine, that’s for sure! But why should she? I’m not sure I can take another day of her, though.’