A Final Reckoning

by Susan Moody

  ‘That’d be old Jenny Forshawe. Blimey, never mind hot-tempered, that one had a tongue on her that made sandpaper look soft. Used to walk in and out of the house as if she owned it, and anyone doing something she didn’t approve of, or not doing it the way she thought it should be done, wham!’

  I pretended shock and surprise. ‘You mean, she’d barge into someone’s else house and hit people?’

  ‘Not quite. The boys, she didn’t mind giving them what for, but us staff … she drew the line there, knew what the reaction would be if she didn’t. But that didn’t stop her tearing a strip off us, and no mistake.’

  ‘Didn’t Mr Redmayne object? Or Mrs Palliser?’

  ‘Most of the time, he was up in London, so he didn’t know how she acted. And Mrs P couldn’t have given a damn, long as nobody disturbed her.’

  ‘Goodness.’

  ‘I remember Jill – that was the housekeeper – standing up to her, saying she had no right to come in and hit defenceless children, and Mrs Forshawe really having a go at her, saying Clio Palliser needed to be looked after because she wasn’t the same as other people, and in any case, it wasn’t Jill’s place to be telling her, Lady Know-it-all Forshawe, what to do.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Jill said in any case it was wrong of her to be disciplining someone else’s children, and that they might be a bit mischievous, but they were good boys on the whole, and didn’t deserve to be knocked around.’ She shuddered dramatically. ‘She was a horrible woman. My husband used to say she was evil, really evil.’

  ‘So do you think she could have been the murderer, and not Mrs Palliser at all?’

  ‘Here. What is this? Are you some kind of journalist? Or one of them whatyoumacallits, cold-case detectives, like in that series on telly?’

  ‘Neither of those things. Just someone wanting to know what happened to her sister, and whether the right person got blamed for it.’

  Linda sighed deeply and stared into the bottom of her empty glass. Above her head, I signalled for another. ‘You said they were good boys,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, they were. Could be a bit naughty, especially that Georgie. But I put it down to their mum. Distant kind of woman. Nothing warm about her. I mean, I’ve two boys myself, never stop giving them hugs and kisses, even now they’re grown-up. My two sometimes played with the lads up at the Lodge, and even when they was kids they thought it was kind of funny that Mrs Palliser never seemed to have anything to do with her children.’ She paused. Shook her head. ‘Had that room of hers soundproofed, can you believe it? So she couldn’t hear any noise! I never heard of that in my life, a mum who – what’s the word? – barricaded herself away from her own kids.’

  ‘Your sons got on well with the Pallisers, did they?’

  ‘Very. They was kind kids … See, my Danny has a health problem, can’t walk or run very well. But they never let it make any difference, always included him in their games, where they could. And Sammy, he was a bit sickly as a child – right as rain now – but they never teased him nor nothing. Not like at school.’ Again she paused. ‘No, they were nice kids – all three of them. There was this third boy, used to spend the holidays at the Lodge, parents worked abroad, so he didn’t get to see them very often, but he was just like part of the family.’

  I could see Stonor among his cronies, where a lot of loud guffawing and backslapping was going on.

  ‘It’s all so interesting.’

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘in all these years, it’s never occurred to me that it could have been anyone but Clio who was responsible. Mind you, Leslie – that’s Leslie Harris, used to work up at the Lodge with me – always used to say there was something a bit funny about it. Can’t remember what it was exactly at the moment, it was years ago.’

  I felt a rush of excitement. ‘How can I get hold of Leslie?’

  ‘You’d have to sprout a pair of wings and fly up to heaven!’ Linda’s guffaw matched any of those at the bar. ‘She passed on five years ago now, breast cancer, very sad it was.’

  Damn, I thought, sparing no more than a passing thought for poor Leslie. ‘That’s a—’

  Pursuing her own train of thought, Linda didn’t hear me. ‘But now you ask me, I’m seriously beginning to wonder whether there’s been a whatyoumacallit, a miscourage of jastuss. Misc … you know what I mean.’

  ‘You think it’s possible, then? That it wasn’t Clio Palliser at all?’

  ‘But if it wasn’t her, why didn’t she speak up? Why go to prison for something she never done in the first place? I certainly wouldn’t.’

  ‘The difficulty about it not being her is who in the world would kill two children?’

  ‘There is that …’

  ‘Nobody else could have done it. I mean, why would they?’ I floated this like a fly landing lightly on the sea of sherry she had consumed.

  ‘If you watch them telly programmes, there’s always someone in the background who’s got it in for someone else, isn’t there? Maybe someone was after your sister and them poor kids just got in the way. Or someone wanted to get at Mrs Palliser.’

  Amazingly, it had never occurred to me that the boys might have been murdered to injure Clio. I’d assumed that the defaced painting – the Balthus, as I now knew – was at the heart of the matter. And maybe it still was. It was perfectly possible that the rude message scrawled across the canvas was a nose-thumb at Lady Forshawe. To imagine some kind of revenge was at work seemed drastic in the extreme, I know, but you only have to read the tabloids to see how twisted the human mind can be.

  ‘I guess so,’ I said doubtfully. Would the fish bite? ‘Someone you’d never think of,’ I agreed. ‘But of course I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there …’

  ‘I was.’ She looked back down the years. ‘There was always arguments going on in that house, mind you. Mr Redmayne, Mrs Palliser – I suppose she was really Mrs Redmayne, but everyone always called her Palliser – Jill the housekeeper. Bit of a temper she had. Didn’t stand any nonsense from anyone.’

  ‘What did they argue about?’

  ‘Anything. Everything.’ Linda suppressed a hiccup.

  I knew that Jill had been up in Manchester with her family at the time of the murders, and it seemed too far out to be tenable to imagine her travelling back in order to get even with Clio Palliser over some quarrel, when she would have had plenty of opportunity when she returned from her Christmas vacation. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘There was Trev Barnard, of course. We always used to think he was a bit sweet on Mrs P. But it couldn’t have been him.’ She finished the last of her sherry. ‘There was my Neil, too. Gardener, he was, up at the Lodge. Clio was always putting him down, finding fault … but he didn’t take it too seriously. That’s just the way she was. Gawd …’ Her somewhat unfocused gaze caught on to mine. ‘You don’t think? … Nah … The police took statements from everyone and nearly all of us were, whatdyamacallit, vouched for by everyone else.’

  ‘Including Trevor Barnard?’

  ‘Dunno about him. Funny: I’m still trying to get my head round her going along with it, if it wasn’t her at all.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t see much point trying to defend herself.’

  ‘Well, I never. I’ll have to talk to my Neil about this.’

  Stonor was raising his eyebrows at me, ready to extricate himself from the crowd of his acquaintances. ‘I have to go now,’ I said, rising to my feet. ‘I’m staying at the Lodge tonight, so if you come up with something, do please let me know. Or if you remember anything Leslie said about it.’

  ‘I will indeed. Well, who’d have thought …’

  I could see her brain whirring, rethinking all her previous assumptions, or at least giving them an alternative perspective. ‘Thank you so much for talking to me, Mrs Windrow. You can’t imagine how hard it was for my family, so far away in California and never really knowing anything about what happened. My dad came over, of course, but my mom couldn’t face it. In fact, it more or
less killed her.’ I could feel myself going red, angry all over again at the killer who had taken my mother’s life as well as my sister’s.

  ‘You poor thing.’ Briefly, she touched my hand. ‘I promise if we come up with anything, Neil and me, we’ll send a message up to the Lodge.’

  But Stonor was pulling at my arm, looking at his watch, saying we needed to get a move on if we were going to get back in time for lunch.

  I still had time for another of Sabine’s letters:

  Hello, Babe:

  Just a quickie …

  The boys are getting more and more excited about Christmas, behaving like jumping beans or performing fleas … Take your pick, they do both! We drove down to the town this morning and I had a pot of tea and a scone in the café while they zoomed about from shop to shop, looking for presents. Just like you and I used to do.

  They were still manic after lunch, so I took them out for a walk late this afternoon. We went down to the edge of the property; there’s a pond – the boys called it a lake, told me in the summer holidays they have mock battles on the water, pretending to be Nelson or Sir Francis Drake, getting soaking wet. It’s surrounded by reeds and bulrushes, all rather dead-looking now, but I can imagine it’s very romantic on a moonlit night. And they showed me a secret place where they’re not supposed to go because it’s dangerous. A well, which they said goes down for hundreds of feet, and there’s all sorts of things down there, including a couple of their ancestors, if you can imagine! Sir Humphrey, they said, who was their about twenty-Greats Grandfather and was a terrible drunk: he apparently fell in and nobody heard him yelling for help, and because they couldn’t find him, he died of cold, not drowning, because the water is only about four feet deep. Actually, it is a bit dangerous since once you move the heavy wooden cover there’s only a very low wall around the edge, and although they were having fun throwing stones down to hear the splash, I hurried them away. Wouldn’t want them joining their ancestor down there on my watch! But I took photos of us all (enclosed) so you can see them and a bit of the house etc.

  Fourteen

  ‘Strange thing is, none of them seemed a bit surprised that we were even asking whether there was any alternative to it being Clio,’ Stonor said. At least, I think that’s what he said. He was shovelling roast beef and Yorkshire pud into his mouth as he spoke, and speaking through it, severely hampering audibility.

  ‘Linda Windrow said that everyone knew sooner or later there’d be some kind of a huge blow-up at the Lodge, but she didn’t elaborate on why. Just said there was always some quarrel or other going on. And Clio was like a pressure cooker.’

  ‘But the lads in the bar said they never really believed it was her. Mad as a March Hare was the general verdict, but not a murderess. And some of them had known her since she was a child.’

  ‘Linda Windrow certainly seemed to like Jennifer Forshawe for it.’ I considered my words and then amended them. ‘The possibility of it being her, I mean.’

  ‘My mates in the pub’s money was on Redmayne himself,’ said Stonor. ‘And if not him, then Trevor Barnard. And if not him, then some guy who appeared to be hanging round the house. Lurking, according to Neil Windrow. Definitely lurking.’

  ‘It makes absolutely no sense,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he was after your sister. Ever thought of that?’

  ‘The only person interested my sister was that Scotsman who was at the weekend we came to before. Malcolm Macdonald, the one in the kilt.’

  ‘Maybe some pervo saw her and decided to try his chances.’

  ‘Come on, Brian. Get real. He sees Sabine, somehow gets into the house, climbs up the stairs, murders a boy and then my sister and then another boy and then goes on his merry way? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound likely, put like that.’ Stonor speared another roast potato from the dish in front of him and cut it in half.

  An idea came to me. ‘This lurking guy: it couldn’t have been the missing first husband, could it?’

  ‘Could easily have been. Casing the joint, so to speak, before making himself known.’

  ‘Why would he suddenly come back after all these years away?’

  Stonor shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe because it’s Christmas time, shops full of it, newspapers, magazines, and he gets all nostalgic, thinking about the little lads he abandoned before they were even old enough to know him.’

  ‘So he goes up the drive, bangs at the knocker. Then what?’

  ‘The Honourable Clio opens up and in he goes, shouting, “Guess who! Surprise, surprise!” and she tells him to fuck off, excuse my French, kicks him out of the house and slams the door in his face.’

  ‘And that makes him so mad that he decides to break in and kill his own sons? Doesn’t sound hugely likely to me. Why on earth would he do that?’

  ‘Why does anybody kill anybody?’ Brian asked tiredly. ‘God, I’ve seen so many of these pointless murders in my time. Innocent people simply trying to live their lives as best they can, and some bastard with an inflated ego or high on something or drunk or angry with the way his own life has ended up decides to take them out. Don’t ask me why, or what good it does. Simply means that they’ll be spending the best part of the next twenty years behind bars.’

  ‘We’ve come up with several different possible culprits,’ I said. ‘By the way, I think we can rule out the Windrow boys since they had physical problems of various kinds at the time, quite apart from the fact that they were kids themselves, and friends with the two boys. Plus the third one. Gavin. Is there anyone we’ve left out?’

  ‘I’m starting to think about the lord, actually.’

  ‘Getting that old time religion, Stonor?’

  His smile was dutiful. ‘Desmond Forshawe. If his wife could have done it, so equally could he.’

  ‘Except she was known for her foul temper. And there was the painting the boys had damaged. And he seems as mild as milk. What would his excuse be?’

  As the waiters cleared away our plates, Stonor propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands.

  ‘A question,’ I said quickly, before he could flat out refuse to answer any more. ‘Why didn’t the police come up with some of these scenarios at the time?’

  ‘Partly because when we checked the alibis, they all seemed to hang together. But mostly because my superior officer refused to look beyond what was in front of his eyes.’

  ‘OK. A final question: the murder weapon. I’ve never heard anything about it.’

  ‘That’s because we never found it. We decided that she’d had about two hours between the murders and the husband coming home in which to dispose of it. Which presumably is what she did. But short of digging up the entire estate, we didn’t even know where to start looking. No suspicious piles of newly turned earth. Nothing in the ashes of the boiler or the fire in the hearth. Nothing hidden anywhere in the house – at least, not as far as we could see. We dragged that little lake, of course, but didn’t find anything except a long-dead dog.’

  I thought about the well Sabine had mentioned. ‘Did you go down the well?’

  ‘Didn’t even know there was a well.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like the police were all that conscientious.’

  ‘You’re right. Look, I’m beginning to get awfully tired of talking about all this.’

  ‘You were the one who brought it up right at the beginning.’

  He seemed weary. ‘I don’t think my brain is firing on all cylinders today.’

  ‘Too much beer last night with Maggie Fields?’

  He stared at me, gooseberry-eyed. ‘Actually, I remember the well. But it had this heavy wooden lid over it, and my guv’nor decided she couldn’t possibly have shifted it.’

  ‘Tell me about Trevor Barnard’s house … Anything there?’

  ‘Nothing that I could see. Some nice old country furniture, nice pictures on the walls, nice bachelor quarters, but it reminded me of my own place … Needs a woman’s touch, if you kn
ow what I mean.’

  ‘I hate to say that I do.’ As if a man couldn’t find a duster or pick some flowers. ‘Anyway, let’s not even think about it for the rest of the afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’m fed up with it myself. Too much speculation and no facts whatsoever.’

  ‘Plus the strong possibility that there never was anyone else except Clio Palliser, as they said all along.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Brian.’ I stood up. I bent towards him and stared straight into his somewhat bleary eyes. ‘Just don’t forget the niggle.’

  After lunch, I went for a walk. I still had the miniatures in my room and wasn’t sure what the best thing was to do with them. I could give them to David Charteris, who had after all given me permission to root around in the attic, though he might well have wondered how far the term rooting extended if I explained that I found them under the eaves.

  The same was true of Maggie, though it would be easier to fudge it with her, make it appear that I’d been permitted to dig deep and wide in my search for these non-existent possessions of my sister’s.

  Or I could simply put them back where I found them. By the time I had returned to the hotel, I had decided that this was the simplest tactic. Accordingly, I gathered the pretty objects together and took a last look at them. How I wanted to abandon all my moral instincts and give way to a deeper more basic instinct: to steal one of them and keep it for my own. The thought of putting them back into their hiding place amongst the dusty interstices of the beams was physically painful. If I were to keep one, which one would it be? The child in a bonnet? The languid guitar player surrounded by eglantines? Or the dark-haired gentleman pressing a slender, calf-bound book against his heart with one delicate hand, his fine lace collar brushed by a goatee beard, his eyes soft but challenging?

  I’m not ashamed to admit that my hand hovered over him for a moment. Unfortunately, when they were rediscovered, there were several people who might realize that one was gone, probably even which one. Eventually, I took them back up the attic stairs and carefully placed them among the silk petticoats in one of the trunks.