by Dilys Xavier
“Have you spoken with the woman claiming to be your grandmother yet?”
“No, I’m going up there presently. At the moment I’m at the hospital. They wouldn’t let me see Mrs Blackett. She’s too poorly. The police are waiting to interview her.”
Rhianna told her friend what Lizzie had said.
“That’s decidedly spooky. They must have got it wrong. Why would anyone be looking for you? I mean, who even knows you’re there? Oh, there’s a customer. Quick! Tell me the name of the pub where you’re staying.”
“The White Unicorn - ask for Rhianna Soames. Come to think of it I’ve given a false name to a policeman!”
“You’ve what?” shrieked Fiona.
“And Fiona, listen, I haven’t told you the oddest bit yet. That chap who came into the gallery - the tall, good-looking one. He’s turned up here. I keep thinking he must have known I was coming here, although I can’t figure out how… Fi, are you still there?”
But Fiona had rung off and Rhianna just hoped she’d caught the name of the pub where she was staying.
By the time Rhianna got back to Brookhurst, it was still only ten forty five. She had an inspiration. She’d take a look at the church which she’d discovered was just outside the village, near a picturesque duck pond and a large green. It was within easy walking distance.
The door was unlocked and creaked protestingly as she entered. There was no-one about and she spent a few minutes wandering about. It was fairly dark inside, apart from the wintry sunlight which filtered through the stained glass windows making dancing rainbow patterns on the floor.
She discovered a couple of brass memorial plates set in the stone wall near the altar, bearing the name of Delroy. She gazed at them in fascination, wondering if they really could be her ancestors.
Suddenly she heard footsteps behind her. Whirling round she saw a middle-aged man coming towards her in clerical robes. He smiled.
“Hallo, sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m the vicar, here. We don’t get many visitors this time of year. Were you wanting to do some brass rubbing?”
She took a deep breath. “Actually, no. I’m staying at the pub – supposed to be meeting up with Letitia Delroy shortly.”
He looked surprised. “Oh, that’s nice. She doesn’t have many visitors.” He stretched out his hand, “Tim Holt.”
“Rhianna Soames.”
His eyes widened. “Did you say Soames?” There was a strange expression on his face but then he smiled. “Welcome to St Peters’. Look, this is the one place where I can actually invite you to take a pew! Are you related to Christina?”
She shook her head and sat down beside him.
“Christina?” she echoed, puzzled. Who on earth was Christina, she wondered. “Not as far as I’m aware. So were the Delroys an influential family round here?”
“Once a long time ago they were significant land-owners, I believe, but now there’s only Reg Delroy’s widow.”
“Actually,” she told him, making up her mind suddenly to come clean, “that’s my real purpose for being here. My real name is Rhianna Delroy. I’ve come to find out if I’m Letitia Delroy’s granddaughter.”
Tim Holt stroked his chin thoughtfully. As a vicar he thought he’d heard everything, but this was a complete surprise. His kindly brown eyes gave nothing away. The girl seemed genuine enough.
“Indeed. Tell you what, why don’t I make us both a coffee? You look as if you could do with one and then you can tell me all about it. We’ve a small kitchenette through there and can even run to a filter.”
“I’d like that - except I’ve arranged to see Letitia Delroy at eleven thirty.”
“Oh, it won’t matter if you’re a bit late, my wife’s with her at the moment. She pops in from time to time. Tell you what, I’ll give her a ring, tell her you’re with me.”
Over coffee and ginger cookies she told Tim briefly what she was doing in Brookhurst. After all, surely she could trust a vicar and a church seemed the appropriate place for confessions and sanctuary.
“Well, that’s quite a story,” Tim said when she’d finished. “It’s just unfortunate Letitia saw fit to ask you to use the name Soames.”
“Why?” she asked puzzled;
For answer he took her by the arm and led her out of a side door into the churchyard. They paused before a family grave and she read the inscriptions on the headstone.
“They’re all Soames – Elizabeth, Derek and their daughter Anna!” she mused. “So who were they?”
“Elizabeth Soames, or Betty as everyone called her, was a great friend of Letitia’s. Anna was her daughter. As you can see, Betty outlived both her husband and her daughter.
“Now, I have to say that I only know what I’ve gleaned from those who knew Anna, but I gather she was a bewitching young woman who was rather free with her favours. She fell pregnant and sadly died in childbirth. Betty and her husband brought up the child, Christina.
“After her husband died Betty struggled on alone, but it wasn’t easy. Tina was a difficult girl.”
“What about the father,” Rhianna asked intrigued.
Tim hesitated and then cleared his throat. “There’s always been speculation but, to this day, no-one really seems to know who the father was. Betty did her best for the child, but her health wasn’t good and when Tina was in her teens, Betty had a stroke and died too.
“From then on Letitia acted as a guardian to Christina, treated her as a member of her own family. It seems it was something Betty had asked her to do.”
“So that’s why you asked if I knew Christina. Where is she now?”
Tim sighed. “Letitia financed her through university, but she got in with a wild crowd and, the moment she’d finished, went off abroad. After a while, she came back here and seemed to settle down - found herself a job and a decent boyfriend, got engaged and we all thought things were looking up.”
He paused and then continued. “Unfortunately, she met up again with some of her former friends. They were a bad influence on her. This time, Letitia refused to bale her out. Tina, as everyone calls her, said she was going to France to find herself, as she put it, whatever that meant. But then a few months ago she came back again and told Letitia she needed to go to Australia but she hadn’t any money, as usual.”
“So I suppose Mrs Delroy gave it to her?”
Tim sighed. “You suppose right. Letitia very foolishly put her hand in her pocket again and Tina took off. We haven’t heard a word from her since.”
Rhianna tried to get her head round all this. “I still don’t understand why Letitia asked me to call myself Rhianna Soames.”
“I would think it’s just so she could identify you - like a password - if you see what I mean. Perhaps she wasn’t thinking straight…Now, I’ve arranged to pick up my wife from Wisteria Lodge, so how about leaving the car here and coming with me? I can collect you later. It might make the situation easier for the pair of you.”
Rhianna felt increasingly nervous as she approached Wisteria Lodge. Supposing it had all been an elaborate hoax – part of the post office raid and, somehow, she’d been implicated? She moistened her lips. What if Mrs Delroy didn’t back up her story? She had used a false name. Perhaps she could end up in a police cell.
But Rhianna need not have worried. The door was flung open by a still attractive woman in her sixties.
“Myra, this is Rhianna. She’s come to see Letitia.”
Myra Holt’s face creased into a smile. “Come along in, my dear, she’s expecting you.”
The moment Rhianna walked into the sitting-room she knew, without a shadow of doubt, that the elderly, frail little woman in the armchair by the fire was her grandmother. She was the spitting image of her father.
A surge of emotions hit Rhianna so that, for a moment, she was frozen to the spot. Myra gave her a gentle push.
“Rhianna oh Rhianna you came!”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Myra said tactfully. “Come along Tim, you can help
me.”
And they were left alone.
There was a long pause and then Letitia asked softly. “Did you bring the things I asked about?”
For an answer, Rhianna delved into her handbag and produced her birth certificate. “And here is a photograph of my parents and one of the painting you were asking about.”
She passed them across to Letitia who studied them in silence for what seemed like eternity. Eventually, she looked up and nodded.
“If I had any doubts left in my mind they would be dispelled by now. That is definitely my son, Joseph Delroy, and you, my dear; you take after your father. You’ve got his eyes.”
Letitia looked long and hard at the photograph of the painting of The Woman in Blue. “So your father didn’t get rid of it,” she murmured.
“What is it with that painting?” Rhianna asked. “Have you any idea who it is?” Letitia nodded. “It’s Anna Soames, of course.”
Rhianna stared at her. “But until I came here, I’d never even heard of Anna Soames. What is the connection…?” she began mystified.
“Didn’t your father ever mention her to you?”
Rhianna shook her head. “No, but this morning, before I came up here, Tim Holt told me a little and he showed me the graves. He also mentioned Christina.”
“Ah, yes, Christina.” Letitia suddenly looked upset. “Christina was Anna’s daughter. She’s gone to Australia.”
“I see. Mrs Delroy, I need to ask you, why have you chosen to get in touch now? After all this time?”
Letitia looked at her sadly. “Couldn’t you bring yourself to call me, Grandmother?”
Rhianna swallowed. “It’s all so strange. It’s going to take time. Until a short time ago, I thought I was the end of the Delroy line.”
Letitia reached out and patted her arm. “I understand, dear. Then couldn’t you call me, Letitia, for the time being?
Rhianna nodded. It was a compromise. She was beginning to warm to this elderly lady.
Myra came back just then with a tray of coffee and biscuits and a promise to return for Rhianna in an hour or so.
After they’d gone, Rhianna said tentatively, “Yesterday someone said there’d been an incident here.”
Letitia Delroy nodded. “There was a prowler – lights in the grounds, things moved about in the summer house and worse than that.”
The elderly lady looked distressed.
Rhianna moved closer to her. “What happened?” she prompted gently.
“Someone let off fireworks. It frightened poor Tansy.”
“Tansy?” Rhianna asked, mystified.
“My little West-Highland terrier.”
As if on cue, Tansy, who’d apparently been asleep behind the sofa all this time, suddenly put in an appearance wagging her tail.
“Probably just some youths being silly,” Rhianna told her, patting the little dog. It certainly wasn’t much to go on.
Letitia nodded. “That’s what the police said, but I can’t help thinking there’s more to it than that. You see the other day; there was a dead crow in the porch.”
Rhianna looked blank. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I see the significance.”
“Tim would be annoyed with me for saying this but, in these parts, a crow can be a portent of misfortune.”
Rhianna was trying to make some sense of this, but was finding it difficult.
“Oh, dear, you’re going to think I’m just a foolish old woman, but since Tina left, I’m afraid I’ve become quite jittery.”
“Have you heard from Tina since she went to Australia?”
Letitia shook her head. “No, just a very quick phone call to say she’d arrived.”
There was a sudden loud rap on the door. Rhianna answered it to find two policemen standing on the step. One was the officer who had interviewed her the previous day.
“Rhianna Soames. I need to ask you a few questions.”
Rhianna smiled at him. “Fire away but I should tell you I’m not Rhianna Soames. I’m Rhianna Delroy.”
He stared at her frowningly. “But yesterday you said – you definitely told me you were Rhianna Soames.”
“Yes, I know and I’m sorry.”
She led the way into the sitting- room and produced her birth-certificate again.
“So, why on earth did you give me the name Soames?”
Letitia came to her rescue. “Oh, it was just a name I asked Rhianna to use. I needed to be sure, you see, that she really was my grand-daughter. It was like a password.”
The policeman looked unconvinced and Rhianna whipped a business card out of her bag.
“You can look me up on the website if you like or ring the gallery. My friend, Fiona Field, will vouch for me.”
“You’re an artist?”
She nodded, relieved that she seemed to be getting through to him at last. “Yes, our gallery’s at this address in Hertfordshire. That’s how Mrs Delroy tracked me down.”
He scratched his chin and said. “I don’t know what to make of all this. If you’re not Rhianna Soames then why did Mrs Blackett say you were?”
Letitia smiled. “That’s easy, I booked her in in that name – saved speculation and it seemed best until we got to know each other, but now, after what’s happened…I’m not so sure.”
“I’ve been told those men were asking for me by name at the post office,” Rhianna said worriedly, and shuddered.
The policeman rubbed his ear. “Yes, well, giving yourself a false name probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do in the circumstances. It seems those criminals might have thought you were someone else… Now, are you going to be around for the next few days, Miss - er - Delroy? We may need to question you again.”
Rhianna nodded. “Yes, I can be contacted at the White Unicorn if you need me.”
“Or here. You’ll be spending some time with me, won’t you, dear?” Letitia said quietly.
Rhianna nodded. Suddenly everything seemed surreal. How had she come to be in this situation with an elderly woman who claimed to be her grandmother? Had she made a dreadful mistake in coming here? But, she was sure there was a distinct family resemblance and, suddenly, she really wanted to believe that Letitia Delroy was her grandmother.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Extract from Family Secrets by Jenny Lane
