A Dangerous Deceit

by Marjorie Eccles

  Ten

  The morning after their visit to the Rees-Talbots saw Joe summoned to the new office which he’d found for Reardon. It wasn’t much better than the cubicle he’d first occupied, but it was marginally larger, having been cleared of the dusty accumulation of objects deemed unwanted and stored there for years – chairs that were wonky, but still too good to be thrown away, boxes of dead files, an ancient defunct typewriter. No place could be found for the large cupboard where unclaimed lost property was stored, but it had been shoved into one corner. As a temporary office, it would suffice.

  Joe went straight away, pausing only to make a tea-drinking gesture to the duty constable who’d conveyed the message, and to grab and take with him the paper bag of coconut biscuits Maisie had baked last night.

  As soon as they were settled, Reardon opened Felix Rees-Talbot’s folder containing the notes Joe had taken yesterday, now typed up, and wasted no time in getting to the point. ‘Chief and only suspect so far – if we can discount the slight possibility of the wife,’ he began. ‘All right, he’s confirmed what Lily Aston told you, Sergeant – that she interrupted the fight he had with her husband – but do we see him as a likely candidate for going back the morning after and finishing him off?’

  ‘Hanged if I know,’ Joe said, struggling with the conflicting emotions left over from the brief hour and a half last night he’d managed to dovetail with Maisie’s time off. It had been wasted, just sitting on the river bank watching the ducks. Wasted from a personal point of view, at any rate, because their conversation hadn’t gone the way he’d intended. The question he had to ask her was beginning to be more important to him than anything else; it kept cropping up when he should have his mind on other things. But in another sense the time they’d spent together had been productive, if only for the snippet of information she had given him about the case. ‘To be truthful, sir,’ he said, ‘it’s hard to say. But no, not really.’

  ‘The maid says he had a hangover and didn’t get up until nearly nine that morning, which gives him an alibi. If she’s to be trusted.’

  Joe stiffened. ‘She is, sir, absolutely. I can vouch for that. And she’s Maisie, her name’s Maisie Henshall,’ he said, red behind the ears. ‘She wouldn’t lie, I’ll bet my life on it.’ He looked down at the paper bag he was still holding, and after a moment he opened it and offered the biscuits. ‘She – er – baked these.’

  ‘Did she now? Thanks.’ Reardon took two and after an appreciative bite regarded him speculatively. ‘Congratulations in order?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as that just yet,’ Joe said, reddening further. You never knew, with Maisie. She’d come a long way from the undersized fourteen-year-old who had worked for the Aston’s, but he still wasn’t sure she was ready yet for what he had fully meant to ask of her last night.

  There was a tap on the door and the police constable brought in the mugs of tea Joe had asked for and put them on the desk. ‘Thank you, Blaydon.’ As the door closed behind him they picked up their mugs and Reardon said, ‘Tell me more about the Rees-Talbots.’

  ‘Inherited family business, most of it sold off now, leaving them comfortable, but not rich, I’d say,’ Joe replied after a moment’s thought. ‘Very involved in local affairs, especially the church, and well respected, both Osbert and his sister. There’s that other brother of course, the uncle that was mentioned last night, but he doesn’t live around here … Malvern, I think. Osbert was a JP and all that, churchwarden at Holy Trinity. Big funeral when he died.’

  Reardon stirred sugar into his tea. ‘Drowned in his bath. Unusual.’

  ‘Easy enough to slip and not be able to save yourself with only one arm. That was the verdict at the inquest – accidental death.’ Joe paused and the silence lengthened. ‘There was nothing to say it wasn’t, and it seemed a reasonable supposition at the time.’

  ‘But now?’

  Joe cracked his knuckles and then picked up the mug of tea to stop himself. He didn’t quite know how to put what he had to say, but after a moment or two he found the words. ‘She didn’t think it was an accident. Maisie, I mean. She – she told me last night that after what’s happened – I think she meant us talking to Felix – she thinks it might be important and that I could tell you … She believes old Rees-Talbot did it deliberately, and what’s more she’s pretty sure the family believe that as well.’

  Reardon reached for another biscuit. ‘What grounds do they have for thinking that?’

  ‘Apparently, there weren’t as many pills left in his pillbox as there should have been. And he’d locked the bathroom door while he had his bath, which he never normally did, though the chances of him being found and prevented – well, how long does it take to drown, a few minutes?’

  ‘And nobody has said anything because they don’t want it to be known that it was suicide.’ Reardon looked meditatively out of the window. It was a better view than his previous one. Instead of an unrewarding brick wall, he now had a slanting view of the Town Hall, and a window where a row of pigeons jostled for space. ‘They wouldn’t be the first.’

  It was a familiar story: relief at avoiding the shame of a suicide and all that entailed, the horror of a loved one having to be buried in unconsecrated ground because to kill oneself was not only a criminal offence, it was also immoral, a sin against God, that of self-murder in the eyes of the Church. And oddly reminiscent of that other case Reardon and Joe had worked on, where the family of the girl who had drowned had faced the same dilemma – accident or suicide? Like that family, the Rees-Talbots had strong connections with their church, and most likely had the same dread of the scandal associated with the taking of one’s own life.

  Apart from that, it was a tragedy for the family, however you looked at it, and maybe understandable that a hothead like Felix Rees-Talbot should want to find someone to blame, jumping to the conclusion that his father had been driven to it by Aston when they discovered he’d been putting the pressure on. Over what, though?

  ‘All right, then. What we’re thinking is: Aston has something on Rees-Talbot so strong he’s prepared to square him with a lot of money to stop the beans being spilt. Until the demands become greater and he gets fed up with paying out, but can’t face up to the consequences if whatever it was becomes known, so he takes his life.’

  ‘After which,’ Joe said slowly, ‘Aston is murdered.’

  ‘Hmm. He’s far from being the fool he appears to be, that young fellow Felix. He no more believes all that business about his father’s grateful generosity to Aston than you or I – nor does his sister, if I’m any judge. He told us he believes it was blackmail. And if he believes that was what caused his father to take his own life, what better motive for killing Aston?’

  Could Rees-Talbot’s death really provide the reason for Aston’s murder, for what up to now had seemed like a motiveless crime? ‘If we knew what it was that enabled Aston to blackmail him, in the first place …’ Joe began.

  Reardon drew a triangle on the pad in front of him, with a name at each corner: at the apex, The Snowman, then the other two, Osbert Rees-Talbot and Arthur Aston. He looked at it for a while. ‘What links them?’

  ‘South Africa, I suppose,’ Joe said after a moment or two.

  ‘But also – since all three of them are dead – there must be another link. The person who killed Aston … and maybe killed the Snowman as well. Unless Aston himself was party to that. It seems the Snowman was killed just before the big freeze began. Which was …’

  ‘Second week in December.’

  ‘And Rees-Talbot dies round about the same time. Guilt?’

  After a moment, Joe said, ‘Maybe. But he couldn’t have been the one who killed the Snowman. Or at least he couldn’t have driven him out to Maxstead and dug his grave. Not with only one arm.’

  Out at Maxstead Court, Lady Maude was sitting in her greenhouse, but for once she was idle. She couldn’t keep her mind on geraniums. Wayward memories kept drifting down the years, refusing to
be banished. She had been plagued with them for days; ever since that young policeman had been to see her the past had refused all her commands to stay in the past, where it belonged. She picked up a pot, put it down again. It was no good. She gave in at last and let them come …

  That she had been there in South Africa at all was a tribute to her tenacity. As Lady Maude Prynne, only daughter of the Earl of Linsdale, a debutante who had been expected to make a brilliant marriage, she had instead fallen desperately in love during her first London season with a young man who had nothing in the way of assets but his good looks and the glamorous uniform of a lieutenant in Her Majesty’s navy. Her parents had other ideas for her, however, and that budding romance had been promptly scotched, despite tears and tantrums. She had wept and thought her heart was broken. For the next two years, she managed stubbornly to resist every effort to see herself married off … but then had come release.

  A second war against the Boers in South Africa had broken out, and she was taken by her mother to a glamorous fundraising event at Claridge’s, organized by Lady Randolph Churchill, who was hoping to raise enough money to equip and staff a hospital ship and sail out to Cape Town with herself on board – in a fetching white uniform designed by her own hand – and the would-be nurses in slightly less flattering ones. She was also anxious to reassure herself as to the well-being of her son Winston, who was a war correspondent attached to the South African Light Horse and had in fact been taken prisoner of war, although he had managed to escape.

  Fired with patriotism, Maude had used her mother’s slight acquaintance with Lady Randolph Churchill and begged to be part of the contingent of nurses. She was told that there could be no question of it. Amused, however, Lady Randolph listened to her pleadings: she would do anything, Maude promised, perform any menial task, roll bandages, clean floors, anything. In the end, such were her powers of persistence that she had eventually been allowed to sail as a lowly member of the staff. The Earl had sighed over his headstrong daughter but eventually had given his consent. After all, Lady Randolph had promised to keep an eye on her.

  The SS Maine, fully equipped with doctors, qualified nursing staff (as well as Lady Randolph and her friends) and the best medical facilities available, having duly arrived in Cape Town, it was soon discovered that the ministering angels of mercy on board were not, as they had hoped, destined to enjoy for long the delights of the beautiful, wealthy, cosmopolitan city, bursting with officers either on leave or convalescing. Not for them attendance at parties, balls and dances at the luxurious Mount Nelson Hotel or the ostentatious houses of the rich uitlanders, foreigners who had made their fortunes in South African gold or diamonds. They were made aware in no uncertain terms that was not the purpose they were there for. In those early days of the war things were not going well for the British, and the hospital ship, they were informed, was urgently needed up in Natal, after a crushing defeat at a place called Spion Kop. Lady Randolph and her team therefore sailed off up the coast to Durban, while poor Maude was left behind in Cape Town, feverish and furious, struck down with – of all things – measles!

  There was no question of her being allowed to stay on a hospital ship in the circumstances. It was a humiliating end to her adventure, but her captivity, as she saw it, was at least alleviated by being offered care and accommodation in the house of a moneyed family of Dutch descent whose strict religion bade them maintain a resolutely neutral stance in the conflict. They had two daughters of her own age, and their house in one of the wide tree-lined streets of the town had marble floors, French furniture, and fountains in the flower-filled gardens. Sophie and Bettje were pretty and delightful girls, and in their company Maude recovered her temper. And once she was allowed out, she found herself drawn into the social whirl, and for the first and only time in her life, knew what it was to feel and act a little wild.

  All the same, it was a part of her life she had afterwards preferred not to dwell on, until Symon’s engagement had forcibly brought it back. Maude, who already had an eminently suitable young lady lined up for him, was dismayed, especially when the name of his intended, Margaret Rees-Talbot, registered and she remembered – had she ever forgotten? – the two handsome young Rees-Talbot brothers, Osbert and Hamer, army officers whom she had met in Cape Town after her recovery from measles.

  She and the brothers had been amused to discover that back home in England they had lived within a few miles of one another, and yet had to travel six thousand miles to meet. It had not occurred to Maude at that point that any previous interchange between them would have been highly unlikely, given the different spheres in which their families moved. Out there social distinctions had seemed to matter less. And the Rees-Talbots had agreeable manners; they had been to a good school, and Sandhurst.

  Both young officers had shown bravery in battle, Osbert in particular. He was recovering in Cape Town from internal wounds received at the Battle of Colenso, and his brother was spending as much of his leave there as possible in order to be with him; they were very close. Personable Hamer had something of a reputation with the ladies – though he was adroit at avoiding undue consequences – but it was Osbert, a young captain of a quieter and more serious nature, still pale and looking rather ill, but invested with glamour from his exploits, who was surrounded by feminine hero-worshippers. He did what was expected of him, flirted and danced with them as soon as he was able, made them laugh with his unexpected, somewhat sardonic humour, but he was restless in Cape Town, determined to get well enough to rejoin the fighting. Eventually he was declared fit for duty and sent up-country to Mafeking in Bechuanaland, a beleaguered garrison which had been under siege since the very first day of the war, in command of a small company with orders to cross enemy lines into the small township and thus supplement the handful of officers already there under Colonel Baden-Powell. The daring escapade was successful and he remained there, promoted to major, until at last the seven-month siege was raised.

  Maude, however, never saw him again. Long before the end of the war, she was dispatched home, and on her return, the dry, common-sense part of her nature that was to become her ruling trait took over. She had had a fling, which was more than most girls of her age had, and must put it behind her. She had not found the romance once denied her and was now unlikely to, and she made up her mind that if she couldn’t have her sailor, it didn’t matter whom they gave her to. So she had allowed herself to be pushed into marriage with Sir Lancelot Scroope, at heart little more than a bluff country squire, with nothing on his mind other than the custodianship of Maxstead Court, his estate, his horses and dogs and the welfare of his tenants. He in his turn had seen the advantages of a marriage with the only daughter of the Earl of Linsdale. It was not the fairy-tale she had once dreamed of, but it had proved to be a good, sound marriage with true affection on both sides, which just showed that the wisdom of the young when in love was not to be trusted.

  Because really, she could now admit, she was too practical and down-to-earth, not the stuff fairy-tale princesses are made of, and Scroope had turned out to be a kindly if unimaginative husband and a good father. He cared not a jot for society and little more for politics. He harrumphed over the newspapers and grumbled that the country was going to the dogs; nevertheless, during the late war, he had done his bit and carried out his duties as Lord Lieutenant for the county in an exemplary and untiring way. Maude missed him more than she could say.

  And now, the wheel had come full circle and a quarter of a century later, Symon was going to marry the daughter of Osbert Rees-Talbot. Which, in view of what had recently happened, could put the cat well and truly in amongst the pigeons.

  Eleven

  Folbury and its town centre wasn’t yet familiar territory to Reardon. He was walking through its old part and taking what he hoped might be a short cut to Town Hall Square and the police station, to stretch his legs after his half-hour lunch break and incidentally get the feel of the place where he was presently working.

  Pr
eoccupied with his thoughts, he hadn’t noticed how very narrow the pavement had become, here where the road, barely wide enough for modern traffic, snaked alongside the ancient timbered Moot Hall – a hazard currently the subject of much heated controversy. On the pavement, Reardon barely avoided collision with the elderly woman much hung about with scarves and assorted parcels who was walking towards him. Just in time, he drew himself against the wall, tipping his hat. She smiled as she passed, but after a few steps she turned round.

  ‘Excuse me, but I believe you’re a police officer, are you not?’ she asked, peering at him from under a large hat of the type he had not seen women wearing since before the war. ‘The gentleman in charge of that dreadful occurrence in Henrietta Street? My niece, Dr Dysart, pointed you out the other day. I am Deborah Rees-Talbot.’ She redistributed her parcels and held out her hand.

  ‘Herbert Reardon. Inspector.’

  ‘I would very much like a word with you, Inspector. Come with me, if you will. Just a few minutes, I promise.’

  Still slightly bemused by being called a gentleman and a police officer in the same breath, he meekly obeyed. He followed where she led, just around the corner, down a few steps into a small hidden courtyard that was walled on three of its sides, its fourth flanked by the windowless side of a large building.

  ‘Isn’t this a pleasant little spot?’ she beamed, relieving herself of her parcels and perching unselfconsciously on one of the steps. ‘I often come to sit here on my way home from shopping. Not many people remember now what was here behind these walls, you know. There used to be a row of cottages several years ago, very picturesque but frightful slums really. All gone now, thank goodness, except for what’s left of their gardens.’ She plucked a spike of purplish willow herb that was growing by the step on which she sat and waved it around. ‘Charming, don’t you agree?’

  He saw that indeed there were still a few remnants of a former existence: flowers here and there that he didn’t think were weeds – though he was no expert – as well as plenty that were, grass and dandelions especially, bright splashes of colour springing up through the cracks between the paved slabs and along the bottom of the walls. Against the faceless brick side wall of whatever that big building was, supported by a tumbledown trellis, an old-fashioned Dorothy Perkins still ramped, thick clusters of frilled rose pink flowers wafting their scent across the yard. A buddleia sprouted improbably from a crack in a wall. It was very quiet, this hidden little corner, warmed at this time of day by the trapped heat of the sun. He saw what she meant by its charm.