After a restless night Richard decided to try and see Betsy’s aunt, the one they met on their way out from the village the other week. Aunt Agnes, Daniel had said her name was. She had refused to talk to Daniel that day but it was possible she hadn’t noticed another man in the trap. Not enough to recognize him from that distance, anyway. If he judged that family correctly she would see him if she thought there were money or titles involved. It was certainly worth a try.
The following day he took his son back to school, then he thought about how he would tackle Betsy Forrester’s Aunt Agnes.
There were two items on his agenda. The first was to endeavour to trace Betsy’s whereabouts, although he suspected from what Daniel had told him of the background there that Agnes genuinely did not know, because neither Betsy nor he had had anything to do with her family after her mother’s death. Yet Aunt Agnes might come up with a name or connection if he could persuade her to talk to him.
Number two was to sound her out about the events of twenty-one years and more ago. He decided he would be Lord Lampney, the name he had used when he spoke to Betsy’s Uncle Jack. If his enquiries over the past few months had been on the right lines then Agnes Salden, or whatever her name was now, should be able to reassure him. Not that he expected her to do so, not if it had been her sister who tied the rope between the trees to kill Ben. But if he saw her and spoke to her himself it would give him the opportunity to see whether it was a realistic possibility.
He had no doubts that the old gamekeeper Pike had been telling the truth when he told his son about the rope and the woman he had seen later. Richard drew two trees on the pad in front of him and stretched a rope between them. He made another drawing of a hooded woman taking the rope down and lastly he drew a final picture of the back of her disappearing through the trees. The rope was probably coiled up and held beneath her cloak.
If only Pike had mentioned the incident at the time. Yet what good would it have done, he thought? Young Ben had had liaisons all over the county. There were many women who might have sought revenge. It might not have been Betsy’s mother after all. Nevertheless he wanted to pursue the thought. There was not much chance of proving anything after all this time, and in any case the woman herself was dead now, but his tidy mind wanted to sort the matter out for his own satisfaction. It would establish for him whether Betsy was a blood-relation of the Choicelys.
Two things happened to prevent Richard carrying out his plan immediately. Lily’s mother was taken ill and a week later her father was out with the shoot and had an accident with a gun. It was not too serious, resulting in a nasty but not life-threatening wound to his leg. He too was confined for a while and Lily was fully occupied in running the household.
Richard rode over to Clover Court most days or evenings and once he thought he caught a glimpse of long glossy black hair and a shapely Betsy-like figure. Then he told himself he must be dreaming, that the girl was haunting him and he was seeing what wasn’t there.
The woman he saw had been coming from the stables and he was too far in the distance to see more than a general outline. It had been such a fleeting sighting. She had turned the opposite way to the drive and then disappeared, so she was obviously not staying in the house. From where he was he could not be sure how she was dressed, but her clothes were dark and her hair gleamed in the half-light of the early evening. He had already stabled his horse and been walking over to the house. He stood for a moment in case she reappeared, then he chided himself for his fancifulness. Probably one of the servants been sent over to the stables for something.
As Lord and Lady Aston-Jenkins recovered Richard’s visits stopped being daily, although he still went several times a week. Lady Aston-Jenkins looked fragile but the doctor was pleased with her progress. She was able to leave her bed for several hours now and Lord Aston-Jenkins sat with her most afternoons. ‘It is quite sweet really,’ Lily said to Richard one day. ‘I believe it frightened Daddy tremendously when he thought he might lose her. For all his blustering ways he relies on Mummy’s judgement in so many things.’
Richard had grown fond of them both. His relationship with his own parents had been overshadowed by his brother’s preferential treatment, although he had not discussed this with Lily.
His own feelings for his brother had been of admiration as well as envy. Looking back he supposed there had been a little jealousy but in truth not a great deal. Ben was the eldest, the heir to the estate and as such he had certain privileges. Richard accepted these as right.
What he had yearned for had been the magnetism his brother possessed. He could see from this distance in time that Ben had charm but not integrity. When they were both young he had longed to be blessed with even just a little of this attractiveness, but for many years now he had realized how shallow his brother was. Richard was happy with himself now that he was older and he owed a great part of this feeling to Anne, his first wife and mother of his sons. When she died he was devastated.
His feelings for the farmer’s wife were something he must keep to himself. They were the normal urges a man feels for a woman, he told himself, nothing more, nothing less. Just thinking about her gave him an erection. The fact that she could also be his niece made him feel guilty and he remembered Ben saying to him one day years ago, ‘The trouble with you, Richard, is that you are too pure to have fun – well, that will never be said about me. Take what you can while you can is my way.’
We were total opposites, Richard thought, and while I longed to be like him, deep inside me I knew, even then, that I could not. You cannot go against your nature and be happy. And he had been happy until he lost Anne.
When he thought about Lily, the young lady he was going to marry in the spring he knew that he did love her. Differently from the manner of his love for his first wife, but he wanted to share the rest of his life with her and it was a good feeling. His desire now was to make her happy. He recognized that part in himself that wanted to be needed, and felt that he was indeed a fortunate man because Lily was young, pretty and she loved him. He hoped and believed they would be happy together.
Or is this all sentimental nonsense? he thought. It is I who needs someone permanent in my social life, someone to grace my table at dinner parties, someone to have in my bed at night, someone to relate to as a friend as well as a lover. Lily has the same beliefs and background as I do and our marriage will be good. I shall make sure it is. After all the Choicely coat of arms was, Duty first, all else shall follow.
Betsy was torn between keeping out of Richard Choicely’s way and making herself known to him. During the normal running of the household she need never see him because she was based in the kitchen, but if she wanted to she could slip out and be waiting somewhere. She knew he would stop the carriage if he saw her; he seemed the perfect gentleman. A man she would be proud to have for a father.
While acknowledging at last that the story Aunt Agnes told her might not have been the truth she still thought that it was. She had never really belonged in that family, never been part of the fabric as her brothers and sister were. As a small girl she remembered being bewildered when she tried to please and had been cussed for it. She had recognized the resentment among them all against her, but her childish mind didn’t know or understand what it was. She only realized that everyone else was together and she was an outsider. Now, knowing that she had a different father from the rest of them did not seem surprising.
Aunt Agnes said he was the son of Sir Benjamin Choicely of Eccleton. Sir Richard Choicely was the son of Sir Benjamin Choicely of Eccleton. There could be no mistake. She could not afford to be wrong. Before she confronted him as his daughter, though, she had to be sure, doubly sure. And she would not go to him for shelter in any case because she knew she could make her own way. That she wanted the acknowledgement of her birth did not detract from the independence which was vital to her and which she had been fighting for most of her life.
Daniel had fought with her. He believed in this as she did, and although
she had done nothing to further her cause since living here, it had not gone away. The fact that there was nothing to complain about here was not the issue, she thought. There were many households which were not as good as the Aston-Jenkins home and estate.
Her yearning for Daniel grew worse rather than better but no man would ever own her again. No man would ever buy or sell her in the market-place or anywhere else. She was Betsy Forrester, a woman who had a brain and a heart and who could read and write and was equal to anyone, man or woman.
She loved Daniel, loved him beyond anything she could ever have envisaged for herself, but even he would never have the opportunity to threaten her with the straw halter a second time. She would live her life feeling half-alive without him as she did now, rather than risk that again.
Betsy began to plan her career. Certainly she did not intend to stay a kitchen-maid for the rest of her life. She could work her way through until she was a housekeeper or cook. She would be in charge of some part of a house, even as she had been at her beloved Redwood Farm with Daniel.
Always when these thoughts threatened to engulf her she remembered her special lady, Mrs Wallasey, and sat quietly for a while to think what she would advise. She knew how fortunate she had been when she was a child of ten to have met and worked for a true lady. One who, although her own status was assured, had seen and helped those who were not in that position.
‘Not everyone will, or even can, aspire to do great things,’ she used to say, ‘but if you believe you can, then you will, Betsy. Learn all you can, watch and listen and work out how you see things in your own mind, no matter what others tell you.’
Although it was so long ago when Mrs Wallasey died and Betsy’s world fell apart for the first time, some of the tears she shed now were for her special lady as well as for her beloved Daniel.
Chapter 14
Richard decided to approach Betsy’s Aunt Agnes through her brother Jack. He thought it unlikely that he would be able to find Betsy through that source, but there was a chance that she knew the name of Betsy’s father. If her sister had confided in her, and if she now thought there was a possibility of money, she might talk to him about that. He did not much like the method he was going to use, but having exhausted all else, he wanted the matter settled in his mind.
Strange that now all the participants in that drama were dead, he found himself pursuing the bits that had not tied up. Of course he had been too young at the time and with too little comprehension of the events, although the snatches of remembered conversation among the staff in the kitchen had stayed indelibly in his mind, he had not consciously thought about them for years.
His parents had presumably never known about the rope. Which left only a handful of people with the knowledge. Jim Pike, the gamekeeper’s son, one or two of the maids who might have heard the rumour but were long since gone from Chasebury, the old cook, the butler and himself.
He had no idea where the kitchen-maids were now. The cook was dead and the butler ga-ga. Richard visited him sometimes, at least twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, taking him a basket of seasonal goodies. He lived with his daughter who was married to a farmer in a village a few miles away. His mind had been going for years and he had not recognized Richard at all for the last two visits.
No, the best way was to find the sister and try to discover whether she knew anything. At least he might learn whether Betsy was his brother’s child, but he doubted she would tell him if her sister had murdered his brother because of it, even if she knew.
Yet there was the possibility that her sister might have confessed before she died. People often did. Old Pike had told his son what he had seen, after all, long after it was too late to do anything, but it was a link. If he could find other links it would help. Richard realized that the mystery had taken charge of him.
After his wedding plans, which were number one at the moment, but were more in the Aston-Jenkins’s hands than in his, finding out whether Betsy Forrester was family was the next important task.
Then came the gruesome subject of murder. Richard was convinced now that his brother had been killed. That the rope stretched between the trees had not been there for someone to practise jumps but had been deliberately set up to murder his brother. He felt sick at the thought. They had not been close and he had deplored many of Ben’s ways, but murder by any means had to be addressed.
It occurred to him that it might not have been Betsy’s mother alone, that brother Jack or indeed any of the family could have helped. But that would mean too many people in the know. And tying a rope across, hiding amongst the trees so she could take it down as soon as the accident happened, then going off through the woods herself was something that needed no accomplice.
Richard surmised that she had told no one at the time. She had, after all, gone on to have the baby. Had she passed it off as her husband’s child, he wondered? He frowned: there had been no mention of her husband yet it seemed the most likely idea. The thought that she might have confessed, possibly on her deathbed, would not leave him. Her sister Agnes was the one whom Richard thought would be the person she told the full story to, if indeed she had told anyone. It was Agnes whom Daniel Forester was trying to see that day when he had met him in Marshdean, he recalled.
Several things began to take shape in his mind as he remembered the Beaumonts, his mother’s side of the family. Betsy had the Beaumont features, the Beaumont charm, the Beaumont colouring, all the things he had once longed for. How did she fit in with that dreadful Salden family? It could explain why she had gone into service when she was ten years old, though none of the others appeared to have done so. He was extremely thoughtful as he set out on his journey.
Jack Salden invited him in rather grudgingly. ‘What d’you want now?’ he said.
‘A chat with your sister Agnes.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘Where could I find her? It is very important,’ Richard said.
‘You can tell me what it is.’
‘I’m sorry, but I cannot. This information has to be given to Agnes and no one else. So you see she will never know what it is if I cannot speak to her.’ Richard’s voice kept an even note as he said the words and he even smiled slightly because Jack looked so pleased. It was obvious that the man smelt money.
‘Well, in that case no harm for you to know. She lives in Ivy Cot, other end of village.’
Richard thanked him and set off to track down Agnes. She was not pleased to see him and only his foot in the door stopped it being slammed in his face.
‘If you will not talk to me,’ he said, his voice quiet but firm, ‘then I shall have to look elsewhere for my brother’s child. Which would be a great pity.’
She looked sharply at him, then said quickly, ‘Why? Why would it be a pity?’
‘I cannot discuss family business out here. May I come in for a moment?’ His words had the desired effect and she opened the door wider to let him enter the room.
‘Well, what family business, Sir Richard?’
She did not ask him to sit down and he stood towering over her. ‘Your sister’s baby,’ he said.
‘My sister had several children,’ she said.
‘I think you know that I am talking about Betsy.’ His voice was quiet.
‘What about her?’
‘I believe she had a different father from the others.’
She jerked her head up aggressively. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’
Keeping his naturally low, deep voice gentle he looked at Agnes’s angry florid face and said, ‘I’m not sure at the moment, but I am trying to find out. If my family is involved I want to know because nothing can be put right if I do not have the knowledge of what happened twenty years ago.’
‘You know Betsy’s Ben’s child,’ she said. ‘Have you at long last decided to admit it and give our family what your father should have done years ago?’
‘I know nothing except what you can tell me, Agnes. I do not even know the n
ame of Betsy’s mother, but I—’
‘Name of her mother, name of her mother – Ben didn’t bother with names, all he wanted was a woman and every woman had what he was after. It didn’t matter to him whether it was her or me, or – or anyone. A washerwoman was as good as a princess for his purpose. Your brother was a scoundrel and he deserved all he got.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, he died before his time, didn’t he? Got his come-uppance. The Almighty struck him down and made him pay for his sins. It didn’t help my sister – your family left her to struggle on—’
‘If what you say is true,’ Richard rested his hand on the table near where he was standing, ‘maybe my family knew nothing of it. Have you thought about that?’
‘Of course your family knew about it. My sister went to see them and was insulted and worse. Your high and mighty mother sent her packing. Her son had his fun and my family had to suffer for it. If you’ve come to offer money now I’ll take it and give it to Betsy. It’s some sort of justice at last.’
Richard shook his head. ‘I have come to find Betsy,’ he said. ‘Any business I have must be done with her, not through a third person.’
Agnes moved quickly considering her bulk, and Richard found himself being pushed roughly towards the door. ‘Coming here under false pretences, making me think you were going to do the decent thing. You’re no better than him. Scum, that’s what he was. But mine until that night, and his daughter’s like him, arrogant hussy.’
She had opened the door with her other hand and as her meaning hit him he said, ‘Yours? Is Betsy your child or your sister’s? Answer me. It is important.’
His foot was wedged against the door again and now he used his strength to prevent his being ousted. ‘Well?’ His hands were on her shoulders. ‘You’ve had your say, now I want the truth.’
His usually quiet eyes were blazing and she quivered slightly under his gaze before shouting, ‘She’s hers, of course. She was always jealous because it was me he came for and she had her revenge that night when he was so drunk he didn’t know who he had.’
The Straw Halter Page 15
