The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  Grass and weeds are growing between the old, cracked paving stones, passage across them made more hazardous by the rubble left scattered around. Wheelbarrows, a cement mixer, planks, buckets, ladders and piles of bricks have apparently been left where they stand, creating more potential risks.

  ‘It’s quite dangerous and strictly out of bounds for the girls of course,’ Miss Draper goes on, ‘but now the builders aren’t here, I’m afraid they sometimes use it as a short cut to the tennis courts if they are short of time, rather than go round by the other way. And for larking about and so on,’ she adds disapprovingly. ‘For some reason that old ruin does seem to exert a sort of fascination.’

  ‘Because it’s forbidden?’ suggests Ellen.

  Miss Draper laughs. ‘Very likely. But with all this rubbish strewn around, they could easily have an accident.’ She cranes her neck to peer short-sightedly across the sunlit space towards a shapeless, dark bundle of something, yet more rubbish, that lies next to a tarpaulin which seems to have been blown aside.

  Ellen, with sharper eyesight, follows the direction of her gaze. After a moment or two she says, ‘I’m afraid, Miss Draper, it looks very much as though the accident might already have happened. We’d better get across there, quick.’ Miss Draper gasps and then, with one accord, they run.

  Having got there first and taken one horrified look at what has been revealed by the blown-away tarpaulin, Ellen pulls it gently back again. She hears the other woman’s ragged breath as she comes up behind her. ‘Don’t look, Miss Draper.’

  But Miss Draper has already seen. It appears she might be going to faint, or be sick, or worse. She is a strange colour. Her breathing becomes even heavier and her hand presses on her chest. ‘It’s Mam’selle,’ she whispers, ‘Mam’selle Blanchard. I – I suppose we must get the doctor.’

  But Mam’selle – even to Miss Draper’s myopic eyes – is far beyond that, and they both know it.

  TWO

  Viewing the dead was a sombre fact of life in Dr Kay Dysart’s profession, and not least when wearing her police doctor hat, when it was all too often gruesome. But the dead she saw, even in those circumstances, hadn’t usually reached this stage of decomposition. Rodents had been here before her, blowflies and other insects had all helped to reduce what had once been the body of a woman to a thing of putrefaction. The stench made her gag, though it was less overpowering now than it would have been had the body been discovered earlier. ‘She’s been here for some time,’ she announced. Stating the patently obvious in order to concentrate on not actually being sick and disgracing herself, because even experienced doctors can feel nauseated at times. ‘A month or six weeks, maybe?’

  The woman’s body lay across a rough, sprawling heap of jagged masonry, mortar, plaster and wrenched-up floorboards pierced with long rusty nails, tossed there like another piece of tawdry detritus. Detective Inspector Reardon and his detective sergeant, Joe Gilmour, had retreated to one side, having already seen more than they wanted to see. After a necessary quick inspection, the whiff of decay had been enough grounds for retreat into the shade cast by the long shadows which lay across the light-filled space between the school proper and this scaffolding-caged wing. They were joined by the cameraman and his assistant, who were waiting to photograph the body from all angles, before it should be borne away on a stretcher. Reardon in particular saw himself as having a strong stomach, but even he felt no need to prolong the agony, and both men had been happy to leave the doctor, a competent professional, to her task. He swallowed down bile, and with it the sadness he always felt when a young, vital life had been so summarily terminated, subdued as always in the presence of untimely death. He didn’t often dwell on the transient nature of life, but at times like this it was forcibly brought home to you.

  The late afternoon sun as it moved towards evening had lost none of its power as yet. He wiped the sweat from his brow while Gilmour, not one for standing still at the best of times, jacket off and hooked over his shoulder, began mooching around among the rubbish.

  There was plenty of it. They’d been told the work on this part of the school was a project temporarily in abeyance. Abandoned, more like it. With no attempt to tidy it up a bit before leaving, either. Builders’ equipment was strewn around anyhow: a cement mixer, planks, ladders, stacks of bricks shrouded in canvas, and even a few spades and picks, all scattered amid a wasteland of uncleared debris and muddy puddles dried up by the sun after last night’s storm. The last days of Pompeii without the volcanic ash. The Marie Celeste.

  The rubbish providing the body’s last resting place was a rough, sloping pile which had been shovelled against the end wall of the partly demolished wing while awaiting removal. Originally an internal wall, this now presented a bare, blank face – blank except for still visible traces of what had once been a staircase, leading to a door at what must be the first floor, which even so meant it was at a fair old height. But the whole of Maxstead Court was a house of high ceilings and several storeys, as Reardon well remembered.

  This wasn’t his first visit here. Three years ago, when a body had been discovered on the edges of Maxstead Forest, he’d been called in from Headquarters in Dudley where he then worked to assist the uniformed police at Folbury, who didn’t yet have their own detectives. That was before the estate and the house itself had been sold, when the formidable Lady Maude had been the chatelaine, before it was ever thought of as a school.

  He turned his attention back to the wall, squinting up to the point where the staircase would have finished. A door, for God’s sake! A door left in situ when it surely should have been removed and the space at least temporarily bricked up in the interests of safety. An act of criminal negligence by the builders, if ever there was one. An accident waiting to happen. He estimated the trajectory of a body catapulting from it. It would hardly have failed to hit that lethal accumulation of rubbish directly below. Yet people could, and did, survive very much higher falls than that.

  ‘Don’t give it a thought,’ said the doctor who, having now ensured that the body had been removed with due care and attention, had picked her way over to where he was standing, following his glance and shrewdly interpreting what he’d been thinking. ‘She couldn’t have survived a fall like that – not with those injuries. Amongst other things, her neck was broken, and it would be a miracle if the spinal cord wasn’t damaged.’ She glanced again at the wall and the track of the staircase. ‘If she did fall.’

  Reardon had come across Kay Dysart several times previously in the course of both their duties, and respected her opinions. She was short and dark-haired, with a quick, clipped way of speaking; not one to waste time or mince words. She was sharp and it was no surprise that she’d interpreted the situation immediately. There might – conceivably – be circumstances when you could open a door such as that one, unaware, and step out into space, but you could hardly close it behind you, nor cover your own body with the tarpaulin which had hidden it until now. It was still held down at one corner by several large stones but, in last night’s unexpected storm, the wind had whipped under the edges and lifted most of it clear of the other chunks of masonry which had weighted it down.

  ‘Nasty. But she would have died pretty well instantaneously,’ the doctor assured him, seeing the expression on his face. ‘Landed face downwards if I’m any judge, then toppled over. Do you know who she is yet?’

  ‘Yes. Her name’s Blanchard, Isabelle Blanchard. She was a teacher here at the school. French.’ The teacher his wife was replacing. Ellen who, along with another member of the staff, had found the body, a circumstance he did not find reassuring. Despite the horrific injuries, time, the depredations of predators and the insect infestation which had rendered the dead woman’s features unrecognizable, her fellow teacher had instantly identified her by her clothes and what must once have been glorious red-gold hair. A Frenchwoman with red hair? Not an unknown or impossible combination, obviously, though for some reason Reardon always imagined Frenchwomen as be
ing dark. ‘Apparently, she left several weeks ago.’

  ‘So what was she doing back here?’ asked Gilmour, joining them. ‘And what the heck was she doing in a dangerous building like that, anyway? Death trap, whichever way you look at it, isn’t it, sir?’

  Gilmour only called him ‘sir’ on duty – and when he remembered. They were good friends, and off duty it was different. Their wives had become friends, too, and not only because they were aligned in sympathy at the way police work intruded on their private lives. Despite being two such oddly assorted women on the surface, Ellen as a professional woman and Maisie, who had started out her working life as a maid-of-all-work and had progressed to becoming a trusted employee, running the home of a respectable Folbury family before marrying Joe Gilmour.

  ‘Well, that’s a problem I’ll leave with you,’ Dysart said. ‘I’m off now. The pathologist will be able to tell you more than I can after the autopsy, and give you an estimate of how long she’s been dead.’ The name of the pathologist in question was Donald Rossiter. He was in fact her recently married husband, but marrying him seemed to have made her oddly self-conscious about saying his name. She kept her maiden name for professional reasons. Sketching a salute she left, clearly not sorry to be doing so, having completed what she was there for, the mandatory task of pronouncing life extinct, even in the patently dead.

  Gilmour looked after her briskly departing figure. ‘Not a nice job for – for her.’ Maisie had trained him to know better than to say ‘for a woman’, but that was clearly what he meant. He was young and go-ahead, but more conventional than he liked to imagine; he still found the idea of a woman undertaking this sort of job hard to stomach. He had a candid, open face and russet hair – not as red as the dead woman’s, but the bane of his life as a detective, since it was the first thing anyone remembered about him.

  Reardon said, ‘We’ll need to speak to Miss Hillyard and the staff, but let’s have a look in here first.’ He gestured towards the cheerless edifice whose grey stones reared up behind them. Fixing an overall view of the scene in the mind was always a first priority, that and the urgent need to follow up what had happened in the first hours after the crime was committed. There was no extreme rush for that in this case. The trail was long cold. When the pathologist was able to give a more accurate indication of how long she’d been dead, then would be the time to concentrate their enquiries and narrow down the investigation within the timescale given. All the same, the usual adrenalin surge was pushing Reardon on, the need to fit the death within the bigger picture as soon as possible, starting with the place from which Isabelle Blanchard’s body had fallen. ‘I reckon we’re going to need a torch, Joe.’

  ‘There’s one in the car.’ Gilmour sloped off to fetch it and Reardon ducked beneath the scaffolding. Behind it, the grey stone façade of the centuries-old building seemed solid and capable of standing sturdily on its ancient foundations for several more, despite the fact that it was being demolished. He twisted the circular iron ring set in the heavy, studded oak that would lift the latch. The door didn’t yield. It was either irremovably stuck, or locked. He stood back and looked for another entrance.

  ‘Bolted inside. You want to get in there, round the back’s the easiest way,’ said a voice behind him.

  I knew this room would have to be my study as soon as I saw it. It’s a corner room, flooded with light, with windows on two sides, the main one overlooking the gravelled parterre and the ugly geometric beds at the front, presently planted with the glaring bedding plants Heaviside loves. Not next year. Next year there will be roses, like the ones in the bed under the other window. Roses. I can never have enough of them. A long stretch of grass runs from that bed, either side of which are the herbaceous borders of the old walled garden. It runs up to the playing field beyond and, in the distance, the forest. A calm, measured view, hallowed by centuries, and one that as yet still astonishes me, that I should own it – Edith Hillyard, who had seemed destined to be the caring, spinster daughter, whose only reward would be in Heaven.

  There is no breeze today and each tree and flower is limned with the late afternoon light, looking still and taut, as if manifesting the tension that’s gripping the whole school after the horror that’s happened here.

  Lessons have been suspended for today, but Eve Draper, dear Eve, the living exception to the rule that an untidy personal appearance must proclaim inefficiency, has taken everything in hand. This despite the shock, for a woman with such a weak heart, of finding the body of Mam’selle. To contain the ferment and speculation that’s bubbling like a cauldron, she has seen the girls corralled into the assembly hall under the watchful eye of Matron, while she and the rest of my teachers are waiting in the staff room as requested by the police. Including the new French mistress, who has stumbled into all this, poor woman, even before she has even started work here. Detective Inspector Reardon, now in charge of what has happened, is her husband. How is that for irony?

  So this is where it has all been leading. To catastrophe, for me and for my school. My school. A fantastic achievement – it would be false modesty to deny it. Twenty-five years ago, I had only just left school myself, and the idea of being headmistress of my own private boarding school for girls had never at that stage entered even the wildest of the dreams no one ever even suspected I had: dreams that one day we might have money, that my mother need not have to get a few shillings by making buttons, hour after hour, as an outworker for the factory round the corner. That my father would miraculously be returned to us.

  There are occasions, more frequent of late, when I have to struggle with the sense that I don’t deserve my present circumstances. I manage to overcome this by reminding myself that my success has happened through a combination of my own brains and determination, and above all hard work and persistence. Luck, perhaps. Yes, that played a part, but others shared in that same good fortune and haven’t ended up nearly so well.

  This edifice I’ve been so careful to build up around myself ever since then, can it possibly be about to be demolished? All I’ve striven for, and accomplished, is it going to be snatched out of my grasp? The peace of mind so long sought, and finally – almost – achieved; is that, too, to be taken from me?

  I could pour myself a stiff drink to calm my nerves, but I’ve always despised the use of alcohol as a crutch. Especially in the duty I must face shortly. I must address the assembled school and calmly explain to them the tragedy that has befallen Mam’selle, order what must be done, allay the children’s fears and quell any signs of hysteria that might arise. For the sake of the girls, the school has to continue to function normally, despite what has happened. I must take control of my emotions.

  I’m not sure I can do that.

  Of course I can, I always have. I straighten my shoulders, smooth my hair, open some paperwork and concentrate on it while I wait for the detectives to come and see me.

  The voice Reardon had heard after trying the door came from somewhere in the corner, where this jutting east wing joined the front of the house. He turned and saw an elderly man standing there, watching him. Collarless flannel shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, baggy corduroys held up with braces, heavy working boots, horny hands. Smoking, and leaning on a heavy spade, looking like a parody of a gardener – but then, he was a gardener, or used to be. Reardon recognized him from his previous visits to Maxstead. Heaviside, that was his name, a joke dished out by the Almighty, considering the spareness of his wiry frame. A dour man of few words and a habitual, sardonic expression. Not really a likeable chap, if he recalled rightly.

  ‘I know you, don’t I? You worked for Lady Maude.’

  ‘Still do. But she don’t need me so much with the tiddly bit of garden she has now at the Dower House, and that don’t keep me in ciggies, so I work here an’ all.’ A cough that seemed habitual suggested he’d be better off without them.

  The Dower House once more, was it? Reardon liked that better than The Bothy, whimsically so named by the wife of Max
stead’s land agent who had occupied it for a time. The garden there would be small enough for Lady Maude to tend it herself for the most part, which was good. She would not live easy in retirement otherwise. She had never been afraid of getting her hands dirty and the gardens to the big house here had been her pride and joy.

  Gilmour returned, brandishing a flashlight as the old man was saying, ‘You want to get in there, follow me.’ He started off, not bothering to check whether they were behind him, his heavy boots making short work of any debris that got in his way as he scrunched over it. Reardon shrugged and nodded to Gilmour. They followed him to the back of the wing. Once there, he put his shoulder to another heavy oak door, assisting its reluctant opening on to a dank passageway that led them to what had at one time been the kitchen. It was ancient and unbelievably cavernous, a room still retaining its complement of stone sinks, heavy block tables, hooks from the ceiling and various sculleries and passages opening off. A great cast-iron range was built into one side of an enormous fireplace, equipped for spit-roasting anything from sides of beef and mutton to sucking pigs and poultry. It must have been a miserable and gloomy place to work in day after day, despite the great fires that would have roared constantly, since all the windows were high up, presumably to prevent kitchen maids from gazing outside when they should have had their hands and minds on the washing up, scouring pans or peeling potatoes. Gilmour found a panel with servants’ bells, each labelled with the room it served, shook his head disbelievingly, and peered into a half-open hatch which revealed a hoist, where food had once been sent upstairs by means of a pulley. ‘How the other half live!’