The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  The long day was destined to go on longer. He still had to talk to two more reluctant schoolgirls, when he should have been on his way home to supper, a glass of whisky and a quiet evening with Ellen, a chance to see things in perspective. He found them waiting for him in the small anteroom adjacent to Miss Hillyard’s study. Side by side on the small sofa, facing a small coffee table, a chair for him on the opposite side. Miss Hillyard left him alone with them.

  The moment he set eyes on Avis Myerson, Reardon identified with the headmistress’s assessment. Trouble. More trouble. Sixteen years old and trying desperately to act twenty-six. Straining at the leash, ready to be off like a greyhound out of the trap when she was released from the childish restraints of school. Clever in her own way, he suspected when he first heard her speak, but choosing not to show it. She wasn’t overawed by his police presence, had in fact given him a look from under her eyelashes she evidently thought was provocative. He wasn’t having any of that and ignored it, but how sad. A young girl, so eager to throw off the best years of her youth and step into the world he was only too aware she was more than likely to be inhabiting soon. A world of wild young men in fast cars, equally fast young women, seeking nothing but the shallow pleasures of the moment – spending a fortune on clothes, night-clubbing, smoking, the next fashionable cocktail. And no doubt cocaine, currently the recreational stimulant of choice.

  Nancy Waring was a different matter. A colourless, awkward girl with a mean mouth and spiteful dark eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. The sort girls like Avis deliberately chose as a foil for their own good looks and personality, and sometimes as a mouthpiece, getting them to fire the bullets they themselves had already manufactured. The sort you could never be sure of because she would say whatever she thought was necessary.

  Together, they presented an entirely different proposition to Josie, although they were still children in his eyes, however hard they tried not to be. But he began by addressing them as ‘Miss Myserson, Miss Waring’, to show them he was going to treat them as young women and would expect a grown-up response, without recourse to childish behaviour.

  They didn’t, of course, know exactly how much he already knew about their activities. So he told them as much as was expedient at the moment: what had been found in that room of the east wing, and that he knew they had been using it. He deliberately left out the word forbidden. Judgement and everything else that would follow was for Miss Hillyard. The only thing he now wanted from them was to know who had helped them in such a mad escapade, and why. ‘Josie went there to remove the sherry bottles and the cigarettes,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose she told you that,’ Avis said scornfully.

  ‘No, she didn’t.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’m a detective, you know. It didn’t take long to work out.’

  The attempt at humour was lost on both. He tried another tack. ‘I suppose you realize you’re going to have to face the music?’

  Avis shrugged. ‘Expelled, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  She didn’t seem to care. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t actually welcome the possibility. It couldn’t have been a new thought to her.

  It was new to Nancy, though. Her face screwed into a ferocious scowl, the result, he guessed, of trying not to show she was upset. ‘Daddy will simply kill me! She can’t expel us, she just can’t!’ The prospect of Miss Hillyard’s wrath seemed to scare her more than her father’s. Hadn’t it occurred to her before now? She wasn’t a particularly bright-seeming girl but he wouldn’t have put her down as stupid.

  ‘Don’t be such a muggins, Nancy,’ Avis said, not looking at her.

  Nancy bridled. ‘It was only a joke, what we did.’

  ‘Well, it was odds-on you’d be caught, wasn’t it?’ Reardon observed mildly.

  ‘I don’t see why. There was no reason why anyone should have known about it,’ Avis retorted. ‘They wouldn’t have, if Josie hadn’t got herself locked up.’ Her eyes held a spark of excitement. She was enjoying this. She could see where it was leading, but it wasn’t upsetting her in any way. She didn’t look or sound either guilty or scared at what was now sure to come. Yet the don’t-care attitude was overdone. Under it, he saw a still rather uncertain young girl.

  ‘Ah yes, poor Josie. She spent a terrible night. Who do you think would do that to her?’ He addressed both of them.

  Nancy gave Avis a shifty glance.

  ‘Well,’ he went on, when neither replied, ‘how did you get hold of that stuff? Who got it for you?’

  He didn’t expect an answer, but for a moment he thought Nancy would say. He waited. But even as she opened her mouth to speak, Avis quelled her with a look, then to Reardon she said, butter not melting in her mouth, ‘We can’t tell you that. We don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

  If she was trying to imply it was one of the staff, that wouldn’t hold any more water than the idea that Heaviside had been their supplier. Almost certainly it would not be any of those village women employed to work at cleaning duties under the strict eye of Mrs Jenkins, the housekeeper. But it did give rise to the possibility, however remote, that it could, in fact, have been one of the teaching staff. Not as unlikely an idea as it might seem at first. Miss Keith, for instance, he didn’t believe would be averse to breaking rules; might even turn a blind eye in fact, though he couldn’t actually see her going as far as encouraging such flagrant behaviour. Still, he’d received the impression she was perceptive, and she might suspect who would have been prepared to do so, and he resolved to speak to her, if only for his own satisfaction.

  ‘It was Heaviside who got that stuff for you, wasn’t it?’ he tried, convinced now that it wasn’t, but simply to get a reaction.

  Neither girl replied. Nancy was attempting the same nonchalance as Avis, and not entirely succeeding, He kept his eyes on her, but she’d grown dumb.

  ‘It was only a few cigarettes – and sherry!’ Avis said at last. ‘Not even a Hanky Panky or anything,’ she added, showing as much bravado as she dared.

  Hanky Panky. Gin, sweet vermouth and something bitter, a name that shouldn’t have been in any schoolgirl’s vocabulary. ‘You sound very familiar with fashionable cocktails, Miss Myerson. I hope you’re not thinking of trying that one out, too.’

  ‘I already have. My father doesn’t object. He lets me smoke as well, when I’m at home.’ She couldn’t be aware how much like a defiant child she looked and sounded.

  Reardon sighed inwardly. The softly-softly approach wasn’t working. ‘Why did you let Josie go alone to get rid of the evidence?’ he asked sternly. ‘In fact, why did you need to clear it up at all? No one would have thought anything of an empty bottle or two.’

  His two lads who’d done the first search should have thought of it, considering the sort of bottles they were, of course, but that aspect of it didn’t concern these girls.

  ‘Catherine said that, but that was potty. It had to be cleared up before anybody saw it.’ Nancy was shifting uneasily on her chair.

  ‘Catherine?’

  ‘Catherine Leyland. She’s such a goody-goody. Things had been left in a real mess. We had to leave in such a hurry, because little Josie felt sick!’

  Did that mean they were drunk? Well, he didn’t subscribe to the theory that just because they were nicely brought-up girls they wouldn’t have succumbed to those sort of temptations. But what Nancy said was interesting. Josie seemed to have been the weak link, all the way round. And what about the other girl? ‘Catherine?’ he asked again, and looked from one to the other. ‘How many more were there?’

  ‘In the Elites? Well, only three actually, that night. Catherine wouldn’t come with us. She said she had some reading to do,’ said Nancy with disgust.

  The Elites. So that was what they called themselves. He almost laughed.

  ‘What about Antonia Freeman? Was she one of the – one of your group?’

  ‘Heavens, no,’ Avis said. She didn’t like the way this was leading. Not going so far as to y
awn, she began to examine her nails minutely, seemingly switched off, boredom seeping through every pore.

  ‘Then how did Antonia know where Josie was? She said she guessed, but if she did, she was spot on, luckily for Josie. You two knew where she was, but you didn’t tell,’ he said severely. ‘That was a bit hard on poor Josie, wasn’t it?’

  ‘We didn’t know she hadn’t come back until we woke up,’ said Nancy at last, when Avis declined to answer.

  ‘And you still didn’t think to say anything?’

  ‘Everyone was looking for her. It wouldn’t have been long until she was found.’ Avis went on examining her nails.

  ‘Who got you that stuff?’ Reardon asked suddenly, sharply. This larking around with him, wasting his time, had gone on long enough. ‘Come on, let’s have the truth. We’ll find out sooner or later, but it’ll come better from you.’ He could look pretty intimidating when he chose, which was now.

  And suddenly Nancy was giving in. She opened her mouth to speak. Avis sat up and threw her a look that said, Don’t you dare! but it was too late.

  ‘It was Mr Deegan,’ Nancy said.

  There was still one more girl to see yet. He hesitated, thinking that what he’d just learnt meant Antonia, as well as Catherine, was off the hook. Then he sighed. Despite the clock relentlessly eating into the evening he’d been looking forward to, he might as well get it over with. He found her alone in the art room, staring moodily at a drawing pad, surrounded by screwed-up balls of paper. She’d drawn something or other on the pad, but threw the pencil down with something like relief when he came in. The relief became palpable when she heard what he had to say. ‘They’re a stupid crowd, those Elites,’ she said, scornfully stressing the word. ‘Except for Josie. She’s all right, really. I didn’t want to get her into trouble.’

  ‘They’re the ones who upset you with those silly tricks.’

  ‘Tried to,’ she returned with some spirit. ‘They wanted to make me look a fool, but it didn’t work. I just ignored them. So they tried to make it look as though I was a thief, or she did.’

  ‘Avis?’ he surmised.

  ‘Yes. She hates me.’

  ‘Why?’

  She blushed. ‘I wouldn’t join their silly set and – well, I did a picture of her she didn’t like.’

  He grinned, and suddenly she laughed as well.

  She was a big girl, at the unprepossessing stage of puberty. She was never going to emerge from the chrysalis as a stunningly beautiful butterfly, but she had nice, steady eyes and a smile (when she thought to use it) that said, when she had gained confidence in herself, she had the potential for being a warm, talented and attractive woman. That confidence must already be growing, if she was able to regard the practical jokes played on her with such coolness, and it was rather admirable, considering her age.

  She picked up her pencil again as he left, and bent her head over the drawing pad.

  The day still wasn’t over, however. Reardon sighed as he encountered Gilmour, who had just arrived at Maxstead, eager to catch Reardon before he left for home, and tell him everything that had transpired from his visit to Wetherby and subsequently to Melia Street. But Reardon asked him to hold explanations until they’d seen Deegan. Together they sought him out and found him in the as yet incomplete room destined to be the science lab. He was bent over an open file of papers lying on the windowsill, a pencil in one hand and a large, leather-bound builders’ tape measure in the other. When they came in he turned, looking pleased with himself, and told them he was taking stock of what was to be done, as Miss Hillyard had given him the go-ahead for the unfinished interior work to begin, as soon as he could get things together, as he put it. When he heard what Reardon had to say, he lost his smile.

  ‘It was only the once,’ he said, looking defiantly from one to the other.

  ‘Once?’

  ‘Well, yes, for the sherry, that is.’

  ‘Two bottles. Isn’t that two too many for children? And God knows how many packets of cigarettes.’

  ‘Children? They’re no children! Leastways, she isn’t, that Myerson girl.’

  ‘She’s only sixteen – and she’s the oldest of them,’ Gilmour said. ‘You could get into serious trouble for that, and for what else was going on with those girls—’

  Before he could finish, Deegan interrupted him furiously. ‘What do you think I am? I’m not interested in little girls. My God, you coppers!’

  He had leapt in too soon with protestations. ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ Gilmour said stiffly, and much as Deegan rubbed him up the wrong way, Reardon knew he hadn’t.

  ‘She’s a spoilt little madam,’ Deegan said, calming down.

  ‘And you took advantage of it, encouraging them to break the rules. And sixteen or not, Avis Myerson’s not averse to a spot of blackmail, is she?’

  ‘Blackmail?’ He tried to look entirely innocent, and failed. His hand clenched on the tape measure, he’d been fidgeting with. ‘No, she just asked me to get her that stuff.’

  ‘And you obliged, for no particular reason? Come on, man, you can’t expect us to believe that.’ He still said nothing. Reardon sighed. ‘She knew about you and Mlle Blanchard.’

  Deegan kept pulling on the brass ring of the tape measure, irritatingly drawing it out a foot, then letting it go with a snap. He saw the looks he was getting and stopped. ‘If she did, what was wrong with that?’

  ‘Dangerous knowledge. Since you were meeting Mlle Blanchard in one of the empty rooms in the east wing.’

  Reardon had had difficulties from the first in being convinced about Deegan and Isabelle Blanchard meeting on a regular basis in that tip of a room in the house he called home. After all, Isabelle’s frequent absences from the school couldn’t fail to have been noticed, whereas the east wing was at least convenient, if scarcely a love-nest, until the girls had started taking an interest.

  ‘That little bitch,’ Deegan said, suddenly and viciously, and Reardon didn’t think he was referring to Isabelle. ‘I don’t know how she does it, but she knows everything; snoops around, or gets other people to do it for her. You wouldn’t believe how much these girls know, where they get to. They don’t have enough supervision, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Oh, I expect they’d always find ways of avoiding it. But Avis Myerson wasn’t the only one who knew what you’d been up to. How much did you bribe Heaviside to keep him quiet?’

  His face turned the colour of clay.

  ‘Did you push that girl, Josie, into that room and leave her there all night?’

  ‘Jeez, I wouldn’t do a thing like that!’

  ‘Tell us where you were that night and we might be inclined to believe you,’ Gilmour said.

  ‘I was at home.’

  ‘Alone, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, like I always am. I had my head down, trying to sort out the paperwork for all this, if you must have chapter and verse. I need a bank loan and God knows if I shall be able to get one. It’s keeping me awake.’ He nodded towards the file on the window ledge, rubbing his thumb on the leather tape-measure case again, as if wishing it were Aladdin’s lamp to summon a genie who would miraculously grant him the money he needed.

  ‘And were you at home on the night of Thursday the twenty-fourth of April?’

  He looked puzzled, then aghast as the significance of the date hit him – the night Isabelle had been murdered. His face reddened. ‘April? I haven’t a clue what I was doing then. Do you remember exactly what you were doing six weeks ago, either of you?’

  ‘We’ve got him,’ Gilmour said.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘He gets Isabelle Blanchard pregnant, then kills her because a pregnant woman he felt obliged to marry was the last thing he needs at this time, when he’s so obsessed with getting his business going. The Myerson girl got wind of what was going on and blackmailed him into getting that stuff for them.’

  ‘He said he would have married Isabelle.’

  ‘Well, he would say that,
wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I can’t see him killing her, just to be rid of the obligation.’

  ‘There’s plenty who would.’

  ‘And Josie?’

  ‘He pushes her into that room, to show them not to muck about with him.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have left evidence lying around – that sherry and so on he’d got for them. He’d have cleared it away himself.’

  ‘If he’d known it was there. I shouldn’t imagine these girls are accustomed to tidying up after themselves, but he wouldn’t think of that. He’s not exactly tidy-minded himself. And he has no alibi.’

  Reardon sighed, that single malt he was looking forward to receding ever further into the distance. ‘What’s this about the taxi driver, then?’

  ‘Miss Hillyard isn’t going to accept that as an explanation,’ said Ellen, over supper, at last. ‘I mean, midnight feasts! That’s lower-school stuff. Those three are past that stage.’

  ‘It was more than lemonade and chocolate biscuits, Ellen. Miss Hillyard doesn’t need to know about that, though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It may not be necessary. She would probably expel them, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Almost certainly. But perhaps they deserve it.’ She helped him to more shepherd’s pie, and passed him the HP. After a moment, she went on, ‘I’m not sure you’re right, but I suppose you have your reasons. And in that case Miss Draper mustn’t be told, either. She keeps nothing from the head.’

  Reardon watched his wife through the steam rising from his plate. She was finding her feet at the school, getting to know her colleagues as individuals: Miss Scholes was gentle, but a very good teacher, Miss Elliott was less of a dragon than she appeared, though she terrified the girls. Miss Cash and her oblivion to anything but games for the girls was a good egg, really. It seemed to be Miss Draper, however, the girls’ favourite teacher, with whom Ellen had established a real rapport. They were already on Christian-name terms, and he didn’t doubt what she’d just said was correct.

  He knew that if it should ever get to the ears of parents that pupils had access to cigarettes, never mind alcohol, the fat would be in the fire. And that Miss Hillyard certainly wouldn’t be content until she knew what had happened to Josie. At the moment, however, the full truth would only complicate matters.