The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  She stopped, realizing where he’d most probably received the blemish on his face, blushed with embarrassment, but to her credit didn’t look away.

  He’d leant to live with it, as others had had to do with the disfigurements and disabilities that were the legacies of the war. One sleeve pinned across a chest, a crutch making up for a lost leg. Injuries to the body, and to the mind, that didn’t show.

  ‘You know how it was, then. The chaos, especially at night.’

  ‘Yes.’ He still relived it in his dreams. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Well,’ she went on after a moment, ‘I was employed as a translator in the communications section. They needed people to do that, when we French and the English were working together. To translate documents, write letters and so on, which I could do, of course. It was my war effort, you see, small though it was. We all did what we could against the Germans, didn’t we?’ She paused, but he didn’t think he was going to have to prompt her to carry on. Phoebe Catherall seemed to have a lot she was anxious to get off her chest.

  ‘There was one night when the weather and everything else was simply frightful. The guns seemed to have been going on for hours. Nobody knew what was happening. Everything was all over the place. Somehow, one of the badly wounded men taken into Edith’s ambulance was a Frenchman; how or why he’d come to be fighting alongside the British Tommies, no one ever found out. He asked for water, in his own language, and Edith had answered him with what little French she knew. Once they had got him into bed, he begged her to write to his mother. She couldn’t refuse the request of a dying man, but she didn’t think she knew enough of the language to find the right words herself, so she went in search of a translator, and found me. That was how we first met, and after that we met off duty, and soon became good friends. When the war was over and she had gone back to England and her teaching, we kept in touch, though not all that regularly.’ She paused again and scrubbed at her damp face. ‘Then my father died and left me some money; although it wasn’t much, I decided I would do as he’d always told me I should, and cross the Channel to see something of the country of his birth. I hoped that perhaps Edith and I could meet again. It was a year or two before I finally decided to come over here.’

  ‘And Isabelle? Did you meet her the same way?’

  ‘Heavens, no, we grew up together. She lived with us and we were as near to sisters as it’s possible without being related, although she was several years younger than me. I fact, she became my stepsister later. She was – she was everything to me – I’d known her since she was a year old.’ Again the tears welled. It took several moments before she could go on. ‘Isabelle’s mother was a widow, but she had been a nurse, and when my mother became ill, she came to stay with us, and afterwards, after Maman died, she agreed to stay on as housekeeper. On condition she could bring her little girl, too.’

  He took a moment to get this together while she sat twisting her sodden handkerchief, trying to find a dry spot. ‘Let’s get this straight. You were very happy at getting that job at Maxstead with your old friend, Miss Hillyard, yet you agreed to that rigmarole with Isabelle about you needing to go into hospital, so that she could take your place?’ She didn’t deny it. ‘That was a long shot, surely? How did you know Miss Hillyard would agree to take her on, for one thing?’

  ‘Well, she knew that Belle was as fluent as I am in both languages, didn’t she?’

  Edith Hillyard had known not only Phoebe, but Isabelle, too. She had lied, at least by implication, by deliberately omitting to tell him that she, the murdered teacher and the one who had replaced her, had in fact all known each other. And pretty well, it seemed.

  ‘Actually, Belle was better qualified than me for Maxstead, because of her teaching English in France for years,’ Miss Catherall admitted.

  ‘Yes, at the Lycée Honoré de Balzac in Metz,’ he said, while his thoughts raced as he attempted to pull what she had just told him together.

  ‘Metz?’

  ‘That was where she had been teaching, according to Miss Hillyard.’

  She looked confused. ‘You must have got that wrong. She only gave private lessons, when she could get them, and that only in the last few years. She wasn’t trained, but she turned out to be a good teacher.’ Reardon thought that any teacher who was popular with her pupils, as Isabelle Blanchard seemed to have been, would have a head start, so that was probably true. ‘But to my certain knowledge, she never lived in Metz. It was Paris where she lived after she left home.’

  So Isabelle, too, had not told the truth to Edith Hillyard. Or maybe it had been the headmistress who had made up the lie about Metz, the references and God knew what else. Lies and more lies, coiling together like a nest of snakes. For reasons that were as yet obscure, Miss Hillyard had omitted to say she knew the two women previously. He found no difficulty in believing she might be capable of blatant untruths. But why? Simply to add verisimilitude, as someone or other had it, to an otherwise unconvincing narrative? That didn’t seem very likely.

  Phoebe Catherall was weeping again. He thought she might now be taking refuge in tears to drum up sympathy and stop his questioning. Being married to a woman he was very happy to know had no such tendencies didn’t incline Reardon to go along with that, and his tone hardened. ‘All right. You met Miss Hillyard through working at that hospital. Did Isabelle work there too?’

  ‘Oh, no, she was too young for that! I suppose they first met when Edith visited me at home,’ she said vaguely, ‘for a meal, you know – as I said, we’d become friends, Edith and I. We didn’t have much food to share at home but it was better than at the hospital.’ She gave a very French shudder at the memory. And then she said timidly, ‘Can we go, now? I’m very tired.’

  ‘Yes, I can see you are, and we’ll leave in a minute.’

  It was a big tangle that was going to take some sorting out, but he doubted if telling Phoebe Catherall to start from the beginning would produce a more lucid explanation. There were huge gaps in her story, such as whether she had been here in Melia Street ever since she had left the house in Moseley, and what her connection with the evasive Liptrott really was. And that was only the beginning. But she did look tired and he was sure she wasn’t going to be persuaded to say more. She had the look of a stubborn child who knew she would be punished if she confessed. ‘But just tell me one thing before we leave. Why was it so important to Isabelle to take that job at Maxstead?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say. She just said she had to.’

  He raised an eyebrow. Now she was lying, or at best being evasive, and whichever, it was beginning to irritate him. He found this unquestioning obedience to Isabelle hard to believe, to say the least. Here was a woman who had landed herself a worthwhile job, which would provide her with status and income and take her away from a lifestyle she had obviously hated, and yet she had been willing to surrender it to Isabelle Blanchard for some unspecified reason. He found it incredible that any woman could let herself be used in the way Phoebe seemed to have been used. Did she actually enjoy playing the martyr?

  He was afraid that might be true. Why else would she have been content to earn a pittance by playing the piano in a picture house? God knows, jobs were difficult enough to find, but even in slump-bound Britain she could surely have found something more suitable to the other talents she possessed. Miss Hillyard, for one, had been willing to employ her for her language skills, unqualified as she was, and surely that wasn’t solely out of friendship? He was beginning to suspect Miss Catherall was someone who drifted along where the wind took her or, more to the point, where her ‘friends’ – who may have included Liptrott, despite what she’d just said about hardly knowing him – dictated she should go. Not to mention that Isabelle, adored friend, not-quite-sister, had clearly had some overriding influence over her.

  He made one last try. ‘You let Isabelle Blanchard take your job without asking why?’

  ‘You didn’t know Isabelle,’ she said sadly.

  And that, he
was sure, was the best he was going to get at this stage.

  ‘She’s lying, of course, or at any rate sparing us the whole truth,’ Gilmour said when all this was relayed to him and the rest, back at Market Street.

  ‘Well, we haven’t finished with her yet. We’ll see what we can get from her when she’s pulled herself together a bit more.’

  ‘Meanwhile, what are we going to do with her?’

  Phoebe Catherall had been near hysterical at the thought of having to stay on at Melia Street, as well she might, and Reardon had suggested the Shire Hotel, which had had almost the same effect. It was Folbury’s one and only hotel, and perhaps she was thinking of the cost, though she had said she had enough money to tide her over. In the absence of any other ideas at what to do with her, he had brought her back to Market Street, hoping for suggestions. For the moment she was sitting in his office with a cup of tea and her belongings in a suitcase at her feet while they decided on somewhere for her to go. The possibilities for accommodation in Folbury, other than the Shire, were few.

  ‘We can always take her back to Moseley, to Mrs Cooper,’ Gilmour offered. ‘She’d be glad to have her, I’m sure.’

  ‘I need to talk to her again. She hasn’t told us everything, not by a long chalk.’

  Longton had been listening in and now stirred himself and coughed. ‘She could come and stay with us,’ he said stolidly.

  Heads were turned in amazement. Gargrave smirked. ‘You smitten, Sarge?’

  ‘Don’t be dafter than you can help, Gravy.’ Longton was unfazed. He was middle aged, carried too much weight for his age, and didn’t have flighty tendencies.

  But Gilmour suddenly understood. ‘I thought your mother had stopped taking in lodgers, George.’

  ‘She has, she said she was too old for it now, after the last one left. But there’s a room, a bed. I reckon she’d be happy to oblige in the circumstances.’

  FIFTEEN

  ‘You can’t bother the young lady when she’s poorly,’ Mrs Longton said next morning. ‘She’s been sick this morning.’

  Gilmour’s eyebrows lifted.

  ‘Now, now young man! Definitely not, what are you thinking? She was sick last night as well, though my meat and tatie pie and plum duff never upset anybody before, Mr Reardon. I’ll tell you what it is. I reckon she hasn’t been eating properly for weeks and maybe it was too rich.’

  Too heavy rather, by the sound of it. If this was the usual fare his mother provided, no wonder Longton was bursting out of his uniform. ‘Maybe one of us could just speak to her for a minute, Mrs Longton?’ To Gilmour, Reardon said, ‘I’ll see her myself,’ thinking that two policemen appearing in her bedroom might be too much altogether for Phoebe Catherall’s tender susceptibilities.

  ‘You can try. But not for more than a minute, I wouldn’t. The kettle’s on. Make the tea when it boils, there’s a good lad,’ she instructed Gilmour. ‘We’ll have a cup when we come back down.’ She was not intending to leave Reardon to his own devices.

  She hadn’t been exaggerating. Phoebe Catherall was looking poorly. She turned to face the wall and pulled the blankets up further around her shoulders when Mrs Longton opened the door. Mrs Longton stood on guard in the doorway as Reardon approached the bed. Her temporary lodger’s indisposition had brought out the protectiveness in her.

  ‘You’ll have to give me time,’ Phoebe muttered, her voice muffled by the bedclothes. ‘I’ve been through so much, and I don’t feel well.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I need to ask you a few more questions, then I’ll leave you alone until you feel better.’ Silence, but Reardon didn’t intend to be so easily put off. He began with the first question that occurred to him. If he could get her started, she might respond to more. ‘We found a letter from her aunt, Mathilde, among Isabelle’s possessions.’

  After several moments’ silence, Phoebe pulled the blankets down and turned her face towards him. ‘Her aunt who?’ She stared at him and then, surprisingly, laughed. ‘My Tante Mathilde, don’t you mean? Mathilde Blanchard is Isabelle’s mother. I’ve called her aunt ever since she and Isabelle came to live with us, after Maman died. And even after she married Father, two years later.’

  ‘She was writing to you?’

  ‘If she signed herself Tante, she must have been.’

  ‘It appeared to be a warning not to go ahead with something.’

  ‘I don’t remember any such letter.’ She spoke almost sulkily. Clearly she remembered very well whatever it was she didn’t want him to know about. But he must not let the fact that he found this woman so annoying sway him, and no one could really have the heart to force her to talk further, the way she looked. White as the sheets on the bed, dark circles under her eyes, although, even so, minus her heavy glasses and her hair undone, she was better looking than she had been the day before. And more vulnerable, he thought guiltily. All the same, he’d had just about enough of women, young and old, who took refuge in untruths, and turned to go.

  ‘Do you know where Newman Liptrott is?’ he asked, as a parting shot.

  ‘I’ve told you, I have no idea. Just leave me alone,’ she said again. ‘I’m ill.’

  He had a strong impulse to shake her. ‘Very well. But you’re going to have to tell us what you know, Miss Catherall, sooner or later.’

  She turned her face back to the wall. Mrs Longton was clucking behind him. He had no alternative but to leave.

  Downstairs the kettle had boiled and Gilmour had made the tea as Mrs Longton had instructed, had helped himself to a cup and was tucking into a flapjack from the plate she’d left out, but Reardon was too frustrated with the woman he’d left behind to waste time on drinking tea.

  Phoebe knew the inspector was right. The day of reckoning had come and the facts would have to be made known. The truth was she was rather intimidated by Reardon. The face – that honourably scarred face – he’d showed her, although he probably wasn’t aware of it, could turn rather frightening, not because of the disfigurement, which wasn’t really all that terrible, but because she thought he might be a rather uncompromising man, when faced with lies. And more lies were what she would have to tell.

  She couldn’t tell the whole truth, feeling him watching her and weighing every word, judging her. She was always uneasy when she felt people didn’t have a good opinion of her.

  But as she thought of that letter he’d mentioned, a brilliant idea came to her and she immediately began to feel better. The pain in her stomach had miraculously gone. She got out of bed and scrabbled in her suitcase for her writing case, a pencil and enough writing paper amongst all the old letters from Tante Mathilde she had kept. This was going to be a long epistle.

  She had no need to go through them all to know that particular letter the inspector had mentioned wouldn’t be there amongst all the others. She remembered it well, of course. She had written to Mathilde asking her for more details about what had happened so long ago in France, and Mathilde had been upset and had written back to tell her not to meddle in something that was over and done with. She had showed the letter to Isabelle and she in turn had shoved it in her bag, absent-mindedly or not, after reading it, and Phoebe hadn’t asked for it back because it really wasn’t anything of importance. And when had Isabelle ever needed a reason to take anything? Whatever Phoebe had, Isabelle had always wanted it, even if she had no use for it. She had always been greedy, for possessions, for status, not caring too much how either was obtained. She had left home and gone to live in Paris as soon as she was old enough for her mother, Phoebe’s beloved Tante Mathilde, to allow her to leave and make her own living. Phoebe never really knew for certain how it was she managed to buy such beautiful clothes and some rather good jewellery, just from the money she earned giving English lessons. But Tante Mathilde’s lips had tightened on the occasions when she visited, and Phoebe had put two and two together.

  There had been nothing incriminating in that particular letter, as far as Phoebe could remember, but then, she didn’t
store facts away for future use like Isabelle had always done, watching with her veiled cat’s eyes that missed nothing, waiting for an opportunity to use it. No reason why she should have kept it, except that it belonged to someone else. Especially if that someone was Phoebe.

  Nor did Isabelle ever forget. She had been fifteen, and Phoebe twenty-two when it happened but, fifteen years later, she still remembered.

  Phoebe picked up her pencil.

  Before I became a headmistress, it never occurred to me that responsibility can keep you awake at night. I used to take seven or eight restful hours’ sleep for granted; now I’m grateful for much less. Last night I scarcely slept at all. It was so hot, and while I have been sitting here, I’ve watched the dark night sky gradually lighten from black to the colour of charcoal, then into pewter, and finally into pearl grey. Now it’s turning the tender blue, touched with rosy pink, that hopefully heralds rain later.

  I was a fool ever to have had dealings with that woman. But there is no point in dwelling on that now. The bell will be sounding for breakfast in half an hour, the blessed routine of the school day will be commencing. I stand up and I’m leaving my seat by the window when I see a figure running towards the school from the direction of the woods. Eve, Eve Draper. Running!

  Stuff was in the habit of piling up on the desk if you were away for more than a day or two, and for Reardon today in his office at Queen’s Road it was no exception. Having shuffled through the snowstorm of papers, he could see that most of it, as he’d expected, was backlog from the previous week that he’d being shoving to one side, with Isabelle Blanchard’s murder needing to take priority. It was routine stuff, but couldn’t be shuffled off indefinitely. He decided to get down to shifting some of it before he had to go out to Maxstead once again. He was halfway down the pile when he saw the envelope.