The Property of Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  She was not at her best, but the dip hadn’t deprived her of her wits. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea who it might have been?’

  ‘I didn’t see, I simply heard.’ She was coming back to herself by the minute. She even took several gulps of her tea, now cool enough to drink, pulling a face at its sweetness.

  ‘It’s an extraordinary claim to make, all the same. Why should anyone want to push Miss Keith into the water?’

  She gave him a look. ‘Why should anyone want to do any of the things that have been happening at Maxstead?’

  He’d been right, she was sharper than she was given credit for. She was adamant about Jocasta Keith having been pushed into the water, and if she was correct about that, it was the third attack here, and might have been the second murder had it not been for her. It was getting harder to escape the fact that the incidents weren’t connected. Miss Cash seemed like a reliable witness, no shilly-shallying, firm about what she saw. He had underrated her, and who else? And then the thought intruded that she, as well as some of the others, might have secrets to hide. There was only her word for it that she’d heard someone running away. There could have been just two people at the lake – Jocasta Keith, and herself. He soon rejected the idea. If there had been only the two of them, why had she saved her? Unless it had been, like Josie’s attack, a warning? Then he thought about those shoes.

  ‘What do you know about Miss Keith?’

  She finished off her tea and put the cup and saucer down on the table beside her. ‘Nothing, except that she doesn’t mix much.’ After a minute, she added, ‘And she does splash her money about a bit. She goes up to London sometimes, just to get her hair cut.’

  That was quite a dig. The standard of hairdressing among the women here was not high, probably catered for by Folbury’s hairdressers. Miss Cash’s own short, curly locks were drying quickly after her immersion and springing naturally back into place, clearly needing nothing in the way of expert styling. ‘All the same,’ she went on, endeavouring to be honest, ‘I can’t see her doing anything that justified someone trying to drown her. And I know she says she can swim, but she wasn’t making a very good show of it when I turned up.’

  Kay Dysart was just leaving the cottage hospital when Reardon arrived to see Jocasta Keith. They met on the steps. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, but they’re keeping her in for observation.’ She hesitated. ‘I’d like a word with you before I leave, Inspector.’ She turned back into the hospital, expecting him to follow, and led the way into a small room off the reception area, with chairs pushed against the notice-plastered walls, eight of them surrounding a table piled with tired-looking magazines. She waved him to a seat and took one herself.

  It was part of Dysart’s persona, as well as a professional requirement, not to waste time. She was known for speaking her mind. She sat down, pushed her short dark hair to one side and asked bluntly, ‘What’s going on out there, at Maxstead?’ He didn’t immediately reply. She knew about Isabelle Blanchard, of course, but not about Josie, he thought. It hadn’t been deemed necessary to get a doctor to her, Matron’s experience being enough. ‘The last time I was called there,’ she went on, ‘it was to a murder, and now this. Another thing there’s something fishy about.’

  He thought again of the shoes. Fashionable, lizard-skin, neatly put together. He thought of ‘falling’ into the water when you couldn’t swim.

  ‘You’re saying you think it was a suicide attempt?’ He wouldn’t have put Miss Keith down as a candidate for that, but weren’t artists reputedly that way inclined? Beethoven was supposed to have been mad as well as alcoholic. Van Gogh had cut off his own ear and you couldn’t get much madder than that. ‘Is that what you think, Doctor?’

  ‘I could speculate, but I’ll leave that to you.’

  ‘Speculate away, please.’

  Still she hesitated, and he could understand why. She knew as well as he did that suicide was still a criminal offence, regarded by the church as a mortal sin and by the law as ‘self-murder’. Those who succeeded were indeed beyond the law, but those who did not faced prosecution, if the act was reported. It was an outdated law which took no account of compassion and increasingly outraged public opinion, including those like himself and, he suspected, Kay Dysart, who necessarily came into contact with those in despair, who could see no way out other than by ending their life.

  ‘Suicide? No,’ she said at last, ‘you can put that out of your mind.’

  ‘That sounds pretty uncompromising.’

  ‘It is,’ she said flatly. ‘If she said she fell in, there’s no reason to disbelieve her.’

  He was willing to go along with it, regardless of those shoes she had removed, especially when he remembered Daphne Cash’s firm assertion that someone else had been there before she had arrived. He smiled at Dysart. ‘We won’t pursue that idea any further then, Doctor. Agreed?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She smiled back and stood up. ‘We won’t.’

  She had been given a bed in a small ward with five other women in various stages of recovery, all of them agog with curiosity about the new arrival and her visitor. Jocasta Keith wasn’t in bed, however, but sitting on a chair by the side of it, looking woebegone, a total stranger to the Jocasta he had previously met. Hair in rats’ tails, face free of make-up, feet in large, borrowed slippers, and wrapped in a dressing gown miles too big for her, taken from the hospital’s store of garments kept for emergencies and drawn up tight under her chin. He hoped it hadn’t occurred to her that it might once have belonged to someone who’d gone where they didn’t need dressing gowns any more. And, for her own sake, he hoped it would soon occur to someone from the school to bring her what she needed.

  He looked around the ward, at the other women, flicking magazines or dipping into convalescent-gift chocolate boxes, their eyes on stalks and their ears no doubt attuned. ‘I can’t talk to Miss Keith here,’ he said to the nurse who had accompanied him. ‘We need to be private.’

  She looked doubtful. ‘I must ask Sister.’ She came back within a minute and told him they would have to sit in the corridor. ‘It’s that or the sluice,’ she added with a cheerful grin. ‘We’re pretty full up at the moment.’

  This was a small cottage hospital with not many beds, used mainly for emergencies and to avoid journeys, for both patients and their families, to bigger hospitals in Birmingham. It was always busy. But just now the corridor outside the ward – wide, warm, and with chairs for those waiting before visiting time – was empty, apart from the odd nurse or ward orderly passing through. ‘It’ll do,’ Reardon said.

  Miss Keith hadn’t so far said a word. She didn’t in fact look at all pleased to see her visitor. Finally, when they were seated outside the ward, she decided to speak. ‘Get me out of here, for pity’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m perfectly all right and I’m taking up a bed they can ill afford.’

  She looked far from all right and – without make-up – defenceless, her face oddly vulnerable.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll let you go. I’ve just seen Dr Dysart and she tells me they need to do some tests for that bump on your head.’ He paused, judging how she might respond to what he had to say next.

  ‘It’s gone down already, and no harm done. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I could quite easily have got myself out of the water.’

  ‘Miss Cash thinks you can’t swim.’

  ‘Then Miss Cash thinks wrong.’

  He said gently, ‘Your shoes were on the bank.’

  A heavily built nurse approached, carrying a metal dish covered with a cloth. The polished boards moved like a sprung dance floor as she passed by, giving them a curious glance. Jocasta waited until she’d disappeared. She said deliberately, ‘You think I tried to kill myself? Well, you’re half right. I was feeling bad, and at that moment there didn’t seem anything else for it. I’d decided I couldn’t live with myself any longer, but …’ Her dark eyes had become
pools of misery and she laughed bitterly. ‘I suppose I’ll never know whether I would actually have had the guts to do it, because all I can say is, one minute I was on the bank and the next I was in the water.’

  This wasn’t the time to press her as to why she’d had cause to feel so bleak. ‘Someone else was there with you,’ he said. ‘Someone who pushed you in.’ She didn’t answer. ‘You do know that’s true, don’t you?’

  ‘Maybe they did. Or maybe I did fall in.’

  The sludgy brown and green check of the dressing gown didn’t help a complexion that was drained of all colour.

  ‘Do you have any idea who it might have been?’

  ‘I don’t know that anyone did,’ she insisted, tracing the wood-block pattern of the floor with a flapping slipper.

  This wasn’t getting them very far. ‘I have to ask you this, Miss Keith. I appreciate there may be things too painful for you to talk about, but—’

  The unadorned face she raised said he’d spoken the truth. Before he could go on, however, she interrupted. ‘Look, I know why you’re here, and I’m not being obstructive. I want to help. I’m going to tell you everything, because it’s gone too far. But you’ll have to let me tell it in my own way.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Silence followed. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  At the beginning was never a useful answer. Who knew where anything really started? Go along that route and you could end up at the dawn of time. ‘You might begin with how you came to be working at Maxstead.’

  After a moment she said, ‘Yes, I suppose that was partly where it started. But it was that child, Josie, being left all night in the dark, alone. That was what finished it as far as I was concerned.’

  It was time for him to sit back and let her take her time. And, gradually, some of the tension dropped away from her as she tried to focus on what she had to say. She began by telling him how she had been recruited to work at Maxstead by a man from her home town, whom she had met in London.

  ‘Your home town being Stoke-on-Trent,’ he hazarded.

  ‘Burslem,’ she said. ‘But it’s all the same.’

  ‘And the man was Liptrott, Newman Liptrott? Was he from there as well?’

  ‘Nol,’ she corrected, accepting without surprise that he knew who she was talking about. ‘Everyone calls him that. Ever since we were at school together. Because of his middle name, Oliver.’

  Once started, she was gradually able to speak almost calmly about how she’d met Liptrott by chance in the street, in London, and how she’d agreed to his suggestions. Twisting her hands tightly, she said, ‘It seems incredible to me now that I ever went along with what he asked, but I didn’t feel I’d any choice, you know? I felt trapped; I was down to my last few shillings, hadn’t eaten properly for days, and I wasn’t getting anywhere with my work. I knew by then that I’d made a mistake, thinking everything would be different if I was in London, mixing with like-minded people who wanted to do something with their lives other than just … but I never met any.’ She stopped and swallowed, dry-mouthed, as if it was too painful to speak.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’

  He went in search of a nurse and found the same cheerful woman who had taken him up to the ward. She gave him a glass of water and made him promise not to keep the patient talking too long. ‘She’s had a shock. Talking too much won’t help her.’

  He thought, however, when he returned with the water, that she was already looking better, and probably feeling it, too, having begun to release so much that had been bottled up inside her.

  She sipped the water gratefully and immediately continued from where she’d left off. ‘He told me everything, you know. He wanted someone to talk to and it all came out as if a dam had burst, or something. He wanted someone to tell his grievances to, I suppose, and I was a captive audience, after all. Well, the gist of it was he wanted me to apply for the job of art teacher at Maxstead. Miss Hillyard was still advertising for staff, he said, and I should apply for the position, on the off chance. I did, and I got the job. And no,’ she added, anticipating his scepticism, ‘it wasn’t such an off chance as you might think. No one was exactly clamouring for a job there – Maxstead’s a new venture that still might not succeed, the way things are at the moment. Besides, it’s cut off, out of the way, no shops, picture houses or anything, so candidates aren’t queueing up. I was far from keen myself, but I needed the money; not only the salary, but what Nol was supposed to be paying me. I didn’t have any qualifications, as I’ve told you, but Miss Hillyard didn’t seem to mind and I’ve done my best. I don’t think I’ve been a bad teacher.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed, thinking of that drawing he had seen, and the way she’d encouraged Antonia, the girl who’d drawn it. He thought he could better understand her passionate support of the girl now. ‘You say Liptrott offered to pay you, over and above your salary?’

  ‘Offer is all it was, it seems,’ she came back sharply. ‘I’ve yet to see any of it.’ Then she gave a ‘what-does-that-matter-now?’ shrug. ‘I had to sing for my supper, after all, and it didn’t seem wrong, you know, he only wanted …’ All at once her courage evaporated. Her voice broke and she couldn’t go on.

  ‘He wanted you to find out what you could about Edith Hillyard.’

  ‘Spying, for want of a better word,’ she came back wryly. ‘How did you guess?’

  Her hand was shaking and, gently, he took the empty glass from her. ‘Adding two and two is safer than guesswork. We’ve reached a point where it’s become fairly obvious that someone is wanting to discredit Miss Hillyard and, by implication, the school.’ Not until he said it did he realize how far he’d been gravitating towards the inevitable conclusion that had been staring him in the face all along – that someone might have it in for Miss Hillyard, or the school. If they were trying to ruin her, they seemed to be going the right way about it. Even so, such extreme lengths took some crediting. Yet, for the first time in this enquiry he was getting a buzz that signalled things might be coming together, ready to fall into place. He had found it increasingly difficult to accept that the two previous occurrences – Josie’s imprisonment and the murder of Isabelle Blanchard – could have been coincidental. Now, with what had just happened to Jocasta Keith herself, he was certain they were not. They had been aimed specifically.

  ‘All this was because Liptrott wanted to scupper the enterprise?’

  Her lips twisted. ‘Hardly that. Not at all, in fact. That would have defeated his object.’

  He folded his arms and leant back. ‘I’m sorry, I interrupted you. You said you wanted to tell me everything about him. Please go on.’

  After a minute, she did. ‘Well, what it was, you see, Miss Hillyard had come into some money. A fortune, Nol said it was, and it had really got him on the raw, because it had actually come from his own stepfather and he was convinced he was the one who was entitled to it. His mother had died and the old man hadn’t left him anything at all in his will, not a penny. It shouldn’t have been any surprise to him, because they’d never seen eye to eye, and in fact he’d hated his stepfather for what he called his meanness to him; but it was a shock, and it’s been eating him up ever since. He’s been determined to get his hands on that money, by hook or by crook. I know he’d tried pleading, appealing to Edith Hillyard’s fairness, threatening her even.’

  Which would have got him nowhere, Reardon thought, if it had ended in the encounter Ellen had witnessed.

  ‘Who was he, the person who left the money to Miss Hillyard?’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t leave it to her directly. It was left to her mother, and Edith inherited it when she died. His name was Thomas Pryde. Ever heard of Prydeware? Tea sets, dinner sets, cups and saucers?’

  Yes, he had heard of it. Who hadn’t? Prydeware was nearly as well known as Wedgwood, if not as exclusive. He saw the name stamped underneath the dinner plates every time he helped with the washing up. He had no trouble in believing in the fortune it
had made for the manufacturers. ‘You told me you once worked at painting ceramics, Miss Keith. Was it this Thomas Pryde you worked for?’

  ‘Yes, though not on the Prydeware range. I was a hand paintress, a ceramic artist and designer, but I never came into contact with Thomas Pryde, I was only one of his workpeople. Just as well I didn’t, perhaps; he’s caused plenty of trouble, leaving all that money. Even though I believe Miss Hillyard did actually offer Nol something from the legacy, he was furious, said so little was an insult and he’d take her to court, then she’d have to give him more. He’s convinced he’s quite entitled to at least half. Well, of course, just supposing she’d wanted to, she couldn’t let him have much, could she? It’s all invested in the school. Even he had to admit that was true, and in the end he came back with the idea that she’d have to make him a partner. She just laughed and told him to go away and leave her alone … well, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anyone? It was ridiculous, but if she’d known Nol, she’d soon have realized what a big mistake that was. He’s quick-witted enough, but he’s basically stupid, and he doesn’t like being crossed. He can be vicious. I think that was when things became nasty, when he started to get this other idea. He’d nothing to lose, so he was determined to find something he could use against her, and make it public. And he could, you know. He could get it into one of the papers he writes for.’

  ‘He’s a journalist?’

  ‘Of sorts. A freelance. He gets bits and pieces in whatever papers he can. I don’t think he makes much of a living.’

  Miss Ainsworth hadn’t been all that much mistaken in believing him to be a writer, then, though freelance journalism wasn’t likely to have been what she’d been thinking of when she’d heard him hammering away at his typewriter.

  ‘But I never did find anything about her that I could pass on, you know,’ Jocasta went on miserably. ‘I must confess I didn’t try all that hard, and I didn’t know exactly what he wanted. Listen to the gossip, he’d said, but they don’t gossip, the teachers there, even if they had found me easy to talk to, which they don’t.’