Blood-Tied

by Wendy Percival

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mrs Quentin?’

  Esme recognised the voice but couldn’t place it. ‘Yes. This is Esme Quentin.’ Someone from the hospital, perhaps? She felt her insides tighten as she anticipated the reason for the call.

  ‘It’s Christine Rowcliffe, Mrs Quentin, Wisteria House.’ Esme relaxed and sat herself down on the arm of the sofa. They exchanged pleasantries.

  ‘We’re in a bit of bother here and I’m hoping you can help us out.’

  ‘Oh? Well, if I can…’ She remembered that the letter to Elizabeth had mentioned fund-raising. Was Mrs Rowcliffe enlisting volunteers? Fêtes and coffee mornings were not her forte.

  ‘I’ve just been on the phone to Mrs Roberts’s solicitor, Mr Evans. You remember your sister had been clearing the cottage where Mrs Roberts lived?’

  ‘Yes, so I understand.’

  ‘Mr Evans telephoned to see how things were progressing, having not heard from Mrs Holland recently. Obviously he was unaware of the latest turn of events, which of course I was able to explain to him.’

  ‘Oh, I assumed Elizabeth had finished everything.’

  ‘Not completely as far as I know. The thing is,’ Mrs Rowcliffe continued, ‘we are unable to take matters into our own hands at the moment, not least because we are short-staffed. But there’s a more pressing complication. Mrs Roberts is adamant that she does not hold a key to the cottage.’ Esme felt a surge of adrenaline shoot through her system as she thought of the keys at the bottom of Elizabeth’s retrieved handbag. Ironic that it was Gemma who had suggested there was a link with Wisteria House.

  ‘I’m sure she had her own set,’ the matron was saying, ‘but Mrs Roberts says not. I think she may have mislaid them and is too embarrassed to say. But it means that I have no way of getting into the cottage to appraise things. Obviously Mrs Holland would have had a key. I don’t suppose you know where it is, do you?’

  ‘As it happens I do,’ said Esme, walking over to the desk where Elizabeth’s bag was sitting. ‘Is there something I could do to help? Do you want me to call in to the cottage and report back?’ She slipped her hand inside the bag and pulled out the keys, clasping them in the palm of her hand. ‘If there are still things left to do, I could carry on where Elizabeth left off, if you like.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mrs Rowcliffe. The matron sounded greatly relieved. ‘We are so pushed at the moment. I can’t deny it would be an enormous help.’

  ‘You’re sure Mrs Roberts won’t mind?’ added Esme, suddenly. For a moment she imagined the matron consulting Mrs Roberts and receiving a definite ‘no’, given the old lady’s reticence at their meeting, but Mrs Rowcliffe didn’t flinch.

  ‘No, of course not. She understands these things need to be sorted out. I’ll let her know you’ve offered your help. I’m sure she’ll be relieved to have the clearance of the cottage completed.’

  Esme wasn’t entirely convinced but accepted Mrs Rowcliffe’s reassurance. She wouldn’t like going against the old lady’s wishes, despite the compelling idea of visiting the cottage of Elizabeth’s family. Perhaps it was where Elizabeth had been born.

  Esme reached over to grab pen and paper. ‘Where is the cottage? I’d better take down the details.’

  Mrs Rowcliffe gave her the address and directions. ‘This is so good of you. I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘It’s no problem, really.’

  ‘Do you want to report directly to Mrs Roberts’s solicitor?’

  ‘I can do if you like.’ Esme took his details, too.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave it with you, then,’ said the matron, preparing to end the conversation.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ said Esme, as a thought flashed into her head. Stupidly, it was the most obvious piece of information she’d failed to establish on her visit. ‘Is Mrs Roberts’s first name Daisy?’

  ‘No, dear. It’s Polly. Polly Roberts.’ Esme felt strangely deflated. So this old lady wasn’t Elizabeth’s mother after all. She ought to have known it wouldn’t be that simple.

  ‘You’re thinking of her daughter,’ said Mrs Rowcliffe.

  ‘Her daughter?’

  ‘Yes. You remember I mentioned her when we met. She was called Daisy. She died recently, rather unexpectedly.’

  Esme recalled the matron’s words about Mrs Robert’s loss. So that was who she’d been talking about. Elizabeth’s mother was not Mrs Roberts but the old lady’s daughter.

  As Esme replaced the receiver she felt a pang of empathy with Elizabeth. Not to meet your real mother until you were an adult and then to lose her a short time later was very hard. And because she had been unable to tell her family, she couldn’t engage their support when her mother had died.

  Esme began to wonder what other trials Elizabeth had endured in her need to keep her secret from them all. Perhaps she shouldn’t judge her so harshly, after all.

  8

  The only part of ‘Keeper’s Cottage’ which Esme could see as she approached was its gable end. Both front and back gardens were flanked by tall hedges running parallel to the road.

  Esme slowed the car looking for somewhere to park. There was no drive or obvious place to pull in beside it. She decided she approved. There was something appealing about walking up to the cottage unannounced by the revving of a car engine. She found a lay-by further down the lane, at the entrance to a wood.

  She got out of the car and wandered over to the gate. A public footpath sign pointed into the trees. She leant on the gate and gazed into the shadows. The path looked well-used.

  The cottage’s namesake, the gamekeeper, would have patrolled in here, protecting the estate’s wildlife and game birds from poachers. She thought of the poor souls who had been transported to the colonies in the late eighteenth century for catching a rabbit to feed their hungry families. She wondered if these woods had seen such events, whether the landowner had been a benevolent soul or a strict upholder of the law of the land. She turned away and took the path to the cottage.

  A privet hedge screened the cottage from the road. Esme stood at the picket gate and contemplated the front elevation. It was the child’s quintessential image of a house. Brick-built, it had a door in the middle, a window either side, and two above. Esme pushed open the gate and walked up the path.

  The front door was wide but squat. Anyone nearing six foot would have to bend their head to walk under the lintel. Esme put the key in the lock and rotated it. It made a satisfying click. She turned the handle, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  Standing in the hall, the front door ajar, she silently absorbed the scene. Through the open door to the sitting room she could see cardboard boxes of various sizes on the floor and on tables.

  She closed the front door behind her and shivered involuntarily. Strange to come into someone’s house and pack away a lifetime into cardboard boxes. Until recently Esme’s life had been nomadic; short term lets and changing locations. She hadn’t accrued many personal belongings. But years living in the same house would surely result in a plethora of possessions. How to choose what to keep and what to dispense with?

  She stepped through the doorway into the sitting room. The room was a pleasant mix of furniture pieces, an old squashy sofa with a loose chintz cover, an armchair in a plain bottle-green and a wooden railed high-backed chair piled with cushions. The rest consisted of a side table and two small stools, a large wooden trunk in the window and a round ‘what-not’ in the corner, green baize on each shelf. A few books and ornaments still adorned the shelves on either side of the fireplace.

  She asked herself if she should feel guilty at being there. Gemma would think she should. Esme had tried to tell her about her visit to Polly Roberts, but Gemma was still occupying the moral high ground, waiting for Elizabeth’s explanation and pretending she didn’t want to know. She was scathing about Esme’s observations of Mrs Roberts’s a
pparent anxiety. Gemma cited privacy and the respect of confidences, implying Esme’s disregard for such matters. She poured scorn on Esme’s suspicions, accusing Esme of exaggerating in an attempt to justify her actions.

  ‘You’re being neurotic,’ Gemma scoffed. ‘Get a grip, Esme. You’re letting past experiences distort your sense of reality.’

  Esme had been shocked by the attack. Perhaps she did look at the world differently since Tim had been killed but that was because it had taught her not to take things at face value. Don’t believe everything people tell you. Or did she mean don’t believe anything people tell you? She shook herself. Gemma was wrong. Esme had learnt from her bad experiences, not been destroyed by them. How could Gemma be expected to understand that? She was still young with the lessons of life’s experiences yet to grasp.

  Esme knew Gemma hadn’t yet come to terms with what had happened to her mother and what she had since learnt about her. Not that Elizabeth’s being adopted troubled her, because, as Esme had already pointed out, it didn’t change the fact that Elizabeth was her mother. It was the deception Gemma was struggling with, as was Esme herself.

  But Esme had few qualms about prying, as Gemma termed it. She was desperate for some answers and if Elizabeth wasn’t able to give them at present, Esme saw no harm in making her own enquiries.

  She peered into the boxes on the floor. There was obviously still some work to do in this room; there were still items on the shelves. But she wanted to explore the rest of the cottage first.

  There were three rooms downstairs, the sitting room which she had already explored, an empty room to the left and a tiny kitchen to the rear. There was a bathroom extension beyond, obviously installed long ago. The atmosphere was cold and uninviting, and the smell of damp palpable.

  Upstairs there were two bedrooms. In the first, the only furniture remaining was a wooden trunk pushed against a wall. Esme guessed this had been Mrs Roberts’s room. There was no evidence of her presence, of course. Her clothes and personal things would have gone with her to the home, but the wallpaper was brighter above the trunk than on the remainder of the wall, indicating that there had once been a different piece of furniture there once, a chest of drawers or a dressing-table perhaps, which Mrs Roberts might have taken with her. Christine Rowcliffe had explained that residents were encouraged to bring items of their own furniture where feasible.

  The trunk held no secrets, being completely empty, so Esme wandered across the tiny landing into the next bedroom. This room held more furniture. The bed had been stripped. A patchwork eiderdown lay concertina-style across the end of the bed. Esme stroked the fabric squares. She wondered if each piece had a story. She’d once been in a school play called The Patchwork Quilt. She couldn’t recall the details, only that every square held something about the past: a piece from a favourite summer skirt, another from child’s dress, another square made from a cushion cover, one side faded but the other side serviceable enough for reuse, such as rag rugs. It was more than ‘mend and make do’. The homes of the women who made these furnishings had soul. Now society simply swept into a high-street store and chose furniture on a whim, or because of a television advertisement. In times past, wardrobes, trunks, tables and chairs were lovingly cared for and passed down through the generations, like threads which joined their living histories.

  Boxes on the bed held folded blankets and sheets. Esme glanced around the room. Objects were piled up on the dressing-table: brushes, gloves, lavender bags and scarves. In the wardrobe there were clothes still hanging, and the drawers of the dressing-table were still full. This room must have been Daisy’s, Elizabeth’s mother.

  Esme decided to begin here and spent the next couple of hours folding, packing, and clearing the wardrobe. As she stood back to congratulate herself on a job well done, she looked up at the deep cornice around the top of the wardrobe. She ought to check that nothing had been left on top, obscured from view.

  She reached up and felt over the cornice, cringing as the sticky texture of dust and cobwebs clung to her fingers. Her fingertip touched something hard. She stretched as far as she could, trying to curl her fingers around the edge of whatever it was and bring it closer, but the object refused to co-operate.

  She looked around the room. There was a walking stick propped up in the corner of the room. She picked it up and tried to use it as an extended arm but it was too inflexible. She was concerned that she might knock the object on to the floor. She propped the walking stick against the wardrobe door while she considered her best course of action.

  She could reach if she stood on the bed but it was too far away and she couldn’t budge it. Iron-framed, probably. She remembered she’d seen an outhouse as she’d arrived. Maybe there was a stepladder. She headed off down the stairs.

  Half-way down she stopped. There was someone at the front door. She could see their outline through the glass panel. Whoever it was appeared to be slipping a key into the lock. Who was this? The house clearance people? No, couldn’t be. They didn’t have any keys. That was the reason Esme was to drop them off at Mrs Roberts’s solicitor once the packing was finished.

  The front door slowly opened a few inches. Suddenly there came a loud clatter from upstairs. The sound echoed around the empty house. The walking stick must have slipped from where Esme had propped it up against the wardrobe and hit the wooden floor.

  The door was yanked shut and the figure behind the glass disappeared from view. Esme dashed down the rest of the stairs and wrenched open the door. No one in sight. Whoever it was didn’t wish to be seen, that was obvious.

  She rushed down the path, scanning in every direction. Nothing. Where the hell had they gone? Behind the cottage? She ran back up the path and round the side towards the road. She sprinted up to the opening in the hedge and looked through, glancing up and down the lane. Someone was moving away from her in the distance but it could be someone out for a walk. They weren’t in any hurry.

  Esme stood for a moment to catch her breath. Who else would have a set of keys? Christine Rowcliffe believed that Mrs Roberts had once had a set but now was claiming she didn’t. Had she mislaid them and wouldn’t admit it, as Christine suspected, or had she given them to someone? But who? And surely if she had, she would have said so. Wouldn’t she?

  Esme retraced her steps, unnerved by the experience. What should she do? There could be a hundred perfectly good reasons why someone else had a key. Except that at that particular moment she couldn’t think of any. And if the reason was genuine, why had the person run away? She thought of Gemma’s remarks about Esme seeing mysteries where none existed. She sighed. She hadn’t time to contemplate Gemma’s blinkered opinions. She had a job to do.

  She resumed her search for a stepladder in the outhouse. There wasn’t one but she remembered the small table in the sitting room. She went to fetch it and carried it up to the bedroom.

  It wobbled alarmingly but she managed to stabilize it by wedging it against the wardrobe with the box of bedding. She tentatively climbed on. Even with the extra height she still couldn’t see over the cornice but she was able to reach further. She grabbed hold of the object and stepped down from her perch.

  It was a picture frame, thick with dust. She blew across it, making herself sneeze. She used the sleeve of her sweater as a duster. The frame was silver, about the size of a paperback book, and heavy. The glass was cracked across the bottom right-hand corner. Behind it was a black-and-white photograph, an elegant head and shoulders portrait of a young woman in soft focus. The photographer’s name was embossed in the corner.

  Who was she? She was very pretty. Beautiful, even. She wore a pearl necklace. Her hair was short and full, cut level with her chin, 1920s style.

  Esme turned it over hoping for a date, but there were no clues on the frame itself, or on the front of the photograph. It looked easy enough to open up. Perhaps it was written on the back.

  Taking care n
ot to loosen the broken glass, she placed the frame face down on the floor. Esme pushed at the swivel clips around the edge with her thumb. They were rusting and stiff, but she felt them move. Gingerly she removed the back from the frame.

  She couldn’t see anything written on the reverse of the picture. She teased at a corner of the photograph with her finger. Then she realised that this was another photo on top of the first. She slid her finger underneath, lifting them both carefully out of the frame, and turned them over.

  The second picture was of a group of people dressed in uniform, standing on the front steps of a large house. She took it over to the window and studied the people in the better light. Judging by the dress and hairstyle she guessed that the photograph had been taken in the 1930s. Had Polly Roberts ever been in service? Was she in the photograph? She must be, otherwise why keep a copy?

  Esme squinted again at the picture. There was something written in the corner? The name of the house, perhaps? The writing was faded but she could just make out an ‘M’ and possibly ‘Hall’. Then she noticed a date. 1937. So her estimate was correct. She looked at the house. There was something familiar about the building. She was sure she’d seen it recently.

  She turned back to the portrait. Perhaps the woman was Daisy. Esme was intrigued. Why was it on top of the wardrobe? Had it been discarded because of its broken glass and overlooked when Mrs Roberts moved out? If it was of Daisy, surely Mrs Roberts would have taken it with her and replaced the glass? And why hide one picture behind another? If it was hidden. Perhaps the frame was required and someone hadn’t bothered to remove the first photograph.

  Esme moved away from the window. She could try asking Mrs Roberts but, considering her current reticent behaviour, Esme couldn’t help feeling that she was unlikely to tell her anything. She gathered up the photos, carefully put the frame back together again, and put them in her bag. It was worth a try, anyway.

  The more Esme thought about the old lady’s behaviour, the more baffling it became. What was it that was too complicated to explain? No matter how she looked at it Esme couldn’t see it as anything other than suspicious. Gemma’s explanation of it being a simple case of respecting Elizabeth’s privacy was perfectly rational. Except that Gemma hadn’t seen Mrs Roberts’s alarmed reaction when Esme had mentioned the attack and her further distress when Esme had added that Elizabeth had been seen arguing with someone.