‘Thanks, Esme.’ Lucy raised her glass. ‘Here’s to mystery and intrigue.’
‘You’re incorrigible.’ Esme grinned. ‘Don’t they warn you as part of your training not to get emotionally involved with your clients?’
‘Most definitely not. That’s the whole point of the job, delving into the past and getting worked up about the people you find out about. So what have we got? What’s the significance of Polly Roberts?’
Esme hesitated. A stab of loyalty to Gemma? More likely her own protection mechanism. She still felt predominantly foolish about her ignorance of Elizabeth’s adoption. But Lucy was a good friend and a discreet one, too. If there was anyone she should be able to confide in, it ought to be Lucy. She knew Esme better than anyone.
‘It’s rather difficult,’ began Esme, fiddling with the stem of her glass.
‘Oh, I see. Don’t worry if it’s confidential.’ Lucy smiled but didn’t fail to look disappointed.
‘No, you don’t understand. I didn’t mean that.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Don’t look so distraught, Esme. I just thought this was some more of your family history you were looking into.’
Esme felt uncomfortable. ‘Well, it is in a way, but not as I might have imagined.’
Understandably Lucy looked puzzled. Esme gave a half-laugh. ‘I’m sorry, this is sounding quite ridiculous and I’m not making any sense.’
The waitress arrived at the table with their meals. By the time they had organised their food Lucy had either forgotten Esme’s confusing remarks or had chosen to disregard them. The perfect opening for Esme to explain the situation had evaporated.
Esme concentrated on her salad, asking herself whether she should simply spill out everything. But if that was her intention her brain and mouth didn’t seem to want to co-operate with one another. She kept eating.
‘So do I get to know who Polly Roberts is?’ asked Lucy casually.
Esme told herself to come right out with it and say, she’s Elizabeth’s grandmother, but the words stuck in her throat. If she said that much, she would have to explain everything and she didn’t feel she could cope with Lucy’s reaction, right now. She lost the second opportunity.
‘Elizabeth knows her. She lives in a residential home not far from here.’ Esme tried to lighten the cool atmosphere which she sensed was gathering between them. ‘They know her there as Mrs Roberts,’ she added with a wink.
Lucy smiled and seemed to relax. ‘Ah, now I see why her name was significant. Roberts was her maiden name and so it looks like she never married. So her daughter was illegitimate.’
Esme tried to ignore the fact that it was Elizabeth’s mother they were talking about. She carried on as if she was discussing someone else’s life history.
‘Which could explain why I couldn’t find her birth in the indexes. Maybe it was never registered, under the circumstances.’
Lucy shrugged. ‘So what else? There must be something. Babies born out of wedlock are not exactly a new phenomenon.’
‘I’m not really sure, but Mrs Roberts is fretting about something and she’s not letting on what. Of course, she doesn’t know me very well, so she’s hardly going to pour her heart out so…’
‘So you thought you’d do a bit of digging.’
Esme flashed Lucy a look. She recalled Gemma’s comment about digging the dirt. ‘You make it sound unethical.’
Lucy laughed and shook her head. ‘No, not at all. I know you. You hate not knowing things. That’s why you’re good at what you do.’ She paused with her fork in midair and looked hard at Esme. ‘But I get the impression there is something more to this.’
Esme put down her knife and fork and stared at her plate. Go on, she told herself. Just tell her. ‘It’s about Eizabeth…’
‘Yes?’
Esme paused, not knowing how to proceed. She picked up a roll and tore off a piece. ‘You remember they thought Elizabeth had been attacked?’
Lucy looked concerned. ‘But they think it was an accident now, don’t they?’
‘Apparently the doctor said she could have got her injuries in a fall, if someone had pushed past and knocked her over.’ She shrugged. ‘So it could have been accidental.’
Lucy frowned. ‘Could have, but they can’t be absolutely sure. Is that what you’re saying?’
Esme nodded. ‘And of course there’s still the matter of the argument with someone.’
‘Have the police said any more on that?’
Esme slumped back in her chair. ‘Apparently not. As Gemma said, if everything’s pointing to it’s being an accident, why look for a crime that doesn’t exist? I’m sure they’ve plenty else to do.’
Lucy took a mouthful of food and chewed it. Esme could feel Lucy’s eyes on her.
‘Go on then,’ said Lucy, when Esme didn’t say anything. ‘I’m guessing you were about to tell me why you think there’s a connection with Elizabeth’s attack and this old lady?’
‘It was when I went to visit her,’ Esme explained, recalling Gemma’s reaction to the proposed visit. ‘I thought I ought to go as she’d wonder why Elizabeth hadn’t been to see her.’
‘And?’
Esme picked up her wineglass and took a sip, debating how best to convey her concerns. ‘It was her reaction when I told her the police had thought it was an attack rather than an accident.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe I should have dismissed it as over-imagination but she seemed genuinely alarmed.’
‘Well, hearing that someone you know has been attacked is going to be alarming, isn’t it?’
Esme shook her head. ‘It was more than that. Elizabeth had visited her that day, you see, and I got the idea that Mrs Roberts knew something about it.’
Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘Are you sure? Have you told the police?’
Esme sighed. ‘What could I say? It’s a feeling, that’s all.’
‘So you thought if you could get some background on this lady, you might find something you could use to persuade the police to take your concerns seriously?’
‘Something like that.’ Esme didn’t like to think what Gemma’s reaction would be. Would she welcome the fact that the perpetrator of the crime might be caught, or would she be angry that her mother’s life was being intruded upon all over again?
‘So what have you got so far?’ said Lucy, clearly warming to the task. Esme relaxed a little. For Lucy this was just another intriguing research project. She wasn’t going to bother about the whys and the wherefores of Esme’s interest. She didn’t need to get caught up in the anxiety and emotion. Lucy would only worry about Esme’s sensitivities if she knew the full story. Better that she enjoy the detective work for its own sake. Esme could tell her everything another time.
Esme rested her elbows on the table and counted off the items she had accumulated to date. ‘An unmarried mother, a child whose birth appears to be unregistered and a link with a family whom the mother used to work for. The link being the cottage which she now owns but which once belonged to the estate where she worked.’
‘Sounds like a good story. What’s next?’
‘But hang on. There’s more.’
Lucy leant closer, conspiratorially. ‘I’m all ears.’
‘The matron where Polly Roberts lives says that the cottage was left to her by the family, but she told me that Polly worked for them for years and years.’
‘That’s why you were thrown by finding that Markham Hall burned down in 1942? Because you assumed she still worked at the house and she couldn’t have?’
‘Exactly.’ Esme picked up her glass and drained her wine. ‘Of course, there were several farms on the estate which would have been unaffected by the fire. Maybe she married a farm worker and lived on one of them.’
‘Except it looks like she didn’t marry, and had Daisy as an unmarried mum.’ Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘Not an enviabl
e situation to be in, in those days.’
‘So the obvious next question is, though I don’t know whether I’m likely to find the answer very easily…’
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ said Lucy, pushing her plate to the side and wiping her fingers on her napkin. ‘Who was Daisy’s father?’
13
Esme eventually managed to get in touch with the gardener, Albert Jennings, through his wife Ada. She arranged to visit him, Albert being apparently unwilling to leave his cherished greenhouse to come to the phone. Ada explained that the greenhouse was where Albert was usually to be found, save for meals and the hours he was asleep in bed, and so it was when Esme arrived.
The Jennings home was a narrow Victorian terrace house on a busy road on the edge of town. Ada answered the door and showed Esme through the house and out into the garden. The greenhouse, which almost enveloped the entire back yard, had been a present on his retirement, Ada told Esme proudly. Albert had his plants and his very own greenhouse for the first time in his life and was content. Esme wondered whether his retirement had coincided with Sir Charles’s death or whether he had left before then, but decided it wasn’t relevant to the reason she was here. Her enquiries were about the distant past, not the recent.
She and Lucy had speculated as to whether Daisy was the result of the amorous attentions of Polly’s employer, Sir Charles Monkleigh, and whether he had left Polly the cottage for her to live there and bring up Daisy. But they dismissed the idea as doubtful. Wouldn’t he more likely have whisked Polly away to some remote location to have the baby in secret? Keeping her in a cottage on the estate for all to see would have only added to the scandal. Perhaps Daisy’s father was someone else in Sir Charles’s employ and Sir Charles had felt obliged in some way to intervene?
However intriguing it was to hypothesize, they decided to keep an open mind, for the time being. That Polly Roberts had, in some form or other, worked for the family and had been rewarded would remain their main theory, unless Albert Jennings revealed something to enlighten their speculation. Esme was optimistic.
Ada ushered Esme in through the open greenhouse door and coughed loudly to attract Albert’s attention. Albert looked up, his fingers blackened by the potting compost.
‘Close the door, woman, for goodness sake. My angels will take chill.’
Ada hastily shepherded Esme further inside and followed, pulling the door to behind her.
‘Angels?’ mouthed Esme to Ada.
‘Angel pelargoniums, dear,’ Ada said under her breath, indicating the beautiful array of small-leaved plants on the right-hand shelf. Esme detected the distinctive scent of the foliage and was reminded of her grandfather.
‘Mrs Quentin’s here, Albert,’ said Ada. ‘You remember. It’s about the family.’ She smiled up at Esme and with a clever manoeuvre reversed her round, dumpy shape out of the door rapidly and closed it again.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Jennings,’ said Esme. She was about to extend her hand but then she noticed the state of the gardener’s own hands and dropped her arm to her side instead. ‘I telephoned yesterday. I’m researching some family history and it seems to link in with the family you used to work for. I read about you in the local paper, in the article about the house.’
‘Oh ay,’ said Albert. ‘You said as much to Ada on the telephone.’
Esme couldn’t decide whether he was flattered to be in demand or irritated by another intrusion, mainly because he was studying her face with a frown. Occasionally people expressed concern about her scarred skin. Some even suggested remedies or treatments. Being approached in this way was something she had yet to come to terms with.
Esme cleared her throat and hurried on in case Albert was prompted to say something on the matter. ‘Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?’
‘Ask away,’ replied Albert, his face relaxing into a gentle smile. ‘Don’t mind if I carry on, do you?’ he added, turning back to his task of stuffing compost into clay pots and setting them in a neat row on the slatted bench in front of him.
‘I’m interested to find out a little more about the family,’ began Esme. ‘Sir Charles was married with a daughter, I believe?’
‘That’s right. I never knew her, though, if that’s what you’ve come about.’
‘Who’s that? The wife or the daughter?’
‘Neither, as it happens. Of course there was all the gossip and that when I first started, but it all happened before my time.’
‘Gossip?’
Albert completed the line of pots on the bench in front of him and started a new one on the shelf above. ‘I don’t remember much. I was only a young lad, you see. It had just happened when I went there.’
He seemed to assume she already knew much more than she actually did.
‘You’ll have to fill me in a bit, Mr Jennings, I’m afraid. I’m not quite –’
‘Albert.’
‘Albert,’ she repeated. ‘You said it had just happened when you went there. What was it that had just happened? Where?’
‘At the Brighton house. I was there with old Fred on some errand or other from up here. Only for a few days, like. I hadn’t long started, see. And the missis had been at Brighton since I’d been started. So, like I said, I never knew her.’
Esme tried to grasp what he was saying but it didn’t make sense. She decided to start at the beginning.
‘What year did you start working for the family?’
‘1939.’
Before the fire, then. ‘And something happened soon after, while you were in Brighton?’
‘The women was on about it for weeks, but it didn’t mean much to me, not never seeing her. She was the little ’un wasn’t she? Catherine.’
‘The daughter, you mean? Her name was Catherine?’ Esme fished out a notebook from her bag and noted the name.
‘That’s right.’ Albert turned towards her. He leant against the bench and folded his arms across his chest, expertly avoiding resting his soiled hands on his shirt. He chuckled.
‘I do remember there being a bit of a kerfuffle. It must have been the day after, I’m pretty sure. Yes, that’s right.’ He wagged a grubby finger in the air. ‘A young girl got the sack. I dunno what for, but I’m sure it was something to do with her ladyship and the little ’un going off.’ He smiled to himself at the memory. ‘She was pretty sore about it, I can tell you. I was rather glad she was going, I remember thinking at the time: wouldn’t want to get in to her bad books, I thought. She’d already walloped me one for leaving a muddy footprint on ‘er clean floor.’
‘What did you mean about her ladyship and the little one going off? They left?’
‘Buggered off the day before, apparently. Went abroad, so they say. Her ladyship had family somewhere foreign. India, I reckon it was. Left a note for his lordship, like, and was never heard of again.’
‘Never?’
Albert shrugged. ‘Not as I know, anyhow.’
‘How old was Catherine when this happened?’
He scratched his head. Getting compost in his hair clearly didn’t incur the same wrath as on his shirt. ‘Ooh, now you’re asking. Couldn’t a been more than a few month old, from what they all said.’
Esme had a sudden thought. Was Polly the member of staff who had been sacked? Was that why she was trying so desperatly to avoid talking about the past? Maybe she had been ignominiously sent away without references. It wouldn’t support the theory of a legacy for long service, but they already had their doubts on that one.
‘The girl who was sacked,’ she said, ‘was she called Polly Roberts?’
Albert shook his head.
‘But you do remember Polly Roberts?’
Another shake. Esme frowned. So much for Albert throwing light on Polly’s background. Had her journey been a waste of time?
She tried another direction. �
��Do you remember the name of the girl who was sacked?’
Albert laughed. ‘Are you joking? It was over fifty years ago!’
Esme smiled. ‘Sorry, that was asking a bit much.’
‘Hang on a minute, though. Now you come to say…’ He began tapping his forehead with a grubby finger. Suddenly he pointed at her. ‘Griffin. That’s it.’ He seemed quite excited. ‘Mary, I think. That’s right. Mary Griffin.’
Esme was sceptical. ‘Are you sure? As you said, it was a long time ago.’
‘She had the same name as my cousins. I remember having the horrible thought that she was a relative or something, though I’d never seen her before.’
‘I don’t suppose you know what happened to her?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea. Went back to where she came from, I s’pose. Probably back up here. There’s lots that went down there as ‘ad worked up here, you know, over time.’
Esme noted the name Mary Griffin in her book and dropped it back in her bag. Wasn’t that so-called friend who’d recently visited Mrs Roberts called Mary? She’d have to check. It might just be a coincidence. Mary wasn’t an unusual name. ‘Well, thank you, Albert. You’ve been very helpful.’
Albert acknowledged her gratitude with a nod and turned his attention back to his plants. ‘You with the other bloke?’ he asked nonchalantly, facing away from Esme now.
‘Do you mean the journalist who did the piece in the paper?’ asked Esme to his back.
‘Nah, not him. He only wanted to know what the old place was like before it burned down. No, him as was trying to find the little ’un.’
Esme frowned. ‘You mean Catherine? When was this?’
Albert stood up and stared out into the garden. ‘Now let me see. Got to be a fair few months back now.’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t remember now. Never mind.’ He went back to the bench and began scooping compost into the next pot. ‘Well, now, if you don’t mind, I’d better be getting on.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Esme, her thoughts galloping. She turned to go, then paused. ‘This person? Did he say who he was?’
‘Some sort of investigator. Private. Like on the tele.’
Blood-Tied Page 9
