A Death in Two Parts

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “Oh, goodness, what a lovely idea!” Patience felt a sheen of tears behind her eyes. “The bottle’s in the top drawer.” And, taking it: “What a kind child you are, Veronica.”

  “I intend to be.”

  It was good to be alone. She lay flat on her back for a while, thinking about nothing so far as she could manage it, then got up and went over to the little writing desk in the corner of the room and sat down to work out the details of her new will. Geoffrey had told her once that an entirely handwritten will – holograph, he had called it – would be legally valid. She made it short and clear. Her entire estate halved between Veronica, and Mark and Mary, who were to act as trustees for Veronica until she was twenty-five. Then she picked up the telephone by her bed and dialled Mrs Vansittart’s number.

  “I’m just nipping across the road to get Mrs Vansittart to witness my new will,” she told Veronica, emerging from her bedroom. “Her housekeeper’s there, so there are two of them.”

  “Ask her if she’s seen the dark lady again,” said Veronica.

  “Good idea. I will.”

  “And don’t let her keep you too long, gossiping. I’m sure the Black Stag expects its dinner guests in their handsome best.”

  “You’re bullying me again. I begin to think perhaps I like it.”

  “While it lasts,” said Veronica, and Patience crossed the road wondering what she meant.

  Mrs Vansittart rather thought she had seen the dark-haired woman somewhere in town, but was surprised that she had left no note and never returned to Patience’s house.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it? Thank you.” Patience picked up her duly witnessed document, smiling back at the cheerful housekeeper. “She must have changed her mind, for some reason, I suppose. And now I must run, Mrs Vansittart; I’ve cousins staying at the Black Stag. They turned up quite out of the blue, and Veronica and I are dining with them tonight.”

  “Such a delightful girl,” said Mrs Vansittart. “Not a bit like the mannerless teenagers we seem to get around here. I suppose blood will tell, whatever the circumstances. Forgive me, my dear.” She looked to make sure the housekeeper had duly closed the door behind her. “I’m glad to have a chance to tell you how wonderfully well I think you are behaving.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Patience, amazed, and fled.

  She found Veronica assembling bottles and glasses in the upstairs sitting room, already immaculate in long shirt and new jeans. “Will I do for the Black Stag?” she asked. “Wear your new trousers, Patience, please, to back me up!”

  “As if you needed it.” But time was short and it was the quickest possible change. Once again she admired the effect of the long red shirt, slung some black beads round her neck and went down to find Veronica rooting for crisps in the kitchen cupboard.

  “Cool,” she approved. “Golly, here they are!”

  Mary was in a long ethnic shirt over trousers, and Mark had put on a tie inside his casual jacket. “How nice you all look,” he said. “This is the best I can do. You’ll have to stand by me if the Black Stag turns up its nose. I wasn’t expecting formal dinners when I started out to meet Mary.” He handed a bottle of champagne to Veronica. “I told them to chill it, but you might put it in the deep freeze for a minute while you find us some glasses.”

  “Cool,” she said again. “I can cope, Patience, you go on up.”

  “What a nice child.” Mary settled on the small sofa with the view across the garden to tree tops.

  “Isn’t she?” said Patience. “I’m so lucky.” Mark seemed to have stayed downstairs with Veronica. And why not? “How did Mark get on with his telephoning?” She joined Mary on the sofa.

  “Pretty well. He had a longer chat than he had intended with Grisel, who had been to more meetings about good causes in the last few days than you and I have in our lifetimes.”

  “Speak for yourself.” Patience laughed. “My life was one long round of them when I was married to Geoffrey. Grisel’s out of the running then?”

  “Yes. And she said she hadn’t heard from Ludwig and Leonora for donkey’s years. Which means nothing either way. They never were a loving family.”

  “What about Seward?”

  “She’d been to see him just yesterday. He’s in a home in Wimbledon. She made it sound pretty horrible, Mark said. Everybody’s nightmare. But he certainly wasn’t loose down here trying to kill you.”

  “Which leaves Priss.”

  “Yes. And she was not answering her phone. The British Telecom lady took a message: Mark left this number. Better than the Black Stag. Then he tried Paul’s office: he’d just left, the girl said. But he’s been there seeing clients for the last few days. Mark managed to find that out casually. He left this number for him too.”

  “Number? For whom?” Mark appeared with a tray of champagne flutes, followed by Veronica with the bottle in its silver chilling jacket.

  “Paul Protheroe,” Mary told him. “I was telling Patience how you’d been getting on.”

  “Protheroe!” Veronica put down the bottle dangerously near the edge of the table. “But he’s the one—”

  “Which one?” Mark rescued the bottle and began to loosen the foil.

  “The one who handled Mum’s money! Who phoned me to say it stopped with her death. I didn’t know anything about it, see. Not till he phoned. It just came into the bank. And then, after she died, it didn’t. And, like, I did go and ask; it seemed pitiful not to, but they just said they didn’t know. It had come. It had stopped. End of story. Then there was this phone call, and a girl said, ‘I’ve Mr Protheroe for you’. And he came on and told me, oh so kindly, that the money stopped with Mum’s death. It was an annuity, he said, so of course it did. He treated me as if I was some kind of young fool. Well, I suppose I was. And, after, I couldn’t remember. The name, I mean. It was all such a shock; happened so fast. And then all Mum’s papers went on to the tip, so I couldn’t check up on anything. That’s when I went round the bend a bit.”

  “No wonder,” said Mark. “But you’re sure now that it was Protheroe?”

  “Dead sure. All I could think of was Fothergill. Well, that would figure, wouldn’t it?”

  “It certainly would,” said Mark. And then: “Patience, that’s told you something, hasn’t it?”

  “I’ll say it has. I can’t believe it! But of course I do. You remember, Paul Protheroe was my trustee. That’s when it all started. He took me out to lunch for my twenty-first and told me the money was all gone, used up on my education. My father had miscalculated, he said. Geoffrey and I always thought he had managed to embezzle it somehow, but Geoffrey said it wasn’t worth going after him about it. It would only be money into lawyers’ pockets, he said, so hard to prove fraud, and we had plenty from old Mrs Ffeathers. Just more misery for me, he said it would be. All the time he must have been using what he knew to blackmail Paul Protheroe. So when he needed to he could make him handle the funds for Veronica’s mother. And then, when the two of them died, it must have been the same thing all over again. Paul didn’t see why he should go on paying out good money to a girl who knew nothing about him. I suppose that must have been part of the arrangement with your mother, Veronica. That she wouldn’t tell you anything about where the money came from.”

  “I never asked,” said Veronica. “Why would I? I just grew up with it like that. And then, all of a sudden, she was dead. There was so little time, and the ward full of people, listening. She talked about Father, a bit, but not about money. I just held her hand, mostly.” She emptied her glass. “Well, she was busy dying.”

  “At least you were there, holding her hand,” said Patience, and there was a little silence.

  Mark broke it. “So, it’s the Protheroes,” he said.

  “Priss,” agreed Patience. “When Mrs Vansittart told us about the dark woman hanging around something tweaked in my mind. Do you remember that odd thing that happened to me years ago, before I ever came down to the Hall?” Again she spoke across Mary to Mark. “Bein
g framed for shoplifting? That was a young woman with dark hair. And that was something else Geoffrey was happy to drop.”

  “Priss was fair,” said Mary.

  “I expect she used a wig.” Mark shared out the last drops from the bottle. “But why would they have wanted to stop you coming to the Hall, Patience? Back then.”

  “They must have had some plan of their own. There’s no way your Uncle Joseph would have told either his wife or his daughter what he and the others were planning. Priss must have thought me a threat to her inheritance from the old lady. I do remember, Paul Protheroe went off in a great hurry after lunch that day when he told me I was broke. He must have had a date with her to set it up, if I agreed to go down to the Hall. He knew I wasn’t going to fetch the cape until just before my train left, so there would have been time. But I think she picked up the pearls to frame me with the day before. I remember the salesgirl was a bit puzzled about them. It really seemed a clear case,” she explained to Veronica. “The pearls were in the pocket of a fur cape I was picking up for Josephine Brigance, and this mysterious dark lady had told a salesgirl she had seen me steal them. Only luckily for me I’d met Geoffrey on the way in and he could vouch for me.”

  “Always Geoffrey,” said Veronica, and Patience thought: My God, he’s her father.

  There was another silence, broken this time by Mary. “Priss was the only one who kept in touch with people down here,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose she must have been down staying with her friends the Thompsons in Brighton. You did say you went shopping there, Patience? The two of you?”

  “Yes. That’s right. She could have seen us, drawn her own conclusions, and panicked.”

  “But how would she have known you were vulnerable like that, through the area?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. She was always nosy, Priss. Everyone knew I was buying this house, but of course it took a while before it was all settled. She could have posed as a prospective buyer and had a good look round. Maybe they were planning something anyway.” It was not a pleasant thought. “Actually, I remember the estate agent threatening me with a rival purchaser, but I just thought it was the usual form of pressure. One good thing your telephone calls will have done, Mark, bless you, will be to have warned her off, don’t you think? Now she and Paul know you two are here as witnesses and back-up?”

  “Glad to be useful,” said Mark. “Worth burning up the roads, wasn’t it, Mary? And now, it’s high time we went and ate our dinner or the Black Stag will refuse us admission. Let’s talk strictly about cabbages and kings, shall we? Too public there. Tomorrow will be time enough to think about the next stage.”

  “But I thought—” began Mary.

  “Such a mistake.” He sounded for the first time like the frivolous young man Patience remembered. “Thinking time tomorrow.” But as he helped Patience into her jacket she noticed him eyeing the tiny letter box she had meant to have replaced by a more postman-friendly one.

  She caught his eye. “Only a very small letter bomb,” she agreed. “But we’ll tape it up before we go to bed, just for luck.”

  Eleven

  That was a cheerful evening, with conversation seeming to flow spontaneously round the table, though Patience, on the alert for all kinds of reasons, noticed just how neatly Mark managed to give it a little shove forward when it was needed, and how careful he was to see that Veronica was not left out of things. But she was a young person very well able to hold her own, cheerfully ready with an opinion when she had grounds for one, but equally happy to listen or even to admit ignorance if necessary.

  Mark seemed to have been all over the world, and Mary had gone out to meet him whenever she could. “Between marriages,” she summed up her position lightly enough.

  “You make me feel a terrible stay-at-home,” Patience confessed over coffee. “Madeira at Christmas was quite far enough for Geoffrey.” She met Veronica’s eyes with a little pang of discomfort, wondering what she and her mother had done.

  “You’ll have to start travelling now.” Mark was firmly signing the bill. “Nothing in the world to stop you.”

  “You’re right. Shall we go somewhere really frivolous for Christmas, Veronica?” Why did the idea suddenly seem so depressing?

  Mary was looking at her watch. “I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have to start back to town at the crack of dawn for an appointment. I don’t like to leave you, Patience, but if Mark is staying for a bit you’ll be OK. It’s a consultant,” she explained. “I’ve waited long enough for the appointment; mustn’t miss it now. I’m sure it’s a false alarm, but better safe than sorry.”

  “Oh, Mary.” Patience reached out to clasp Mary’s hand for a long, close minute. “I wish you’d told me.” Impossible to ask for details now.

  “I did mean to.” They both remembered the fright Veronica’s paint had given them. “But I’m almost sure it’s all imagination really. It so often is.”

  “I do hope so. Promise to let me know what he says.”

  “Of course. I’ll want to hear about you, too. Myself, I still think you ought to go to the police.”

  “That’s what I say,” said Veronica.

  “Patience and I are going to talk it over in the morning,” Mark told her.

  “Not the morning,” said Patience. “I’ve fixed to go and see my solicitor.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Goodness, no. But I’m making a new will.”

  “Cutting us all out,” he said with satisfaction. “Good. The afternoon then. Let’s walk up the hill, if it’s half-way decent weather. I haven’t seen that view of yours for over forty years.”

  “And I’m going into Brighton,” said Veronica. “To see a man Mark knows, about my A levels. He thinks he might sneak me in.”

  “Oh, bless you, Mark,” said Patience and watched with an odd little tweak of the heart as Mark tucked Veronica into her jacket.

  Mark checked the area when he saw them home, and they taped up the letter box once they were inside, agreeing that they felt quite silly doing so. But Patience had a restless night just the same, waking from time to time out of an anxious dream she just could not remember.

  The telephone rang while they were at breakfast, and Veronica, nearer, picked it up. She said, “Mark,” on a rising note, and then: “Cool,” and, “Yes, I’ll tell her … That was Mark.” She smiled across the table. “He’s coming into Brighton this morning, said he thought he’d drop in on those Thompsons and find out, casual-like, if Priss really was staying with them. He’ll ring when he gets back, he said to tell you. And if I’m going to meet him at the station I must dash. Sorry to leave you with the dishes.”

  “They’re nothing.” But the house felt very empty after she had left.

  Mr Jones did nothing to cheer her up. He was appalled at the little she told him about Veronica. The mere fact of her existence shocked him quite enough, and Patience was glad indeed that she had decided to tell him nothing about how they had met. She had no intention of telling him about the attempt on her life either, which made it hard to explain her sense of urgency about the new will, though he brightened up at her mention of Mary and Mark. “The best of the lot,” he said. “I’m glad to hear you are back in touch with them. But it’s a sad business, Mrs Crankshaw, a sad, sad business. And, if I may ask, what are you going to say locally to explain Miss Lavolle if she is really going to stay with you?”

  “We talked it over, she and I, and she felt very strongly that only the truth would do. And I respect her for it, Mr Jones. So we told Mrs Vansittart, the other night. To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised that you were surprised today.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact Mrs Jones did say something last night. I am afraid I told her it was totally impossible.”

  “You owe her an apology, Mr Jones.”

  “I really believe I do. If I had not heard it from your own lips, Mrs Crankshaw … You are totally convinced?”

  “Totally. And when you see Miss Lavo
lle, so will you be. The likeness to Geoffrey is remarkable. She is in Brighton today, trying to fix up to take her A levels next year. She missed them this summer because she was nursing her mother. I’m afraid she has had a very hard time of it, and I feel I owe her everything I can do for her.”

  “But not so fast,” he pleaded. “Take time to think it over, Mrs Crankshaw, to get to know the girl. You know nothing about her after all.”

  “Oh.” Patience could not resist it. “Did Mrs Jones not hear about her grandfather?”

  “Her grandfather?”

  “Lavolle,” said Patience.

  “Not the Duke?”

  “Yes, the Duke.” She saw with satisfaction that, probably for the first time in her life, Veronica’s grandfather had been useful to her. Mr Jones might not be convinced, but at least he was working towards the belief that there must be something to be said for Veronica, however illegitimate. He agreed reluctantly to set about drafting the new will, and to put her holograph in his safe for the time being.

  On her way home she paused at the bank to discuss an account for Veronica, then dropped in to Leyning’s thriving delicatessen and bought the makings of a cold lunch in case Mark or Veronica, or both of them, should return in time.

  She waited in vain and was finally making herself a sandwich when the phone rang. Mark at last. But he was speaking from London, he told her.

  “I’m so sorry. My masters got me on my mobile and summoned me to an urgent meeting. I’m at Victoria, on my way to it. I’ll call you when I get back. Tonight, I do hope. No walk today, alas. Forgive me, Patience? And be careful, you and Veronica. Please.”

  Patience threw the sandwich into the bin and made herself a cup of coffee. She had just settled, elbows on table, to drink it, when the door bell rang. Idiotic to tell her to be careful. But it was probably Mrs Vansittart, or the milkman, or the erratic post.

  She recognised Priss at once, though she had changed enormously from the plain, downtrodden daughter at home. The mousy hair had auburn highlights now, and a very expensive cut, and the charcoal grey suit had come straight off the catwalk. As Patience hesitated, remembering Mark’s warning, Priss spoke.