After Clare

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Indeed you have, sir. A meeting, followed by several days in Brighton. But the meeting you attended began at six and ended at eight. Plenty of time to get here and back to London in time to get the last train to Brighton. I might add that on the same night, as well as the lights, a motor was seen here at Leysmorton.’

  It was not only Stronglove’s hands which were trembling now – it ran through his whole body. He looked agitated. He put a hand to his chest, as though he were having difficulty breathing.

  ‘Are you not well, Mr Stronglove?’

  ‘No, he is not!’ Marta cried, springing up. ‘I told you before you started all this—’

  ‘Marta, don’t, I’m well enough . . . don’t say any more.’

  ‘I will, Dirk! The whole of the village could confirm that we weren’t here that night,’ she said wildly. ‘Everyone would have known if we had been. A motor going through Netherley is enough to alert everyone.’

  ‘But not,’ Novak said, ‘if you had skirted the village and arrived here by means of that back road, the one they call Courting Lane, that runs along the back of the house. I believe you drove along the lane – a hazardous undertaking, I might say, considering the surface, and—’

  ‘Yes, indeed, have you seen the state of that lane?’ Marta interrupted scornfully. ‘No one with any sense would risk driving down there.’

  ‘Not unless they were a skilled driver. And you’ve driven on worse roads than that, haven’t you, Miss Heeren? It’s nothing to the roads in France, when you drove an ambulance full of wounded men.’ She could not fail to know what he meant: appalling roads made worse by shell craters, often filled six feet deep and more with Flanders mud; under enemy fire, in pitch darkness, trying to avoid the worst of the craters as well as abandoned, shattered machinery and vehicles, and sometimes the bodies of men already dead, lying where they had fallen.

  At that point Stronglove gave a groan of something like despair, and made a tremendous effort to speak. He took off his spectacles and this time left them off. The effect of his dark eyes, black as coal in his white face, was alarming. ‘Marta . . . too late for lies . . . Yes, we did come back that night . . .’ He was gasping, unable to form a proper sentence. ‘I killed Peter . . . hit him . . . the poker . . . written all down, my study . . .’ He stood up, staggered dizzily and sat down again, almost missing the chair, retching a little. His skin looked clammy and grey and his lips had a leaden tinge. A thin trickle of vomit escaped from the corner of his mouth and he tried to pull his handkerchief from his trouser pocket to wipe it away, only to collapse, falling forward over the table.

  Marta gave a sort of sobbing scream. ‘He needs a doctor! My God, you’ve killed him with all this – he’s had a stroke!’

  Willard, galvanized into action, took over. In two strides he was bending over Stronglove, feeling his pulse. After a moment, he looked up and shook his head. Novak took hold of Marta’s arm. ‘It’s too late, Miss Heeren. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I’m very much afraid Mr Stronglove is dead.’

  Her face almost the colour of his, she stood like one turned to stone, staring petrified at her brother, the handkerchief he had reached for hanging half out of his pocket, and at what had been pulled out with it – a trickle of small scarlet berries that lay scattered on the floor.

  ‘What are those, Miss Heeren?’

  ‘Don’t touch them. They’re yew berries. He’s eaten some of them deliberately. He did it to save me.’

  The blank stoniness that had come over Marta after that last despairing utterance had given way to an agitated restlessness, as they gathered in Dirk’s study. Emily, arriving back a few minutes ago after dinner at Steadings, had walked into a situation she still couldn’t comprehend. ‘Let me get you a drink, Marta. Take those pills the doctor’s given you and you’ll feel calmer.’

  ‘It’s nonsense,’ Marta said suddenly, addressing Novak as if Emily hadn’t spoken, jerking a hand towards the sheet of paper, the ‘confession’ Dirk had written. ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘I know it isn’t, Miss Heeren,’ Novak said. ‘I know. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on. Of course your brother couldn’t have killed Peter Sholto. Physical constraints apart, he wasn’t even here, was he? He was on his way to Brighton. It was you who murdered him, arranged it all.’

  The words made no impact. She seemed to have forgotten, or obliterated from her mind, what she had said when she had seen those berries, scattered like drops of blood across the carpet.

  Emily looked up in shocked protest. She had been told that Dirk had killed himself by eating yew berries, chewing not only the harmless outer red flesh but the deadly inner seed as well. Shocking enough in itself, but now, it seemed, Novak was accusing Marta of murdering Peter Sholto. She felt out of her depth, someone who had no business to be here. She scraped back her chair.

  ‘Leave if you wish to, Lady Fitzallan,’ Novak said shortly, as if she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. ‘I’d advise you to remain, however – there are things you need to hear. If you do stay, please try not to interrupt.’ She sat down again rather abruptly. Willard nodded reassuringly at her and turned a page of his notebook.

  Novak turned back to Marta. ‘Is there anything you wish to say, Miss Heeren, about your brother’s confession?’

  ‘Confession!’ she repeated scornfully. ‘Dirk was ill, he didn’t know what he was saying.’

  ‘Tell me about the night Peter Sholto was killed.’

  ‘I know nothing. We weren’t here.’

  ‘Very well, if you won’t tell me, then it’s up to me to spell it out.’ Novak paused and then began patiently to go over the version of events he believed to be the truth. ‘I think Peter Sholto, when he was due to be demobbed, let you know that he was not about to relinquish his claim to be the grandson of Clare Vavasour.’ He turned round at Emily’s involuntary exclamation, ready to silence her, but the shock had robbed her of speech, or even the volition to get out of her chair and leave the room. He gave her a steady look, then turned back to Marta. ‘The war had put a suspension on his blackmailing activities, but you knew that when he was demobbed, he would start again. So you wrote and told him that you, too, had discovered – and destroyed – the “proof” he had told you he’d found and hidden.’

  An oddly contemptuous smile sat on Marta’s face, but he went on, ‘In fact that was a lie, you had never even seen it, but it was enough that he might be afraid you had. But he didn’t react as you thought. He immediately absconded without leave in order to confront you. When he arrived here, he telephoned you in London, didn’t he? You didn’t expect that, but in fact it suited you rather well – your brother was off to spend the weekend in Brighton, which left you free to deal with the situation alone.’

  ‘You believe this! You know that!’ The scorn was oddly reminiscent of her brother. ‘How do you know anything?’

  The truth was, Novak didn’t know, but he was sure that was more or less how it had happened, and that was the line he was going to take. ‘Your brother had been buying him off, not to press the claim. In actual fact, had Mr Stronglove known it, there was no danger to his inheritance from that quarter. Peter had no rights, legal or otherwise, to any of his grandmother’s inheritance. He need not have worried.’

  ‘What?’ The smile left Marta’s face. She looked suddenly dazed.

  Unrelated facts, fears, suspicions were whirling with dizzying speed through Emily. That letter from Christian Gautier, its implications . . . a child . . . Dirk’s unexplained visit to her in Madeira – was that to find out if Peter had already been in contact with her? Had Peter’s death been planned, even then? But Novak had said Peter had no claim . . .

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Miss Heeren?’

  Marta’s glance had become unfocussed. ‘You will never be able to prove anything.’

  ‘In that case, we shall have no alternative than to use Mr Stronglove’s signed confession.’

  For a moment her chin lifted in defiance and it l
ooked as though she might be going to challenge him, but she held tightly onto the arms of her chair, breathing deeply, while the spark went out of her, as if a light had been switched off. At last she said dully, ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now.’

  ‘Then tell me what happened.’

  For a moment her old stubbornness appeared. Then her tongue flickered out to moisten her dry lips and she began to speak in a flat monotone. ‘We share a garage in London with a neighbour, an American. He was visiting in New York and he’d left the keys of his flat and his motor with us. It’s a black Siddeley. When Peter telephoned, I drove it here.’

  She stood up and began a restless pacing, moving round the room, touching familiar objects. After a moment she went on. ‘He was waiting when I arrived. He said he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so we went into the kitchen and I opened a can of soup, and while it was heating up, I poured him a glass of my wine.’ An unpleasant sense of self-congratulation broke through as she added, ‘He drank it straight down – he really should have known better. I poured him another and he drank that down, too. And then he . . . just fell asleep.’

  ‘What did you put into it?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said, giving him a sly look. ‘He was slumped in his chair and – it was easy. I came up behind and hit him over the head.’

  ‘You hit him over the head with the poker. Just like that.’

  ‘No,’ she corrected. ‘The flat irons were on the hearth, as usual. I used one of them.’ She looked directly at Novak and now her eyes were brimful of malice. ‘He deserved it.’

  Emily closed her eyes against the horror she was hearing. Why, she asked herself, why? She opened her eyes and found Marta staring at her, those round eyes unnaturally bright, like polished pebbles, and when she spoke it was almost as though she had heard Emily’s silent question. ‘I used to love Peter, you know. But when somebody does the sort of thing he was doing to Dirk, you begin to hate them. All the more, for once having loved them. It was what he deserved,’ she said again.

  ‘Marta—’

  Novak said, ‘Peter’s body was found a long way from the house. How did you get him there?’

  She passed a hand across her eyes. ‘I don’t remember. Oh yes – in my wheelbarrow, of course. I put him by the yew tree. The ground was too hard to dig, but I did cover him up.’

  She was a strong woman. It would have been difficult, but not impossible, for her to do as she said she had done – lay him on the ground and throw the bricks over him, tussle with the old tree house planks.

  Her pacing had brought her to Dirk’s desk. She looked wild and disorientated, gazing down at it until all of a sudden she said, quite clearly, ‘It was the doll, wasn’t it, that made you suspect me? When I saw you showing the doll to her.’ She nodded in a dismissive way towards Emily.

  ‘You put Hildegarde there?’ Emily said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ she returned impatiently. ‘It was only a doll. I opened a cupboard and it fell out, all arms and legs and bits and pieces.’ She laughed again, then the confusion returned. ‘Poor baby!’ she went on. ‘I didn’t have a shawl so I wrapped her in that fur tippet – little babies should be kept warm . . .’

  Something very dark had entered the room. Emily’s scalp crept. Marta was looking, and sounding, more than a little mad. ‘She never felt the cold, or the sun, you know. They took her away, my baby, my little dead baby, and they wouldn’t tell me where her grave was. But this time I found a place myself, one where babies would be safe.’

  Emily tried to smother the horror she felt. ‘A safe place in the Hec—in that tree. Why, Marta?’

  ‘What? Oh, Nanny Bunting was always going on about how her dear little girls used to play there, how Clare used to hide things in it. They were very pampered children, you know, Inspector,’ she said spitefully. ‘Spoilt. Allowed to do what they wanted. Pretty clothes their mama brought home from London for them, all the toys they wanted. They left a whole cupboard full of dolls behind.’ She shook her head, then added in quite a normal voice, ‘I – I wasn’t myself at the time. But I still had Dirk, didn’t I? And then he killed himself to try and save me, when I only did it for him.’

  Novak knew what he had to do, the words he had to say, but for the moment, hearing the desolation, looking at the woman before him, he couldn’t bring himself to utter them. Willard coughed. And Novak began, ‘Marta Heeren, I—’

  She laughed again then, shockingly, a harsh, grating laugh, and without warning she kicked the desk chair over violently and then, panting, her hand lunged out and the heavy, cut-glass inkwell was knocked over, ink spreading across the green leather surface, and everything else on the desk was swept to the floor. Except for the Chinese tobacco jar which teetered on the edge while its lid rolled off and the yew berries Dirk had left in it spilled out.

  For a moment there was a stunned silence, then quick as a flash she bent and scooped up a handful. But before she could get them to her mouth, Novak’s hand was round her wrist. There was a long silence as little by little they trickled to the floor, and after that she said, ‘Take me away from this place. I never want to see it again. I have nothing left now.’

  Twenty-Four

  ‘This was where she worked, then?’

  He walked around the little room, focussing on every detail, and Emily sat on the window seat and watched him, liking what she saw. A careful, scrupulous, kindly man, Edmund Sholto, she thought. She saw white hair that had probably once been fair, a pale face, his eyes. Half an hour ago, he had been a stranger to her, but the green-gold of his eyes had given her the truth. She had wanted to say, ‘I would have known you anywhere. You have your mother’s eyes. Tell me about her. Tell me all about Clare.’ But it had been too soon to say that, just then. She was only too grateful that he had agreed to come and see her.

  This first meeting had been painful so far, in view of the circumstances: the tragic death of his son, the appalling events surrounding it, the police enquiries and everything that had emerged out of them, leading to the revelations about Clare. They had circled around both subjects, neither wishing to hurt the other, and now, all that surmounted, they were left in an awkward hiatus.

  It was Emily who took the first step, a literal pace towards him, smiling and extending her hands. ‘For your mother’s sake, I hope we are going to be friends. We are the last of the Vavasours, you know.’

  ‘My name is Sholto, Lady Fitzallan,’ he said evenly.

  With no hesitation she answered, ‘Of course, and mine is Emily, Edmund.’

  They regarded each other gravely. Then he smiled. ‘She would have preferred me to call her Clare, too, though I never did.’ He slid a hand into his pocket.

  Emily looked at the snapshot of Clare, wearing a loose smock and an unfashionably long skirt, her hair inadequately bundled under a wide straw hat. She was standing before her easel in a flower-dotted meadow with a paintbrush in her hand, and the photographer had caught the rapt absorption on her face. No longer the young face Emily remembered, but still, in her thirties, recognizably Clare’s.

  ‘I was lucky,’ Edmund said lightly. ‘As I snapped her, she realized what I’d been doing and that was the end of it. She would never have her photograph taken, and she ordered me to destroy the negative, but I wasn’t going to get rid of the only photos I was ever likely to have of my mother.’

  Emily could not take her eyes off the snapshot. Clare. The same slightly defiant tilt of the head, the same concentrated frown. Her eyes misted over, and he allowed her to recover herself while he leaned against the desk, his arms folded, and gently went over the story he had briefly told Novak – of Clare’s life among her artistic friends, her marriage to Ethan Sholto, a good man and a hard worker. She listened avidly, wanting to know all the details that would enrich what she already knew.

  ‘Life must have been very difficult for her, supporting a child. How did she live, Edmund?’

  ‘Until she married my father we were poo
r, yes, But she worked hard and scratched a living by selling sketches and watercolours to shops that sold those sorts of things to tourists, and painted other things solely for herself. What she did sell didn’t bring in much money.’ He stopped, looking at her intent face, her wide eyes. ‘I don’t want to distress you.’

  ‘Oh, please, go on,’ she urged. She was greedy for more, for every detail of Edmund’s early life with Clare in that small Cornish fishing village – which she noticed he always spoke of as ‘home’ – of the man he called father, and above all of Clare herself.

  ‘There’s a school for painters and an art gallery at Newlyn, which isn’t far away, set up by Stanhope Forbes, the artist. Her friends used to exhibit their paintings in the gallery, prior to submitting them to the Royal Academy, but she could never be persuaded either to show or submit hers, although I know now that she’d nothing to be ashamed of in her work – to the contrary, in fact. It was all part of the secrecy that pervaded her life, but everyone thought she was mad, including my father, though he never really understood art or even pretended to. But it made no difference. She went on selling what she called potboilers to the tourist shops as she always had, getting practically nothing for them and infuriating everyone with her stubbornness. The money didn’t really matter by then, of course.’

  Emily showed him the sketchbooks and everything else Clare had left behind, including all those obsessive depictions of the Hecate tree, and then went back to sit on the window seat, leaving him to look through them. Only one thing had she removed: the pen-and-ink drawing of the dark goddess herself – removed it and burnt it. She still didn’t know whether Clare had left her obsession with magic and Hecate behind, or passed it on to Edmund, and that particular drawing, which still disturbed her so much, was something she didn’t want him – or anyone else, for that matter – to see.

  Eventually, he came to stand by her at the window with the sheaf of drawings in his hand, gazing straight towards where the old yew stood, looking at it with some amusement. ‘Some size, isn’t it, that funny old tree? Interesting, though. I guess that’s why she had to draw it so many times. She was compulsive that way – she’d draw something a dozen times or more, simply to get it right. I like these drawings of it, though – may I keep one or two?’