‘Very well, Inspector, I’ll tell you,’ said Edith sounding almost weary. ‘Goodness knows it will be a relief to have it all out in the open, if only just between these walls, as you say. I suppose you would like me to start at the beginning and the beginning is a very long time ago, some thirty years.’
‘We were all friends then, Inspector,’ Sir William joined in. ‘Edith, Constance, Marjorie, Henry and I. The girls had all gone to school together, as had Henry and I, and we spent all our holidays together at the insistence of our parents who were keen that we should marry. Constance and Marjorie’s parents were keen that they should marry men of title or social standing, and both mine and Henry’s parents were keen that we should marry the Bellingham sisters due to the money that they would bring with them into such an alliance; their family really was obscenely wealthy, you know.’
‘I was just the poor relation, there on sufferance,’ continued Edith. ‘But what they never expected, particularly as I was shy and plain in comparison with the beautiful and accomplished sisters, was that I and Henry, Lord Belvedere, should fall in love. We kept our relationship a secret because we knew it would be frowned upon. But then I found that I was with child.
‘I was frantic, as you can imagine. I knew that Henry’s family would be furious and my own mother disappointed, but I assumed they would let us marry. After all, I came from a good family, if a poor one. But I made the fatal mistake of confiding in Marjorie before I had even told Henry. Even after all this time, I’ve often wondered what made me do it. I was always far closer to Constance, you see, but Marjorie was a little older than us and always seemed sensible and worldly wise. She promised to help me, but instead she took the opportunity to use my misfortune for her own ends so that I never saw Henry again until this weekend. She went at once to Henry’s mother and told her. Between them they arranged that Henry never received any of my letters, which were growing more desperate by the hour, and I in turn never received his. Marjorie told Henry I no longer had any feelings for him and she told me that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me and the baby. I was distraught. I informed my mother, who took me to the continent so that I might have my baby secretly and give it up for adoption. While there, I had the great good fortune to meet Harold who, despite being informed by my mother of my condition, proposed marriage and said that he was happy to bring up the child as his own. As you can imagine, I jumped at the chance to keep both my child and my reputation. We were married soon after and then returned to England, at which point I discovered, on reading my first English newspaper for months, that Marjorie had married Henry.’
‘Do I take it then that Lord Belvedere never knew about the child? How did you learn of Lady Belvedere’s deception?’ The inspector looked at Edith, keenly.
‘Her old lady’s maid wrote to me about it a couple of years ago. She felt guilty for the part she herself had been made to play in the deception. She was on her deathbed and wanted me to know the truth so that she could make peace with her maker.’
‘Until this weekend, when was the last time that you saw the earl and countess?’
‘I never saw either of them again, inspector, until this weekend. Our paths never crossed. I never seemed to be invited down to stay at Ashgrove at the same time as the Belvederes; I suppose that was your doing, William?’ Sir William nodded.
‘I guessed, you see,’ said Sir William in reply to the inspector’s quizzical look. ‘Cedric looked far too like Robert for it to be just coincidence. When Cedric came to stay one time when he was six or seven, I looked out a photograph of Robert at a similar age. They looked identical; they could have been the same child. Henry had confided in me years before about his relationship with Edith, so I asked her outright next time she came to stay.’
‘It was a relief to tell someone,’ admitted Edith. ‘I have never even told my husband who Robert’s father was. From the very start we pretended even to ourselves that Harold was his natural father. But I knew that I could trust William to keep my secret, I knew he would never betray me.’
‘When I discovered that Marjorie and Henry had invited themselves down this weekend, I tried to get Constance to put off your visit,’ admitted Sir William. ‘I was afraid what would happen if you all met again. But Constance wouldn’t listen to me. She assumed I was concerned about your meeting Cedric, not her sister and her husband.’
‘So I wasn’t imagining the likeness between Cedric and the photograph of your son,’ Rose said. ‘And it explains some other things too. When you fainted it was because you were shocked to see Lord Belvedere there, not Cedric, wasn’t it?’ Edith nodded. ‘And the earl was shocked to see you here too,’ continued Rose. ‘Lavinia said he was shaken, as if he’d seen a ghost, which I suppose he had.’
‘Even so,’ interjected Sir William, ‘I feel sure that he somehow knew you were going to be here and that’s why he accompanied his wife down this weekend. He hardly ever visits us, he prefers to shut himself away in his library at Sedgwick.’
‘Yes, he confessed as much to me on the one occasion that we spoke,’ confirmed Edith. ‘He wanted to know what had really happened, you see, all those years ago when I had to all intents and purposes just disappeared.’
‘Lady Belvedere was afraid of you when she first saw you,’ Rose said, remembering. ‘She must have been afraid that you were going to tell Lord Belvedere the truth.’
‘Yes, I felt quite powerful to begin with,’ said Edith, ‘but then I became nervous about telling Henry about Robert, and Marjorie always had a knack of intimidating people she considered weaker than herself. She began to make me feel timid and afraid, and I think she started enjoying my discomfort in the end because she began to feel safe. She didn’t think I’d have the nerve to tell Henry, you see.’
‘And I was worried about Edith,’ said Sir William. ‘I thought it was all making her quite ill. I was afraid you would get sick again, my dear. I fear, however, that my wife thought I was being over solicitous to you and misread my intentions. I will have to make amends to her.’
‘It explains why there was always a tension in the air at dinner,’ said Rose. ‘Everyone was tense, reading things into things which weren’t there, or just waiting for something to happen. On Saturday at dinner you said, Edith, that you weren’t well and stood up to leave; what happened then? Something did happen then, didn’t it, something that shocked the countess?’
‘Henry came to my rescue and put an arm around me so that I wouldn’t fall. He whispered that he was sorry about everything.’
‘So Lady Belvedere knew then that you had spoken to him? I think she sensed that she was in danger. Oh, I got it all so completely wrong, you know, in the beginning,’ admitted Rose. ‘I overheard your conversation with Sir William on the croquet lawn and assumed you were threatening to tell Lady Withers about your relationship with her husband. I thought he was urging you not to, when all the time what he was trying to do was to persuade you not to tell Lord Belvedere of the role played by his wife in having you disappear from his life and in keeping him in ignorance about his son.’
‘That explains our rather strange conversation over lunch that day on the croquet lawn,’ said Edith, looking relieved. ‘I thought you knew the truth having seen the photograph and overheard my conversation with William. I spoke far too freely then; I think I was rather delirious from the stress of it all. It was only when you mentioned my hating Constance that I realised you were still in the dark about it all.’
‘You spoke of the hurt that it would cause Harry, and I assumed at the time that you were talking about your husband, Harold,’ said Rose. ‘But then I happened to overhear Lady Withers talking to Stafford about Henry, meaning the earl. I’d only ever thought of him as Lord Belvedere before, but then I realised that everything made sense if, when you’d been talking about Harry, you’d been talking about Lord Belvedere.’
Deacon had been avidly following the dialogue between the three. Now he interjected.
‘I’
d like to know, though, what made you, Mrs Torrington and you, Sir William confess to Lady Belvedere’s murder.’
‘I couldn’t let you arrest Cedric, Inspector, and I knew if I didn’t do anything Henry would confess. I didn’t want him to do that because, you see, I felt it was all my fault. I realised, right from the very start, that he must have done it. I felt responsible. If I had only kept quiet, Lady Belvedere would still be alive today.’ Edith turned her head away. ‘And Henry, of course.’
‘I myself thought Edith had done it, Inspector, and I didn’t want to see a lady hang for the crime. And I’d promised to protect her, you see, no matter what,’ explained Sir William. The inspector looked at him impressed. There was more to this man than he had at first thought, although whether his nerve would have held all the way to the gallows, he’d never know.
‘William assumed straightaway that I had shot Lady Belvedere,’ said Edith. ‘That’s why he thought up that silly story about the poacher, to try and put you off the scent. The first opportunity he had to talk to me alone he asked me why I had done it and I said I had to. I meant tell Henry, of course, but he thought that I was confessing to the murder.’
‘This is all very well,’ said Deacon. ‘It explains why Lord Belvedere may in time have come to hate his wife, but I still don’t see what drove him to murder her this weekend.’
‘I doubt he would have done,’ said Edith, ‘if it hadn’t been for the photograph.’
‘And Cedric and me,’ Rose said quietly.
‘Yes,’ agreed Edith, shooting her a quick glance, ‘that too.’
‘Photograph?’ Deacon sounded confused.
‘Yes,’ Edith said. ‘But before I explain, I think I’d better go back to the Saturday morning. Despite what you may have thought at the time, William, I did heed your words. I wondered if I was being very selfish after all. It was obvious to everyone, I should imagine, that Henry and Marjorie were not close, but Henry seemed reasonably content immersed in his own little world of books. I wondered what would be gained by telling him the truth. To tell him in one breath that he had fathered a son that he had never known even existed, and then in the next breath to tell him that he would never lay eyes on his son because he had died on the battlefield, seemed cruel beyond belief.’
‘And yet you argued your case with me,’ reminded Rose, ‘even if we were talking at cross purposes.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Edith. ’It was when I was describing to you Marjorie’s privileged background, that she’d had everything she could possibly want, and yet she had not been satisfied. She had thought nothing of trampling on me to get what she wanted. The more I spoke about her, the angrier I became and I realised that I simply couldn’t just let her get away with it, I couldn’t. So I arranged to meet Henry on the croquet lawn once you had concluded your game, and I told him everything. I don’t propose to go into details, to tell you what we said to one another after all that time. Suffice to say that he was very shocked and sad, not to say angry; indeed there was much emotion on both sides.’ Edith broke off, a glazed expression on her face as if she was back there on the croquet lawn remembering their conversation.
‘And then you decided to show him the photograph of Robert,’ said Rose, ‘the one you carry around with you everywhere and showed me on the Friday.’
‘Yes.’ Edith seemed to falter, and Deacon wondered for a moment whether she would continue.
‘She’d damaged it, hadn’t she?’ Rose asked suddenly. ‘Lady Belvedere had somehow got hold of the photograph and done something awful to it. I think you knew it was a possibility. I remember you’d been showing it to me when the countess appeared unexpectedly; you quickly snatched it back and stuffed it into your bag. But you hadn’t been quick enough, had you? Lady Belvedere saw you do it and must have guessed who the photograph was of.’
‘I shouldn’t have put my bag down, I shouldn’t because she must have found it.’ Edith’s voice was rising dangerously. ‘She could have just taken it out of my bag and got rid of it. I’d have been none the wiser. I’d have probably thought I’d dropped it somewhere. But that wasn’t enough for her, she wanted to hurt me for threatening to upset the life she’d built for herself. What she probably hadn’t reckoned on was that I would only discover the fate of the photograph when I took it out to show Henry. She’d cut it up into fifty or so little pieces and stuffed them back into my bag so I would know it was her. I was distraught. It was the last photograph I had of Robert, taken a couple of days before he went off to war. She must have known it was irreplaceable, and I’m afraid I rather lost control. I screamed at Henry, told him exactly what I thought about the woman he had married, as I tried desperately to try and piece it together so that he would at least have an idea of what his son had looked like.’
‘And you told him about Cedric and me,’ Rose said, her voice hardly above a whisper.
‘Yes. I told him that Marjorie was going to ruin Cedric’s life as she had ruined his. I told him that his son had the possibility of happiness but Marjorie would do everything in her power to prevent a relationship from developing between you, that she’d prefer for her son to be in a loveless marriage so long as it brought wealth with it. Henry didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to. He just looked down at the ruined photograph and studied it for a moment before turning very pale and walking away. I didn’t even try and stop him from going; I think a part of me was glad that he was at last sharing a little of the pain that I’d endured. But I should have gone after him; I think I knew even then that he had decided to stop her.’
‘I suppose the idea of shooting his wife came to him when you showed everyone your duelling pistols that evening, Sir William,’ said Deacon. ‘He’d just found out that his wife had arranged to go on a walk with Miss Simpson the following morning, presumably to persuade her to leave, and he decided to act sooner than later. It was not a spur of the moment thing, of course. He had the whole night to think it through. But even so, I think he was shocked by what he’d done as soon as he had pulled the trigger. He certainly wasn’t thinking straight when he put back the gun because he hadn’t even wiped off his fingerprints. It explains why he seemed surprised to hear that there were no fingerprints on the gun when we interviewed him. He wasn’t to know after all that someone else had seen fit to wipe them off.’ Deacon paused to give Sir William a meaningful glance.
‘I’m sorry if I frightened you, my dear,’ Edith said to Rose. ‘I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to know if you had seen something that would implicate poor Henry. I so wanted him to get away with it, you see.’
Chapter Thirty-eight
‘Harold!’
Edith turned to face her husband. Except for the two of them, the house seemed unnaturally silent as if they were the only ones there, when Edith knew for a fact that Rose was gathering her things together in preparation for her own departure, Sir William was in his study, Lady Withers was in the drawing room with Lavinia and Cedric, and umpteen servants were milling around like busy ants behind closed doors ensuring that, whatever happened in the nature of catastrophes, Ashgrove, as a country house, would continue to run smoothly.
‘What are you doing here, Harold?’ Edith was poised on the bottom step of the stairs, her husband having just come into the hall. ‘I can’t come home, I can’t. When you know what’s happened, and that it was all my fault, you won’t want me to either.’
‘I know what’s happened, Edith,’ replied her husband, gently. ‘William telephoned me and told me everything. I’ve come to take you home. Then I’ll make the necessary arrangements so that you can divorce me.’
‘Oh, must I? Yes, I suppose I must.’
‘It’s what you want, isn’t it. I’ve always known that you only married me because of Robert. I hoped you’d come to love me. I loved him like my own son, Edith, truly I did. But when he died a part of you seemed to die with him. I wanted so much for us to share our grief, but I didn’t know how to and you seemed to shut me out as if it was your own pers
onal sorrow. I felt that I was intruding or being insensitive if I showed any sign of weakness. But I longed to cry for him as much as you did, truly I did.’
‘Oh, Harold,’ Edith leapt forward and clasped his hands in hers.
‘I knew Lord Belvedere was Robert’s natural father. Your mother hinted as much to me and then I saw the likeness when I looked in the society pages, between Cedric and Robert. I knew you never stopped loving him, I knew I was a poor substitute.’
‘You’re wrong, Harold, you were never that. I never realised until just now how very much more of a man you are than he was. I stopped loving him years ago, I realise that now, I just couldn’t forget about him until he knew about Robert.’
‘Then …’
‘I want to go home, Harold. But I don’t want a divorce. I want to be your wife, but this time I want it to be real. I want to live in the now, I’m tired of living in the past.’
‘Oh, Edith,’ And, with that, her husband took her in his arms, much to the surprise and delight of Lady Withers, who had just come out of the drawing room with the express intention of ascertaining once and for all from Edith her true relations with Sir William.
Half an hour later Rose descended the stairs. Edith and her husband were long departed and she was hesitating, weighing up the necessity of going in search of her hostess to thank her for her stay, against coming face to face with Lavinia and Cedric, who must surely harbour feelings of resentment towards her for the part she had played, admittedly unwittingly, in the tragedy that had unfolded. She wondered, given the very unusual circumstances, whether it wouldn’t be best for all those concerned if she just left without saying anything and then sent a note. As she was considering this option, which was becoming more attractive by the minute, the drawing room door opened and Cedric came out.
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