The Antique Dealer's Daughter

by Lorna Gray

  Duckett. I was shaken. I barely needed to say his name aloud. Richard said absolutely nothing. He simply returned the fragment to the pile on the surface of the turbine and turned his attention to the scorched remains of paper that oozed soggily over the rim. I knew what they would be. They’d suffered more from the effects of the water than my clothes had, but if even a tiny fragment had retained its legibility, I knew it would reveal a note written in John’s extravagant hand, recording rents accrued and expenses made by the estate for the comfort of his tenants.

  My whisper was lamentably hoarse. ‘Duckett set this fire. That’s why it’s different. There’s no vegetable garden here. And this place was locked. This isn’t Abbey’s usual dramatic attempt to expunge all traces of his lair.’ Then, more edged, ‘Was this left by Duckett as a warning for me? Because of what I did today? I thought he’d understood that I wasn’t involved in the game Abbey’s playing with the nerves of his wife.’ The remaining debris in my hand was wiped away as if it were poison.

  Suddenly Richard’s arm was around me and as quietly secure as it had been under the arches of the hospital porch. This time he didn’t let me go again. ‘No, Emily. I—’

  I swept on in a whisper of disbelief, ‘Is this supposed to embarrass me? Is this meant to capitalise on Mr Winstone’s silly joke about my face being the only features he can remember from that evening of the attack? Is Duckett trying to prove I did it by forcing my connection to this site? Because how can Duckett have possibly heard enough of Mr Winstone’s comments to think this would work? I mean, I can accept Duckett might have heard of the attack on Mr Winstone, but if he knows where it happened and he knows to use me here …’ I stopped on a shiver of doubt. I didn’t like where these thoughts were going. Because even on the hope that Duckett might discredit my witness statements with this fire to the extent that no word of mine would ever be believed again, all he was really doing here was risking incrimination himself. Particularly when I’d seen the culprit that evening on Mr Winstone’s path and he wasn’t Duckett. He’d been tall and dark-haired.

  I asked, without really believing it myself, ‘Is this supposed to make Abbey culpable for the theft from the Manor as well as all the rest?’

  Richard turned me with him as the torchlight played one last time over the building around us. I watched what he watched. There was nothing else here but the remains of a fire that had been deliberately set and then decisively extinguished supposedly for the purpose of leaving a perfect reminder of the connection between me and the violence in this place.

  Richard’s reply was rough with the hush of night-time, deliberation in every word now. ‘No. He must know it just won’t stick. You saw Duckett take your case. He must at least suspect that I’ve deduced he took those ledgers at the same time. He certainly saw the policeman visit you at the cottage that day. And if we hadn’t told PC Rathbone then, Duckett must presume that after his little effort down by the docks today we’d take a pretty dim view of any further threat to your welfare.’

  ‘So he is hoping to discredit me and incriminate Abbey.’

  Richard just held me and said nothing.

  ‘Richard,’ I began. My hand was gripping his clothing again, only this time, since there wasn’t a convenient lapel to clasp, my fingers had twisted themselves into a knot with the woollen jumper somewhere about his middle. My hand adjusted its grip restlessly. It came with a sudden reluctant concession to the doubt that had been building in Richard all the way through this madcap night-time excursion. I finally said what he needed me to say. ‘You don’t think this has been left here for me or Abbey at all, do you?’

  ‘I don’t believe it has, no.’

  He left me the silence in which to accept that and the first of its unhappy implications. Then, bewilderingly, he reverted to talking about Abbey. He told me swiftly and quietly, ‘Danny Hannis found two of Abbey’s lairs today. After the funny little incident this morning where you chased Abbey through the house, it occurred to Hannis to take a good look at all our buildings and outbuildings for signs we’ve been harbouring this man. After all, our – or I should say Mrs Cooke’s – vegetable garden has been obliterated. And as predicted, Hannis found signs of a style of living room in the darkest corner of the watershed.’

  ‘No bed?’

  ‘Quick again, Emily. No, there was no sign of a bed. And he hasn’t slept in the hayloft above the stables either, where Hannis found similar signs of a little lair at the very back where Abbey’s been lounging away his days amongst the old musty hay. He hasn’t been sleeping in the house so wherever his night-time haunt is, it isn’t the Manor. When I saw the electricity go out tonight and then the smell of smoke followed it, I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly thought I knew enough of Abbey’s habits to discount the expectation that this would be just another fire in the style of the blazes set in other outhouses. Those have been the beacon trail left by a hunter who is drawing closer to his quarry and making a very bold statement about destruction. This blaze, I can see now, was a token gesture. Desperate, ill-thought-out and amateur at that.’

  He was discounting the arsonist from this act. But all the same, Abbey’s name rang on and on.

  My gaze was fixed fiercely on absolutely nothing except the memory of how reluctantly Mrs Abbey had been named between us this morning in the car. I remarked grimly, ‘I ought to be asking how Duckett even heard enough of the details of Mr Winstone’s assault to know what it would mean to leave this kind of mess, oughtn’t I? You heard Duckett tell me how he knew to find me at the cottage, didn’t you? And in just the same way, she must have told him about Mr Winstone’s assault. Duckett told me today that she’s a very old friend. He called her Florence.’

  ‘You’re reading this as a battleground between an old love and the new?’

  I conceded, ‘I really do want to presume Mrs Abbey must have persuaded Duckett to do this, just as she told him I was harbouring her husband. It’s possible that she enlisted Duckett’s help and that she brought him to set this fire.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I can’t stop thinking how that man – Duckett – was a bully to me earlier.’

  I felt his hand tighten its grip fractionally. I turned my head. His profile was being thrown into exciting shadows by the torchlight. I told him in a clearer voice, ‘Duckett is obsessed with the idea of betrayal, Richard. It begins with the treachery that led Abbey to thieve rationed goods and it ends with a new kind of treachery of the sort that leads a former prison inmate to haunt his wife and children. Duckett says it is all being done for little purpose other than revenge for the fact that Abbey lost his stake in the business, and then he lost his wife. Duckett is terrified that Abbey is going to target him next. You saw how Duckett handled his conversation with me because he perceives me as a part of the threat. Perhaps Mrs Abbey had to tell Duckett that I was harbouring her husband because otherwise Duckett would have decided she was betraying him too. Perhaps he wanted to leave a little challenge for you after your intervention today. It’s possible, isn’t it, that she told him about Mr Winstone’s attack here and said that this place belonged to the Manor and now he’s used my clothes to leave a warning for you because he hates that you intervened earlier and he suspects you’re helping Abbey too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps we should ask Danny Hannis.’ It burst out of me almost angrily. All these perfectly viable suggestions and Richard was contradicting every single one. ‘You have to consider it a possibility that Danny knows more about her feelings than he’s willing to admit. It’s very convenient that he’s been using that hay loft for months now while he feeds that poor blighted goat and now, today, he’s miraculously made the sudden discovery that Abbey has been using it as his daytime lair.’

  I was thinking about the way Danny had kept his connection to Mrs Abbey secret. I was thinking about all the furtive exchanges the pair of them had made in Mr Winstone’s house on my first night here. And lastly I was remembering how my cous
in had looked as she’d watched him walk past the kitchen window. And I was adding to the effect the information that he had been in the library with Richard only a few minutes before and had learned Phyllis was there, and had still emphatically decided to avoid her.

  Richard’s voice was very gentle. ‘Emily, when I spoke to Hannis earlier, he said something to me that I think you should know. As well as giving me a sound ticking off for keeping you here and lecturing me, not unreasonably, on the Langton history when it comes to ruining innocent peoples’ lives, he growled something along the lines of ‘and you had to embroil her too, didn’t you?’ He was referring to your cousin Phyllis.’

  It was a new small rescue.

  Richard was firmly drawing my mind back from constructing its own horrible list of betrayals. I gave an involuntary shiver against the warmth of his body, not because it displeased me to hear Danny was angry that we’d rescued Phyllis from her hospital bed, but because if I’d been wrong and Danny wasn’t another man who belonged to Mrs Abbey, it meant nothing else could stand between me and a return to the wretched knowledge of what this really meant. I was back in that awful conversation in the car and the discovery that this man beside me was highly conscious that something was building around him and himself specifically. Only this time, instead of feeling alienated and confused, I could feel the full force of his arm around me and he didn’t want to let me go.

  I felt Richard’s jaw brush against my hair as he led me to what must be said. ‘This was meant for others to find tomorrow. I was supposed to learn about it after the wide-eyed public and the police had waded in, as they inevitably will when the sun comes up and the farmhands start their walk to work. Instead, I’ve managed to come and see what they’ve left and I don’t like that it seems designed to work around your name.’

  A fresh chill ran beneath my skin. That last part didn’t matter – surely no policeman worth their salt could possibly read this as proof that I had anything to hide, and I wasn’t prepared to worry about what that journalist might say about me before this particular well ran dry. But the rest was unshakeable. Richard wasn’t going to remove what we’d found, but all the same this was why he’d brought me along on this night-time trip and it was why he’d hesitated too, at that last gateway by the farmyard. It was an extension of the impulse that had driven him to attempt to put me on the train earlier. Now he’d committed himself to letting me understand the truth before the world rushed in and, knowing him, the decision wasn’t selfish at all.

  I drew an unhappy breath. Proceeding very cautiously so that he should have full room to silence me if he wished, I asked in an oddly flat little voice, while my heart beat in strong painful strokes, ‘Richard? What did she say to you when you drove her to the doctors?’

  I felt him stiffen. Then with deliberate steadiness, he told me, ‘You said before that you thought Mrs Abbey might be the victim here. For what it’s worth, in some ways I agree even now.’

  There was no sound but the distant rushing of the stream, no feeling but the warmth of his arms and his body and the touch of his cheek to my hair in the pause before he added, ‘In the car this morning, I asked her frankly what had happened to leave that bruise. I thought it might give her the idea of not being left alone to face Abbey or Duckett or whoever struck her. Her reply was to tell me about the snow last March because she thought I would be interested to know that the harvest will be poorer than usual. Apparently, the awful weather meant that they had to put the seed in late.’

  That last part had come with the wry delivery that would normally belong to the punch line of a bad joke. I was bewildered. I’d expected some lurid demand or a slander, or something. ‘You think she was protecting the ears of her children?’

  ‘On the contrary, I think she was keen to draw my attention to them and with John’s name ringing in my ears. I believe the mention of the bad spring was as close as she dared come to another mention of my brother, given the audience.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Suddenly I was away from him and breaking through the battered doorway. Outside was better. The air was free of unhealthy fumes and there were stars and the hard glare of the torch could be put out. He’d followed me. I hadn’t been running from him. I stopped as my feet met the rougher terrain of the sheep-grazed hillside. He was with me. I could see his profile just slightly above me but the dark meant he couldn’t read my expression as I listened to him observe without a trace of accusation, ‘You’ve known about her claims of an affair for some time, haven’t you?’

  We were standing at the point where the rough hillside met the track. The light at Eddington was out now. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel his gaze burning upon my face. We’d come to it all of a sudden and I hated it. ‘Yes. Yes, I have,’ I confessed bitterly, ‘because she’s been taking pains to mention his name to me too. And today I learned that she tried to sell her house to him.’

  I heard his sharp intake of breath as he moved to ask a question. I raced to fill the gap. ‘She didn’t tell me about it. I heard it from her old neighbours on my ill-advised walk through Gloucester today. Only they didn’t say anyone’s name. They merely talked about Mrs Abbey’s ‘friend from up the hill’, which I took to mean your brother, and then a soldier turned farmer, who I guessed must be Danny. Did you know that he tried to buy her house?’

  He might have deliberately misunderstood, but he didn’t. ‘John? Yes.’

  I kept my gaze fixed fiercely on the grey form of the opposing hillside. Barely half a yard away to my right, Richard’s voice merged with the dark. He told me crisply, ‘The truth is, John was in the throes of thrashing out an agreement when he died. I only learned about it because the solicitor forwarded the papers with his will. Delightfully, it fell to me to write to her and inform her that the sale would not be proceeding, though I doubt that the news came as a surprise to her.’

  He took another carefully regulated breath. ‘The popular explanation for the attempted purchase – had it ever been made public – would have inevitably been that he was intending to furnish it with his stolen riches, or something along those lines. The timeline certainly matches the culmination of his efforts in that department, but it doesn’t remotely make sense to me. As I understand it, he was meaning to profit from his activities, not fit out a house with them like a mad museum to crime. And yet, without all that nonsense, I still can’t quite fathom how he ever dreamed he might have managed the debt. You know the Manor is under an all-consuming mortgage. After his death, when it became my job to negotiate a stay of judgement from the bank on our payments, it would have made it a whole lot closer to impossible if John had managed to tack on the Parliament Street property too. So lately I’ve had to start wondering if the whole disaster – the attempt to sell his soul for looted goods – came about because he needed to pay a bribe. The sudden interest in her house certainly smacks of an attempt to pay her off, doesn’t it? A nice honest transaction over a private property to conceal a greater exchange of funds. But in truth I can’t believe for a moment any woman had such a hold over him as that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? I should have thought it was obvious.’ This, suddenly, was said roughly. ‘My brother was a murderer. He’d found his own way of dealing with people he didn’t like.’

  Ah.

  Then he followed this bruising show of temper with a swift apology that I, in my turn, dismissed by turning to face him so that I could say quickly, ‘Richard?’

  The meagre light was making it very hard to make out the features of his face. I could feel the watchfulness of his eyes, though, and knew this was hurting him. I added cautiously, ‘It makes you uneasy that the neighbours didn’t explicitly state that the friend was John, doesn’t it?’

  Unexpectedly, I heard the breath go out of him with a little easing of tension. It was because we’d reached the core of what was troubling him and I was brave enough to face it – this something that was more painful for him than the small discomfort of having
to embrace the idea that a brother who had willingly crossed so many other moral lines should have apparently indulged in a spot of adultery.

  For me, this little nudge nearer to the grim truth made the space between us seem just a fraction wider. I think I’d spent so long teaching myself to believe that this existed only in my mind that it felt like a fresh betrayal to be mentioning it now. And this betrayal was of myself. Because it unleashed a dread that was horribly like loneliness.

  Richard prompted, ‘Tell me what you know. Please.’

  ‘All right,’ I agreed with determined crispness, ‘But you should know that I think the part where her little boy might be John’s child doesn’t quite stand up to scrutiny. The boy is roughly three years old, yes?’

  A tip of his head in confirmation.

  ‘But she moved here herself three years ago, and only after her husband was imprisoned? So by her timeframe she was either heavily pregnant when she moved into Eddington or had a very young baby. It would be easy enough to check, I think, if it matters. What certainly does matter, and I’m sure you must have realised, is that for your brother to be responsible, he must have known her when she lived in Gloucester, when her husband was still free and at home, long before she applied to become John’s tenant and years before he even conceived of buying her house.’ Something in his stillness made me stop. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘This isn’t very nice.’

  Richard’s manner was very gentle. ‘I can’t at this stage tell you which I should be more ashamed of. The fact that I’m leading you into dissecting the begetting of a young boy as if he were a badly bred calf, or the fact that I knew when I brought you down here that we’d end up discussing this and I swore I wouldn’t let anything upset you.’

  I beat aside the chill that ran through me. It was a feeling very like anger. I told him firmly, ‘Mrs Cooke’s sister.’

  Blankly, he confirmed, ‘Mrs Blake. Yes?’