A Set of Lies

by Carolyn McCrae

  “I beg your pardon.” Skye’s voice was loaded with indignation.

  “Sorry. I know you are his daughter but he is old-fashioned, he considers his line to be the legitimate male line. There are no more Laceys as far as he is concerned. He wants to write the history of the family, I am an historian, and that is what I have been hired to do.”

  “So are you going to use this weekend to check out some of the family history as well as poking around my home ticking boxes?”

  “I don’t think I’ll have much time to do the family stuff this weekend. I’ll leave that until…”

  “…until I’m not in the way anymore.” Skye finished his sentence for him.

  Fergal inclined his head. He realised too late that he had been unnecessarily tactless.

  Skye’s sense of indignation jolted her out of the cosy familiarity that had been developing between them. This man was the enemy, she reminded herself. He was a privileged, arrogant agent of her father.

  “Don’t you think I might have something to offer on the family history front?” she asked tartly. “I know I’ve only lived at The Lodge for most of my life and I understand I’m only about the fourth or fifth generation of Lacey to do that. I know that all the things my aunt told me about her family are probably far beneath your contempt, I know—”

  “Of course you have. Of course they’re not,” Fergal interrupted and tried to justify himself. “But Sir Arthur has made it clear he is only interested in the titled Laceys and since they didn’t live here on the Isle of Wight, or at least if they did it wasn’t for long, he doesn’t want me to waste time on the Isle of Wight branch of the family.”

  “Waste time? So you don’t think The Lodge is important to the Lacey story?”

  Fergal shook his head. “It’s not a matter of what I think, it’s what your father thinks and he’s made it clear that to him The Lodge is only a source of funds and a property to do up. He will sell it as soon as he can.”

  Skye took long sips of her wine in the uncomfortable silence that followed. She knew that Fergal was wrong, the house was very important in the family history. Audrey had told her about some of her ancestors, and then there was the trunk and the canvas bag sitting in the corner of the library. They had to fit into the story somehow.

  She sat, staring at the ice cream melting on her plate, unable to decide whether she was more upset with her father or with Fergal, who seemed to agree with him on too many things.

  Fergal was angry with himself. He should not have agreed to spend the weekend doing something he was not qualified to do. He was uncomfortable and that was making him say all the wrong things and in the wrong way. He knew he was being indiscreet and tactless and he was surprised to realise how much it mattered that Skye thought well of him.

  Skye eventually broke the uncomfortable silence. “What have you learned then?”

  “Sorry?”

  “What have you learnt about my family?”

  “Of course, the Laceys.” Fergal welcomed the opportunity to break the spiral of awkwardness that seemed to be developing between them. “I’ve only been involved for a few days and most of that time has been spent sorting out computers and listening to your father’s views so I haven’t really got very far. I’ve only sketched out the line of the title back to the first baronet, that was Sir Bernard Lacey in 1815. I haven’t found any Laceys before him yet so I suspect either the title changed or he came from humble origins.”

  “My father wouldn’t like that.”

  “Probably not, but unlike him I’m not into creating facts. If I can’t find anything interesting I’ll leave him to it.”

  “But wouldn’t it put the kybosh on his plans if you exposed him as having a family that goes back only two hundred years or so?”

  “He just wouldn’t publish the book. His philosophy will allow him to ignore anything that is inconvenient.” Fergal tried a smile and was rewarded by Skye smiling back at him, clearly agreeing to forget any awkwardness.

  “And another thing he’s probably lying about is his expenses. I’m absolutely certain he’s been claiming for The Lodge and he’s never lived here, at least not since the war. Wouldn’t proving him to be a fraud and a cheat stop him?”

  “I hardly think so. If he has been guilty of false accounting he is only one amongst many and would probably get away with it and then increase his majority because everyone would think he had been hard done by for being found out.”

  “Even though the house he calls his second home is miles from his constituency?”

  “That doesn’t seem to matter.”

  “That’s a shame. I was hoping somehow, you know, after I’ve left The Lodge, I could go to the papers… give them the facts…” Her voice trailed away.

  “Professional investigative reporters have tried. Those are people who know what they’re doing and all the ins and outs of catching people out, but they’ve failed. Your father has powerful allies on all the relevant committees. I’m sorry, but I can’t see you succeeding where they haven’t. Even if he’s guilty nothing will ever come out.”

  “Oh shit. I really hoped that I could use that to get back at him for chucking me out. I’ll have to think of something else won’t I?”

  Fergal smiled. If he had to spend two days in Skye’s company he felt they would, at the very least, not be boring.

  *

  An hour later, as she drove back to The Lodge, Skye was still trying to think of something she could use to interfere with her father’s plans both for her and for the country. She reluctantly accepted that falsified expenses claims would not work but she thought there might be mileage in his over-inflated expectations of his family’s history.

  After she reached The Lodge she stayed in her car, hunched over the steering wheel, staring at the last remnants of light in the sky. She remembered how oddly Audrey had reacted to finding the canvas bag and the trunk and how badly it had affected her. Audrey must have known a lot more than she ever admitted about the family’s history, perhaps there could be something that could be used against Sir Arthur.

  Ten minutes later Skye sat in the silence of the library staring at the heavy red cloth that had covered the canvas bag and the chest since the day of the storm four and a half years earlier.

  She knelt down, pushed away the cloth and opened the canvas bag. The flag and the jacket were there, as she had left them. She was uncertain why she thought they might not be. She closed the bag again and placed it beside her on the floor as she concentrated on the chest. She looked for a catch but could find none, she could see no lock and no hinge. She sat back after a few minutes, defeated. There seemed to be no way to open it. She put the bag back with the chest and replaced the red cloth.

  “Oh Audrey,” she said aloud to the empty room. “What is this all about? Why did it upset you so much?”

  Sitting on the floor in the dark library she knew she would not be able to hide the cloth and what lay underneath it from Fergal.

  Perhaps she would have to trust him.

  *

  The next morning, when Skye arrived at The George to drive Fergal to The Lodge, he was still eating his breakfast.

  “Join me for coffee?”

  “And I’ll have fresh orange juice, please, and then scrambled egg with crispy bacon. Presumably still on my father’s account?”

  Fergal smiled and gestured to the waiter.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Skye said as she buttered a slice of toast and carefully spread honey on it. “I could have something you might find interesting. But I would have to be able to trust you.”

  “Trust me?” Fergal asked with some suspicion.

  “Well it’s something that might be significant and I’d have to know you would treat it properly. You must promise you’ll be discreet and won’t do anything without my approval.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that, not without knowing what it is I’m swearing to be discreet about.”

  “I won’t tell you anything unless you p
romise.”

  “Sounds like Catch-22.

  “Exactly.”

  “I suppose I’ll just have to trust that it’s something I can be discreet about.”

  She peered at him over her cup and frowned.

  “OK, I promise.” he said with an unconvincing show of reluctance.

  “Really?”

  Fergal nodded. “I do. I promise.”

  When Skye had finished her story Fergal took another slice of toast and buttered it thoughtfully. He said nothing, but she knew he had taken her seriously.

  “It seems unlikely that the bag and the chest or trunk or whatever it is mean nothing, doesn’t it?” Skye urged. “I mean, they were obviously walled up in the chimney deliberately.” Fergal nodded so Skye continued. “And they’ve obviously been there for years so they must contain stuff that’s really interesting, mustn’t they?” Again Fergal nodded. “And they must have something to do with my family because the Laceys have lived here for the best part of two hundred years. Surely you must see, even if they’ve got nothing to do with any baronet they must have something to do with the Lacey family history.”

  Fergal said nothing. He concentrated on looking at the view out of the window and the white sails of yachts billowing in the early morning breeze on the Solent.

  “Well they must, mustn’t they?” She felt frustrated when Fergal showed no reaction.

  “Yes, they could be interesting. But let’s not get carried away. Let’s finish our breakfast and then we’ll see if they’re anything to get excited about.”

  *

  “Here we are.” She turned in the drive. “Sorry, it’s a bit bumpy.”

  “I’ll know the way next time. You’re right, I’d never have found it on my own.”

  “Satnavs are useless, they leave you about two miles away as the crow flies but about five by road.”

  As they drove towards the house Fergal became aware of the grandeur of its imposing façade. He understood why Sir Arthur and Lady Barbara would never live in the property, it would take far more imagination than either of them possessed to live in a place like this.

  “It isn’t what I expected.”

  “In what way?”

  “I suppose I thought it would be more, well, more rustic.”

  “Rustic?” Skye didn’t understand what he meant.

  “I suppose not quite so well built, not quite so stylish, smaller, more like a lodge?” He struggled to find the words to explain how different it was from how he had imagined it to be.

  “OK, it may have been built a long time ago but no money was spared and it was built to impress.”

  “Well it certainly does that.”

  “And no money was spared for a hundred years as it was extended and updated.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t.” He turned around to look out at the view, across what had once been a formal garden, through woods over the ridge edge towards the Solent and the hazy coast of Hampshire. “I can understand why it would be loved by the people who were lucky enough to have lived here.”

  Skye chose to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he hadn’t intended to hurt her. “Come on in. I’ll get some coffee while we sort out what you have to do.”

  Fergal sat down at the long kitchen table and watched as Skye fussed around with the kettle and mugs.

  He thought it was a very grand room to be a kitchen. At one end was a large bay window with stone mullions, at the other a large cream cooking range. There was no fitted furniture, just free-standing dressers and sideboards, none of which matched, and the old-fashioned butler’s sink had been cut into a table in the middle of the room. He understood that anyone who was used to a fitted kitchen with every possible piece of modern equipment would want to change the room completely. It was shabby, and there were probably a million places where dirt could accumulate, but it was the most welcoming kitchen he had ever been in.

  “I suppose you spend all your time in here?” he said conversationally as Skye put two mugs on the table and sat down on the bench opposite him.

  “Pretty much. In winter it’s the only room that’s warm.”

  “No central heating?”

  “God no! There are open fireplaces in the dining room and library and in the main drawing room. In fact there are fireplaces in every room in the house though I don’t think any of them would be safe to use.”

  “You’ve never used them?” he guessed.

  “No. I can’t imagine they’ve been lit for years but when there were maids and skivvies and people to do the work I expect most of them were kept in all winter.”

  “During the war?”

  “No, even before that I think. I’m talking about the grand old days when my great-grandparents lived here.”

  “It must be strange living in the same house all your life, and knowing that you are related to the people who’ve lived in it for decades, if not for hundreds of years.”

  “It will be very odd living anywhere else, that’s for sure. But I’m getting used to the idea, really I am.”

  Fergal hadn’t meant to raise the subject of Skye’s enforced removal so he tried to divert her by making something of a joke of his own circumstances. “I’ve lived in at least fifteen places as Mum and Dad moved around and then, since I left home, I’ve moved pretty much every year until recently.”

  “Yes, I know, the flat in Docklands and the cottage in Burford.”

  “I was going to say that at least I’ve never accumulated more stuff than can fit in one small van.”

  “I haven’t got a lot either so that part of my move won’t be so difficult. Most of everything you see in the house will stay. The house is stuffed full of antiques but I can’t imagine my father allowing me to take even one mug off that dresser.”

  “You sound very bitter.”

  “Audrey was bitter. If I’m bitter it’s on her behalf,” she said firmly. “She and my father were evacuated here in 1940 and at the end of the war she stayed while he left for the north island to go to school.”

  “North island?”

  “You know, the mainland, off the island.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “Sometimes. Well, anyway, obviously the boy had to be educated and it didn’t matter that the more intelligent child stayed at home just because she was a girl. And not only that, just because she was a girl she didn’t get anything when their father died. If there were any justice in the world she would have inherited the house she lived in and loved but no, it had to go to the boy.”

  “Seriously though, you do sound really bitter.”

  There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence as they both recognised that, under the circumstances, Skye’s impending move would be a difficult subject to avoid.

  Fergal put down his coffee mug and pointedly changed the subject. “Tell me where you found that canvas bag you told me about.”

  Skye brightened, realising that Fergal was doing his best to be tactful. “It was outside, in the chimney cavity, behind the Aga.”

  “Will you show me?”

  Fergal followed Skye past an array of coats and hats and wellington boots and outdoor shoes and walking sticks, through the back door.

  “I’ll show you my photos. You wouldn’t believe how many trees and branches were down after the storm.”

  They walked round the corner of the house. “It’s all been rebuilt and repointed now so you can’t really see where the hole was.”

  Fergal looked at the wall made up of large rough-hewn blocks of stone, some still blackened from the lightning strike, interspersed irregularly with small red bricks. The wall was a complete contrast to the finely cut and smoothed stones he had seen on the front of the building.

  “Where are they now, the bag and the chest I mean?”

  “Inside.”

  Fergal followed Skye back through the kitchen and the dining room, into the hall, past the imposing staircase and a closed door he presumed was the drawing room, then into the libra
ry.

  “Here.”

  Skye lifted the red velvet cloth and laid it flat on the table. Then she lifted the canvas bag onto the cloth and without a word she turned towards the chest.

  “Let me help.”

  “No thanks, I can manage.”

  Fergal stood back as he watched Skye put the obviously heavy chest next to the bag.

  “What do you think they are?” he asked tentatively. He knew that the odds were likely to be very long that they would contain anything of importance, but somehow it didn’t feel like that.

  “I don’t know. When I first found them I was really excited. I think they showed there was a close connection between the occupants of the house and the French Revolution. I mean there was a big garrison on the island, someone may have captured these things in France, there were all sorts of reasons they could be here and I was really excited but Audrey seemed a little afraid of what it might all mean. And then she had her fall and, well, I suppose everything else took second place after that. Now I’ve got to leave and I haven’t had a chance to look into it at all.”

  Fergal looked at Skye as if to get permission to open the canvas bag. She nodded and he undid the buckles. She approved of the way he unfolded the flags, showing what she considered to be suitable reverence.

  “That’s the flag of Corsica, sometime around the mid-to-late eighteenth century. They changed the flag quite often so it should be easy to get a specific date for that.” She spoke with rather more authority than her level of knowledge deserved.

  “You have done some checking then?”

  “Some. We weren’t so sure about the other flag though. Audrey said that the width of the stripes and the order of the red, white and blue makes a difference, and it could be the flag of any number of places. I looked it up and thought it was a Parisian revolutionary flag, or possibly a French national flag from a time after the revolution,” Skye added as Fergal almost tenderly unfolded the cloth.

  “Can I take pictures?” he asked quietly. “I know someone who would like to see these.” Skye was grateful that he had asked her permission.

  Fergal spent a few minutes silently taking photos of the bag and the contents, unfolding and carefully refolding the flags before asking, “Are the contents of the trunk of similar age?”