A Christmas Case

by L. B. Hathaway

  But there was a quick step behind them all, and the Reverend Parker had appeared, carrying his cat. ‘What’s all this noise?’ he said in his usual calm, slightly amused tone.

  ‘I thought it couldn’t be too bad as one of you would have called down for me. What’s a fella to do to get some peace in this house? It’s time for dinner, I can hear the gong. Children, shall we go down? Now, Rosa, my dear, what sort of mess have you made in here? What were you after exactly?’

  But then he must have seen what they were all looking at on the bed, in its red shroud of despair: four of them knowing, Rufus in blissful ignorance.

  For the next thing Posie remembered was the screaming starting up again, and Richard pushing her from the room as if her life depended on it.

  ****

  Rosa Parker didn’t come down to dinner. The children ate a wretched dinner in silence with the Reverend Parker at the head of the table, who was calmly eating and flicking through a sermon he had prepared for Midnight Mass later. Upstairs came the sound of banging.

  Two hours later a thumping noise came down the stairs, and Rosa Parker put on her outdoor hat and coat and gloves in the hallway. Two small valises rested at her feet. Posie and Richard came out to see her, hanging round the door.

  ‘I’m going, my darlings. I’ll walk and try and get a hansom cab. I’m not sure yet when I’ll return. Have a good Christmas.’

  And without kissing them, or hugging them, she had stepped out into an afternoon which was as dark as night already, and with a wind blowing off the Norfolk fens which was as salty and strong as the tears her children wanted to shed, but felt unable to.

  For they were in a state of shock, too.

  And that was Christmas Eve, and they had all known in their heart of hearts, as it proved true, that they would never clap eyes on their mother again.

  ****

  Ten

  Lost in her reverie of the past, Posie almost didn’t hear the knocking.

  She turned, surprised, at the third knock, and went to the door. She opened it just a crack, wondering if it might be Rufus with news of Dolly, or if Dolly was asking for her, even at so late an hour.

  But it was neither. Instead it was Dulcie Fairbanks, still elaborately dressed for dinner.

  Posie’s heart fell. What could the girl possibly want with her? What could she offer by way of comfort or advice to one who had been so obviously duped?

  Courtesy reigned. ‘Can I help you? Would you like to come in?’

  ‘Thank you, that’s kind. You must think me an awful fool.’

  ‘I don’t know you, so I’m not in a position to judge you, Mrs Fairbanks. Why should I?’

  Posie gestured at an empty silk slipper chair, and the girl perched on it lightly, while Posie sat down wearily on her own single bed. She rubbed at her eyes in tiredness.

  Mrs Fairbanks licked her lips, as if willing herself to go on:

  ‘I saw your light, and I knew you must be awake.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep after such a terrible evening.’

  ‘Something you said earlier surprised me. I thought I’d better talk to you about it.’

  ‘Oh?’ Posie raised an eyebrow. That she could have said anything surprising among such a tide of craziness as that night had offered up made her feel surprised.

  Mrs Fairbanks splayed her hands. Posie noticed how the huge emerald and diamond engagement ring she had worn earlier had disappeared. ‘You see, I now know that my husband was a dud, a fake.’

  ‘A dangerous, murdering fake, you mean?’

  The girl nodded. Posie found that she didn’t feel that sorry for her.

  ‘Presumably you can go back to India to your noble family and recover your position?’ she said. ‘Or would that be awkward?’

  The girl laughed, and it was a strange laugh. ‘Many things about my husband didn’t stack up,’ she said quickly, as if scared that if she spoke slowly Posie wouldn’t listen. ‘There were lies, lies and more lies. We’d only been married a couple of months, and I’d only known him during that time.’

  ‘From out in India?’

  That laugh again. ‘No! Of course not. That was all a lie, too. I’ve never been to India in my life. He’d been, for sure: he was full of it. But the furthest south I’ve ever been is Rye in Suffolk, and this is the furthest North.’

  ‘So where did you meet him then?’

  There was a slight pause. ‘It was at a hotel actually. In Dover. The Grand, on the seafront. He’d just come from his boat, from his passage back from India, and well, he quite swept me off my feet. I was a dancer, you see. I was the main female lead at the hotel, and I was on the permanent staff.’

  Posie stared hard. ‘I see.’

  It was as if she was hearing some dreadful tale being told over again in an odd, fearful symmetry of how her own parents had met each other. Not that she had shared that particular detail with anyone here tonight, of course.

  ‘Of course, my husband couldn’t bear to tell the world his wife was just a dancer: he saw something cheap in it, I think. So he dressed me up nicely and gave me this ridiculous history about India. Fortunately I’ve never yet met anyone who had actually been to India, otherwise the game would have been up. I suppose I do look quite convincing though, I’m very dark, like my father.’

  Posie sighed, tired and crushed and aching all over. ‘This is very interesting, Mrs Fairbanks…’

  ‘Dulcie, please.’

  ‘Dulcie, this is very pleasant. But what on earth makes you think I want to know about it all? I’m hoping you’re not about to tell me you’re a murderer too? Responsible for some other crime?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Dulcie hastily. ‘Far from it. I wanted to share some information with you, that’s all. I’ve thought about it these last two hours, up here alone, and I think it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘When you spoke about Broadstairs earlier, twenty years ago, you mentioned a man…’

  ‘Harry Jones? The one who was killed? The civil servant?’

  ‘No. The other one. An Italian, Benito Rossoli. The dancer. The one who went missing.’

  Posie frowned. ‘What of him?’

  ‘He’s my father.’

  ****

  ‘My real name is Dulcie Rossoli. I didn’t know what led my father to flee Broadstairs – he never spoke of it – but I knew it must have been serious, for he loved it there. He kept a lot of photographs of the place, tied up in ribbon in boxes in the apartment my parents lived in.’

  ‘He’s dead, then?’

  A flicker of sadness crossed Dulcie’s face. ‘Oh, yes. He was a good man, but the effects of the dancing, you know: arthritis; bad joints; the cold English winters. He died last year from a cold which went to his chest. Dancers are never strong, really.’

  ‘I’m very sorry for your loss. You clearly inherited your talents from him, and your looks, as you said, so at least you can console yourself with that.’

  Dulcie nodded. ‘My parents set up base in Rye; you know, that charming Suffolk tourist town? They were given the job of organising tea dances at The Mermaid, the best hotel there, and a small apartment went with the position. I was born there, and I think they were idyllically happy, although my mother was never the most conventional sort of woman. Still isn’t.’

  ‘So your mother is still alive?’ Posie was already checking her small red-leather wristwatch for the time, supressing a yawn.

  Dulcie nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve come to speak to you about,’ she said, softly.

  ‘She’s still alive and she lives in Rye in the same apartment she has had for the last twenty years. She’s called Rosa, and I think – in fact I almost would swear my life on it – that she is your mother. That you and I share a mother. That you are, in fact, my sister.’

  ****

  Posie couldn’t take it in.

  ‘My mother is dead,’ she said simply, believing it.

  Rosa Parker had walked out of all their lives twe
nty years before, and never come back. She had abandoned her children. She had not known their joys and successes, their disappointments, or their sorrows. She had not known of Richard’s death, or of their father’s misery in the aftermath of it.

  No mother could do that to a child.

  ‘I have a photograph,’ said Dulcie, and laid it down on the small bedside table in the room.

  ‘I know it’s a lot to take in at once. But I’m sure. You look like her, you know. I was struck by it when I first clapped eyes on you his afternoon: I thought I must be seeing things. Couldn’t take my eyes from you. Of course, she’s never spoken of you… Perhaps think about it and we can see if you would like to visit her? Talk about the old days?’

  And then Dulcie had left, with a soft ‘goodnight’; a graceful slipping from the room.

  Posie had not looked at the photograph for a long time. She stood instead again at the window, watching the snow.

  She wondered if her mother, for it must be her, was standing in her flat in Rye and thinking back to that fateful Christmas Eve in the Norfolk Rectory, when the truth, or some version of it, had all been laid bare.

  Posie closed her eyes, placed her burning forehead to the freezing glass, and tried to make the image she had carried with her for her whole adult life disappear.

  But she couldn’t make it go away…

  The item which had been flung by Rosa Parker from a bottom drawer of the Reverend Parker’s dresser, wrapped in a red handkerchief, thrown accidentally among a pile of presents on an immaculate white counterpane. Found by complete chance.

  A pair of brown-smeared, bent, broken, glass- cracked glasses.

  Tortoiseshell glasses.

  The same glasses which Harry Jones had been wearing at the time of his death, and which were mentioned in reports even now as being missing, being sought in connection with the murder. An item so trivial, so small, so mundane. And yet so dreadful that their discovery could break a family apart, could cause a man to hang.

  What could it mean?

  What had her mother done?

  Had she been involved with Harry Jones? Was she the reason for his trips down to Broadstairs? Had Rosa Parker, an incurable romantic, believed Harry might be a passport to a better life, to more exciting things?

  Was it possible that Rosa had been involved with Benito Rossoli too? Or had Benito simply been a faithful friend whom Rosa came to love much later, when she came to rely on him for her own future in Rye?

  And just what exactly had Posie’s father done? That was the real question.

  Had Rosa’s behaviour proved too much for the normally unflustered Reverend Parker? Had his pride and curiosity spurred him to follow her and her lover? Or lovers? Had he taken matters into his own hands, perhaps not prepared for the consequences which would follow?

  Did Posie’s mild-mannered father really have it in him to be a monster who could kill in such ghastly cold-blood? Surely not.

  But why else had he held onto that grisly memento?

  Who knew?

  It had been best never to think about it, never to speak about it. To live with the uncertainty. Richard had never spoken of it, ever again. The Reverend Parker had never mentioned it, had sailed on as before, absent-minded, calm, collected. It would have been impossible to try and broach the subject.

  And now it was all firmly in the past, and unsolvable. For the Reverend Parker had been dead these last few years.

  Posie Parker wiped away a swift tear and got into her bed, still bundled up. She put out the light.

  Tonight there had been ghosts, memories, murderers and mysteries. And the return of missing mothers.

  And that was more than enough for anyone for one night.

  Even for Posie Parker.

  ****

  Epilogue

  The train was pulling in at York Station, encircled in wreaths of steam, bound for London.

  Tiny little Phyllis Lovelace was pulling at her father’s arm in an excitement approaching hysteria and he was doing his best to make sure she didn’t dance over the yellow ‘danger’ line on the platform, while juggling his leather duffle bag and a canvas carrier containing toys.

  Posie hung back, slightly unnerved, small children not being one of her strengths. She had noted the Inspector’s blue second-class ticket, and saw that she was at the opposite end of the train, in first-class. She couldn’t insult him by offering to upgrade his ticket, or to pay for a porter, or a nursemaid: not a man like Richard Lovelace.

  The guard was indicating they should get on.

  She pulled at the smart fur around her neck, the frozen end-of-year air as bitter here as at Rebburn Abbey, if not more so. She was longing for London now, for the comfort of her Bloomsbury flat with its small, neat fire; for the convenience of the shops nearby which would be open again soon and the bright lights which were always just a stone’s throw away. She was longing to pay a visit to her office on Grape Street where her elderly Siamese cat, Mr Minks, lived: as haughty and spoiled and familiar as ever. She would go tomorrow and buy him a really nice cut of chicken and fry it up, just as he liked, in cream, for his lunch.

  Speaking of lunch…

  Posie was ravenous. It seemed hours since breakfast, and since then they had travelled through the frozen wilds of the Yorkshire moors in a pony and trap, and then by bus for the last stretch to York.

  ‘I might see you in the Restaurant car, sir,’ she said hurriedly. ‘For a cup of tea and a cheese scone later, perhaps?’

  Lovelace nodded. ‘Perhaps. Although if Missie here sleeps I’ll not be venturing far, I can tell you that. Her having a nap is more precious than gold to me!’

  Posie smiled and turned away.

  ‘Oh, Posie. Thank you. It was an interesting Christmas. I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Good to get things sorted out, don’t you think?’

  Posie frowned quizzically. She thought of that strange incident with Dolly, and the Doctor. The oddity of that particular group of people having been gathered there at all, in one place, at Rebburn Abbey: a group of people whose interlaced, long-buried secrets should meld quite so seamlessly and dangerously together on Christmas Eve as the layers of the deception of their lives were ripped apart.

  Sure as bread was bread it had all been a coincidence. Although Posie didn’t like coincidences at the best of times…

  It had been a Christmas Eve which had resulted in life-changing consequences, for Fairbanks and for Andromeda Keene, who would both now probably hang after lengthy trials. And there had been consequences for Posie, too. For now there was Dulcie to think about, and her own mother, living at The Mermaid in Rye.

  There would be choices to be made. And not all of them easy. Would she try and contact Rosa?

  Posie hardened her heart to the woman she didn’t know as her mother, but whose blood still flowed through her own veins.

  ‘What was sorted out exactly, sir?’

  ‘Oh, you know, those mysteries. And it was good to get some background. On you, Posie! You’ve never really spoken about your parents, or your family to me before. I should have known there was some Italian in you. Something a bit different.’

  ‘Really?’ Posie scowled, unhappy at the remark. ‘I can assure you I’m nothing like my mother. I never looked like her at all.’

  The Inspector raised a quizzical eyebrow and picked his child up together with all his bags, putting his foot on the first tread of the stairs.

  ‘That’s as maybe. But didn’t you say that whenever she walked into a room men couldn’t help but follow her with their gaze? Sounds like someone else I know…’

  He got onto the train before Posie could say anything and she just flushed an inconvenient red. A guard came rushing along, saw the yellow first-class ticket in Posie’s hand and urged her to hurry.

  ‘Only another two minutes til we depart, Miss,’ he breathed urgently. ‘We must get to Peterborough on time. That’s the next stop and there’s snow
about still, with the promise of more to come. Your carriage is down there. You’re in quite the wrong place.’

  ‘I seem to make a habit of that,’ Posie muttered to herself, and moved off.

  As she walked she tried to force out of her mind the strange goings-on of Christmas Eve, two days before, and the memories it had stirred up, some of which had laid buried for years.

  That wretched pair of tortoiseshell glasses.

  For a horrible second she thought she might be overcome by tears. She thought of the Inspector and his well-meaning, kindly words about her family, searching for some quick and easy familiarity in a landscape which looked pretty bleak for them both.

  But I haven’t spoken about my family to you, she thought to herself. Not really. And I probably never will.

  She sighed.

  If I did you might run a mile.

  She was brought back to the present by a loud carrying voice, the sort of voice which can stop traffic when it has to:

  ‘POSIE! I forgot!’

  She turned. The Inspector’s head was sticking out of the window of his carriage.

  ‘Come over to ours at New Year, if you’re free?’

  Posie grinned. She yelled above the noise of the steam engine. ‘Right you are, sir. I’ll be there for sure.’

  Of course she would. She had nowhere else to go. And even the delights of her flat in Museum Chambers palled slightly when thought about in the context of a New Year’s Eve, spent alone. As she slammed the door to her carriage and took off her hat and her fur, she smiled a little, despite herself. Maybe things weren’t quite so bad, after all.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Posie Parker,’ came a voice which sounded a little familiar, directly opposite her.

  ‘I hope it was magical. You deserved that.’

  And as the good-looking blonde man opposite lowered his paper, and grinned, Posie almost jumped out of her skin.

  Her hands went up automatically to finger the pink necklace at her throat, which the man opposite had given her, in a place very far away from here.

  She smoothed her hair.

  ‘I was just thinking that I’m often in the wrong place,’ she said to the man, self-assuredly, her confident words belying the butterflies in her stomach which were rising in a swarm. ‘But for once, I think I’m in exactly the right spot.’