The Knapthorne Conspiracy

by Malcolm Ballard

  “How do you manage here? It must be quite difficult, living by yourself in the middle of nowhere.” He was concentrating on getting the cigarette to his lips with a shaking hand when she spoke and didn’t reply until he had succeeded in the task.

  “What business is that of yours?” He was searching his pockets, presumably for matches or a lighter. “Is that what the daughter of Patrick Foxton came here to say? Speak your mind or go, it’s all the same to me.” His sharpness pricked her into action as her hackles began to rise.

  “What gave you the right to kill Patrick? Who gave you permission to take his life?” Her tone was angry, accusing. Exactly what she had wanted to avoid but he had goaded her into it. Seemingly unaffected by her outburst Frank Allsop took his time lighting the cigarette having found the lighter down the side of his chair. Sucking the smoke down, greedily, he savoured the effect before answering.

  “You know nothing about it, lassie. What right do you have to judge, tell me that, eh?” Without looking at her he gave a short derisive laugh, a defamatory sound dismissing her accusations and mocking her all at once.

  “And what would I need to know about it?" Bella’s voice was rising with her anger. “Murder’s murder, whatever I may know or not. You’ve taken another man’s life and escaped punishment for it, where’s the justice in that?” He turned to look at her then his eyes like rivets pinning her to the spot. It was a look born out of years of suffering, the blackness of depression, the mental anguish and the loss of a daughter he’d wanted to love but hadn’t known how. What did this bright young thing, untouched by the savagery of life, know about justice?

  “You know nothing, I’m telling ye!” The violence in his words shocked her, bringing the colour to her cheeks, and she suddenly felt afraid of this sickly old man, a man who had once taken another’s life. It had the effect of draining her own anger, the words reverberating around the room and in her head. If you don’t know anything her inner voice said with a little exasperation as if it were obvious, then find out. Ask him! Frank Allsop had slumped back in his chair, feeding off his own memories. Recollections conjured up by this girl who had walked out of his past. He made a sad figure in that depressing room, his slight frame silhouetted against the meagre light from the windows, the angular face in profile and his head wreathed in tobacco smoke. It was an image she would carry with her for a long, long time.

  “Tell me about it, then, Frank,” she said calmly. “Tell me how it happened. Tell me about Patrick and what made you do it.” It was almost as though she were in the room talking to herself. Physically the old man was there with her but his memories had taken him back thirty years and more and he was reliving the pain. Reliving the anger and frustration of an unhappy, depressed husband and father all those years ago and he was about to give vent to feelings and emotions he’d never aired before. Yet a calmness had suddenly descended on him. Somehow he had known this was going to happen. Felt it for a long time now. Months maybe longer. Like he had been waiting around for something like this before relinquishing his ever-weakening grip on life. It was his chance to make a clean breast of things and ease his conscience after so many years of torment. Bella sensed what was happening and tried to make herself comfortable on the bulging, lumpy sofa while she waited. Smoke spiralled up from Frank’s cigarette, two thirds of it gone, as it rested in the ashtray, where he’d placed it. Without thinking he took out another from the silver case.

  "Meeting Doris, my wife, was the best thing that ever happened to me," he began. "I came down from Scotland to take up a position on the Estate and I wondered what I'd got mysel' into. I was like a fish outta water and not at all welcomed by the folk here." Bella's expression didn't change but she fully understood his meaning. "She changed all that, did Doris. A no-nonsense lassie who put the local boys in their place. Those first years of our marriage were the happiest of my life. We had our wee bairn Mary..." he broke off suddenly, beset by a hacking cough that filled the little room with its intensity and sucked the energy from the old man who was left wheezing and struggling for breath. His eyes narrowed and he looked suddenly grim.

  "That all changed when I had ma accident." He wasn't looking at Bella as he spoke. His focus was on the past and he could picture it as clearly now as when it happened. "I tumbled off a roof, hit my head bad. At first I was fine but as time went by I started getting moody and bad-tempered. Not all the time, ye ken. It would come on of a sudden like a change in the weather..." he paused to bring the cigarette to his lips and Bella wanted to urge him on, wondering why he was telling her all this. Then he looked her in the eye through a haze of tobacco smoke. "I reckon you're thinking what's this to do with your father? Well I'm coming tae that." She felt a quickening of her pulse.

  "Doris knew I'd always wanted a boy. Persuaded me we should try for another bairn to bring me around. Eventually she fell pregnant but it was a girl, Gina, the loveliest wee thing but it didn't change anything. Now we had two girls,” Frank continued, “bonny they were, too, but I felt no love for them. Doris found it in her heart to put up with me but it was hard on the girls.” He stopped to draw on his cigarette. “Many years later the oldest one left home as soon as she could, sick of her bad-tempered, moody father. Found hersel' a boy to wed. It near broke her mother’s heart, too. That left Gina, the apple of her mother’s eye, at home by herself. Doris encouraged me to get her a pony now her sister had gone and I grudgingly agreed. Worse day’s work I ever did, buying her that.” With a shaking hand he stubbed out his cigarette and pursed his lips, pressing them hard together to stop his grief from pouring out in front of his visitor and it was several seconds before he felt able to continue. The atmosphere in the room from Frank's incessant smoking was repugnant and Bella just wanted to leave but it was impossible to do so before she found out the truth.

  “It was like her birthday and Christmas had both come at once and, for a while there I think she genuinely did love me. But then that animal took up all the love she could give, leastways that’s what I thought.” Emotion got the better of him again and he struggled to overcome the sadness of bitter memories. Bella was finding the whole experience unnerving. For the second time in as many days she found herself listening to reminiscences from another era and seeing the pain and grief those memories evoked. Two men and two villages linked by a common bond, an arcane agreement binding them both to complicity in the concealment of two crimes, each as equally heinous as the other. Frank Allsop lifted his head slightly and sniffed once or twice before exhaling, then he began to cough, a terrible, wracking cough that shook his bony frame and made Bella wince. It took him some time to get his breath back but once he had recovered he took up where he had left off.

  “Almost by accident, Doris discovered Gina was pregnant. Barely sixteen that pretty wee lassie was and already defiled. Never been near a boy in her life as far as we knew but that obviously wasn’t the case. She’d had a meeting with someone while out on that damned pony.” In a rush of movement he slammed his bony fist down on the arm of his chair. “I drove her into his arms!” It was uttered vehemently, his voice full of emotion. “If I’d have loved her, spoken to her like a proper father, it never would have happened!” With an anguished sigh he put his head in his hands as guilt and grief overcame him. For some moments he stayed like that, then drew his hands slowly down his face.

  “I vowed to give the bastard a real hiding if ever I discovered who it was and it didn’t take me long. I gave him a beating he’d never forget!” Once again he raised his eyes to look at Bella. Eyes that were cold and lifeless.

  “It was your father, lass, that got my daughter in the family way.” He got no pleasure from the look of shock on Bella’s face. “Aye, Patrick Foxton it was.”

  So intent had she been on following the old man’s story, wondering what its relevance was, that she had completely failed to see what was coming. In retrospect it seemed an obvious conclusion now that she knew about it, not unlike solving a cryptic clue in a crossword puzz
le. Surprise had been her reaction more than anything else. After all, what was there left that could shock her about Patrick Foxton? Echoes of rumours and snippets of information played back in her head, scattered pieces of a jigsaw that were slowly falling into place and building a picture of a man shot to death in a Dorset wood three decades ago. She felt a great deal of sympathy for Maria and tried to picture what it must have been like living with such a person. Little wonder she’d been driven into Rupert’s arms. And what about Frank Allsop, already harbouring animosity towards Patrick while struggling with his own demons? It wasn’t difficult to see how, after the death of Ruth Flint, Frank would have viewed him as vermin and disposed of him accordingly. The thought made her shiver and she harked back to her abhorrence on first hearing of Patrick’s murder. How her feelings had changed since the facts had come out! Now she had begun to sympathise with the sentiments of all those involved, especially the man sitting across from her. But Frank Allsop hadn’t finished yet. Hadn’t reached the conclusion of his story that would finally allow him to publicise his grief and expunge it once and for all.

  There was no rush. Hadn’t he waited thirty years for this moment. Bella watched as he lit up another cigarette, inhaled, then began to cough. She couldn’t help feeling there was something terribly tragic about knowing the suffering he’d gone through during his life and the fact he was still being made to suffer, albeit as the victim of his own addiction. For someone like herself who’d led a fairly self-indulgent existence it made her realise how fortunate she’d been.

  “How did you find out it was Patrick?” she asked him, when he’d stopped coughing.

  “It was nae difficult,” he replied, without looking at her. “It’s nae like London doon here. Everyone knows everybody else’s business. It was a well-known fact he loved riding. Used to borrow a horse from one o' his pals in Knapthorne.” It was said in a matter-of-fact way but then his voice changed to something much uglier, full of anger and revulsion.

  “When I confronted your father he laughed about it. Laughed! He took my daughter’s innocence and abused her. A sweet, lonely child starved of love. And he had the nerve to boast about how she had enjoyed it. I should have killed him there and then, just like he did for my Gina.” Bella didn’t understand.

  “What do you mean, he did for Gina?”

  “Killed her,” Frank answered, almost spitting the words out. “Or might just as well have done. You see, she died in childbirth.”

  It was not difficult for Bella to appreciate just how much he must have hated Patrick Foxton. The more she learned the easier it was to understand Frank’s reaction to Ruth Flint’s murder. He was deserving of pity rather than punishment or recrimination, driven to the brink by his daughter's pregnancy and then pushed over the edge by a dreadful crime. She felt a rush of pity for him, trying to picture him as a young man full of enthusiasm and hope but not able to see past the broken old man in front of her, his life slowly ebbing away. She watched as it took a real effort of concentration for him to take the cigarette from between his lips and lay it on the ashtray. He was not done yet. A few words of explanation, to take the blame for it all, then he was done.

  “I sent her away, for her sins. I wanted nothing to do with her.” He spoke in a small, far-away voice as remorse and self-pity washed over him, his thoughts focused on a time long ago. “I couldn’t bear the shame of an unwed mother under ma roof and all the time it was because of me, because I’d turned her away. It was me who should have been turned out, then everything would have been fine.” His voice faded a little as Frank Allsop retreated into his own world, a world of sad and bitter memories and he thought about what might have been, if things had been different.

  “If I’d have loved her, like a good father should love his daughter, then chances are both her and your father would be alive today. What do you think to that, lassie? I’m not looking for forgiveness but can you blame me for shooting him after what he did to Ruthy Flint? After all these years, though, I still can’t get it out of my mind.”

  Frank Allsop leaned forward and reached for his cigarette with a shaky hand. Somehow he knew he wouldn’t be long for this world now. This had been his final act, an expiation of sorts or as close to one as he could get. This young woman who had appeared from nowhere had been his confessor, the surrogate priest to whom he had bared his soul. Now he could be put to rest happy that he had not only acknowledged his guilt and shame but spoken of it to the daughter of the man who had caused him so much pain. It was female curiosity that led Bella to ask him a question but she knew she couldn’t leave it unanswered.

  “So what happened to the baby, then?” Whether he had heard and was choosing to ignore her, she wasn’t sure. This time she spoke a little louder when repeating the question, to make absolutely sure he would hear. If there was one faculty of Frank Allsop’s that hadn’t suffered impairment, it was his hearing. Oh, he’d heard alright. Why did she have to mention the baby, he asked himself. As if it hadn’t been distressing enough reliving it all, now she wanted to hear about his final condemnation. The last act of the drama that had finally split the family apart and eventually brought him to Thornden and his hermit-like existence. Once again he thought of Patrick Foxton, The Irishman, the murdering, no good Irish bastard who, even from the grave, had had the last laugh, and its hollow echo was still ringing in Frank’s ears.

  It was an age before he answered, with Bella all but ready to stand up and leave, which he must have sensed.

  “You might as well know the rest of it now we’ve come this far. I guess nothing of it matters much any more, not where I’m going anyway. He rearranged himself in the chair, trying to get comfortable but only succeeded in bringing on another coughing fit. Bella was becoming impatient, having found out what she’d come for. The bleak atmosphere of the room and its dying occupant were getting to her and she longed to be outside in the sunshine and fresh air. She could even smell his cigarette smoke on her clothes.

  “Gina went to her sister Mary’s and she took care of her up until the baby was born.” Bella had to listen, now he’d begun to talk. The old man’s gaze was still fixed on the same patch of carpet, as though it were a crystal ball revealing scenes from the past instead of the future.

  “When they lost her at the hospital, through some complication, Mary immediately wanted to keep the bairn for herself. She and her husband had been trying for a baby and had no success. No-one saw the wrong in it, the authorities, my Doris, all thought it a great idea but I were dead against it. My grandson, a living, breathing reminder of The Irishman, the man who’d taken ma daughter from me, tae torment me for the rest of ma days. I would nae hear of it! Have it adopted, I told them, I don’t care what you do but get that baby out of our family!”

  “And did Mary keep it?” Bella was trying to urge him along, wanting to go. He gave a wry laugh.

  “Of course she kept it but I wouldn’t see her again. Haven’t spoken to her or that husband of hers in all the years since. Doris left, too, eventually because of it, and I came here.”

  “And where’s your grandson now?” she asked, innocently, endeavouring to put an end to the tale. Frank Allsop shook his head from side to side, as if unable to believe what he was about to say.

  “There’s the laugh of it, lassie. My own family have deserted me but the boy’s the only one to look after me. The Irishman’s bastard son is who keeps me in provisions and pays ma bills. What do you make o' that? If it wasn’t for Kyle calling in every couple o' weeks I’d probably have been dead years ago!” Bella’s heart skipped a beat and she had to make sure she’d heard correctly.

  “Did you say Kyle, Mr. Allsop?”

  “Aye, I did. A very apt name, dinna ye think? It’s Scottish, you see. Means a stretch o' water between two islands.” Right at that moment Bella couldn’t have cared if it meant rear end of a sheep as she was experiencing the most strange sensations and felt extremely giddy. Closing her eyes in order to concentrate she heard herself speakin
g but it sounded like someone else’s voice, strained and nervous.

  “Your daughter, Mary, what’s her married name?” A sign of his age, he couldn’t bring it to mind at first then gave a weak smile as he remembered.

  “She married a man called Lucas, Dick Lucas. Why what’s it to you?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The ignominious manner in which his stay at Willow Cottage had ended had been festering away inside of Kyle Lucas like an annoying ulcer and the more worked up he got about it, the more he wanted Bella Foxton. Staff at the studios were tending to steer clear of him unless it was absolutely unavoidable and snide remarks had been made when he’d been seen talking to himself, on occasion, in his office. It was exactly two weeks to the day since he’d made the trip to Knapthorne and he was planning to make a trip this weekend to Thornden. Old grandad Allsop was not going to be around for much longer and Kyle wouldn’t miss him when he’d gone. It was the perfect excuse to call on Bella and make amends whether she wanted to or not. He hated the visits to Thornden now, having to go into that stinking, run down old house and deal with the old man who was in much the same condition.

  When Mary had taken Kyle in, her husband's parents immediately treated him as their grandson and as he grew older Kyle had viewed Frank Allsop as something of an enigma. Having three grandparents who showered him with affection it was inexplicable to a young boy that there was another who wanted nothing to do with him. He had grown up in the knowledge that there had been a rift in the family but had never been able to find out why. Not until many, many years later when he was in his mid-twenties, had he felt an inexplicable urge to seek out the old man and pay him a visit and it was fortunate that he had. Frank had fallen from a stool and broken his wrist, while trying to change a light bulb. Luckily for him Kyle had found the back door open, only to discover his grandfather on the kitchen floor where he had been lying since nine-o-clock the previous evening. At first Kyle hadn’t introduced himself wary of the old man’s reputation for being short-tempered and moody. Content only with getting his grandfather some medical attention he told him that he was from the local council and left it at that. The old boy was in quite a bit of pain and didn’t inquire any further, happy that someone had found him. He’d had a neighbour close by, then, who kept an eye on him and ran his errands but she was away on a week’s holiday. These days she’d long since gone the way of everyone else. As his grandfather didn’t have a phone Kyle took him to Dorchester and had him attended to at the hospital. Later, on the way back to Thornden, Kyle broke the news to him that it was his grandson helping him out. There was a deathly silence in the car, with the old man’s face looking like thunder but he never said a word and the atmosphere remained the same for the whole journey. When they arrived back his grandfather made it clear, in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want Kyle in the house then proceeded to struggle out of the car. Feeling a little annoyed by his treatment, with absolutely no idea why his grandfather should show such animosity towards him, Kyle let many months pass before returning but felt that he had to look the old boy up again as the rest of the family had disowned him. He got the impression this time that deep down Frank was not exactly pleased but relieved to see him. It didn’t have any effect whatsoever on his rudeness though and very often he would only grunt or mumble in response to Kyle’s questions. However, he did manage to find out that Frank’s neighbour was leaving the village soon and his grandfather would be on his own. It was Kyle who had contacted the social services and done what he could for him. Since then he had called in as often as possible but in all that time their relationship had never changed. In recent years Kyle had experienced great difficulty in squeezing in the time for his visits to Thornden but, thankfully, he knew the old man would soon be gone and along with him Kyle’s inexplicable sense of responsibility.