A Dangerous Deceit (20 page)

She had actually looked disconcerted for a moment and it had given him a small satisfaction to know he had shown himself not suitably put in his place.

Reardon said now, after a long silence, ‘Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Micklejohn probably did the best he could with what he had. All the same, I can't see it would hurt to have another word or two with those out at Maxstead.' He twiddled a pencil. ‘It's a rum do, all this – posh folks at one end of the scale, Arthur Aston at the other, and the Rees-Talbots in between. Not to mention our friends from the other side of the world. What's between them all is what I'd like to know.'

Of course, there was shortly to be a marriage between the Rees-Talbots and the Scroopes, and the obvious links between the elder Rees-Talbot and Aston had been established, but to Joe, any connection between Rees-Talbot's erstwhile batman and the family at Maxstead was as impossible to envisage as Lily's crocheted cushion covers decorating the antique furniture there.

Having obtained from Margaret Rees-Talbot the neatly typed manuscript of the booklet her father had been writing about the Second Boer War, Reardon took it home with him to read that night. It didn't take long, and left him with mixed feelings.

Her father had written of the military engagements he'd fought in, though without specifically mentioning his own involvement in them. The rest of the manuscript was written in an oddly perfunctory way that to Reardon's mind would certainly not rouse any excitement in military historians – or even in a wider public. To most of the world, anyway, it had been a war between the British and the Dutch settlers and, bloody as it was (not only in the fighting but in the enteric fever that had killed more soldiers than enemy guns had), it had been eclipsed in many ways by the infinitely bloodier world war which had followed not much more than a decade later.

It had, however, not been the battles or the extent of the deadly fever that roused Rees-Talbot to eloquence, but the British scorched earth policy that had ultimately ended the war but left the Boer settlers without their farms and driven them from their lands. It had forced their womenfolk to become refugees – after which they were herded into what became known as concentration camps, where the conditions were so horrific that thousands of women and children perished. It was evident where his sympathies had lain, but much of what he had written, even so long after the conflict, would not have been welcomed in Britain, had it ever been published. To have been labelled ‘pro-Boer' would have damned the book before it ever saw the light of day.

Rees-Talbot himself had in fact had second thoughts about publishing what he'd written, his daughter had told Reardon, when, not without protest, she had handed over the manuscript. ‘Why on earth does my Aunt Deborah think this will be of any use?'

‘I can't say that until I've read it.'

And having done so, he still couldn't. It didn't appear to throw any light on anything that might have given rise to Rees-Talbot's blackmail.

Dearest Plum,

I must tell you what happened yesterday. About five o'clock, I bumped into Felix amongst the crowd who had just come out of the railway station. He was walking towards Alma House and as I was going that way too, I walked along with him.

I saw immediately that he looked different – same old jacket and flannel bags, his hair still badly in need of a cut, still sloping along in the same loose-limbed way that made it difficult for me to keep up with him, but I had an odd fancy that he held himself straighter, and he was certainly looking flushed and elated, and his eyes were just blazing. He didn't say anything about where he'd been, or why, and I didn't ask, but after a while I could see he was dying to tell me. We were passing the park gates and all of a sudden he grabbed my arm, propelled me inside and threw himself down on the nearest bench. ‘Sit down a minute, I've something to tell you.'

He has got himself a job! Yes, really. With the TUC, working in their London offices!

I must have looked astonished. Well, he hadn't spent three years at Cambridge reading law for nothing, he said with a grin, though he wasn't expecting to be anything but a dogsbody at first in this new job – or at least, he would be if he could take up the offer by the end of the week. Otherwise …

His face fell. He might not be allowed to leave Folbury, he admitted at last, because he had got himself into a scrape with the police. And so, the whole story …

‘Though not a word of that must go into that paper of yours,' he said, suddenly recollecting to whom he was speaking, grabbing my wrist tight. ‘Promise?'

After a moment's hesitation, I promised – but don't read anything into that, Plum.

He opened a new pack of cigarettes and lit one, which seemed to give him the courage to tell me the details of how the fight had happened. It seems Felix found out that Arthur Aston had been blackmailing his father, went to Aston's house and picked a fight with him. They actually came to blows, but he'd done nothing more than knock Aston down before his wife came in and the fight stopped. I didn't say that I already knew about this from Lily, and that the morning after, Aston had been found dead and, hey presto!, Felix is the chief suspect.

Well, of course, it's ridiculous. I know Felix couldn't have done it, and if the police think he did they have a long way to go yet, but he's by no means convinced they think the same, or that they have finished with him. And as I pointed out to him, it's going to look even more suspicious that he's suddenly decided to take a job away from Folbury.

‘What made you go for the job, anyway?' I asked him. ‘What made you do it?' I had a good idea, of course, but I needed to hear him say it.

He didn't want to say anything about why he'd decided until I prompted him: ‘They tell me you've resigned from your WSG, Felix.' Though resigned seems a grandiose word for simply walking out of the meeting and leaving behind all the waffle and bad feeling. I hadn't been attending their meetings lately – they're a ridiculous waste of time – but I'd heard about the row. ‘The group will fall apart now.'

He made a wry face. ‘Truth is, it was never much together, was it? Oh, I know, they'll say I'm a traitor to the cause, et cetera, et cetera, but I hope I can do much more good in the end … You know Bobby Armstrong's left as well? It was he who put in a good word for me at the TUC. He's going there, too.'

Well, the fact that Bobby was leaving didn't surprise me. He's a hothead from the Durham coalfields, with a chip on his shoulder the size of an oak tree about working conditions up there – and though I have every admiration for his sincerity, I do wonder how he'll get on at the TUC. He's convinced the union top dogs sold the rank and file down the river over the General Strike settlement.

We talked about him, and the new job, for some time, then I asked, ‘Have you told Vinnie Henderson?'

‘Not yet.'

‘If you want to marry her, don't you think she has the right to know?'

‘Well, maybe I don't want to marry her, not now.'

After that, he went silent. I thought he was sulking, but after a while he said, ‘I can't make you out, Judy Cash.'

‘I can't make myself out, most of the time. I don't know why I do the things I do.'

‘All the same, nothing stops you. You always know just where you're going.'

‘I must have what I want, if that's what you mean. You know that, don't you?'

It was very quiet in the park, that time of day. Most people were at home, having or preparing their tea. Beyond the gates, I could hear the noise of motor traffic, the rumble of a cart, but in the park there was silence. You could have heard a leaf drop.

‘And we both know what we want, don't we, Judy?'

I held out both my hands and after a while he took them, and after that … well, you don't need to know about after that, my darling Plum.

The following afternoon, Joe and Reardon were driven out to Maxstead Court. On Joe's previous visit, since there were no buses out this way, he had cycled. It was quite a distance but he had been pleased to find it hadn't taxed his staying powers overmuch. This time, they arrived in style. Given the option, Stringer would have driven down the tree-lined drive and swept ceremoniously up to the front door, but Reardon stopped him short of the house by a couple of hundred yards while he and Joe got out of the car and proceeded on foot down the double avenue of trees towards the big house set four-square in front of them.

The contrast with Henrietta Street couldn't have been greater. This was gracious living. Set in acres of lawn against a heavily wooded backdrop was a grey stone house, scarcely a mansion, but certainly large, flat-faced except for two bays flanking the front door on either side, slightly intimidating behind gravel paths and a parterre of severely geometric flowerbeds, bare of bedding plants as yet, that did nothing to soften the heavy grey outlines of Maxstead Court.

A tall man of soldierly aspect and a dumpy, middle-aged woman dressed in dark colours were standing at the foot of the wide flight of steps to the main door.

‘You're the one who's met the dowager before, but let me take this, Sergeant,' Reardon murmured as they neared the couple.

‘Right, sir.'

Had she answered the door to him, Reardon would have taken her for the housekeeper or someone employed in some other similar capacity. As it was, she was the first to speak, removing all doubt. It was Joe she addressed, whom she obviously recognized from his previous visit. ‘Sergeant … Gilmour, isn't it?' she uttered as they got within speaking distance, showing admirable recall; there had been barely a hesitation. ‘What can we do for you this time?'

The royal ‘we', like Queen Victoria. Come to think of it, she was not unlike that royal personage. She was the same size, the greying hair drawn back into a tight bun, and she had the same unamused look and commanding manner. She inclined her head graciously when Joe introduced Reardon. He had expected a different response when he told her that their business was to reopen a discussion about the dead man found on her land, but she didn't flinch on hearing it and invited them to enter the house.

The man beside her immediately prepared to take his leave, but she detained him. ‘Please stay, Giles. This is my land agent, Colonel Frith,' she told Reardon.

‘I believe it was you who found the body, sir.'

‘I did.'

‘In that case, it would perhaps be as well if you did stay. You may be able to help us.'

Frith didn't look too pleased, but evidently saw he had no option, and when Lady Maude led the way inside he followed, stiffly upright. Reardon tried not to let his private prejudice against men who kept their military rank after they had left the army get in the way, though from his demeanour it wasn't difficult to see that Frith disliked taking orders from those he evidently still looked on as the lower ranks.

The wide oak door opened on to a vast, cold and empty hall with a stone-flagged floor, dim portraits frowning down from the upper reaches and a ceiling disappearing into the ether, where every word echoed and reverberated. Fortunately they passed through this into what her Ladyship referred to as the ‘snug', a sitting room that perhaps also served as some sort of office. It was amply furnished with books, easy chairs and a desk holding several ledgers and files, a comparatively small room made to seem even smaller by the echoes of Victoriana in the heavy furniture, the crimson wallpaper, and the bottle-green plush covering a round table.

It was all comfortably shabby in the way these old, inherited houses tended to be, but Reardon didn't make much of this; in the present climate many aristocratic families living in country houses like this one were on a downward spiral. He admired the savoir faire that enabled such owners to carry on as usual despite death-watch beetle behind the panelling and crippling debts due to estate taxes and death duties. He couldn't begin to envisage what unimaginable sum it might cost to run and keep up a place like this. A surround of the brocaded wallpaper behind a picture showed considerably lighter than the rest of the wall, plainly indicating that a larger and perhaps more valuable one had once hung there.

Lady Maude seated herself behind the desk and graciously indicated facing chairs, while Colonel Frith chose to stand to attention by her side, his hands clasped behind his back, a remote expression on his face as if to say all this had nothing to do with him.

It was that which made Reardon decide to start with him, but before he could do so, tea for four appeared on a silver tray which the maid who brought it placed on the plush-covered table. As far as he was aware no one had ordered tea, yet here it was as if conjured up by telepathy. Lady Maude removed herself from behind the desk and graciously presided over the pouring as if it were a tea party, though it was just tea, no fancy cakes or cucumber sandwiches, not even a biscuit.

‘I have to tell you that there have been further developments, a possible identification—' he began, but was again interrupted before he could go any further when the door was opened by a young man, accompanied by a female fashion plate in a short, rose-coloured dress trimmed with black braid.

‘Oh tea, how topping!' she exclaimed, coming forward. ‘Binkie, naughty boy, has walked me round the garden until I'm simply
exhausted
.'

‘Bit early for tea, isn't it?' her companion asked Lady Maude.

‘Not now, Julian. Tea will be at the usual time.' Presumably when the cucumber sandwiches would be served: however mysteriously it had appeared, this tea was clearly not for the family. Lady Maude smiled, but with a steely glint in her eye that clearly indicated a dismissal, yet Julian chose to stay, even when she told him who the visitors were.