A Dangerous Deceit (25 page)

She closed the piano lid, rubbing her fingers together. I'm out of practice, anyway, she thought. Like the piano, I'm out of tune – with myself and everything that's happening around me.

Such a short while ago,
she had written to Addie Dunstable yesterday,
our lives were going along in a regulated and uneventful manner, if not, even then, free from the continual worry about Maxstead. But worrying about Maxstead, as you know, Addie dear, has been an established fact for so long that one has grown accustomed to it, like ever-present indigestion, I fancy – unpleasantly there in the background, but something one has to accept because there seems to be little to be done to alleviate it permanently. And now look at us: people we have never heard of, dead people, intruding into our lives. A son who has brought us face to face with ruin, brothers who are at loggerheads – or to put a kinder slant on that, who are not seeing eye to eye …

It was a letter destined never to be sent. She had torn it up, thrown it into the fire and watched the flames consume it, knowing she could not share such frightening thoughts with anyone – thoughts that led, inevitably, to Binkie's decision to sell Maxstead. It was a form of self-pity and she must not – she
would
not – allow herself to indulge it.

Closing her eyes, trying to blot out terrible forebodings, she felt rather than heard the distant reverberation of the heavy knocker on the front door. She just had time to compose herself before old Stanton showed him in, the detective inspector with the scarred, unsmiling face, but one which, she was inclined to hope and believe, hid a more sensitive nature than it led one to expect.

She hoped, in fact, that it was because he didn't wish to inhibit her from speaking freely that he had come alone today, on the premise that one policeman was less intimidating than two. She waved him to a chair, choosing one for herself that had its back to the light.

She had decided beforehand to surprise him by taking the initiative, and she began immediately he had taken his seat. ‘I believe you might have guessed why I asked you to come here, Inspector.'

It was indeed she who had requested the meeting, and though he had fully intended to see her again after the interview with her son, he hadn't felt it appropriate to request her to present herself at the station, as he had Sir Julian. ‘Guessing isn't what we're paid to do in my profession, my lady.'

She smiled slightly. Her fingers drummed on the table beside her until, becoming aware of it, she quickly folded her hands on her lap. They were square hands, and small – fingers too short for the piano; she had never been able to span an octave – and she did not want him to notice how rough they were, the nails trimmed very short. Gardener's hands – certainly not a lady's. She took a deep breath, tried to recall the prepared phrases, and as she began to speak prayed he would not notice how difficult she was finding this.

‘I have spoken to my son, Inspector, and we do not need, I think, to go over what passed between you regarding his unwise investments with … with the foreigner, Mauritz, as I understand his name was. On the other hand, I now believe I owe you an apology for not being entirely frank with you about that person when we spoke before.' She hesitated only a fraction and then went on firmly, ‘I am prepared to do what I can to help you now.'

‘Thank you, Lady Maude. Any help you think you can give us would be greatly appreciated.'

‘We at Maxstead are as anxious as you are to get to the bottom of all this.'

‘Indeed.' He hoped that was true.

They were interrupted by a smiling maid who came in with a graceful silver coffee service on a tray, and there was silence between them while the girl poured it out and offered thin almond biscuits before leaving them alone once more.

That apology had cost the lady a good deal, Reardon was willing to bet, as he nibbled the biscuit. If her offer of help was genuine, it made him feel more kindly disposed towards her, and willing to give her as much background information as he thought wise regarding Mauritz. When the door had shut behind the maid, he briefly outlined what they had discovered about him, and his probable links with a man named Arthur Aston. Her brows rose enquiringly at the last name, but he decided it was not necessary to elaborate that particular point. Her stiff, formal manner of speaking – natural to her, or due to nervousness, or possibly just to remind him of his place, he hadn't yet determined which – was catching. He heard himself saying when he had finished, in a way that didn't sound like himself, ‘I understand Mauritz made himself unpopular by coming here and probing into some occasion, or happening, that occurred when you were visiting South Africa some years ago.'

‘Visiting? That is not precisely what I was doing there. It was wartime, you understand, the South African war, and I had gone out there on Lady Randolph Churchill's hospital ship, hoping to nurse our wounded soldiers. However, I was taken ill and had to stay behind in Cape Town while they sailed on to Durban. It was a bitter disappointment to me, but in the end had certain compensations for a very young woman such as I was then. When I was pronounced fit enough, I was able to enjoy the many distractions and amusements Cape Town had to offer, which would not otherwise have been the case, before I left for home.'

‘It's my understanding that Mr Osbert Rees-Talbot and his brother were two of the army officers serving out there.' In view of her apology, he didn't remind her that she had evaded the answer to this question about them before. ‘I understand he was injured and spent some time in hospital in Cape Town. So I suppose it was very probable you associated with them there?'

A small porcelain clock on the white marble mantelpiece emitted a silvery chime, and the crystal drops decorating two vases either side shivered very slightly. ‘I did,' she admitted stiffly after a moment or two.

‘Very pleasant to meet up with old friends, I dare say, neighbours from here in England.'

‘I had never met either before I left England. I was still unmarried and living at home with my parents, mostly in town and only occasionally at our home in the country, which lies some miles to the west of Folbury, so the number of people I knew, friends from this part of the world, was limited. The Rees-Talbots and I did not move in the same circles. In fact, we actually met for the first time in Cape Town when Captain Rees-Talbot – Osbert – was convalescing from injuries. He returned to his regiment shortly before I went back home. That was the extent of our acquaintance.'

‘Which presumably you renewed after the war?'

‘No, not at all. Our paths did not cross again.'

‘Perhaps I misunderstood. When we last spoke you told us one of your sons is engaged to the late Mr Rees-Talbot's daughter?'

‘Yes, indeed, Margaret is shortly to become my daughter-in-law, I am happy to say, but their meeting was nothing to do with family friendships or connections. Young people nowadays do not expect their parents to concern themselves with making matches for them, as we did.'

‘I suppose that's true.' That sort of thing had never been part of Reardon's working-class upbringing and thank the good Lord for that. He waited a moment before saying carefully, ‘About Cape Town. I'm afraid I have questions to ask, personal questions … I'm sorry if they should be painful.'

‘I understand. Carry on.'

Without any more hesitation, he plunged straight in. ‘Was there, by any chance, any sort of … attachment at the time, between you and either of the Rees-Talbot brothers?'

She stiffened, but met his gaze directly and answered readily enough. ‘We went to the same dances and parties, I found them both charming, and very amusing company as I have said, but I assure you there was never anything remotely romantic about our meetings.'

He tried to imagine what Lady Maude – stocky, plain, grey-haired – would have been like as a girl. Although she could never have been a beauty, in the chocolate-box, Gibson-girl prettiness popular in her youth, she would have had vitality, he was sure, that spark of liveliness in her eyes that was, in the end, more attractive and lasting. But no, not in any circumstances could he imagine Lady Maude flirting.

‘Sir Julian told us that when Mauritz came to see you, he was anxious to question you about an old photograph he had with him. You told him quite definitely that you didn't recognize anyone on it, which he saw cause to doubt. What do you think he was hoping you would say?'

‘As to that, I remain as much at a loss as you, Inspector.' She fixed him with her sharp, bright stare, head a little to one side, probably hoping to disconcert him, he felt, until he decided she was actually assessing him, weighing him up. After a moment she seemed to come to a decision and picked up a book on the small table beside her. Underneath it lay an old, slightly faded snapshot, which she slid across to him. ‘The photograph he had was another copy of this. How it should have come into his possession I have no idea. When I asked him where he had obtained it he refused to say. The girl there' – pointing to a rather dim corner of the picture – ‘is me. It was taken one day when a large group of us took a picnic out to a well-known beauty spot by Table Mountain, where the views are magnificent.'

‘Yet you denied that when he showed it to you.' He could see why she'd hoped she could get away with doing so. The girl she had indicated was sitting in the shade of a large tree, with the result that the picture of her was too indistinct to give any unmistakable impression, and Mauritz would have had no grounds for challenging the truth of what she said.

‘If he had been plainer and less secretive, told me honestly what he hoped to gain by questioning me, I might have been more forthcoming. One does not take kindly to unlooked-for probing into one's private affairs. And there was also something very shifty about the man that I did not like.'

‘What about the other people in the picture? Were either of the Rees-Talbot brothers there, by any chance?'

She placed a hand on the coffee pot, and finding it still hot asked, ‘More coffee?'

‘Thank you, no.' He waited until she had poured one for herself before repeating his question. ‘The Rees-Talbots were not there?'

‘No, they were not,' she answered firmly.

‘I see. Lady Maude, do you remember any particular, untoward incident that occurred when you were in Cape Town?'

‘
Untoward?
Unpleasant, you mean? My dear inspector, we were at war with the Boers. Incidents of an untoward, not to say distressing nature were happening all the time.'

‘I'm not necessarily referring to the fighting. I was thinking of something different, something that might have happened to people you knew personally. Scandals, rumours going around?' He thought carefully before adding cautiously, ‘Particularly regarding either of the Rees-Talbots?'

She drew herself up and sat very straight. ‘I believe you are in danger of overstepping the mark, Inspector.'

‘I'm sorry, but that's something that can't always be avoided. You must see I have to ask you these questions if we're to get to the bottom of this matter. We have reason to believe, you see, that Mr Osbert Rees-Talbot may have come under pressure before he died regarding some occurrence when he was serving in the army there.'

He could feel the frost from where he sat, and feared he might have lost whatever sympathy had been generated between them. It had been a mistake to imply that any breath of scandal – however far in the distant past – could have touched the family of her future daughter-in-law. In that world in which she moved, such a thing would reflect itself on the Scroopes and would have to be avoided at all costs. Social snobberies like that were a far cry from life as he – and almost everyone else, he suspected – knew, but just because they were beyond his experience didn't mean they didn't exist.

After a while, a trifle less coldly, she said, ‘I take that to mean Mauritz had been pestering Margaret's father too?'

Reardon might well have thought this of Mauritz, had those payments been made to him, and not to Aston. He had come to believe that they must have been working in collusion, but he was not, however, about to befog the issue by bringing Aston into this discussion with her Ladyship. Perhaps he had already gone too far. She was sharp, quite intuitive, and Aston or Mauritz, it was not going to take her long to put two and two together and reach the conclusion that Osbert Rees-Talbot had been hounded into taking his own life, with all that would mean to the Scroopes. Either way – past or present scandal – they would see themselves as being allied to a family tainted with disgrace, ridiculous as that was. They might, he thought, be living in a Jane Austen novel.

Yet even while he was thinking this, she said something which made him decide that he may have been doing her less than justice.

‘My son – Sir Julian, that is – has been a fool,' she said bluntly. ‘And we do not yet fully know what the consequences of that will be. I love him as a mother, but I speak as someone who is not easily deceived. I tell you, whatever the man Mauritz had done, Julian could never have committed murder on him. Not even,' she added with a sardonic trace of humour, ‘if it was to save his own life.'

She stood up, a signal that the interview was over, and he followed suit. He towered above her but did not feel he had the advantage. ‘Thank you for talking to me, my lady. I have a small request before I leave. May I borrow that photograph, please?'

She hesitated only fractionally before pushing it across the table. ‘Very well.' Suddenly she asked, ‘How old was that man?'

‘Mauritz? It's believed he was in his thirties.'

‘I thought younger, but then I am a bad judge.'

Could it possibly have been relief he heard in her voice?

Making regular reports to his superintendent was necessary but awkward. An afternoon meeting had been fixed up, too early for Reardon to knock off for the day afterwards, yet late for getting on his motorbike, riding to Folbury and then back home again, when he'd sworn to snatch time to take Ellen to the concert she'd been looking forward to for weeks. Hopefully, he might just be able to make it.