The Crow Trap (29 page)

“Ah,” Lily said. “That’s another thing. I wanted to explain about Grace.”

So this is it, Anne thought, remembering Vera’s words. This is where we get the spin.

“You do know that it all happened long before I married Robert,” Lily said earnestly. “I mean I wasn’t involved in any way at all.”

“Of course.”

“And Robert actually didn’t have much say in the matter. The old lady was still alive then. You never met the old lady.”

It wasn’t a question. Lily had done her homework. Robert’s mother had died before Anne moved to Langholme. Still a response was expected.

“No.”

“She was formidable, a real tyrant. Robert was scared of her, you know. Can you imagine being that scared of your own mother?” She paused, lowered her voice, spoke confidentially. “I don’t think she was terribly stable. I wouldn’t say anything to Robert of course he’s very loyal but I wonder sometimes if that’s where Edmund’s problems came from. They do say, don’t they, that mental illness is genetic.”

“So it was Lady Fulwell who banished Edmund from the ancestral home?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“How would you put it?”

“Edmund was never easy, you know. Even as a boy. Robert’s told me all about him. Today we’d say he had some sort of disorder or syndrome.

Then, they didn’t know what to do. He was expelled from school, from several schools. The only person who had any sort of control over him was a woman Robert’s mother employed in the kitchen. She was quite unsuitable as a nanny but that was how she ended up because no one else would put up with him. She was half gypsy by all accounts and not very hygienic. The family found it terribly difficult. I mean, of course one loves one’s children equally but it must have been hard to feel any affection for Edmund. In those days he didn’t seem to be good at anything. Except getting drunk in the Ridley and chasing farmers’ daughters.”

Fraternizing with the plebs, Anne thought. That wouldn’t have gone down very well.

“Besides, he wasn’t thrown out of the Hall. He moved into one of the estate houses because he wanted more independence. More privacy.

Actually I think Robert was generous to him. He lived in that house rent free, and it was space one of the workers could have used. And he never exactly contributed to the running of the business.”

“Was Grace’s mother a farmer’s daughter?” “No,” Lily said slowly. Then: “Didn’t Grace mention any of this?”

“Nothing. I didn’t know you were related. I made a joke out of it.”

“She didn’t tell you even then?”

“No.”

“I wonder why she was so secretive.”

“Perhaps she was ashamed of you, so she didn’t want to admit the connection,” Anne said lightly. “You’re not exactly popular, you know, among conservationists. You’re selling a valuable habitat for development.” She paused, saw Lily gather herself for the old defence about protecting the family’s heritage and added hurriedly, “So, who was Edmund’s wife?”

“She was called Helen.” Lily gave a nervous giggle. “Actually she was the rector’s daughter. Very Lawrentian. Though Robert’s convinced Edmund only seduced her to make his mother cross. She was pregnant of course when they married. Only just pregnant. It didn’t show. And desperately in love. According to Robert, Edmund was very dashing in a wild unkempt sort of way. She thought she could look after him, stop him drinking. She thought she’d make him settle down.”

And did he?”

“He did for a while, surprisingly. He became almost respectable. They bought a little house near the coast. Helen thought he should move away from Langholme and make a fresh start. It was all very suburban.

He even had a job of a sort. He and a friend opened a restaurant.”

“The Harbour Lights.”

“So Grace did tell you about that.”

“No, I’ve eaten there. I’ve met him. Without realizing of course who he was.”

“Ah,” Lily said. “I heard he went back to Rod when he stopped travelling.”

“I take it the suburban dream didn’t last.”

“Oh, it did for a while. A couple of years. The family thought it was the making of him. They liked Helen. She was a docile little thing.

They had her to stay at the Hall after the baby was born. And later. I wonder if Grace remembered her visits there. Perhaps not. She would have been very young.”

“So what happened?”

“Edmund had an affair. I don’t know who the woman was. I’m not even sure Robert knew. Helen took it very seriously. I suppose being brought up in the rectory had left her with old-fashioned ideas.” “Very suburban,” Anne said.

Lily didn’t pick up the sarcasm. “It was rather. It’s usually possible to find a way of working around these things.”

Does that mean you have affairs, Anne wondered. Or perhaps Roberts does. Perhaps Arabella the nanny has taken his fancy. He could easily go for the younger woman. He married Lily when she was still a child, though I’m hardly one to judge.

“But Helen committed suicide,” she said. Like Bella, she thought, but not like me. You wouldn’t catch any man driving me to that.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

And Edmund ran away.”

“I think actually he was very upset by what had happened. He did love Helen in his own way. And the child.”

“But not enough to look after her.”

“Men don’t very often, do they, even these days.”

Nor do women of your class, Anne thought. You pay people to do that.

And how much effort did my parents put into caring for me?

“Didn’t Robert’s mother feel any responsibility for Grace?”

“She was quite ill by then,” Lily said evasively. “She really didn’t feel up to it.”

“Would it have been that much of a drag to have a child in the house?” Anne asked. “It’s a big place. She needn’t even have seen her.”

Lily turned away from Anne and stared towards the horizon. “It wasn’t only Grace, was it?” she said.

It took Anne a moment to realize what she was getting at. “You mean that if Grace made her home here, the family might have to accept Edmund back too.”

Livvy nodded, pleased that she hadn’t had to spell it out. “He was terribly troublesome.”

“Has he been troublesome lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“The police say he’s disappeared. I wondered if he’d turned up at the Hall.”

“Good God, no, we’re the last people he’d turn to. He never got on with Robert and I don’t know him.” She paused. “Grace turned out well, didn’t she, despite everything. I mean, I understand she had two degrees. Edmund must have been proud.”

“She wasn’t very happy,” Anne said.

“No? Oh dear.” But the expression of regret wasn’t convincing. Lily’s mind was elsewhere. With an agility that Anne envied, she extricated herself from the deck chair “Look, I must go. The boys are home from school for the weekend and we have such little time.”

“Thank you for coming.” It had, after all, been very interesting.

Lily was her confident self again. “No problem. Do get in touch if there’s anything. I mean it. Any time.”

Anne walked with her to the yard and watched the Range Rover drive up the lane. When she returned to the garden Vera Stanhope had materialized in the deck chair She sat, bare legs stretched ahead of her, eyes half closed as if she’d been there for hours. She sensed Anne approaching and turned to face her. Her shifting weight made the canvas creak like sails in a storm. Anne imagined it ripping and Vera falling in a heap on the grass.

“What did you make of that then?” Vera asked.

“How much did you hear?”

“Everything,” Vera said with satisfaction. She moved again and nodded towards the open French windows. “From there. I saw the car pass the farm. Thought it might be interesting.”

“Was it?”

“Very. I think I can remember her Robert, you know, at those parties Constance gave. My father dragged me along. We’d be more or less the same age. But Edmund?” She seemed lost in thought.

“She is much younger than Robert,” Anne said.

Vera grinned. “I’m not past it. Not yet. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Do you know if Lily Fulwell met Grace while she was living here?”

“Neither of them mentioned a meeting, but then Grace didn’t say much about anything.” Anne hesitated. “I saw her once on the estate, looking at the workers’ houses on the Avenue. I suppose she was curious to see where her father had grown up.”

Vera remained recumbent, beached on the deck-chair. And I’m bloody curious,” she said with a surprising intensity, ‘ find out where the bugger’s got to now.”

Chapter Thirty-Six.

While Vera sat in the sun Rachael was in Black Law farmhouse trying to convince Joe Ashworth that Bella’s suicide and Grace’s murder were related. The sergeant was polite but unconvinced.

The inspector doesn’t think that’s a profitable line of inquiry,” he said. He’d made them tea, offered chocolate digestives but he was quite firm. “You should know her well enough by now to realize you’ll not shift her once her mind’s made up.”

“OK,” Rachael said. “So, what if it’s got nothing to do with murder, but Bella was being threatened before she died? Blackmail. She met someone who recognized her, or someone from the quarry found out about the manslaughter conviction and put pressure on her. That would be a criminal case, wouldn’t it?”

“It might be but there’s no evidence of that. No complaint. Not our business.”

“But it could be our business, couldn’t it?” Edie asked. “I mean, if we were curious about what happened to a friend we could ask some questions. Inspector Stanhope couldn’t object to that.”

“She wouldn’t like it.”

“It wouldn’t be as if we’d be treading on any toes. As she’d dropped that line of inquiry anyway.” “God,” he said. “Save me from forceful women.”

That was all the encouragement they needed to trace Bella’s younger brother, the boy who had gone straight from school into his father’s butchery business. It seemed that Alfred Noble’s meat empire must have collapsed because there was no shop of that name left in Kimmerston.

There was only one butcher left a smart establishment with a large delicatessen section which catered for visitors to the holiday cottages in the National Park. The owner remembered the Nobles. “They had three shops once. Must have been worth a fortune.”

“Did the business go bust?”

“No, he sold up just in time. Before the supermarket was built and people started getting faddy ideas about nuts and bean sprouts. It must have been after the old man died.”

“He?”

“The son. Charlie.” The butcher turned away to provide a quarter of ham off the bone and some Brussels pate for a well-dressed woman with a southern accent. He was persuading her of the quality of his homemade sausage and Edie had to shout to get his attention. “Do you know where the son is now?”

Rachael cringed, but he completed the transaction and then replied, “He and his wife run the stables on the way out of town on the Langholme Road. He bought it years ago from the profit on the business.” He looked at his shop. Empty again of customers. “It was the most sensible thing he could have done. Do you know the place I mean?”

They knew exactly. It was set back from the road in a river valley surrounded by mature woodland. They passed it every time they drove back to Baikie’s.

They arrived at the stables in late afternoon. The place was overrun by girls in their early teens who had come straight from school. They seemed to be everywhere. They were humping bales of straw, pushing barrows of muck, hanging over stable doors to pat ponies’ heads.

“I always wanted to ride,” Rachael said. “You wouldn’t let me.”

“I never thought it was you.” Edie was dismissive. “Precious little madams with their jodhpurs and their gymkhanas and their pushy mums.”

She looked around, taking in the Range Rovers in the car park. “It doesn’t seem to have changed.”

I’d have loved it, Rachael thought. I wouldn’t have minded the snobbiness or having the wrong clothes.

The girls gathered round an instructor, clamouring for their favourite horses. She was a large young woman wearing a shapeless T-shirt. She shouted out names and the girls melted away. Rachael wandered across the yard to watch them tack up while Edie accosted the instructor.

“We’re looking for Mr. Noble.”

“Can I help? If you want to book lessons … “

“No.” Edie gave a little laugh to show how ridiculous that idea was.

“No, it’s personal.”

“Oh.” The woman had probably been told to keep punters away from the boss and was still reluctant. “He’s probably in the house. I know his daughter’s there.”

The house was of stone, long and low, closer to the river, separated from the road by a large indoor school and the breeze-block rows of stables. In front of it was a cobbled yard where a BMW was parked. The door was opened by a girl of about eighteen. She had glasses on her nose and a copy of Chaucer in one hand. She spoke with the rudeness of most adolescents.