Against the Light Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Marjorie Eccles

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Part Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Three

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Four

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Marjorie Eccles

  THE SHAPE OF SAND

  SHADOWS AND LIES

  LAST NOCTURNE

  THE CUCKOO’S CHILD *

  AFTER CLARE *

  THE FIREBIRD’S FEATHER *

  AGAINST THE LIGHT *

  The Herbert Reardon historical mysteries

  BROKEN MUSIC

  A DANGEROUS DECEIT *

  HEIRS AND ASSIGNS *

  * available from Severn House

  AGAINST THE LIGHT

  Marjorie Eccles

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2016

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published 2016 in Great

  Britain and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2016 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2016 by Marjorie Eccles.

  The right of Marjorie Eccles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8622-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-724-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-785-1 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Part One

  One

  April, 1912

  It made the headlines, of course. This time last year the newspapers had been too full of the approaching Coronation jubilations and excitements to leave much space for anything else, and since then there had been nothing half so interesting to draw in the nation’s readers – only the gloomy forecast of yet more strikes to come … suffragettes … the Irish problem … and the German Kaiser getting too big for his boots. When it broke, the new story with its human appeal caused a mild sensation, and sent the sales of the Daily Mail rocketing.

  Until that, too, was abruptly relegated to the back pages, eclipsed by news which stunned the world.

  The Titanic, a luxurious ocean-going liner launched to a huge fanfare of publicity, a reputedly unsinkable vessel with over two thousand passengers on board, had been lost on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to the United States. Unbelievably, dramatically, it had collided with an iceberg south of Newfoundland, foundered, and now lay at the bottom of the ocean.

  Continents on both sides of the Atlantic mourned the fifteen hundred and more men, women and children who had lost their lives, while Alice Latimer’s family were still trying to come to terms with the event that had turned their own lives upside down.

  She had felt no premonitions of what was to come as she bicycled energetically homewards across London. Alice was a doctor in the time allowed – four days a week – from being the wife of a Member of Parliament. It was a busy, demanding, divided life she led, not without its problems, and as always she had several things on her mind, her main concern today being with what she’d find when she arrived home. Or rather, what she hoped not to find.

  She pushed on, feeling hot, as much due to these bothersome thoughts as to the exertions of pedalling in a stuffy bicycling costume with a divided skirt and a hat that would insist on fighting its hatpins in its desire to blow away, as well as trying to avoid getting her bicycle wheel stuck in the tramlines. It had been a long day at the Dorcas Clinic and cycling from the congested back streets of insalubrious Spitalfields to the wide, tree-lined avenues and handsome houses around the Regent’s Park was no mean feat, even for someone as determined as Alice. And the spring morning which had started out so beautifully, clear and sparkling, had once again given way to lowering skies which looked as though they meant business – though no one was complaining about the present capricious weather and what might be a dull summer to come. Not after the interminable months of scorching heat last year, when all London had wilted, the grass in the parks had burned off and people had collapsed of heatstroke.

  He’s certain to be gone, she persuaded herself, pushing aside a damp strand of hair from her overheated face. She had left the house before either of them that morning, but Edmund nearly always kept his promises (he was a politician after all) and he wouldn’t have reneged on his offer to speak to Dudley and – diplomatically of course – let him know he had outstayed his welcome.

  ‘But please, no money when he leaves – absolutely not, Edmund,’ she’d warned last night. Her cousin had never asked for money, but the suggestion had always hovered. Independent-minded as she herself was, she felt it was more than time he learned to stand on his own feet. And yet, she still felt bad about sending him away. It was she who’d urged him to stay in the first place after all, another of those impulses of hers that she’d come to regret. The time had come for him to depart, however, and asking him to leave would come better from Edmund, who would never let himself be swayed by sad brown eyes and a mute appeal, like a spaniel being rejected by his master. Like any politician he could, when occasion demanded it, be quite ruthless.

  ‘Very well, you have my word – though I must admit I’d be happy to give him almost anything to go away. I really cannot take much more of his determination to be unobtrusive.’

  Alice laughed. A joke from Edmund these days was to be savoured, even such a small one. They came so rarely lately, swamped as he was by the cares and responsibilities of office that came with the occupation of a ministerial position in Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith’s Liberal government.

  Dudley Nichol was in fact Alice’s only living blood relation, though he was a cousin so far removed she barely knew him. He had arrived unannounced, a slight, willowy, rather helpless young man
of twenty-six, a virtual stranger from the distant past, and because Alice was glad to welcome anyone even vaguely related to her, he’d been given a cordial invitation to visit for a while. It was unfortunate that he seemed to have interpreted it as meaning an indefinite stay. Anxious not to be in the way but always there. He found things to do during the day but evenings were no longer their own.

  Alice liked him, however. He had an odd, quirky humour Edmund couldn’t share, and they laughed together, although Edmund had to admit he had intelligent and perceptive observations to make when the two of them spoke about current affairs, even though Dudley invariably withdrew when the discussions threatened to become too serious. He spent a good deal of time each day in his room, endlessly scribbling. At what? Alice had wondered, intrigued. Not a novel or anything like that – he’d confessed sadly that his education wasn’t up to that sort of thing when she’d bluntly put the question. But he hadn’t said what it was he wrote so assiduously. Letters to a sweetheart, maybe. That little-boy-lost look, the occasional impish smile spiced with a hint of mischief, could tug at the heartstrings, and that shy smile must have set many a woman a-flutter.

  ‘At least we’ll have the place to ourselves again,’ Edmund had said.

  ‘I don’t know where he’ll go, though.’ Alice was still worried.

  ‘There’s always Violet,’ he replied dryly, surprising her that he’d even noticed the odd rapport which had sprung up between his sister and Dudley. ‘In which case we wouldn’t be rid of him at all.’ Since they lived at such close quarters, that was undeniable.

  ‘Dudley wouldn’t presume.’

  Edmund said nothing more but his eyebrows rose.

  His sister and her husband shared with the Latimers the large house which had come to Edmund on the death of his father, and it was true that Dudley did wander along in a desultory way to spend rather a lot of time during the day with Violet, in the intervals between disappearing somewhere on vague, unspecified business. In fact, his existence altogether seemed to have been pretty aimless since the death of his adored mother, when he was eighteen. Alice had listened to accounts of the various attempts he’d subsequently made to earn a precarious living – a catalogue of beginnings and failures – with more patience than she would otherwise have done, had she not known only too well what it felt like to be suddenly left alone in the world, bereft of the one person who had meant everything.

  Just when her own life as a newly qualified doctor was opening out in front of her, her father had died of a massive heart attack. Francis Nichol had been a doctor himself, an untidy, improvident but kindly and well-loved man who had accumulated debts through not pressing his bills, and his affairs had been left in chaos. After the debts had been settled, his practice in a small Herefordshire town, which Alice had been planning to join, had perforce been discontinued, leaving her adrift and practically penniless. It was at that point, when she was at such a low ebb, feeling her life was in bits and her natural buoyancy having totally deserted her, she had met Edmund Latimer. Handsome, well-to-do and distinguished-looking, possessed of presence and a quiet but undeniable authority, he had stepped in and taken the guiding reins and before she knew it, she had found herself the wife of a politician. A man with a growing reputation, Edmund was always busy with one thing and another, shouldering responsibilities in the demanding Parliamentary career for which he’d abandoned his law practice. He was also nearly twenty years older than she was; but none of that had seemed to matter.

  She would never cease to be grateful to him, more especially since, unlike most men, he made no objections to the idea of his wife working, as she now did voluntarily among the sick and the poor at the Dorcas Free Clinic. And yet, accompanying him to the endless social occasions and dull dinners that went with his position, and playing the hostess when required, she often needed to stifle a sense of rebellion by telling herself that was after all part of the bargain. She knew that, divested of her working garb, bathed and scented, her hair released from its simple, easily managed knot and newly arranged into fashionable rolls and puffs, and wearing the sophisticated and expensive clothes Edmund insisted she bought, she could be transformed into an exemplary Parliamentary wife who could hold her own with the best of them. It mattered to Edmund that, unlike the Prime Minister, he was thought to have approval in his choice of the right wife. She was no dazzling beauty, never that, but some of his colleagues, at least, appreciated intelligent conversation and respected the competent, professional woman behind the pretty face, which he liked to see. It was only when he thought that anything approaching flirting with his younger associates was going on that he frowned. Perhaps because it reminded him too much of the difference in their ages.

  It had never occurred to her when she agreed to marry him that there would come a time when she’d question the wisdom of trying to keep up the medical work she was trained for and loved, as well as the obligations entailed in marrying him. It was never meant to be for long, only until the children they had both hoped for arrived, Edmund as much as Alice. Five years later, and still childless, however, Alice had begun to feel herself increasingly dissatisfied with the situation. But in her busy life, she found it necessary to slot matters into different compartments, and she hadn’t yet found the time (or perhaps was afraid) to open that particular one and seriously think about what it might mean.

  Manessa House, large, prosperous, white-stuccoed, many windowed and symmetrically built, stood at the end of its short, tidy sweep of gravel. It was at its best in summer, when the quiet garden that stretched out to the back would be filled with the scent of roses, and when its backdrop of trees, now just beginning to green over, was in full leaf. Even this cold, drizzly afternoon couldn’t spoil the handsome, dignified look of the house in the tree-lined avenue. Inherited by Edmund from his father, Henry Latimer, who had outlived both his wives, each of whom had given him a child, its size and its various staircases and passageways made it a viable proposition for him to allow his much younger half-sister Violet Martens and her husband to occupy half of it, without either family getting too much in each other’s way. Alice was in fact very careful not to abuse the easy accessibility the arrangement offered. Friendly relations were maintained by treading softly where Violet was concerned. On the other hand, a visit to see her adorable baby niece was the highlight of each day and something Alice did her best not to miss.

  There was no sign of Edmund’s recently acquired Napier on the drive, despite the fact that they were due to dine out – dine out or make up a theatre party, Alice couldn’t remember which without consulting her diary. Wheeling her bicycle round the back to park it in an outhouse, she felt a stab of guilt in hoping some Parliamentary business might hold Edmund up for long enough to prevent them going out at all. At the end of a long day’s work at the clinic among the poor who led such desperate lives, it was sometimes hard to summon up enough enthusiasm to prepare herself for a glittering social occasion. She was therefore not in the least displeased, when she reached the spacious hall, to find that a telephone message had been left, to say that Edmund had indeed been detained. Quite possibly a question was being raised in the House which was likely to lead to a lively debate and a late sitting. Perhaps a vote was expected, when his presence would be essential. The Government’s extremely slim majority after the last election meant that Mr Asquith, the Prime Minster – H.H. as he was generally known among his colleagues – needed every bit of support he could get, and not only on the ever present Irish problem which was yet again dominating all other business. Among other matters, he was also under relentless pressure from his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George, and from Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, to push through controversial vote-catching domestic reforms. Edmund kept a modest set of rooms near Westminster, handy for the division bell, where he could stay the night if the occasion warranted it.

  Alice read his message again. It ended by saying she must not feel there was any real necessity for her to go alone to what
she now recalled was one of those tiresome soirées. She was grateful for that; without doubt it would be so overcrowded her absence was unlikely to be unduly remarked on, and right now, a free evening alone, a bath, supper on a tray and a book was certainly a far more appealing proposition. She stifled the idea that the message might subtly have suggested that although she could avoid the occasion if she wished, it might in fact be diplomatic for her to attend.

  Pulling out her hatpins as she ran up the graceful central staircase, she paused for a moment to squint at the clock at the foot of the stairs. As usual, the house was immaculate. The waxed floors shone and smelled of beeswax. In a large vase on the hall table, stiffly arranged daffodils stood to attention. The brass stair-rods were newly polished, as was the mahogany long case clock, ticking regular seconds away into the silence. Although the lives of the two families did not overlap much, a shared staff was employed to run this large, two-household establishment, both of which were ruled by Mrs Lowther, their housekeeper. Violet also had a personal maid whom she allowed to assist Alice on odd occasions, when her hair needed to be dressed more elaborately than usual, for instance. A forty-year-old daughter of the vicarage with an expression permanently soured by resentment at her unmarried state, Newcombe was evidently not pleased at this. But she did as she was told. She was devoted to Violet.

  Alice tossed her hat on to the bed in her bedroom and shrugged herself out of her jacket. She hesitated as she emerged from the room. Was it wishful thinking that the place had the feeling of air undisturbed by any human presence? It wasn’t until she found Dudley’s room deserted and its cupboards empty that she allowed herself to believe it. Relief surged through her. No note or letter, though. She hadn’t been looking for thanks, but she was disappointed he hadn’t even said goodbye. She turned to leave and her eye caught a glint of something showing underneath the bed valance, a glint which proved to be the gilded page-edges of a small book. How very odd – a Roman Catholic prayer book, red leather with flimsy, well-thumbed pages. Inside was written: To Dudley, from Mother, on your First Communion.