A Dangerous Deceit Read online

  ‘Not really. Oh, I mean … well, of course I am, it’s shocking news.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ She was smartly dressed as usual, wearing a light wrap coat, cut to button on the hip, in some material with a silky gleam to it, its bronze colour bringing out the glow in her hazel eyes, but somehow draining the colour from her face. She was bareheaded, twisting the straw hat she had worn in church round and round in her hands. ‘What is it?’ he repeated.

  Sympathy was always guaranteed to make her cry, but her natural control was gradually reasserting itself. She made an effort and breathed deeply. ‘This afternoon, the police came looking for Felix. They – they believe Mr Aston died after being attacked.’

  ‘What? And they suspect Felix?’ To say he was astounded was putting it mildly. ‘Your brother Felix?’ he repeated, as if she had some other brother. ‘What grounds have they for that?’

  ‘My brother Felix,’ she answered with a shaky laugh, ‘has been making more of a fool of himself than usual.’

  This was eminently conceivable to Symon, but his private opinions about Felix did not include seeing him as a murderer, even when Margaret went on to tell him about the scrap with Aston that Felix had apparently initiated.

  ‘That was – foolish,’ he said, choosing the word carefully – idiotic, crass and asinine being unpardonable words in the circumstances. ‘But he must have had his reasons for picking a fight with the man?’

  ‘He believes he had. You see, the fact is – oh, it’s too awful – but the fact is, Mr Lazenby has discovered something – well, unusual, in Father’s papers.’

  ‘Mr Lazenby? Ah, the accountant.’ After a moment he said, ‘We’d better find a seat and you can tell me everything. Unless you’d prefer to go somewhere more private? Home, perhaps?’

  ‘No. Here will do – it could hardly be more private, after all; no one here is likely to repeat what they overhear, are they?’

  This time it was he who let the little attempt at frivolity pass. It showed she was feeling more herself, but it was not one of the occasions when he felt it appropriate to laugh and relax and say nonsensical things himself. He led her to one of the seats along a side path, sat her down and then gently held her hand and told her to start from the beginning.

  She had been immersed in fashion catalogues when the police arrived, although the elegant creations depicted therein were serving only to reinforce the certainty that her trousseau was not going to be enhanced by anything likely to be purchased from the Misses Schofield on the High Street, whose basic stock-in-trade was lisle stockings and liberty bodices. Her wedding dress was no problem: it was being made by one of Aunt Deborah’s friends who had learnt her craft at the Royal School of Needlework. Skirts that year had shot up to barely an inch below the knee, but Margaret had conceded that was a length inappropriate for a wedding dress and had settled for mid-calf, choosing a simple long-waisted deep cream chiffon over a white satin underdress, the bodice and fluted hem embroidered with roses and seed pearls. As for the rest of her trousseau – well, shopping for clothes wasn’t normally Kay’s idea of a good day out, but perhaps she could be persuaded into a trip to London …

  Or perhaps she could stay with her chum Barbara (now known as Babs), who, since moving to London, seemed to spend her life driving around with young men in fast cars, dancing with them half the night, wearing very short skirts, drinking cocktails, and generally living life at a hectic pace. They were young, restless, those who had been spared the war, determined to enjoy what the new future held. ‘The bright young things’, the papers were calling them, making it seem as though the whole post-war generation was gripped with this mania.

  But dull as Babs’s letters sometimes made Margaret feel, she knew that a visit to her was not the answer, certainly not at the moment. Better than either her or Kay, she thought suddenly, would be Vinnie, who had only ten minutes before arrived with an extravagantly large bunch of white, sweet-smelling narcissus she’d seen on a market stall and been unable to resist. She had begged to arrange them, and was at that moment doing so in the kitchen. Yes, it would be good to have Vinnie shop with her – she was always so sensible and invariably in good spirits. Margaret’s mood had lifted at the idea of doing something so intimate and feminine.

  The front door bell had rung at that point and an unusually flustered Maisie ushered in Joe Gilmour, the young red-headed policeman she was walking out with, accompanied by another older man in plain clothes and with a sadly disfigured face, who introduced himself as a detective inspector and asked to see Felix. Felix was upstairs and Maisie was dispatched to ask him to come down. Joe looked as though he would rather not have been there, but it was the inspector, Reardon, who spoke briefly to Margaret while they were waiting.

  She hoped she wasn’t showing the nervousness she felt about this request to see her brother – though Reardon was less intimidating than she had expected, once you got used to the scars. She offered them tea – which they politely refused – and did her best to keep the conversation going until Felix, who was taking his time, should appear. Seeing the police, her heart had sunk. She had immediately known without question what this visit must be about.

  Felix had finally admitted to her what she had already suspected when she had seen his bruised jaw – that he had taken out his frustrations over what they’d learnt from Mr Lazenby by attacking Arthur Aston in his own home, a man old enough to be his father. That he had underestimated his opponent and come off badly didn’t make it any better. He was ashamed of himself, yet obviously still felt he’d had justification, and more, for confronting Aston, and had told her defiantly that given the same provocation he would probably do it again. She could see now that in view of what had later happened to Aston, that stupid action of his could have assumed a nasty significance, at least if seen from the point of view of the police.

  Presently a door slammed somewhere upstairs and she breathed a sigh of relief. Nobody but Felix slammed doors.

  Reardon didn’t attempt to break the silence as they waited. She wondered if he had noticed her tension, and deliberately tried to relax. After another minute or two Felix came in, pushing open the door for Vinnie, who was carrying the vase of flowers, her beret still perched on her head, looking breezy and outdoors. ‘Oh, sorry, didn’t know you had visitors, I’ll make myself scarce,’ she said with a sunny smile, putting the flowers down on a low table.

  ‘Stay, please, Vinnie. No reason why she shouldn’t, is there?’ Felix demanded pugnaciously, holding tight to her hand.

  ‘You are Miss—?’ Reardon asked.

  ‘Henderson. Vinnie Henderson.’

  ‘Please sit down if you wish, Miss Henderson.’

  ‘Oh, right-o then.’ She allowed herself to be pulled down next to Felix on the uncomfortable horsehair sofa that everyone else normally avoided, its recovering long overdue. The sunlight washing the room made its shabbiness even more apparent than usual, as well as showing up all the other deficiencies created through years of careless, comfortable living, so familiar you never noticed them. Vinnie’s flowers, fresh and new, looked almost incongruous, but brave in the circumstances. Margaret smiled at her, glad she was there, helping to bring normality to a situation that was growing increasingly bizarre.

  ‘So,’ asked Reardon, after he had pressed Felix into confirming, reluctantly at first, then with a certain bravado, the encounter with Aston, which had apparently already been related to them by Aston’s wife, ‘what was your grumble with Mr Aston, specifically?’

  ‘Grumble?’ Felix gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Well, if you call cheating my father out of several thousand pounds simply a grumble, I must beg to differ.’

  Margaret tried to catch his eye. This sort of attitude was not going down well with the chief inspector, but when he in turn spoke she sensed it was the words rather than the attitude which had caused him to look so sharply at her brother, that he was perhaps alerted rather than irritated.

  ‘Cheating? Would you explain
that, sir?’

  Felix shrugged and looked sulky and Margaret took it on herself to answer, quickly putting Reardon in the picture as to Mr Lazenby’s position regarding the family finances. ‘My father died at the end of last year and we’ve asked Mr Lazenby – he’s an accountant – to sort through all his papers for us to see if anything further needs to be done, though it doesn’t now seem as though that will be necessary. My father was quite precise in keeping his affairs in order. But …’ She stopped and took a deep breath, then went on, her colour heightened. ‘To be truthful, I’m afraid he’s come across something slightly odd.’

  It was her turn to receive one of Reardon’s sharp glances, but he merely nodded and waited for her to go on. It seemed that according to Mr Lazenby a considerable loan had been made to Arthur Aston several years ago when he started up his business, and had apparently never been repaid. Of course, some unrecorded agreement about this might have been arrived at between the two parties, Mr Lazenby had said, tutting in disapproval at such an unorthodox way of dealing with matters, but it was irregular, very irregular. And there the matter might have been left, had he not gone on to say that Osbert had also written several very substantial cheques to Aston just before his death, and unless these were gifts and not further loans, they had not been repaid either.

  There was a long silence when she had finished. They all looked at Felix who now sat with his head in his hands, saying nothing.

  It was clearly Reardon who was going to do all the questioning, leaving the sergeant seemingly relieved at the note-taking role assigned to him. ‘Did you already know about this?’

  Felix muttered something unintelligible and didn’t look up.

  ‘A thousand pounds,’ he had heard someone say, walking past the open study window, a surprising statement that had made him pause to listen further. A woman’s voice, he’d thought. Harsh, grating. And then his father’s, shocked: ‘Another? That’s quite impossible!’

  He had turned away then, shocked himself and, yes, ashamed. Ashamed of eavesdropping, but more at the sequence of thoughts the words had immediately, shamefully but unstoppably conjured up: a woman demanding money. His father, still not much above fifty, and a widower for twenty-five years …

  Ashamed even more when Mr Lazenby had found that a thousand-pound cheque had lately been made out, not once but three times, and not to any woman but to Arthur Aston. Knowing without doubt then that he’d been mistaken – that it had not been a woman’s voice he’d heard demanding money from his father, but Aston’s, raised and distorted with anger, greed – or possibly menace.

  What if he hadn’t walked away from his eavesdropping? What if he’d walked into the study there and then and confronted the person he now knew to have been Aston, and told him to clear out and leave Osbert alone? Would that have saved his father? From what? He had clearly been afraid of Aston exposing something shameful. Would it have helped, or given the other man reason to bring whatever it was into the light? Round and round in his mind the questions whirled. In the end, he had persuaded himself he should forget it, it was none of his business, but by then it was too late. Osbert was dead. It was only when Mr Lazenby had brought those payments to light that he’d found the guts to do something. An abortive attempt, and look where it had landed him! In trouble with the police.

  He looked up at last and replied obliquely, ‘Whatever the reasons, I didn’t see any justification for Aston getting away with it. I couldn’t stand it any longer and I went to face him and tell him he was honour-bound to repay every penny he owed.’ Anger boiled up in him as he pictured Aston’s fat, leering face. ‘The rotten blighter had the cheek to find it amusing! He told me to go away and actually laughed in my face.’

  ‘And so you knocked him down?’

  ‘He was the one who started it. He suddenly punched me on the jaw and I – well, I hit him back. But it was nothing more than a tap. He fell over backwards on to the fender and knocked his head against the fireplace, but he was all right. I was the one who got the worst of it. He damn near broke my jaw! Things might have got worse, I’ll admit, but his wife came in and that was that. He was OK, sitting down comfortably when I left. Not a very edifying scene, I suppose,’ he ended with some bravado, ‘but I was bloody furious, excuse me.’

  ‘Furious enough to go back next morning and finish him off at his workshop?’

  ‘No,’ Felix said shortly. ‘I’d cooled off by then. But I’m not surprised that somebody did fix him. He’d been asking for it one way and another for a long time.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Reardon said nothing for a while and then he addressed Margaret. ‘Was your father normally such a generous man? To part with such large amounts of money?’

  ‘He was generous to a fault with us, his family, and to the church and other charities, yes.’

  ‘But Mr Aston was hardly a charity.’

  ‘He apparently saved my father’s life once, when they were serving together in the South African war. I don’t know the details but Father was not one to forget such an action.’

  ‘Aston took care not to let him forget it! That’s what the cheques were about. It was damned blackmail, nothing more.’

  Margaret said, ‘He – Father, that is – always felt guilty. He was given the DSO for bravery, you see, but he always said it was Aston who should have been decorated, though I don’t know the details—’

  ‘Well I do!’ Felix broke in passionately. ‘Father would never speak of it, but Uncle Hamer told me the story years ago, when I was a boy. Apparently, Aston helped drag Father back into safety after he was shot when he was leading his men to take an enemy position – successfully, as it turned out. The fellow was brave, no doubt about it, but it was Father who led the men out into heavy fire and lost his own right arm. No one but him ever said he didn’t deserve his medal. To think otherwise diminishes his own courage.’

  He slumped back in his chair, his face set. Vinnie suddenly reached for his hand and held it pressed between hers. It was up to Margaret once more to answer the few questions the detective inspector still had, though there wasn’t much more, thankfully, that he wanted to know. Perhaps, she thought, there was nothing else he could ask really.

  At a nod from Reardon, Joe Gilmour snapped his notebook shut, slipping it into his uniform pocket. He gave Margaret a small reassuring smile. She liked the look of this young man of Maisie’s, and managed a return smile. The other policeman, Reardon, was not so easy to read, but throughout she had sensed a surprising depth of understanding in him. Maybe it was that facial scarring, the evidence of war wounds that one had, sadly, grown only too accustomed to seeing in the last years. He must have had traumas of his own to deal with.

  She stood up as they did, but it appeared Reardon hadn’t quite finished. On the point of leaving, he turned and said, ‘My condolences on your father’s death, Miss Rees-Talbot. A tragic accident, I understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered with heightened colour, and added more firmly, ‘Yes. As you’ve no doubt heard, he was crippled by the loss of his arm, and he slipped while taking a bath.’

  ‘That was indeed unfortunate. He must have been a brave man, they don’t give DSOs for nothing.’ He held out his hand. ‘Thank you for your trouble. We’ll be in touch if necessary, Mr Rees-Talbot.’

  Felix and Vinnie left the house shortly after the police had gone. Perhaps, thought Margaret, he needed to be with her in private, to pour out his troubles into a sympathetic ear, though more likely he felt the need to escape, expecting a lecture from Margaret herself. He needn’t have bothered. She was in no mood for the big sister role, and anyway, he already knew how fed up she was with him.

  But if he wanted a shoulder to cry on, she thought he had picked the wrong person. Kind as Vinnie was, she was too sensible and down to earth to let him feel sorry for himself.

  ‘So that was it?’ Symon asked.

  ‘They haven’t arrested him or anything, if that’s what you mean. But they said they would need to talk to him
again.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Oh, I know Felix is a fool in many ways, and it’s time he grew up and used the brains he’s been given, but I really think this will teach him a lesson. It’s been a shock, to both of us – about Aston and the money, I mean. What could Father have been thinking of?’

  ‘Presumably he had his reasons.’

  ‘Poor Felix, you mustn’t think too badly of him, Symon.’ She hesitated, colouring deeply. ‘He has to have someone to blame for what happened.’

  It was the first time she had even hinted, however obliquely, that Osbert’s death had left questions with unacceptable answers. He understood that pain and bewilderment made her afraid of admitting this, even to him. ‘You have no need to blame your father, Margaret. Such a thing could have happened to anyone.’

  ‘What made him do it, Symon?’ The injustice of it all welled up. He understood that it wasn’t her brother she was speaking of. ‘What made him do it? It’s so unfair, and it makes me feel so – so helpless. I feel I ought to do something to find the truth or I’ll burst!’ She punched her fist down in frustration.

  ‘Margaret, Felix “did something”, and look where it’s got him.’

  ‘But you know what he’s like. He wouldn’t – he couldn’t …’ She stopped, her face stricken.

  ‘Couldn’t what?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I won’t even think that! He’s my brother, Symon. I would know if he’d done something so monstrous. And I’m responsible – I wish I didn’t feel that, but …’ What she was feeling was just too complicated to put into words. ‘You can’t understand!’

  He looked at her, intently and gravely, his eyes dark. ‘Oh, but I can, Margaret. A choice between duty and what we wish is never easy.’ She realized with a stab of love that he did understand, of course, none better. He had problems of his own in that direction, with his own brother, though he had never shared the burden with her and thought she didn’t know.