The Property of Lies Page 13

  Reardon couldn’t find an immediate response to that, but it seemed to be a rhetorical question that didn’t require an answer anyway and she went on, ‘Or even if it’s due to her – well, let’s face it, her plainness. That might well have induced feelings of inferiority which make it necessary to assert herself.’

  She met his silence with a wry look, maybe chiding herself for thinking (quite wrongly as it happened) that he wasn’t likely to be interested in such modern theories. He was thinking of Antonia, lumpy and unattractive, reputedly fond of cake – and surely born to be a victim of bullying rather than the victimizer. Those ‘practical jokes’ she had been suspected of carrying out, hadn’t some of them been aimed at her, and wasn’t that in itself a form of bullying?

  ‘However, I am not prepared to put up with that sort of thing, whichever side it’s on. I haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it yet, but I will,’ she asserted, the iron hand showing beneath the velvet glove. ‘Meanwhile, I just don’t know. She’s fallen behind in her work lately, and it isn’t through any lack of intelligence – quite the contrary, in fact. She’s one of our scholarship girls.’

  ‘Scholarship?’ Reardon hadn’t known girls were able to get to Maxstead Court via the scholarship route.

  ‘We only have two, as yet, she and Catherine Leyland, though I hope to have more later. Clever girls can raise the standard for the others. I have great hopes of Catherine.’ Her voice softened. ‘She’s all set for a university place and I’m sure she’s going on to do great things.’

  ‘Doesn’t Miss Keith think the same thing about Antonia – artistically speaking?’ He was remembering that compelling, imaginative drawing she had shown him.

  ‘She has made it plain enough that she does,’ Miss Hillyard replied, irritated, ‘though Antonia’s situation has troubled me too, for some time. I’ve seen her artwork, and no doubt she’s very gifted, but I don’t see that there’s a great deal to be done about it.’

  ‘I gathered Miss Keith believes she’d benefit from further training.’

  ‘Yes. I dare say she’s anxious for the girl to have what she missed. She hasn’t had any formal training herself, and she’s rather conscious of the fact. She came to us from industry.’

  ‘In the Potteries, was it? Stoke-on-Trent?’ She’d spoken of decorating cups and saucers.

  ‘Somewhere like that. Yes, it was.’

  ‘Presumably you have connections there, as well? That was how you knew her and asked her here to teach, I mean? You said you had invited most of your staff to join you here?’

  ‘No, she answered an advertisement I put in Teachers’ World.’

  ‘My mistake. But she presumably knows places where Antonia could go?’

  A spark of anger had lit her eyes. ‘What Miss Keith doesn’t know is how impossible that would be. Antonia will be leaving at the end of term. She’s here on scholarship, as I said, which even so has been a great sacrifice for her widowed mother. Her husband, Antonia’s father, was a successful solicitor, but he wasn’t thrifty, and unfortunately he’d run through any money he had before he died suddenly, leaving her penniless. There are three younger children and the mother needs Antonia to find work and bring in some money, however much she might wish for her to continue with her education, or training.’ She still held the paperweight and her fingers tightened round it. ‘No one who hasn’t been in that situation can realize what heartache such a decision can be for a parent, believe me.’

  She spoke so vehemently he was prompted to wonder what had sparked it off, allowing him a revealing glimpse of Edith Hillyard he hadn’t seen before; that few people would be allowed to see, he imagined. He had only seen her before as calm, fully in control, dedicated and perhaps ruthless in her ambitions. She’d struck him as a rather cold woman. But surely someone in her position must know of ways to help a girl in Antonia’s situation?

  He was in deep waters here, however, and for the moment he’d had enough of it, quite apart from the fact that all this was taking up time he could ill afford. ‘I suggest they’ll all soon think better about not speaking up, Josie and Antonia, as well as those other two friends of Josie.’

  She sighed. ‘That’s another problem. I’m not altogether sure they are friends, in that sense. They share a room, but I’ve had my eye on them for some time, thinking they should perhaps be separated. It’s not long to the end of term, however, when Avis Myerson will be leaving, and it will sort itself out then.’

  He took a furtive glance at his watch. He should go, but he was intrigued, despite himself. ‘Avis Myerson?’

  Her expression hardened. ‘A girl who needs watching, Inspector. A spoilt child of parents with too much money, who resents being here at all, and does all she can to encourage others to flout authority. I’m sorry to say I think she might be at the bottom of what’s happened to Josie. At her last school she had some difficulties, I’m afraid, and was asked to leave – and there’s a big question mark hanging over whether she’ll be allowed to stay on here. I can’t have disruption like this.’ She didn’t say what had caused the girl to be expelled from her previous school, and closed her lips as if she had already said rather too much. With an air of winding up the subject, she finally put the paperweight back and said, ‘Maxstead is only a stepping stone before she’s old enough to be packed off to finishing school in Switzerland; she’s only here at all because her parents don’t really know how to cope with her until then. I confess I shan’t be sorry to see her go.’

  ‘But you did take her on?’ If her rich parents could afford the Maxstead fees, who was Miss Hillyard to turn her away? She was only human, after all.

  ‘That’s all part and parcel of being a teacher. I don’t believe anyone is beyond redemption, though I have to say,’ she added, ‘Miss Myerson tests my convictions sometimes.’

  I know I shall have to be more open with Inspector Reardon sooner or later, and I will, but not yet. Even now, when it’s getting pretty near the bone, I can’t plant suspicions in his mind, implicating some who might, for all I know, be innocent. Not until he has explored the full nastiness of what has been going on and hopefully discovered it for himself. He’s getting there. He has just asked me about any connection I might have with Stoke-on-Trent, which gave me a jolt, but I was able to answer quite truthfully that I hadn’t. Not personally, at any rate. Mother came from a neighbouring town – yes, one of those they call the Five Towns – but it wasn’t Stoke.

  What would she have thought of all this? She would undoubtedly have been proud to see me installed here, but I doubt whether she would approve of how I’m dealing with the situation (or not dealing might be more appropriate).

  I think she must have been a sweet girl, my mother, before my father’s death and the sadness that took hold of her thereafter. Her photographs show her as a young woman with softly waving brown hair and a dimpled smile. I don’t remember her like that. My father’s death had left her without the wish to smile very much at all.

  She was born Adelaide Beckwith, always called Addie, born and brought up in that part of the country which is world famous for its ceramics, but nevertheless a place which is relatively unconsidered by most people in the British Isles, except for what it produces in the way of the crockery that graces their breakfast and tea tables, that provides kitchen- and sanitary-ware. The beautiful china that’s also produced there is beyond most ordinary pockets. Addie worked in one of the factories during the week and sang contralto in the chapel choir at the weekend.

  I’ve never visited the area myself, never having had the least desire to do so, but it seems almost as though it is mapped into my mind from the hours of listening to my mother’s fond memories. It remains one of life’s mysteries to me how anyone could feel as deeply as she did about what sounds like the last place on earth anyone could wish to remember; full of the grime of industry, and the threat of poverty for many hanging over it all, it seemed to me. And yet, it was all part of the reason why she did what she did and eventual
ly left behind her family and everything that was dear to her.

  The real truth was that she was swept off her feet by a young man called Jamie Hillyard. She liked to tell me she fell instantly in love, in the way women often do with someone bright, charming, footloose and different, I suppose. In this case a stranger to the town with his head in the clouds, who taught music and wrote popular songs which he hoped to sell. Unfortunately, he failed to take into account that there was little money in a working-class district for most of the parents, however proud, to indulge their children with falderals like music lessons. Or that the music publishers to whom he sent his songs would have little interest in buying them. All the same, Addie couldn’t resist his charisma, and within a few weeks of their meeting they were married. She elected to continue working, because band workers like her could earn good money, and that kept them going until I was born. That was when she was forced to give up work to look after me. And when, I suppose, the trouble really started.

  Nothing was coming in, and my father apparently never had the slightest idea about money except how to spend it, and the Micawberish attitude that things were bound to come better soon. If only the music publishers would see his songs for the little gems they were. If only the warm men, owners of the pot banks, could be persuaded that music was as intrinsic to their lives as making kitchen-ware and lavatory basins. If only money would drop from the skies like manna from Heaven.

  Eventually, when the situation grew desperate, with hope triumphing once more over experience, Jamie decided he was bound to find both pupils and an outlet for his songs if he took us, Mother and me, with him to live in London. He was the only one who was surprised when no magic occurred there. Very soon the wandering minstrel was reduced to playing his fiddle and singing his songs in public houses for what he could get until, in the way things happened to Jamie, as I learnt many years later, he was accidentally drawn into a pub brawl in which he was entirely innocent and received a stab wound from which he never recovered.

  I wonder if Addie ever admitted that the choices she made had committed her to years of hell? My poor dear mother. How different her life would have been if she had not married my father.

  How different my life would have been had I not made certain choices.

  By the time Reardon left Edith Hillyard’s room, it was late afternoon. It had been a fraught day and he was tired, with work still to be done. After having agreed with her to leave questioning the girls until morning, he trudged back to the police room.

  Once there, he found Gilmour despondently riffling through his notes. Normally as resilient as a rubber ball, he was looking as knackered as an old carthorse, more tired than Reardon felt himself to be. ‘You look rough, Joe.’

  Gilmour rubbed a hand across his face. ‘Up half the night again, weren’t we, me and Maisie?’

  So, it wasn’t the day’s work that had got to his sergeant. He was talking about Ellie, their one year old, Ellen’s goddaughter. Having passed through the teething stage so far without any trouble, little Ellie had recently taken it into her head that sleeping during the day and then waking up at three a.m., chirpy as a cricket and wanting to play, was what life was all about. Gilmour needed to catch up on some sleep, Maisie too, no doubt. Reardon took pity on him, told him to call it a day, and sent him home early.

  Left alone, he settled down to try and get his notes and his thoughts in order. At one point, Miss Elliott looked in, eyebrows raised to find Gilmour already gone, but left without saying what she had come for, though no doubt it had been to check on why they hadn’t found an explanation for Josie’s imprisonment, or why they hadn’t found the murderer yet. It wasn’t an unusual reaction from those intimately concerned in an investigation like this. It never even entered their heads, understandably upset, and obsessed as they often were about their own tragic circumstances, that those working on their behalf might have a life beyond. Thinking of which reminded Reardon that he, too, had a home to go to, and a wife, as soon as he was finished with this lot.

  The day had turned; the sun had passed from this side of the building, and this little storeroom, which never got much of it to begin with, had grown even darker. He rose to switch on the light, paused for a moment at the window. The slanting side view he had of the east wing made it look no less grim and inimical, and the shadows thrown across the littered space below didn’t help. He’d already encountered Michael Deegan there earlier, pottering about with a clipboard, looking extremely pleased with himself, for reasons which became clear when Deegan told him that Miss Hillyard had given him the go-ahead to finish the work started by the late Mr Broderick. Even better, after a great deal of thought she had decided that the derelict wing was to be knocked down entirely at some time and new buildings erected as they became necessary. Reardon couldn’t help but feel that the disappearance of the east wing would be nothing but a good thing, and in the interests of everybody, but he warned Deegan not to be in too much of a hurry over starting work there. ‘We haven’t finished here, yet.’

  But Deegan had smiled sunnily and said not to worry, there was plenty to be done before they reached that stage. Miss Hillyard wanted the other half-finished work inside completed first. He was looking optimistic, and Reardon reflected how lucky it was for him that he could so easily put aside the murder. Maybe even the pregnancy, too. After the first shock of hearing about that, he was probably relieved that he would never now be required to face up to the consequences.

  The already completed demolition of part of the wing now allowed a glimpse of open countryside to be seen, across fields which sloped up to a copse where starlings roosted year after year, just as generations of Scroopes had settled here in Maxstead Court. Reardon stood for a moment or two longer, his eyes on a great flock of the birds which were swooping home, wheeling and dipping in unison, to a compulsion only they knew. Awesome, beautiful against the deepening sky. He watched them, mesmerized for several minutes, then switched on the light and turned back to his desk.

  Half an hour later, the door opened, and he raised his head with a frown that disappeared like a cloud before sunshine at the sight of his wife, bearing a tray. ‘What are you still doing here, love?’ he asked, jumping up to relieve her of it.

  She smiled. ‘I might ask the same about you.’

  This weekend was the first time they’d been apart since they’d been married and he held out his arms to make up for that unsatisfactory greeting in Miss Hillyard’s study. He kissed her, held her to him and rested his chin on her head. She only reached his shoulder, and he breathed in the clean scent of her shampoo. Apart from that brief conversation when she had telephoned him from Kate’s, they had hardly spoken. ‘I’ve missed you. Haven’t even had time yet to ask you if you had a good weekend,’ he said as she pulled gently away and waved him to sit down, though it must have turned out well, considering she had decided to stay on an extra day.

  ‘I know, I’ve been waiting to see you, to tell you how I went on with Kate, but you’ve been up to the ears.’

  ‘You could say that,’ he answered, stretching, clasping his hands behind his head and leaning as far back as he could in the chair, which wasn’t very far, considering it was one designed for the classroom rather than comfort.

  ‘I got round the kitchen staff to make you a sandwich.’ She whipped off the white cloth that covered the tray and set it in front of him. A man-sized sandwich, a pot of tea and one of his favourite custard tarts. And two cups. ‘Tuck in. I bet you haven’t eaten properly all day.’

  He didn’t need telling twice. He couldn’t in fact remember eating anything since a slice of toast for his breakfast, except for the two ginger nuts that had come with a cup of tea.

  ‘I didn’t stay on with Kate simply because I was enjoying myself,’ she said with a smile, picking up on what he’d been thinking, as usual. ‘It was good to see her again, of course, but it wasn’t only that. Remember what I told you on the phone about Miss Hillyard? That Kate thought she’d come into mon
ey?’

  He nodded, his mouth too full of sandwich to speak. It was more than good. Brown bread and plenty of beef, not overdone, and she’d remembered to tell them mustard, not horseradish.

  ‘Well, I managed to get a bit more information, about her time at the Agatha Dean.’

  The bite he’d just taken went down without it being chewed properly. ‘Ellen. You didn’t go scouting around there, surely! You didn’t ask to see the principal?’

  He blamed himself. He’d told her, hadn’t he, that he wasn’t averse to her keeping her eyes and ears open for a bit of gossip? But that didn’t mean she should be acting like some female Sherlock Holmes and making enquiries which were the business of the police. He always tried not to listen to her when she joked that if she hadn’t been a teacher, and if the Force should ever be so enlightened as to take them, she could fancy herself as a woman detective.

  She smiled. ‘Calm down and get on with your sandwich. It was the former school secretary I saw. There was no need for me to go to the college because she’s retired now and she lives quite near Kate and they still meet regularly. She has a pension from Agatha’s and a dear little house, so she lives quite comfortably. We took her some éclairs she dotes on and had coffee with her. She must be over eighty, but there’s nothing wrong with her memory and she still has her wits about her. And guess what?’

  ‘You’re going to astonish me and tell me she remembered Edith Hillyard.’

  ‘Of course she did. Kate had told me she’d been there for ever, remembered every girl that ever went through the college while she was there, and would be only too happy to have the chance to do some reminiscing, and she was. Her name’s Chipperfield, but she was always known as Chippers to everyone.’ Ignoring his rolled eyes, she went on, ‘Kate was right, she was a thoroughly nice woman, a perfect dear, and I can see why they all loved her.’

  ‘All right. So what did you learn?’

  ‘She remembered Edith Hillyard extremely well, in fact; she’d always had a very soft spot for her. She remembered Eve Draper too, but only as Edith’s friend. She was one who kept in the background, apparently. Before she retired, Chippers lived in at Agatha’s, where she seems to have been a sort of mother confessor – apparently, everybody used to go to her with their troubles and she’d sort it all out over cocoa and biscuits. Even Edith, who’d always kept her home life to herself – until the day Chippers found her in tears.’