After Clare Read online

  ‘You swear you haven’t seen this letter before?’

  ‘Never. How could I have done?’

  Suddenly aware of the bee’s frantic buzzing in the confines of the small room, he levered himself up from his chair and cupped his hand carefully around it, guiding it to the open pane where it flew off, released. Feeling a reaction out of all proportion to the effort, he sat down heavily. ‘What has all this to do with my son?’

  ‘Well, I think Peter discovered the letter when he was poking about among the furniture at Leysmorton, going through the drawers where some of Clare’s work was stored – maybe he was even looking for it, or something like it, that would provide him with the means he wanted to exert pressure on someone. Maybe he just came across it accidentally and put two and two together. Or maybe he already suspected your reasons for coming to live in this part of the world – for one thing, to be near Leysmorton where your mother had grown up. But let’s be frank. I think it’s more probable you were in it together, that you’d told him about the fortune that was waiting to be claimed – your mother’s, his grandmother’s share of the Vavasour inheritance. Even though you were illegitimate, there were grounds for thinking there might be a moral if not a legal claim. On Lady Fitzallan, whose heir at present is Dirk Stronglove.’

  Silence once more, while Edmund searched for what he could possibly say.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘It wasn’t like that, not at all. I grew up knowing nothing of any inheritance. My mother would never speak about her family, who they were, whether they were rich or poor. I didn’t even know what her maiden name was. Before I came here, I had never heard of Leysmorton House and the Vavasours, and how wealthy they were reputed to be.’

  ‘And when you did it was like a fairy tale come true? Oh, I know coincidences do happen, Mr Sholto, but I don’t believe in ones as large as this.’

  ‘You may believe what you like, Inspector,’ Edmund said wearily. ‘I’m telling you the truth – which is precisely what I told you before, about why I came here. I’ll admit that this part of the world drew me because I had somehow picked up that it was around here my mother had been brought up, but I had no idea where. And the only coincidence is that I came to this village by having met Hugh Markham, through my bookshop.’

  ‘That really won’t do, Mr Sholto,’ Novak said mildly.

  ‘Then I don’t know what else to say.’

  ‘I think there’s a lot more you could tell us.’

  For a long time, Edmund sat without speaking. Novak, arms folded across his chest, waited. The room was heavy with the heat of the day and Willard ran a hand round the side of his collar. At last, his shoulders sagging, Edmund spoke. ‘Very well.’

  He made himself sit very still for a moment or two longer, then he stood up and walked across to the drawer where he’d asked Willard to drop the snapshots, and from it he removed a pencil sketch, framed in gilt, handling it almost reverently. ‘I have never spoken to a soul about this before, I swore I never would, but . . .’ He held out the sketch.

  Novak looked at it with interest before passing it over to Willard.

  Willard said, ‘This is Lady Fitzallan as a girl, isn’t it – and her sister?’

  ‘It was the only thing my mother had kept of her previous life; it always hung on the wall of her bedroom. It was her most cherished possession. I hung it on the wall when I came here until Hugh Markham saw it one day. I noticed that for some reason the sight of it had quite upset him, though he denied that it had. When I later learnt there was another drawing like this of the two girls, I thought it best to remove it.’ He stopped, overcome with the effort, but then he pulled himself together and went on, gesturing towards the letter Novak still held. ‘So my father was this Christian – Gautier, you say? From Grenoble?’

  Novak repeated what he had already said to Emily Fitzallan. ‘The chances of you finding him are slim, non-existent, I’d say.’

  ‘Finding him? Oh, but I haven’t the least desire to do that. Ethan Sholto was the only father I ever knew. I loved him and respect his memory more than ever I could respect anyone who deserted my mother as this man appears to have done.’

  ‘You’d better tell us the rest.’

  ‘Yes, I had,’ he replied, after a moment’s further debate with himself. ‘Then maybe you’ll see what I mean.’

  Once launched, he found no difficulty in speaking freely. In fact it seemed to be a release, much like the cessation of pain after a carbuncle had been lanced, or a rotten tooth drawn.

  In the oddly assorted marriage of his parents, it had often seemed to him as though the man he called father, though only fifteen years older than his mother, was more like his grandfather. A short, dark and dour Cornish tin miner from St Just, a widower who had married his mother when Edmund was seven years old, Ethan Sholto had nevertheless been a significant presence in Edmund’s life, although it wasn’t until after his death that he realized just how much he had loved him. When he was young, he had thought him hard as the ore he mined, and maybe he was, in a way. That was what had got him part-ownership of the mine.

  ‘He was a wealthy man then?’

  ‘Comfortable, no more. It was only a small concern. But he died suddenly, without making a will – like many more, he thought there was still plenty of time to do that – and everything went to my stepbrothers, the children of his previous marriage. Which was fair enough by me. He had put me through college and by then I was married, working as a schoolmaster and earning my own living.’

  ‘How did your mother come to choose Cornwall as a place to live?’

  ‘I don’t know. She never spoke about her past life, but she knew several of the artists painting down there at that time, so I suppose that’s why she went to live among them. They had a fairly free and easy lifestyle, not judgemental. A woman with a baby and no husband wouldn’t be condemned by them, and if they’d known anything about her previous life, they never said so to me. She met my father, Ethan Sholto, and he braved local opinion to marry her. I always called him my father, I always shall. Not this unknown man who fathered me.’

  No one said anything for a while, until Novak said, gesturing towards the framed sketch, ‘Tell us how you learnt about the other drawing of your mother.’

  ‘It was Peter who found it. He came across it at Leysmorton one day just before the war, and borrowed it to show me. He was full of excitement, saying he had found his grandmother. When I saw it I was stunned, because there was really no question about it. One of the girls was undoubtedly Clare, my mother. The pictures were a companion pair, and I had the other.’ His eyes closed, momentarily reliving that moment of shock. ‘That, I’m afraid, was when Peter started talking about making a claim on Lady Fitzallan. He wouldn’t listen, even though I told him categorically that I would have nothing to do with anything like that.’

  Novak regarded him steadily. ‘Not for yourself, maybe,’ he said, ‘but it would have been a different proposition, surely, if you were thinking of your son’s future? Are you sure you didn’t in fact encourage him to go ahead? It would have been only natural if you had.’

  ‘Except that I did not,’ Edmund said shortly. He said nothing more for some time, weighing up whether he had not already said too much. At last he said, ‘Besides, there was something else, something Peter didn’t know.’

  ‘Go on, Mr Sholto.’

  He looked at the photograph on the mantel. Forgive me, Morwenna. When he could, he said, ‘He was determined to go ahead, with or without me. But what he didn’t know was that he had no claim without me. He was not Lady Fitzallan’s grandson. He was in fact in no way related to the Vavasours. Peter was not my son.’

  Silence.

  ‘My wife and I could not have children, but then her brother died in a fishing boat accident, and his wife, Peter’s mother, lost her will to live and threw herself from the cliffs into the sea. It was the natural thing for us to take the child and bring him up as our own.’

  ‘That’s a tragic s
tory.’

  ‘Too tragic, we decided, ever to tell him – which I see now was a mistake, but . . . hindsight is a wonderful thing. He was only three years old, and he very soon forgot his parents, and never questioned the fact that we were not his true mother and father. Then Morwenna, my wife, died. Peter was growing up, it was a small community we lived in, and I began to be afraid he would sooner or later hear talk, that he would never forgive me if he learned I had kept the truth of his birth from him. I see now it was a monstrous thing to do. If Morwenna had lived, she would have known what to do, but I . . . As it was, I decided to move. Peter never knew he wasn’t my son.’

  ‘And you couldn’t bring yourself to tell him, even in the light of your own upbringing, when he began to talk of those false claims?’

  ‘My circumstances were entirely different. Ethan Sholto never pretended to be my real father – and there was my mother to consider. There had to have been a strong reason why she had suffered poverty by cutting herself off from her family. She had been at pains not to let them know about me, nor me about them, and nothing would have made me go against her wishes – even if I’d had the slightest inclination to involve myself in a sordid, long-drawn-out and expensive lawsuit. But Peter wouldn’t listen. It became an obsession with him. He even had some foolish notion of going out to Madeira and appealing to Lady Fitzallan, though in view of the difficulties – the war had just begun, for one thing – I couldn’t imagine how he envisaged getting there.’

  But Peter had known how. And as soon as Edmund had opened the laburnum box and seen those banknotes stashed there, he had surely known what they were for. He said sadly, ‘As the boy saw it, she had unfairly come into what should have been my mother’s share of their inheritance along with her own, and had a moral duty to put things right.’

  ‘In my experience, morality has little to do with it when it comes to money,’ Novak remarked.

  ‘Be that as it may, I forbade him to do any such thing. For the reasons I’ve given – and for another. I had no idea what sort of person Lady Fitzallan was. I still don’t – I’ve never met her.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to make yourself known to her – relieve her of the anxiety about her sister? It’s preyed on her mind all these years, you know.’

  ‘How could I have known that?’ Edmund knew he sounded stiff-necked, with the same sort of stubbornness his mother had shown all her life, though he had had a deeper reason for avoiding Emily Fitzallan: he was afraid of awakening memories and perhaps having to defend what Clare had done. He said, ‘She found that letter, you say. Does she – does she know who I am?’

  ‘After finding it, I’m sure she has accepted the reason for her sister’s disappearance was because she was having a child by Christian Gautier. How much else she has deduced, I don’t know. But I suspect you won’t come as a great shock to her. Lady Fitzallan is a very astute woman. And I would think it very likely,’ he ventured, albeit with the air of a man who feels himself on shaky ground, ‘that she would like to meet you.’

  A variety of emotions chased each other through Edmund. At last, he sighed. ‘Well, it was Peter’s wish we should meet, so for his sake I will see her, if only to let her know I am not seeking to claim anything from her.’

  Twenty-Two

  Driving home that evening, when they reached the junction where the road sign indicated North, Gerald Markham’s chauffeur suddenly made an exclamation of annoyance and put on his brakes. Traffic and milling crowds blocked the road ahead, with no possible chance of getting through, while the automobiles, carts and vans already piling up behind them prevented any possibility of turning back to find another route. ‘Another demonstration, looks like,’ he remarked, switching off the engine. ‘Nothing to do but wait, Mr Gerald.’ He sat back, arms folded in resignation.

  Gerald, not resigned at all, thought of the tiresome dinner party he and Stella were due to attend that evening. If he was late, Stella would not be pleased. ‘Where are the police? They should be keeping it under control.’

  ‘It’s a women’s demonstration – garment workers, by the look of the banners, Mr Gerald. The coppers are sympathizing, shouldn’t wonder. Out on strike theirselves not so long since, weren’t they?’

  ‘What’s the world coming to, Deegan?’ Strikes and lockouts, was there no end to it? There had even been trouble down at one of the printing works that employed only old, trusted craftsmen, last month.

  ‘It’s the war. Stirred something up in everybody. Jack was as good as his master in the trenches, so why not out of it?’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’ They both knew it was no more true now than it had been then, but it was reassuring to pretend. ‘But I wish they hadn’t chosen to try and prove it just here.’

  Normally, Gerald enjoyed these little exchanges with his father’s old chauffeur, and thought Deegan did, too. ‘Chip off the old block you are, Mr Gerald. Just like your father,’ the older man often said, an idea Gerald had liked, and quite agreed with. Until the bombshell the old man had exploded last night. Gerald couldn’t imagine himself even contemplating what Hugh was proposing to do. Not even at his father’s age, with nothing to lose, as Hugh put it. Up sticks and off to Madeira – with Emily Fitzallan! Both of them prepared to leave England on a permanent basis, though with the caveat that since the Peregrine Press had been Hugh’s whole existence, he was not about to relinquish his interest entirely. He had promised he would come over at least once a year for board meetings. The surprise to Gerald was that Emily, with her evident passion for the old place, was prepared to leave Leysmorton again. He hoped they were not making a mistake, but his own cautious nature told him that they might be.

  But then he grinned as pure pleasure shot through him, imagining what Stronglove’s reaction would be to the other piece of news Emily had confided, that she was changing her will. Not that she was cutting Stronglove out entirely. She would, she announced, see he was well provided for, but she wanted to see continuity, to see Leysmorton House go to someone who would love it and its garden as she did. When Gerald, stunned, had at last taken in the astonishing fact that she proposed to leave Leysmorton, eventually, to Rosie – to his daughter, Rosie! – the idea had pleased as much as it had astonished him. He rejoiced for Rosie’s sake, of course – but the thought of Stronglove out of his life filled him with unalloyed delight.

  People thought Gerald a soft touch. They underestimated him, which was foolish, but that was how he liked it. He knew when to act, and wasn’t afraid to do so when necessary, though in his own time and then not openly. He preferred to work behind the scenes. He had done what he had to do once before, in the case of Peter Sholto, and saw no reason to regret it.

  But now, without the need for Gerald having to do anything about it himself, the Stronglove situation might be solved.

  When at last they drove into Netherley, he checked his watch yet again. Still time for a quick one before dressing. Hopes of that vanished, however, when he reached Steadings and found that inspector chap who was investigating the Peter Sholto business sitting on a chair in the hall. Stella was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘I was hoping to see Miss Markham,’ Novak said, ‘but I’m told she’s out riding, expected back shortly, I understand, so I thought I’d wait.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll be out giving young Drummond his lesson. She’s teaching him to ride – which I suppose is safer than that motorcycle contraption of his!’ her father said easily. ‘Hello, Alice, old girl!’ He bent to pat the fat old spaniel who had appeared and now flopped down at his feet.

  Novak had in fact known Rosie would not be at home and had timed his visit precisely to accommodate this. He hadn’t been able to come up with a better way of meeting Gerald Markham without making an appointment, which he didn’t wish to do, but the times of Mr Markham’s regular departures from home for his office, and his return, were open knowledge to everyone in the village. As it was, he was uncharacteristically late, and Novak had had to hang around here, hoping Rosie woul
d not return before her father did. ‘Just a small question to ask her,’ he murmured, hoping he wouldn’t have to say what it was.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry you’ve missed her.’ Gerald hid his irritation with a smile. ‘I’m afraid we are dining out and I’m already behind time, so if you’ll excuse me . . .’ He had the look of a man who regularly wined and dined well. An affable, genial fellow, with a rubicund, outdoors sort of face, slightly incongruous somehow with his smart city clothes. ‘But I shouldn’t advise waiting for Rosie. Time is expandable, when she’s out riding.’

  ‘Well, I dare say I can see her tomorrow.’

  Her father nodded, but the smile became less warm. ‘Inspector, I know you’ve your job to do, but I really don’t appreciate this hounding of my daughter.’

  Novak’s brows rose. ‘I’m sorry you see it as hounding, sir. Miss Markham has been very willing to help us in our enquiries so far. Very helpful.’

  ‘What has she been saying?’ Quick colour mounted, over and above his natural freshness. ‘What has she – in fact, to be blunt, what have any of us – to do with this business of yours?’

  ‘You all knew the victim, sir,’ Novak pointed out mildly. ‘Your children in particular. He was a visitor to your house.’

  ‘The victim,’ Markham repeated. Suddenly he looked sadder, and older. ‘Yes, Peter was David’s friend . . . what an end, what a waste. At least my son died for his country.’

  There was a moment of silence. ‘What would you say if I told you Peter Sholto probably died because he was blackmailing someone?’

  ‘Blackmail? Peter?’ He stared at Novak, then he said abruptly, ‘Look here, I need a snifter. Been a long day. Would you like one?’ Novak thanked him but waved the offer away. ‘Well, come in here while I have mine.’ He entered a door to one side of the hall, leaving Novak to follow him into a masculine study with sporting prints and team photographs adorning the walls. The old spaniel padded behind them and collapsed in a heap on the hearth rug, her big, soulful eyes watching their every move. It was dim in the room but Markham made no attempt to switch on a lamp as he crossed to a side table and poured himself a substantial measure, lit a cigarette and stood in front of the fireless grate. He did not invite Novak to sit, the implication being that the talk should be brief.