A Death in Two Parts (20 page)

“You have to be joking!”

“No. It's true. I was twenty-one – not much older than you are. There was capital punishment then. I sat in that cell, facing the gallows. I was sick with fright, Veronica. Not fair to blame the police; it seemed such a clear case. Of course they treated me like a guilty thing, worthless, who'd killed an old lady for her money.”

“Money?”

“Yes. I was her companion. It's a long story. She made a will, you see, to tease her relations, leaving it all to me. I was a relation too, actually. And then she died – poisoned – and everything pointed to me. It was hard not to believe it myself, sitting in that cell. Then Geoffrey read about it at the Yard – we knew each other a bit – and he came down like St George and the Dragon. He had one bit of evidence that helped my case, and then I got thinking and we talked about it, and he looked at it with a fresh eye, believing me. He would have been a good policeman, Veronica; it was all such a pity. Money spoils people.”

“So what happened?”

“He went through the evidence against me with a fine-tooth comb, and it didn't stand up. How could it? So they let me out. Goodness, that was a strange day: the doors opening, the change in my gaolers, the grovelling. I think they were afraid I'd sue for wrongful arrest, but there wasn't so much
of that about in those days. Besides, I hadn't actually been arrested, they kept saying that, just ‘held for questioning'. It felt like arrest to me. I've not been mad keen on policemen since. Though of course all that lot retired years ago.”

“Brave of you to come back to the Hall.”

“I didn't want to. But Geoffrey wanted to live there. It suited the image he'd planned. He talked me into it. I'd have been better without all that money too. I should have gone back to college – I was in my last year when it all happened. But it was all so awful: the whole family lined up against me, conspiring, it felt like. Well, I was the outsider; you couldn't blame them for closing ranks against me.” Her mind shied away from the picture of that hostile group, and Mark among them, his eyes avoiding hers.

“So who had done it? What happened?”

“Geoffrey discovered that the old lady was coming down with senile dementia, or thought she was. And she had forged a lot of the evidence against me herself, so as to get a hold on me. She was such an old tartar, the other companions had always left, but I stood up to her. I think she liked it actually; up to a point. But she had to have everyone under her thumb. When I refused to report on her family to her she forged her own signature on a cheque and landed me with it. I gave in for the moment – anything to get through Christmas – but I was going to leave right after. Only then she died. There had been a forged prescription, too, for the sleeping pills that killed her. You can see how black it looked for me, until Geoffrey turned up and went to work on it.”

“So what happened?”

“In the end the coroner ruled that it was suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed, or some woolly
phrase like that. So then of course I inherited all her money.”

“That can't have pleased her family.”

“No, poor things. It was hideous for them. They had counted on it so. And that hadn't been good for them either. She'd kept them all dangling on her strings. A horrid business. Money really is the root of all evil.”

“Lack of it's no fun either. But it's not just the money bothers you, is it? Like, there's something else.”

“It was the way they ganged up on me. The whole lot of them. I didn't ever want to see them again.”

“And have you?”

“Not till just the other day. The day we met, actually. My cousin Mary suddenly showed up on the doorstep. It was her turning against me I'd minded most, her and her brother. She was on her way to the ferry to meet him in France somewhere. Said it was time we buried the hatchet. And we did. It was good. She stayed to lunch, and we talked about it a bit. She told me she and Mark had been going to break ranks, as she called it, meant to stand up for me if it had come to a trial. I don't know how much good it would have done me, and of course one will never know—”

“Whether they really would have? No way. Easy to say it after the event. You liked them?”

“They were the best of the lot. Mary had got away, had a flat of her own in town, and a job, and a string of young men. In those days, of course, she got engaged to them, one after the other. She brought one down that Christmas and married him after it was all over, but it didn't work out. It was their mother asked me to go there in the first place. I never could like her. She was tough as old army boots, Josephine Brigance.”

“And the brother – what was he like?”

“Mark?” Was she blushing? Could she after all these years? “He had all the charm in the world, and used it. I'm not sure charm isn't almost as dangerous as money; you get to think you can get away with murder.” And then, horrified: “No, that's not what I meant at all.”

“‘Course not. What did he do, this charming Mark?”

“Damn all, so far as I could see. He'd done awfully well at Cambridge, his mother kept saying, and had just been idling about at home since he came down.” He had offered to get a job for her sake. Top hat or bowler, he had asked lightly, surely not meaning it. She did not want to talk about Mark. “If you could call Featherstone Hall home.” She changed the subject. “It did not feel much like it to me. Horrible house.”

“And yet you lived there all those years, afterwards.”

“Yes; it's hard to believe, now, knowing about you and your mother.”

“But you didn't. And I suppose he had charm too, my father, when you come right down to it.”

“Oh dear me, yes. But a totally different kind from Mark's. Geoffrey was the ‘I'm just a helpless little boy, you must look after me' kind. Mark was your Byronic man, the world his oyster. You could imagine him swash-buckling his way through a romantic novel. Women swooning all over him. That kind of thing.” She felt she was achieving just the light touch she needed.

“Did you swoon?”

“Well, a bit. That's why I minded it so much when I found he and Mary were part of the cabal against me.”

“Like, you fell into Father's arms on the rebound? That
figures. And he gave you no time to change your mind. He was always a quick operator, was Father.”

“He said he wanted to take me away from it all.”

“‘Course he did. You and the money. What happened to romantic Mark then?”

“Do you know, the most surprising thing. Mary was telling me the other day. She was off to meet him in France because he went into something very cloak and dagger indeed. The only way to see him is by assignation somewhere in Europe. And he must be good at it too. Well, he would be. They won't let him retire.”

“Charming the secret birds off the trees. Cool. I'd like to meet your Mark.”

“Hardly my Mark.”

“But nobody else's?”

“Well, no marriage, Mary said. But what that means these days—”

“Damn all,” said Veronica cheerfully.

It gave Patience the courage to ask a question that had been simmering in her mind. “How about you, Veronica? Have you a …” She hesitated, looking for the right word.

“Like, boyfriend? Partner? Man? Mate?” suggested Veronica. “Thought I had, till I went to him in trouble and he pinched my purse. Aren't I glad I was too busy looking after Mum to fall into bed with him like he wanted.”

“I'm glad too,” said Patience. “So we don't have to worry about that.”

“No way. Actually, Patience, it taught me something. Like, it's awfully uncool, but I don't reckon I'm going to sleep with anyone till I know them a hell of a lot better than that.”

“You mean, you haven't?”

“Isn't it quaint? Tell me, just when did you say your cousin Mary turned up out of the blue?”

“Two days ago. The day you and I met.”

“That's what I thought you said. So it was after I dumped that paint in the cellar?”

“Yes. In fact she and I found it together, when we went down for a bottle of wine. Actually, she said something about having seen a teenager hanging around. I suppose that was you.”

“So she knew about the grille. It might have given her the idea.”

“Mary? But she was on her way to the ferry.”

“She said. She could perfectly well have hung around, collected the bag of papers, come back later on, dumped it down when we were at Mrs Vansittart's or even the day before. We were both dead to the world, remember; we'd never have noticed.”

“But we didn't feel anything yesterday.”

“We've no idea how long it takes to build up. You said so yourself.”

“But it's absurd. Why Mary? And after all these years, too.”

“Because something's changed,” said Veronica.

“Well, I suppose everything's changed; that's true enough. Look at us.”

“Ah,” said Veronica, “but Mary didn't know you and I were going to get together, on account of it hadn't happened. So that wasn't it. Father's death, yes, that might have had something to do with it. Or your moving here? Maybe no one could get at you when you were at the Hall with all those smarmy servants.”

“But why, Veronica?”

“You've always wondered if my father was right about the old lady's death, haven't you? It came over loud and clear when you told me about it. You were so careful what you said. You didn't say she committed suicide. You said that was what the coroner decided. And that was why you didn't want to see any of them. You didn't trust them, and you seem to have been dead right. Tell me, do you think Father wondered too?”

“Veronica, I just don't know. We never talked about it. I think that was one of the things that went wrong between us.”

“I should just about think it might be. So who
did
you think had done it?”

“All of them together. It seemed the only way it could have happened. Making me the scapegoat, see? If I'd been found guilty of the old lady's murder, I couldn't have inherited her estate – and it would have been divided among them as next of kin. Sitting in that cell, I even started wondering if they could have got me down on purpose. She kept changing her will, you understand. It was all left to the fifty-two letter alphabet when I got there. And that would have done no one any good.”

“And did it work out?”

“Yes. She changed her will almost at once. In my favour. So that she could hold it over me.”

“Not a nice old lady.”

“She wasn't. But bullying her family was the way she managed to enjoy her life, and you have to respect her for that. Not bad still to be an active functioning tyrant in your nineties.”

“You don't in the least believe she killed herself, do you?”

“No. I'm afraid I don't. But it's years ago, Veronica. Mary
told me that the older generation of Ffeatherses are mostly dead or in homes.”

“And the younger ones?”

“Well, Mary and Mark you know about.”

“If you believe Mary. And who else?”

“Ludwig and Leonora. They were Seward Ffeathers' children – he was the older son. Their father wanted them to be musicians, hence the names, but they were mad on science. They've totally vanished into the United States, Mary said. Not so much as a Christmas card.”

“Sinister?”

“Not necessarily. Their father's senile; they may have seen it coming and wanted out from under. It would be like them.”

“What about their mother?”

“She was always a complete nonentity, but Mary says she took on a new lease of life when Seward went downhill: had him sectioned and is doing her own thing at last. I don't know what form it takes.”

“So she's not in a home. A question mark over her. And over the vanished children. After all, if they were into science they might have been able to whip up the slow-acting miracle poison no one could trace.”

“It was just an overdose of her own pills. The problem was, how had she got it, if I hadn't given it to her. Which I didn't.”

“I believe you,” said Veronica. “Who else is there?”

“Just Priss. Now that was a surprise. She was Joseph Ffeathers' daughter – he was the younger son. She wanted to train as a social worker, that was the kind of person she was, but old Mrs Ffeathers wouldn't put up the money. So she just
hung around at the Hall and her mother kept dragging young men down for her, and no good came of it. And all the time she was carrying on with another cousin, Mrs Ffeathers' lawyer. Mary told me about it the other day. Secret assignations and lurking in corridors, all that. They got married after the old lady died, and everyone was flabbergasted, Mary said. Well, so was I; she was such a white mouse of a girl and he was very much the man of the world. Older, of course, running his own firm. He was my cousin too, and my trustee. Geoffrey and I always thought it was his fault somehow that all my money vanished while I was growing up, but Geoffrey said there was no way we could prove it. He said I'd had trouble enough already without a long legal battle getting nowhere but lawyers' fees. And after all, I had old Mrs Ffeathers' money by then so it really didn't matter.”

“I keep wondering what you did about the money.”

“What I did?”

“Like, they all seem to have managed all right without it. Going off to America, marrying shady young lawyers, settling comfortably into old people's homes. You gave them some of it, didn't you?”

“Well, of course I did. How could I not? Mrs Ffeathers hadn't in the least meant me to have it. It was just part of the game she played. I found a new lawyer, Mr Jones here in Leyning, who saw my point of view, and we settled annuities on the lot of them. Wonderful to have so much that I could. Geoffrey was furious.”

“I bet he was. Not what he meant at all. I say, you haven't left any of the rest of it back to them in your will, have you, since he died? Have you let them know it? Or might they think you had?”