The inheritance, p.23
The Inheritance, page 23
CHAPTER FORTY
‘I can only apologize,’ said Doctor Phillips, once a very irate Sarah had explained how David Young had arrived without warning. ‘I thought we had made a lot of progress with David, on boundaries and not exceeding them.’
‘I would say that turning up on my doorstep uninvited and scaring the hell out of me was crossing a boundary, wouldn’t you? I don’t know what’s going on inside David’s head but I want to make sure this never happens again.’
‘I will ensure that it does not. I’ll leave David in no doubt that what he did today was entirely unacceptable.’
‘So you are going to speak to him about this, personally?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said as if that would be the end of the matter.
‘Is that all?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Is that all you’re going to do? What if he gets annoyed at me for reporting him and comes straight down here? He was clearly irate.’
‘Oh, I hardly think he will do that. I’ve known David for years and I can assure you …’
‘Did you think he would come and pay me a visit this morning?’ she interrupted.
‘No, but I don’t think we could have envisaged that he would have …’ He was searching for the right phrase now, so Sarah completed his sentence.
‘… been the kind of person who stalks and harasses women?’
‘I think perhaps you are being a little unkind there. David didn’t stalk you. He simply turned up, admittedly uninvited, in order to assist you with your research.’
‘Then, when I told him to leave, he refused and became incensed.’
‘Because he was upset at being accused of a murder he did not commit. That’s a natural enough reaction from a man who has spent a large portion of his adult life in prison.’
‘Firstly, we only have his word that he did not commit that murder; secondly, he did commit a different murder on his own admission around the same time; and thirdly, having an irate killer turn up on my doorstep like that was an alarming event.’
‘I do hear you,’ he said soothingly, ‘and I can assure you we will take this seriously.’
‘Good, because I am making a record of this call and if he shows up here again, I will hold you responsible.’
He clearly didn’t like the idea of taking any future blame for David’s actions. ‘There are certain protocols we can enact,’ he offered, ‘if it will make you feel more secure.’
‘Go on.’
‘David currently lives in unsupervised accommodation. I could treat this incident as a violation of the terms of his conditional release and bring him out of there. He would then be made to reside in a more secure environment.’
‘Do you mean prison?’
‘I mean living amongst others in supervised accommodation.’
‘I would prefer that to his current arrangement, where he can just hop on a bus and visit me.’
‘Regrettably, I can think of no better course of action than that, so, with your agreement, I will enact the protocol.’
‘I agree,’ she told him. ‘Absolutely.’
By that afternoon, Sarah had a splitting headache, which she put down to the stress of having to deal with David Young on her doorstep. Because she could no longer focus on writing her book, she took some aspirin and went upstairs to lie down for a bit. She had just managed to drop off when she was woken by sounds coming from the room below hers. Patrick was sanding and repainting the window frames in the guest room, she remembered now. When the scraping sound from the sanding ceased, it was replaced by another. He must have started the painting now because his voice came up through the vent. Was he talking to himself, she wondered at first, but no, it was better than that; Patrick was singing.
As the words to ‘Jolene’ drifted up towards her, Sarah couldn’t help but smile then laugh at Patrick’s terrible rendition of the Dolly Parton classic. There’s a man happy in his work, she thought, but his singing didn’t last long. He was soon interrupted by a second voice. Mrs Jenkins must have appeared at the doorway and Sarah could hear her clearly as she cross-examined Patrick about how long he was going to be in there and whether he was doing other rooms that day, so she knew where to dust and hoover. Their exchange wasn’t particularly loud nor was it heated, but it struck Sarah that thanks to the vent in the wall, she could make out every word.
Mrs Jenkins was cleaning downstairs when Sarah caught up with her.
‘Was the room beneath mine always a guest room?’ she asked the housekeeper.
‘When your aunt owned it? Yes, it was. It’s one of the nicer rooms,’ she explained, ‘with a view of the grounds.’
‘Before that, though? Did the family use it as a guest room or did someone occupy it permanently?’
‘No, it wasn’t a guest room then. It was a family room. Now …’ Mrs Jenkins stood in thought for a moment.
Please remember.
‘It was …’
Come on, come on …
‘… Persephone’s room,’ she remembered at last.
‘You’re certain about that?’
‘Yes, of course.’ The older woman sounded like she was about to take offence at having her memory questioned.
‘And my aunt Evelyn had the room I’m in,’ Sarah checked, ‘and before that it was Lucy Woodfell’s?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Mrs Jenkins. ‘Why?’
I know things, I’ve heard things I wish I hadn’t, but I cannot unknow them.
‘Just curious,’ said Sarah and she left the woman to her cleaning.
Sarah remembered the words in Lucy’s letter to Evie. If she had been lying in the same bed Sarah slept in now, she could have heard everything going on beneath her in Sephy’s room.
The more she contemplated it, the more convinced Sarah became that this might be the source of Lucy’s forbidden knowledge.
The big question remained, however. If Lucy had heard something from Sephy’s room, what was it and why was it so important? Sex? An affair? An argument, a fight or a confession of some kind?
Did it perhaps have something to do with the parenthood of Britain’s next prime minister? Would anyone even care now if his real father wasn’t Captain Alex Ramsay but one of a number of possible lovers Sephy might have entertained in her room? Toby Ramsay was thirteen years old by the time Lucy disappeared. This seemed to be a long time after the fact, if he really was someone else’s?
Even after she had made what felt like a significant breakthrough, Sarah still felt none the wiser.
She was dragged from her thoughts by the sound of her phone ringing. It was Doctor Phillips.
‘I’m calling you back because I wanted to put you at ease about David,’ he told her. ‘I had a long session with him today and he came to the realization that what he did was entirely inappropriate.’
‘He does accept that?’
‘Indeed he does.’
‘But you are still bringing him into supervised accommodation.’
‘Yes,’ he said a little more tersely.
‘How did he take that?’
‘Initially, he was upset but he has accepted it. He knows he has to take responsibility for his actions, if he wants to return to unsupervised living.’
‘When will that be? Not days, I hope?’
‘Well, I can’t say exactly, but not days, no. Months at the earliest.’
‘Thank you.’ At least that was one less thing for Sarah to worry about.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to put your mind at rest.’
‘Well, I appreciate it.’ Maybe he wasn’t a complete arsehole after all.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
November
Sarah didn’t scream. She almost never screamed. Women always screamed in films. That’s how you knew something awful had happened, but in real life not so much.
The fox was lying on the kitchen table and no less frightening for being dead. Someone had killed it then taken the trouble to bring it up to the manor, break in somehow, then position it on the table, so that Sarah would see it as soon as she walked in. Its sightless eyes seemed to stare back at her, its orange fur was muddy and stained with blood and it looked as if it had been shot. Blood had seeped on to the kitchen table. The stricken animal was meant to frighten Sarah and it did, but she also felt a great sadness that someone would want to harm such a beautiful animal in this way.
‘What kind of person would do something like that?’ she asked Patrick once he had returned from burying the fox in some corner of the estate. He had taken the table outside too and promised to burn it. He had been the first person she thought to call and she was grateful for his prompt appearance. ‘And how did he get in?’ she wondered.
‘I can’t see any sign of forced entry.’
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘I think you should let me get a locksmith out, to change every lock, put bolts on the doors and new locks on each window to properly secure this place. It will cost a few quid but …’
‘The estate can pay for it.’ She was adamant about that and ready for a fight with Dickie if he protested, but she was pretty sure that a dead fox left to rot on her kitchen table would be sufficient justification.
The visit of the locksmith immediately improved Sarah’s state of mind. He was there for hours, changing locks and adding them to windows, putting two sets of bolts on the inside of every external door. If someone had been using an extra set of keys to gain access to the house, that option would no longer be available to them. They would have to break in and at least she would probably hear them.
That night, Sarah felt calmer in the house than she had in months. Her sleep was almost undisturbed and when she did wake, it was from the sound of a sharp north-east wind buffeting Cragsmoor Manor, not someone prowling around downstairs, so she instantly went back to sleep.
The clock had been ticking in the back of Sarah’s mind for almost six months now and there was precious little time left. The end-of-year deadline to complete her book was fast approaching and the ending still eluded her, but the pressure of that felt like nothing compared to the rigid cut-off point for her investigation into the disappearance of Lucy Woodfell. Sarah would soon be evicted from the manor house, making her homeless. She would have some money in her bank account, at least, but where would she go? She felt rootless.
When Dickie pulled the plug on the investigation, it would probably feel like a mercy killing. Like her aunt before her, Sarah had succeeded only in tying herself up in knots. She had gone over the same facts, rumours, lies and half-truths surrounding Lucy but failed to come to any concrete conclusions about what had happened to her. It was even more frustrating to know that, despite her initial fears, she hadn’t been entirely dreadful at this and had actually uncovered some new information the police didn’t have, just not enough of it to make a difference or prove anything.
She was determined not to give up until the very end of her time at Cragsmoor, though, and there was still one more person left to question.
Sarah drove up to Berwick, on the edge of the Scottish border, to visit the retired nanny. It was good to get away from the house for a pleasant drive in autumn sunshine, which took a little under an hour, because she didn’t want to flog the old Triumph Sunbeam too hard.
Margaret had taken a while to reply to Sarah’s letter, apologizing that she did not get out very often these days, even to post a letter, but she seemed genuinely interested in meeting her. When Sarah arrived, the old lady appeared pleased to see her and more than happy to discuss her life at Cragsmoor. Margaret shuffled off to make a pot of tea and slice some fruit cake. Her home was small but cosy enough for one.
‘Would you like to see some photos?’ Margaret asked when she returned with the tea and cake.
‘I’d love to.’
The old lady came back with two old shoeboxes, filled almost to overflowing with photos of ‘the children’. Most were in colour but some were in black and white. She had taken them herself ‘with my old box Brownie’ and spent some time showing them to Sarah, while providing commentary on each one, including who was in it, where it was taken and what year it must have been, though she sometimes struggled to recall the actual sequence of events. Sarah could tell the old woman was enjoying herself and did not feel she could interrupt her. She probably received few visitors and must have given up her own chance of a family years ago to look after other people’s children.
Her time at Cragsmoor had begun with Olly, Freddie and Sephy from the first marriage, then she stayed on to look after Lucy, from the second, before eventually being lured back to help Sephy and the captain with their son Toby. Sarah endured countless snaps of picnics on lawns and trips to the seaside, of the children riding little ponies in the grounds of the house or playing on a rope swing there. Margaret was still a young woman back then and clearly thought a lot of them, which was why she had recorded so many of their childhood adventures. The children looked quite alike, especially the boys, Oliver and Freddie. You could tell that Toby Ramsay came from this family too. The girls were less similar. Lucy was a pretty girl but Sephy was striking even from a young age.
‘Freddie and Sephy were close,’ said Margaret, ‘but oh Lord, they argued all the time and I had to referee their disputes.’
‘What about Oliver?’
‘Olly was a law unto himself,’ she said. ‘Never needed anyone else’s company. Always involved in mischief and pranks but terribly bright. And boys will be boys,’ she smiled indulgently. Sarah couldn’t help wondering if men might not turn out better if people stopped using that excuse at every stage of their lives.
‘He was fine until he went off to that college,’ Margaret said, and she folded her arms defensively.
Her tone indicated the situation was the fault of the institution he attended and not Oliver himself. ‘He got in with a bad crowd.’
Sarah didn’t need to hear any more about Oliver’s drug taking, so instead she asked, ‘Was it Sephy’s idea to bring you back to Cragsmoor?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Did you look after Toby from the start?’
‘Not when he was a baby, no.’
‘You were working elsewhere?’
‘I was.’ But she didn’t add any detail. Sarah got the feeling of something being concealed by omission.
‘Yet they did tempt you back in the end. With a big pay rise, I suspect.’ Sarah forced herself to chuckle at that.
‘Oh no, it wasn’t about the money.’ The old woman was indignant and, just as Sarah had hoped, she walked into revealing the truth by defending herself, ‘They just needed help with Toby. He was a little challenging.’
‘Bit of a handful, eh?’ and Sarah plastered the smile across her face, as if making light of her enquiries. ‘They all are, aren’t they? Boys.’
‘There was a bit more …’ She could tell the old woman was cautiously picking her way through sentences in her mind before she spoke them aloud, ‘… work to be done there,’ she finally offered. ‘On understanding the word “no”. His parents didn’t have the time to … but they knew I could … and he was such a bright boy. So clever with the Latin and the Greek and whatnot. Anyway, it all worked out in the end. I mean, it must have, because he is the prime minister.’ And she beamed at that notion.
‘Being so young, it must have been quite a blow for him when his aunt Lucy disappeared.’
The former nanny’s face immediately darkened. ‘Lucy going missing was terrible for us all, but Toby was only thirteen and he bottled it up inside. The young are better at accepting things.’ Was this her way of rationalizing an apparent lack of grief from the boy?
Sarah described the impact that disappearance had had on her aunt Evelyn. ‘She never stopped searching for the truth,’ she explained. ‘She even asked me to keep digging for her.’
‘So that’s why you’re here?’ If Margaret was aggrieved by Sarah’s deception, she didn’t show it. Perhaps she was simply glad of some company.
‘Can I ask what you remember about that day?’ asked Sarah.
‘It wasn’t very eventful, until that point. I spent time with Toby. Just like any other day.’
‘He was a bit old for a nanny by then, wasn’t he?’ Sarah was hoping to persuade the nanny to reveal the reason why Toby was home-schooled.
Margaret looked pained. ‘He didn’t fit in at school, so they took him out and he had tutors at home for a while. I stayed on to get him to do his homework and whatnot. I helped round the house too.’
‘Was Toby expelled, Margaret? Is that what you are saying?’
‘There was an incident with another boy,’ she clarified carefully, ‘a fight. It was suggested that he might be happier at another school.’
‘Must have been quite a fight. Was the other boy injured?’
‘He had to go to the hospital but he made a full recovery.’ Then she added, ‘in the end.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ So our new prime minister was a violent teenager, thought Sarah. It seemed almost all the Woodfells were volatile. ‘You were sitting in the kitchen with Toby when Lucy was last seen. And you saw her walking away from the house, correct?’
‘That’s right, she was.’
There was something about the way Margaret said that, or perhaps it was what she didn’t say, that made Sarah pause. What she hadn’t said was ‘Yes, I saw her.’ Instead, she said, ‘That’s right, she was.’
‘Her brother and sister both saw her,’ said Sarah, ‘and you saw her too.’ The nanny gave Sarah a tight little smile and nodded her head quickly in affirmation. ‘Didn’t you?’ Sarah probed.
‘That is … erm … yes.’
‘You don’t seem very sure about that.’
‘Well, it was a very long time ago.’
‘But you told the police you saw her leave?’
‘Then I must have done,’ confirmed the nanny.
‘Sorry, but I have to ask you this. Did you really see her go?’
