Hell bay, p.24
Hell Bay, page 24
“May I see them?”
“No, Mr. Barker. They were intensely private, and of limited practical value.”
“I shall not press you on the matter, then,” he said. The Guv could be gentle and kind when he needed to be.
“The two of you formed an attachment.”
“We were in love. I fell in love with Richard later, but I hope it is not wrong to state that I was in love before him, and in quite a different way. We were head over heels. That is the expression, isn’t it?”
“I believe so, Lady Hargrave. And then he died.”
“Twenty-ninth August 1855. He was captain of the coast guard. Some fishermen were trying to return in the middle of a storm. Their boat wrecked on the west end of the island and broke up on the rocks. Silas set out from the nearby island of Bryher. Hell Bay overturned several rescue boats. His foundered and he was tossed overboard by a wave and drowned. His body washed up on the shore two days later.”
She was reliving it all in her head, remembering that day so long ago. A tear leaked down the side of her nose, but she did not have the strength to wipe it away.
“How long afterward did you learn you were with child?”
Her pale blue eyes went large.
“I do not judge you, madam. It is not my place. Nonetheless, it happened.”
“It did,” she finally answered. “I was only seventeen. I didn’t understand what was going on. Of course, my family was scandalized and since my seducer was already dead, they blamed me. It was kept a secret, of course. After Jack was born, he was placed with a nice family in Land’s End.”
She sat for a full minute staring at the counterpane as if it were a conjurer’s glass ball in which she could view the past.
“Then I met Richard at an estate ball in Penzance. He was dashing in his uniform and so clever. He was the smartest man I ever knew. My parents were so relieved, but before I could accept his proposal, I had to confess about Jack. He was as big-hearted as he was capable. He promised to take care of Jack for me and to see to his proper upbringing. Nothing was too good for Jack. I wanted him to bring my son home, but he pointed out that we would have children of our own and it wouldn’t be fair to them. He was right, of course. Paul was born within the year, an heir between the two houses. It was as if Jack were never born. But we always exchanged letters at Christmas and Richard had photographs taken of him and where he was.”
Lady Hargrave reached for her nightstand. Rummaging about in it, she produced a small blue book. Inside there were folded letters addressed to “Dear Mummy” from Jack and photographs of a towheaded boy in the yard of an attractive building. Another photograph was of the Bromley School looking majestic and successful.
“So, young Jack was in no doubt as to whom his parents were. How old was he when your husband took over his education?”
“When he was three.”
Barker opened the first letter, read it, folded it again and placed it back where it had come from.
“One can follow his education.”
“Yes. Jack was a clever boy. The headmaster, Mr. Throgmorton, said he was one of his best students. The letter is in there as well.”
Barker retrieved it. I saw the stamp of the school on the letterhead. The note was typed on a typewriting machine, and then signed by the headmaster who had so recently been shot.
“So it is,” the Guv stated.
He read through them all. When he got to the last one he stopped and looked up.
“So, Jack Hillary enlisted in the fusiliers when he was seventeen.”
“Yes, he enlisted after he graduated. Richard told me he had offered to pay for university, but this was what Jack wanted. His regiment went to India. They were stationed in Calcutta.”
Barker picked up the next letter. I saw some sort of military insignia embossed upon it. It was typed also.
“‘We regret to inform you…’” he began.
Lady Celia broke down. Philippa came to her aid, of course, with a handkerchief and some smelling salts. She wailed. It was a cultured wail, produced by generations of breeding, but it was a wail nonetheless. A child had died. He would not be the last.
“This was written,” Barker went on, over the muffled wailing, “in 1873. Can you tell me, ma’am, why your husband would make a young man who is officially dead the final beneficiary of his will?”
“What?” Lady Hargrave said, all at sea.
Barker pulled the folded will from his pocket and opened it before showing Her Ladyship. Over her shoulder Philippa stared, fascinated.
“Your husband wrote the will, which was witnessed by a solicitor in 1880, seven years after your son’s supposed death.”
“Is my son alive?”
“It would appear so, and as recently as nine years ago he was in contact with your husband.”
“But why didn’t Richard tell me?”
“I cannot speculate, Lady Hargrave.”
“I can,” Philippa said. “He could have been disfigured in the war or lost a limb. He might have considered himself unwelcome.”
“He would always be welcome in this house!” Lady Hargrave cried.
“For whatever reason, Jack wished to be thought dead. He wished to be estranged from the family.”
“Do you suppose he has married? Could he have children of his own?”
“He’d be in his thirties now. Most people marry and have children,” Philippa stated.
Her voice sounded a trifle flat. She could not count herself among such people. Lady Hargrave pressed her hands against her mouth in wonder.
“Can such things be? I dare not allow myself to hope!”
“Perhaps you should not yet,” Barker began.
“I lost three sons, but one of them may still be alive. Do you suppose he is in England?”
“It is a large world. He could be anywhere,” I said.
Barker gave me a stern look. With Philippa I was encouraging hope where it might not actually be.
“Mr. Barker, you are a detective. When this is over, and you can travel back and forth again, would you undertake to track down my first son? I will pay you whatever you ask.”
“We shall see, Lady Hargrave. Let us not put the cart before the horse.”
She clapped her hands in joy.
“He has to be alive. And we shall bring him home. Olivia has an older brother she has never met!”
“May I borrow your commonplace book, Lady Hargrave? I promise to take extremely good care of it. Perhaps it can give me a clue as to where Jack is living now.”
“Take it!” she insisted. “Oh, we’ve got to find him again!”
“Thank you.”
“I was afraid what would happen when you came, Mr. Barker. I never suspected you would bring me such welcome news!”
Barker bowed and all of us left her to her happy contemplation. So why were all of us stone-faced, you might ask? The answer was none of us believed it in the least.
My employer sat down in the seating area on the first floor. It had become a waiting room, dining room, interviewing room, and now traveling office. Barker pulled the first photograph from the book that came to hand. It was from the Bromley School.
“This is not a photograph at all,” he said, looking at the faded sepia image. “It is a print. More correctly, it is a postal card. One could purchase a copy in any post office or store in the area.”
“But he’s written a message.”
“Rather, someone has.”
Philippa looked through the letters. “The handwriting appears to be the same, counting for the change in age.”
Barker lifted the earlier photograph, which was also a postal card. It showed a trim little farm with children playing with the sheep in the front yard.
“This is not the proper size of a card. A sliver of the bottom has been cut off. The portion which printed where this card was really produced.”
“The card states it is the St. Ives School for Young Boarders,” I insisted.
Barker shook his head. “You’re not understanding me. The cards. The photographs. The letters. The book. They are all a forgery.”
“Lady Hargrave created a fake book?”
“No, lad. Lord Hargrave did. He was fooling his wife. Jack Hillary never played in a yard like this, with the sheep capering about. He was raised in a mud pit more probably, and forced to do menial work to pay for his room and board.”
“But the photographs of Jack,” Philippa insisted. “They are actual photographs!”
“Yes, dear, but not of Jack! Don’t you understand what Richard Burrell did for a living? He created false documents like school records and death notices all the time. He manipulated information. He manipulated his wife for what he supposed were the right reasons.”
“Which were?” Philippa asked.
“She had an illegitimate child. Little Jack was a reminder of his father, of whom Lord Hargrave was jealous. It was he who sent the annual letters under controlled conditions. This rosy image of a boy growing up in an orphanage and being perfectly happy is codswallop. I’ve been to baby farms. Over half of the children do not survive beyond five years. Some caretakers are actually paid to get rid of the child. The care of illegitimate children is one of the worst secrets in our society. The child pays for the sins of the parent. I don’t know which is worse, being killed outright as a child, or the long slow torture that extends to adulthood.”
“Dickensian squalor,” I piped up.
“That is an almost romantic literary euphemism for slavery and starvation. And that, Thomas, Philippa, is the first reason I have come across for blowing a man’s head apart, and murdering his children one by one.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The storm came shortly before dinner. As I changed, I peeked out of Barker’s window and saw the wind tossing the trees to and fro. On an island, one is exposed to the elements from every direction. As I bided my time I heard the first drops of rain on the windowpane. It sounded like pins dropping on the tile floor.
I met Barker and Mrs. Ashleigh downstairs. Within a few minutes it seemed to go from midday to night. Angry clouds bunched and bumped across the sky, and thunder rumbled in the distance. The building shook with the rumbling. By then, of course, we had all grown a little tired of each other’s company, and listening to the storm as it huffed and puffed at the Godolphin House of brick had novelty. Besides, we were snug and dry inside and it was satisfying to picture the assassin scrambling for shelter somewhere out there, slipping on rocks, wet to the bone, and miserable.
As it turned out, it was Mrs. Fraser’s birthday, and there was an attempt at gaiety in spite of the rumbling that moved across the island and the unnerving bolts of lightning. They interrupted the conversation and turned it into a shouting match.
“I understand you went after that scoundrel the other night, Barker!” The colonel spoke in his strident, military way. I could picture him bawling at a squad of soldiers.
“Never got within a dozen feet of him,” Barker grumbled.
“That fellow knows what he is about. A professional spy, you mark my words, sir! A German or possibly a Russian.”
“We are currently at peace with both countries,” Gascoigne said. “Such an act is unthinkable.”
“It was unthinkable when Bismarck was the kaiser, but now he is in exile. That brat, Wilhelm, holds the reins. I don’t trust the blighter. Either he will build up arms against us all, or break up Germany into a handful of unstable states. Neither will be useful to England.”
This is what they did at the USRI, I assumed. They argued continuously over what might happen if the country did this or a ruler did that. It was still a time when some men ruled with full authority, and some were erratic or weak, or even mildly insane. England now governed a sizable portion of the world, and some countries and their rulers were jealous.
“Oh, come now, Colonel,” Philippa Ashleigh said. “It’s your wife’s birthday. Why spoil it with talk of politics?”
The colonel grinned and embraced his wife beside him, who looked alarmed at the display of affection.
“You are right, my dear. Everyone, please, charge your glasses. I’d like to make a toast.”
It turned out to be a speech. He talked about meeting her at an embassy ball, and learning she had many suitors for her hand. He charmed and pestered all his acquaintances, discovered his opponents’ faults or weaknesses, and exploited them until he was the lone suitor. He was so good at it, in fact, that now he did that sort of thing with countries.
She was a faded rose, and I saw nothing in her to spark passion. But then, she was his rose. Once he must have seen her as exotic, bilingual, this scion of the English port-making industry. He had worked hard to get her, and he had kept her all these decades. Most everyone I knew was unwed. I was beginning to despair that marriage was going out of fashion.
He had false teeth and gray hair. She had pudgy fingers and bags under her eyes. They had been together, it transpired, for forty-eight years. They knew each other’s secrets and loved them anyway. The truth was, I wanted to be an old man across from Rebecca Mocatta. Oh, not right away, of course, but someday. I wanted to get it right, you see. My first marriage had ended in disaster and even death. I was bound and determined not to make a mistake on the last.
We had agreed to marry, Rebecca and I, but it would be another couple of years. She was in mourning over the loss of her husband, though it had been a loveless marriage. I was not the kind of suitor her parents would have liked. I understand her mother called me “the criminal.” That might have crushed me sometime in the past, but when it came to Rebecca, I was an immovable object. I was no longer afraid of her mother, dragon though she was, or her father, who preyed with soft words until he found one vulnerable spot. I wanted what Colonel Fraser and his wife had: a normal life together. Some men wanted money or power or fame. I wanted Rebecca and a long life, and the world could go to perdition as far as I was concerned.
A large trifle was brought out in a glass bowl and served. Champagne was opened and poured. Outside it still blew, but this house had endured centuries of such gales and shrugged them off.
“I don’t like storms,” Olivia Burrell said beside me.
“Why not?” I asked. “You are safe inside.” I was guarding her again with those invisible bracelets.
“I have seen too many. Someone always gets hurt. Shipwrecks, drowning, or misadventures.”
“I am sure no one is foolhardy enough to be out in weather such as this. They had all day to come into port.”
“You do not know the islanders. One more haul of fish is almost worth the danger to them.”
“Tell me, why has not anyone just pulled into the harbor? It has been days since the ambassador arrived.”
“Father did not always appreciate locals using the harbor and bothering him with goods to sell. He was not always the easiest of men to get along with.”
“Really?” I asked. “He seemed like a good fellow.”
“Oh, he was if you were of use to him, but it was not wise to get in his way.”
“Those are harsh words from a daughter.”
“Oh, I loved him. Don’t think I didn’t. But I never fell into the belief of my brothers that he could do no wrong.”
“I see.”
Another rumble shook the building.
“I shall be glad when the morning comes,” she said.
“I would think,” I countered, “that with the dangers herein, you would not worry so much about something as mundane as the weather.”
“You have not been out in a proper Scilly Isle gale, Mr. Llewelyn, or you would change your tune. Those brief showers you have on the mainland are hardly anything at all.”
“I shall take your word for it, but we are not out in it, and I have no intention of going there. I will leave it alone if it will have the courtesy to do likewise.”
Lady Hargrave was still absent from the festivities, mourning in private. Perhaps she was holding dreams of a lost son found again, clasped to her bosom. I didn’t believe the story she was writing in her head about the prodigal son would come true. In her place, Olivia was overseeing the party, serving as hostess.
Olivia and I played whist against Dr. Anstruther and Gwendolyn. Bella was not at the table that evening, but I thought she might still be upset at Percy’s death, and unable to come down. There was something vaguely bad form about playing cards in a house of mourning, but everyone needed distraction.
I dealt first and we were under way. The fact that partners were not able to communicate with each other in any way did not stop her from giving me a hard stare and warning. Luckily, she held the ace, and we took the first hand.
Whist is a pleasurable game, but I’m no great reader of card strategies, so I won’t relate the game in any detail. Olivia played ruthlessly and we prospered. The good doctor should have stuck to surgery, and as for Gwendolyn, my opinion of her was not improved by her playing. Olivia played with an intensity that none of the rest of us shared, and I had a good run of cards.
Meanwhile, overhead, the gale did its best to rattle the windows and scrape the roof tiles. Under other circumstances, those not involving the death of a half-dozen people, I might have enjoyed the storm. It was not the fault of our hostess. The location was novel, the company interesting, the food well prepared. It was not her fault that a madman was killing off everyone one by one.
In deference to the card playing, the normal dinner had been replaced with a sideboard buffet that we all took advantage of after the first hour. There was a hot curry which I knew would please Barker, prawn sandwiches, a collection of sweetbreads and other cold courses. The rain from the west brought some warmth with it, which made it whole portions welcome. I longed to remove my jacket, and our guest of honor fanned herself as she chose which card to play next.
“I need to powder my nose,” Olivia said.
“You look fine.”
“It is hot in here and I am wilting. I need to freshen my face. You can stay here.”
“No, I will go with you. Let me catch his eye,” I said, referring to my employer.
