Murders Most Foul (12 page)

Paul was also playing a prominent role in Lizzie’s growing concern about Vince. Faro came close in her list of worries, but only second. She loved him and longed to be his wife but in a straight choice it would always be Vince, even if that meant breaking her heart over losing Jeremy Faro, the only man she had ever loved.

She remained doubtful regarding Vince’s hero-worship for the ‘son’ of the house. Delighted that Paul had taken such an interest in the twelve-year-old son of his stepmother’s lady’s maid, and conscious of a list of good things that might result, at the same time she was anxious; an ever-present worry nagged at her like a mild but persistent headache that refused to be ignored – a feeling that something was wrong but she didn’t know how to talk to Vince about it. The reason, she guessed, for his intense friendship with the older man was that Vince had never had a father, only the fictitious one she had invented, a brave soldier killed fighting for country and
queen in India, and this was a common link, a bond with Paul.

‘Just like my father, Ma,’ Vince had sighed proudly.

Lizzie groaned inwardly. Her lies had come home to roost with a vengeance. She hoped she would never have to reveal the dreadful story of his conception – certainly childhood and adolescence were not the right times. Maybe wait until he was older, grown up and aware of the true facts of life, and that other world that existed beyond a mother’s devotion and protection.

Lizzie was aware that as far as Vince was concerned, Paul Lumbleigh was perfect, he could do no wrong, and already the boy was heavily under his influence. Most of it, she had to agree, was hopeful and helpful, especially since Paul was clever and knew about books and the kind of things like art and music and history, subjects of which she was almost totally ignorant; famous people of the past that Jeremy also liked to talk about, a bewildering world she had never had time to explore as an overworked maid bringing up a small boy. Her reading matter was limited to occasional romance stories.

She didn’t mind the card tricks. She was lost in admiration for Vince’s quick-moving fingers as, by demonstrating, he explained away the apparent magic of making cards disappear and reappear thanks to the sleight of hand Paul had showed him. Proud of her clever son, she laughed delightedly. Her only fear in that direction was that Vince might also use his skills one day to be a gambler. She shuddered at the thought, remembering rumours that Paul and the master had quarrelled over Paul having suffered heavy losses at the gaming tables, and that he was
only saved from jail by his stepfather having to settle all his debts.

There was a more pressing reason for her anxiety. Vince was being taught how to use firearms to shoot over the hill, using guns Paul took from the big house.

One day, Vince showed her the handgun that had replaced the rifle, a more efficient weapon Paul had told him. And when she gave a shriek of horror, Vince put an arm around her and smiled sadly.

‘Men have to know these things. No need to be scared. Pa would be proud of me. I bet he always wanted me to be a soldier.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘There now, Ma. Paul is a good teacher and I’m very careful. I know what I’m doing.’

Those words from a young boy. Lizzie shook her head, she could think of no suitable reply, and felt only misery for that lie once told. Vince believed in anything that brought him close to the fictitious father she had invented for him.

And Lizzie felt she had to do something, tell someone who would understand. That man was Jeremy and she brought it up that evening when they were walking together in Queen’s Park.

To her surprise Jeremy merely laughed. He obviously didn’t think it a matter for concern, and he certainly did not share her fear about accidents.

She looked at him a little sadly. He seemed different, a bit distant since his return from Glasgow, and she suspected more preoccupied than usual with the details of the murder of Ida Watts. To be truthful, he had very little interest in Vince’s activities, which came well down the list of important and urgent matters like finding the killer of two women.

His sole concern about Vince’s new friend was how it would affect Lizzie if she knew that Paul was the prime suspect in the murders of Doris Page and Ida Watts.

As Lizzie went on about her fears for Vince, Faro wondered what she expected him to do. Of course she felt helpless and was pleading for his support. Was that what Lizzie was hoping for, that he would sit down and talk sternly to Vince? He almost laughed, it was so ridiculous and unimaginable, a cosy chat between them. He certainly had no intentions, nor was he even willing to consider confronting the boy who loathed him and made no secret of it. Surely Lizzie was aware of the tensions between her suitor and her son, that any advice Faro offered would have exactly the opposite effect.

At the moment he wasn’t prepared to take her fears seriously. If he had concerns they were about his own relationship with Vince’s mother. What was he going to do about their future after the bitter revelations of his encounter and rejection by his own true love, Inga St Ola? In vain, he tried to thrust out of his mind that disastrous meeting.

Had it changed his feelings for Lizzie, somehow revealed her in a new light? He shook his head. The fact that Inga did not love him, had never loved him except in his wild imaginings, did not automatically upgrade Lizzie and make him fall wildly in love with her.

Inside the big house all was not well. The absence of policemen lurking about and making enquiries had done nothing to soothe Archie’s indignation and outrage at the invasion of his privacy. The impeccable reputation he had
been at such pains to build seemed likely to topple and he was hurt and bewildered at finding Clara’s reactions were not as sympathetic as a husband would have naturally expected. Sometimes he thought he hardly knew her at all. She had a habit he found particularly irritating of attempting to soothe away his fears with a plea for a better understanding of those beneath them. In fact, showing an alarming tolerance for human nature.

Nervously he wondered if she was aware of his long-standing relationship with the madam of a brothel. He shuddered at the idea but she was certainly displaying much more compassion for the lower classes than seemed right and proper for a lady in her position in society.

Archie had good reason for bewilderment. Behind those gentle smiles Clara still lived on a knife-edge of keeping hidden the secret of her own reinvention. Maids come and go without reason or explanation at regular intervals in big houses, but the upheavals in the calm of Lumbleigh Green over the table maid’s disappearance and the shocking evidence of her killing had taken their toll on Clara’s sleeping. She had firmly believed that the girl who had once been Ethel Wyner had passed into oblivion and would stay there safely buried for ever. At least that was so until Ida’s murder, an event which had opened several cans of worms in the Lumbleigh household, and the house teeming with policemen (according to Archie) had jolted her back into memories of an unsavoury past.

Conversations with even the most polite policemen she found quite unnerving, although she had reason to regard DS Gosse with disquiet – his young and very attractive assistant, DC Faro, she learnt, was walking out with her
maid Laurie. She approved of that but was at pains to keep this information from Archie. At present the mention of Laurie brought a frown of anger, a furrowing of his brow, and to add romantic entanglement with one of the policemen who had cast such a blight upon the sacred precincts of his home might well have sealed the immediate dismissal of her precious maid from the premises.

Laurie was not the only cause of Clara’s sleepless nights. She had other pressing worries. The sight of two policemen striding across the lawn towards the house had reawakened long-buried memories of a previous encounter with the law after the prison fire that had enabled Jabez Bodvale to escape.

Clara remembered being the object of long interrogations in the hope that she might have information regarding his whereabouts. Now those memories reawakened and became ghosts to haunt her rest, taking shape in nightmares about her terrifying stepfather …

In them she saw a resurrected Jabez rushing across the lawn towards her, with his evil grin, while she stood paralysed, unable to flee. The front door had opened to admit him and she heard clearly his footsteps on the stairs.

She woke up sweating with terror. Of course it was impossible, to imagine him lurking about outside Lumbleigh Green. How long was it since she had heard of his dramatic escape? Years since the police had arrived at her door with the dreadful news and the suggestion that she might be hiding him, her movements regarded with suspicion. At long last they had accepted that he had other plans for his escape and his stepdaughter was not involved. Still she had waited in terror for the policemen’s return or, what was far
worse, the appearance of Bodvale at her door. Time passed without any news of his recapture. But if he was still alive and free, roaming about the country somewhere, there was not the slightest doubt in her mind that his uppermost thought would always be to track her down.

Obsessed by nightmares, the vivid memory of which clung to her even during daylight hours, terror lent a pressing urgency to share her fears, to tell someone. She needed a confidant, someone to soothe her fears. The most natural person would have been Archie, but that was out of the question. The whole unsavoury past would have to be revealed, and shuddering, she imagined his horror.

In that fact alone she was mistaken. Her concerns about what Archie’s reaction would be were quite without foundation. In her husband’s eyes she was a beautiful and priceless ornament and he would have been as indifferent to her past as he would to the past owners and often bloody histories of those large, and she thought preposterously ugly, Chinese vases which he boasted had cost a small fortune.

But just as his wife had dismissed him as her confidant, so Archie had also turned to someone other than Clara to listen to his troubles. Had Clara made a small calculation she would have wondered at the fact that, never famous for an ever-open purse, Archie was uncharacteristically generous in keeping her very well provided for. And it was on his regular visits to the perfumer’s establishment in York Square that Mavis – keen to maintain her own small allowance from Archie – listened and shook her head in eager sympathy.

Having firmly decided in her ignorance that Archie was
the last person in whom to confide, Clara considered her women friends. No, they were acquaintances, really, that she encountered in her small social world. There wasn’t one of them with whom she had anything in common or that she warmed to. Their backgrounds belonged to another world from hers. Thoughtfully regarding the ladies sitting around the table with her, she guessed that they had never known poverty, hardship, the sexual violence of a cruel and brutal stepfather. Their main concerns over afternoon tea or the dining table in the evening were money, their husbands’ elevated ranks in Edinburgh, dressmakers, milliners, parties, children and servants – a considerable time was spent moaning about the latter – all topics, with the exception perhaps of clothes, which had a very limited interest span for Clara.

Idly she wondered if any of them had a husband with a long-term mistress like Archie. She had known about Mavis for a long time. Had she loved him more she might have been hurt and shocked, but instead this was a piece of knowledge to store away at the back of her mind. It might have its uses later.

In desperation, Clara realised, there was only one woman with whom she identified. And that was her maid Lizzie Laurie, from whom she could not conceal the dark circles around her eyes brought about by lack of sleep.

Lizzie was also concerned about Clara. Considering her mistress’s reflection in the dressing-table mirror, she said: ‘Madam is looking so pale today,’ and added anxiously, ‘Is there something wrong?’

And that was enough, the decision was made. Clara
moved over to the sofa and indicated Laurie sit beside her so they were less likely to be overheard. Hairbrush still in hand, looking somewhat bewildered, Lizzie followed.

Clara smiled. ‘Leave my hair, it will do for now, Laurie. There is something very important I have to say to you.’

At her solemn expression, Lizzie laid aside the brush with a trembling hand. She felt suddenly sick. Had the master won? Was she to be dismissed? Oh dear, what was worst of all, what would become of Vince deprived of his lovely secure new existence? But her beloved mistress was taking her hands, saying: ‘What I am about to tell you, Laurie, you must promise never to tell a living soul. It has to be our secret. Will you promise me that?’

Lizzie promised and her eyes widened considerably as, almost in disbelief, she listened to the terrible story of the mistress’s fearful childhood, the disgusting, brutal stepfather; the following years after her escape from his clutches, awful to guess at, and which were tactfully skimmed over, and then how she had struggled to survive before she met and married the master.

Lizzie blinked; it was like something from those novels she read but much worse, because this wasn’t fiction … this was real.

She was, however, less shocked than Clara had expected. In return she could have shared her own secret that she was not in fact the widow of a brave soldier killed in India, but that Vince was illegitimate, fathered on her at fifteen by a guest, identity unknown, in the Highland mansion where she was a maid.

She might have told Clara, exchanged confidence for confidence, secret for secret, but she thought better of it.
There were so many other people involved for whom such knowledge of her past might have repercussions – most importantly, Vince himself, being told that his whole life story, the father of whom he was so proud, was in fact a lie invented by his beloved mother. Only one person, Jeremy Faro, knew the truth and Lizzie knew that she could trust him with her secret more than anyone else on earth.