[Peter and Georgia Marsh 05] - Murder in the Mist Page 17

  ‘I’ll leave you,’ Luke said promptly.

  ‘Stay, Luke, please,’ Georgia begged. She watched while he sat down as though this were some ordinary Saturday morning.

  ‘It’s just a possible lead, Georgia,’ Elena was saying. ‘I’ve never been back to Brittany, you can imagine.’

  Yes, Georgia could. She never doubted Elena’s emotional response to Rick’s disappearance, only her way of handling the results. Her way of vanishing when the situation had to be faced. It had been Georgia and Peter who travelled to Brittany to get the police involved in Rick’s disappearance. Peter and Georgia who threw themselves into following up every lead, with Peter pulling in every favour he could in his capacity as a DI in the Kent police. And when he’d had his accident … No, Georgia didn’t want to dwell on this. This was here, this was now.

  ‘I have a friend in Brittany,’ Elena explained. ‘She’s just retired and is trying to find things to do. She decided – oh, darling, I didn’t ask her to – to go to that farm that you and Peter tracked down. Where Rick had been staying. Near Carnac. You remember?’

  Of course she did. Georgia would never forget. She and Peter had thought they were getting somewhere at last. Rick had been staying there and helping with the harvesting. The couple at the farm had recognized the photo. The pain they’d felt when the trail then went cold again returned in full force. Rick had left. He’d been travelling by train and hitch-hiking, but the farm couple didn’t know where he was heading. He didn’t know himself, he had told them. That was Rick. Of course he didn’t. Not like Georgia, who would plan every exciting move so that she could look forward to it with pleasure.

  ‘Yes,’ was all she replied to Elena now.

  Elena looked at her doubtfully. ‘What they did remember was a girl visiting them some year or two afterwards, asking after him. She was English. She’d met him, then they had parted, and she didn’t even know he had disappeared. She didn’t know his name either, but she did tell them where she came from. By the Kent coast.’

  Georgia remembered now that there had been talk of seeing Rick with a girl, but no one had come forward, and it was vague. It might not have been Rick, and the police had dismissed it. And so had they.

  ‘What was her name?’ she asked jerkily.

  Elena stared at her dolefully. ‘They didn’t know or couldn’t remember. They thought it was a saint’s name.’

  In a Roman Catholic country, that could be most names under the sun. Georgia felt desolation sweep over her.

  ‘I thought,’ Elena said tentatively, ‘you and Peter might like to follow it up.’

  Georgia could have wept again. More mystery. More lines that would be impossible to follow up but still no answers. It would lead nowhere at all, and merely add fuel to a grief that had already been dealt with. Had it though? If she was honest, it hadn’t. Like Roy Sandford. Like Alwyn Field. The past might lie fallow, but it was still fertile. It could spring to life at any moment. A moment such as this.

  ‘Are you going to tell Peter?’ Elena asked doubtfully.

  Georgia looked at Luke to see if he were thinking as she was. He nodded slightly.

  ‘No,’ she replied to Elena as gently as she could. ‘You are.’

  No way would she risk keeping Peter in ignorance that his former wife had been here. For once Elena could face him herself.

  Being in the same room as Peter and Elena together seemed unreal to Georgia. Elena had refused to come unless Georgia came too, to which she agreed, having warned Peter first, and now she watched her mother telling the story with an odd fascination as though this were a play and she a spectator.

  ‘I see,’ was all Peter said gruffly, when Elena had finished. Then he turned to Georgia. ‘Would you mind, Georgia? I’d like a few minutes alone with Elena.’

  At first she thought Elena would refuse, but she nodded brightly enough at Georgia, who fled to the kitchen, where Margaret was waiting with Luke and with pursed lips. Margaret remembered Elena from the old days, when she’d been queen of the village and, as had the entire village, been fiercely on Peter’s side when Elena departed.

  ‘But then there’s never just one side,’ Luke had commented on one of the rare occasions when Georgia had mentioned Elena to him.

  Georgia had disagreed, but now, with Elena actually here, it might be easier to see it that way.

  She waited on tenterhooks, hearing the rise and fall of voices, but half an hour passed before the tap-tap of Elena’s heels proclaimed that she was on her way to find them.

  ‘Darlings,’ she beamed, ‘I’m leaving now.’

  ‘Is Peter all right?’ Georgia asked quickly.

  Elena looked hurt. ‘Of course, darling. What did you expect?’

  ‘Can we take you to lunch, Elena?’ Luke asked politely.

  ‘Luke, how charming of you. But I don’t believe I could take the emotional strain. After all, I did live here. One day perhaps – if …’ Then her lips trembled. ‘If there’s ever anything more to discuss.’

  ‘I said we’d try to follow it up,’ Peter told Georgia flatly, as soon as Elena had left and Georgia had rushed in to see Peter, fearful of what she might find. To her surprise he looked cast down, but not devastated.

  Luke stepped in. ‘Why don’t we go to the pub for lunch? Margaret won’t mind. You can eat her lunch tonight.’

  Peter brightened up. ‘So I could.’

  ‘How can we follow up on anything so vague?’ Georgia decided to broach the subject once they were established at Haden Shaw’s magnificent White Horse. ‘A girl living in Kent who visited Brittany thirteen years ago, and once again thereafter. She met someone she didn’t know, and we don’t know whether she would have any information in any case.’

  Luke began to laugh, which broke the gloomy silence that followed. ‘It makes the affairs of Frost and Co look straightforward in comparison.’

  ‘There must be a way,’ Peter said after Luke had thus broken the ice. Then he must have read Georgia’s expression correctly. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t get fixated.’

  ‘Will you be all right on your own tonight?’ she asked uneasily. ‘Shall I stay over?’

  ‘You think I’ll have nightmares?’

  ‘Highly possible,’ she said practically.

  ‘I’ll take a pill.’ He saw her look of worry. ‘I’m all right, Georgia. I’m better alone, and in any case you have Great-Aunt Betty to think about,’ he joked.

  ‘We both do,’ Luke said casually, putting his hand over Georgia’s.

  ‘The game’s afoot, Watson.’ Luke’s voice greeted her as she picked up the mobile on Tuesday morning. ‘I thought you’d like to know right away.’

  ‘Which game?’ Georgia asked. It sounded good news, which was a relief in itself after the weekend’s traumas. Unanswered questions – they seemed to pound at her head incessantly. If only one or two tiny ones about Alwyn Field could get resolved, it might help. This sounded hopeful.

  ‘Molly’s telephoned. They’ve got their scientist’s preliminary findings.’

  ‘Which are?’ This was good news.

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me. She’s asked if she can come over after yet another trustees’ meeting this evening. She’s coming for dinner at the White Horse. If, mind you, there’s anything we should know. And the invitation is for you too, not just me. She takes it for granted we’re joined at the hip now.’

  ‘And if there isn’t anything we should know?’

  ‘We can whistle for our supper, I suppose. One step at a time though.’

  Luke was cheeringly calm as she waited impatiently with him in the White Horse that evening. She began to despair when no Molly arrived, but just as both she and Luke had nearly given up hope, Molly came in.

  ‘Tired but triumphant?’ Luke joked, as he rose to greet her. He looked imperturbable. Maybe that was a special expression that all publishers developed, Georgia thought.

  ‘The first part’s one hundred per cent on the nail,’ Molly said wearily. ‘Not e
asy-going, these trustee meetings. The second part is partly true – for you anyway.’

  ‘Ah,’ Luke commented. ‘Drink?’

  ‘Yes, please. I’m staying over here so you can pour it down my throat unceasingly so far as I’m concerned. The good news for you, bad for me, is that our expert says the same as yours. The paper is pretty well conclusive. Our phantom forger could in theory have got hold of wartime paper in 1948, but he sure as hell couldn’t have got hold of 1948 paper in 1941 or earlier. He’s also confirmed the originals are in Alwyn’s handwriting, and the others are forgeries of Roy’s. So unless one argues that Alwyn copied them from Roy’s originals written in wartime and now vanished only for someone to copy them again in the late 1940s in Roy’s handwriting for some mad reason, it looks certain it was indeed a trumped-up charge against Alwyn Field.’

  ‘That’s what I call good news for Marsh and Daughter,’ Georgia said thankfully. One hurdle surmounted at least. ‘How do you feel, Luke?’

  ‘It depends on the trustees’ co-operation, don’t you think, Molly?’ Luke was clearly remaining cautious.

  ‘That’s the bad news for you.’ Molly pulled a face. ‘The board won’t let The Flight of the Soul be released again under Alwyn’s name. If you’re still interested, Luke, you can reprint Roy and Alwyn’s other works, and Elfie’s, but not that one.’

  Sheer vindictiveness was Georgia’s first reaction, though Luke’s face remained impassive – of course.

  ‘I’ll sleep on it, and ring you tomorrow, Molly. One question: who owns the copyright for The Flight of the Soul – or rather who would have owned it if it had been Roy’s work?’

  ‘As with Roy’s other work,’ Molly fenced, ‘I handle it.’

  ‘But who owns it?’ Luke persisted.

  ‘His estate,’ Molly said reluctantly, ‘went to his parents, since he died intestate. Their estate was divided between their surviving children, which now means my father as Roy’s elder brother William died some years back – and anyway,’ she swept on, ‘since I’m the agent and literary executor for the parents’ estate, that’s my problem.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Luke persevered. ‘You said surviving children. The contracts would have to be signed by, and the money go to, either living survivors or their estates.’

  Molly grimaced. ‘It’s a fair cop. I surrender. It means effectively that my father now owns half of it.’

  ‘And the other half?’

  ‘Great-Aunt Elizabeth, Scatty Betty, as she’s known. My father’s aunt.’ The tone of her voice indicated that was the end of the conversation. No way, Georgia thought, but as she was about to tackle Molly, Luke got in first.

  ‘And what about Alwyn Field’s estate? Does Birdie own the copyright?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Even Molly blushed at her response.

  ‘I take that as a yes. So how can the trustees stop the publication?’ Luke pressed. ‘You’re on the board, but not your father or this Scatty Betty, and don’t you have a duty to them? They have the final yea or nay. And then there’s Birdie too.’

  ‘Someone has to make decisions in the interests of the Fernbourne Five. They speak for Birdie. If you must know, she assigned copyright to the trust. But,’ she added hastily, ‘she gets a cut of any royalties earned and a say in what happens.’

  ‘In that case, does she know about this development? Does she know that Alwyn has been vindicated?’

  ‘Not my problem.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Georgia sweetly. ‘Even though the board runs her affairs, and even though, as you told us, you are the literary agent and in control?’

  Molly looked at them. She began to speak then changed her mind. And when she did say something, it was clear that she was no longer fighting the trustees’ corner. ‘Oh, hell,’ she said, frowning. She was clearly thinking something through. ‘You know, I’m not sorry there’s a spanner in the works over this biography,’ she said at last. ‘Ever since I began the damn thing, I had a feeling there was something wrong.’

  ‘About Roy?’ Georgia asked sharply.

  ‘No. About the Fernbourne Five. Something rotten in the state of Denmark, as Shakespeare would have put it.’

  ‘Then or today?’ Georgia asked. ‘The Five or the trust?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Molly confessed. ‘And that, believe it or not, is the truth. I could be completely wrong, but this plagiarism issue has clinched it. When Damien Trent came to me with a cock and bull story, I sent him off with a flea in his ear. I’m not proud of that now, and I owe him. So I’m throwing my weight, for what it’s worth, in with the good guys. Seen any around?’

  ‘Would we do?’ Georgia asked, feeling a whole lot warmer towards Molly. ‘Luke, Peter, me – we can’t all be baddies.’

  ‘You could,’ Molly said ruefully. ‘But that’s my problem. It’s that book of yours that worries me, not you personally. Call me neutral on that, which is why I can’t go too fully into Damien Trent’s story.’

  ‘Until when?’ There had to be a catch, Georgia thought.

  ‘Until you’ve met Scatty Betty.’

  Eleven

  What, Georgia wondered, was the problem with Great-Aunt Elizabeth? Scatty Betty was clearly a thorn in the flesh for Molly and probably therefore the board, but did that necessarily make her public enemy No. 1? How scatty was scatty? She and Peter would soon find out. Her father had been greatly annoyed to find out that Suspects Anonymous had been deprived of a potentially important player. Unfortunately, it was the first day of November, and a very chilly one, which made the prospect of coping with scatty ladies even less appealing.

  She had found out through the internet that Welling, where Great-Aunt Betty lived, had been a mere dot on the Dover Road from London to the coast until the railway had pushed its way through in the 1890s. In the same decade London’s Metropolitan area had stretched out its greedy paw to push back the boundaries of the ancient county of Kent from Lewisham as far as Shooter’s Hill, once a notorious highwaymen’s haunt and only a mile or so from where she was.

  In today’s Welling there was little sign of the original hamlet. It was effectively a London suburb now, albeit thriving with shops, and there was only a faint suggestion that there might once have been market gardens and fields between it and the urban sprawl of the capital.

  Great-Aunt Betty Sandford lived in a warren of seemingly identical streets and houses dating back to the 1920s or 1930s, and set back from the main Bellegrove Road, so Georgia discovered as she negotiated the car round several corners. Peter had decided to join her today at the last moment, now that he had the bit between his teeth over Roy Sandford at last. He at least gave him level pegging with Gavin, as the way forward for Marsh & Daughter.

  ‘The best news since toasted cheese,’ he had proclaimed with unusual conviction, after he heard about Molly’s attitude.

  ‘You don’t like toasted cheese,’ she had pointed out.

  Perhaps that had been some kind of omen, however, for the knock on Great-Aunt Betty’s the door produced an almost instant result in the form of someone who could have been Dickens’ model for Betsy Trotwood. She was tall, with short, straight grey hair, an angular figure, a two-piece long-skirted grey suit, and a somewhat demented look in her eye as she peered past them into the road.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ she demanded, wasting no time on inessentials. What she saw obviously satisfied their hostess. ‘Good, you’ve got Mrs Parkwood’s spot. That’ll teach her.’

  So Miss Sandford substituted cars for Betsy Trotwood’s donkeys, Georgia thought, highly amused.

  Next came the wheelchair. ‘How are you going to get that thing in here?’ Betty Sandford asked with her next breath, eyeing it grimly.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me that,’ Peter replied with equanimity. The matter had been waved aside when Peter had talked to her on the telephone to arrange the meeting.

  ‘French windows,’ came the verdict. Slamming the door behind her, Betty bustled past them to indicate the way to the r
ear garden. ‘Moves by itself, does it?’ she asked with interest.

  ‘With a little help from me and electricity,’ Peter told her gravely, obviously beginning to enjoy this.

  It took ten minutes or so to get the chair inside the house, not because the French windows provided a problem, but because Great-Aunt Betty had forgotten to unlock the windows from the inside, and also forgotten to bring her house keys with her to regain entrance. Fortunately she announced she had a spare key, whose position changed every week. The place she first pounced on proved to be last week’s position and the upturned terracotta pot was empty of all but an indignant toad. The next one was more fruitful.

  Once established in her own domain again, she resumed authority. Molly had told them that Betty had been a teacher all her life, and Georgia could well believe it. Head teacher was more probable, and in the days when children were children and did what they were told. Even in her mid-to-late eighties, the aura remained.

  Georgia found herself meekly perching on the edge of a chair at Peter’s side, while cups were whipped on to a tray and then whipped off again as Betty changed her mind about which ones to use. Everything was clearly under constant reappraisal in her life.

  ‘Now,’ she said sharply, when the tray was settled to her satisfaction – although it still lacked coffee. ‘What’s this about Roy?’

  ‘You know there’s an arts centre being opened next year in Fernbourne?’ Georgia began tentatively.

  ‘Naturally. No thanks to Molly, though. Just like her grandfather. Birdie Field wrote to me. They don’t want me there, but I shall be. I’ve booked the taxi.’

  ‘I’m sure they must want you,’ Georgia said.

  ‘Oh, are you? You’ll see. They think I’ll cause trouble.’

  Georgia was beginning to see why Molly had been reluctant to mention Betty Sandford earlier. It was going to be difficult to rein her in. ‘Why should that be?’

  A smirk. ‘They’re afraid I’ll spoil the image of Saint Roy.’

  ‘You didn’t like your brother?’ Peter asked matter-of-factly.