Authors: Wendy Percival
20
The moment the police left Polly was surrounded by an enthusiastic inrush of concerned staff. Esme could only watch from the sidelines as tea was brought, cushions were plumped up and words of sympathy were offered. Mrs Rowcliffe arrived and Esme decided it was time to withdraw from the bustle of professional tendering. She escaped into the hall and made her way towards the side door and out into the garden.
For the moment there was a lull in the showers, though the darkened sky indicated that the respite was to be short. She meandered along the wide paths, appraising the borders. They were well tended and weed-free. She had the urge to rush back home and get out into her own green space which was desperately in need of a complete revamp. Plants had outgrown their allotted spaces and were flattening one another in a sort of horticultural civil war. She also craved the regenerative benefits that gardening would bestow, to counter the feeling of dejection which descended upon her in unguarded moments. But, even if present circumstances allowed her the time, it was unlikely to stop raining long enough for her to get started.
As she wandered the paths she reviewed her theories, which had been thrown in to complete disarray with what she had just learnt from the police. She had been convinced that it was Catherine Monkleigh who was responsible for applying pressure on Polly to part with the cottage. Yet now it appeared that Catherine had been in Daisy’s confidence. At least this latest piece of information had confirmed one thing of significance; that there was a loyal, and possibly enduring, connection with the Monkleigh family, as Mrs Rowcliffe had implied. But the reason why Polly was so reluctant to discuss her past association with the family remained stubbornly elusive.
Esme shivered and decided to return indoors. She re-entered the building the way she had come and made her way down the corridor towards the matron’s office. She heard a door open behind her and turned to see a member of staff emerge from the lounge. Mrs Rowcliffe followed briskly behind.
‘Is everything all right?’ asked Esme, turning back towards her.
The matron hesitated. ‘Mrs Roberts seems a little distressed,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We thought it prudent to ask the doctor to call.’
So Esme wasn’t going to get her chance to discuss the land values and urge Polly to resist signing any documents. If she was under the doctor, though, at least she wouldn’t be seeing visitors so Mary was unlikely to trouble her for a day or two. That gave them some breathing space.
Esme and Mrs Rowcliffe began walking down the corridor towards the matron’s office.
‘It’s understandable she’s upset,’ said Esme. ‘It was really her daughter the police wanted to talk to, about a friend. They obviously weren’t aware of the circumstances, so she had to explain.’
The matron shook her head. ‘Poor dear. Such a strange few days.’ She lowered her voice. ‘That awful woman was in again yesterday. The one who used to work with Mrs Roberts.’
Esme frowned. ‘Mrs Watts?’
‘The same. I do think it most odd that she agrees to her visits, they seem to upset her so. Mind you, she did tell Abigail that Mrs Watts would only be coming once more and then that would be it.’
‘Did they have an argument?’ asked Esme.
‘Not that I’m aware of. I think it’s simply that Mrs Roberts has at last seen sense. I can’t for the life of me think why she didn’t put a stop to her coming before. The woman clearly annoyed her.’
They arrived at the door to Mrs Rowcliffe’s office as the front door opened.
‘Ah, Dr Parker,’ called the matron to a short balding man in a creased suit. ‘Good of you to pop round. Such an advantage that you are so close.’ Esme wondered whether the doctor shared these sentiments but he seemed convivial enough. Perhaps it boosted his professional ego for the matron to be so dependent on him.
The doctor nodded an acknowledgment to Esme as he passed and Mrs Rowcliffe accompanied him to Mrs Roberts.
Esme hovered in the front entrance uncertain whether to stay or go. She didn’t want to leave if there was still a chance that she could speak to Polly, however briefly. She thought again about the issue of blackmail. To what extent had Polly’s distress been due to the presence of the police? Had she thought they had come on some other errand, and that Mary had informed on her?
But Esme herself had heard Polly assure Mary that she had no intention of breaking their arrangement, whatever it was. So, if informing on Polly was indeed Mary’s threat, why would Mary lose whatever advantage she had by carrying it out prematurely? Esme sighed. If only she knew what this was all about. Having only fragments of information meant she could only speculate. And what good was that proving to be? The most promising conclusion she’d arrived at so far had just been discredited. So much for her investigative skills.
There was a chair outside Mrs Rowcliffe’s office. Esme sat down on it, trying to dispel the image forming in her head of waiting to see the headmistress. If Mary Watts had still to visit for a last time it meant that Polly hadn’t yet signed the necessary documentation to sell the cottage. She had no doubt that Mary was only the intermediary of whatever deal had been agreed. Someone else was involved and if it wasn’t Catherine, who else did that leave?
Esme rubbed her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair. But could she persuade Polly not to sign? Only if she learnt what was being used against Polly could she hope to change Polly’s mind. But if Esme did learn what it was, what guarantee was there that she could do anything about it? The prognosis looked hopeless.
Abigail came past and offered her a cup of tea which Esme gladly accepted. She was leaning against the doorway of the kitchen chatting to Abigail, a mug of tea in her hand when the matron returned.
‘The doctor’s given her something to help her sleep,’ Mrs Rowcliffe informed Esme when she saw she was still waiting.
‘How is she?’ asked Esme.
‘Dr Parker said she’ll be right as rain by the morning,’ said the matron. Then something caught her eye and, frowning, she directed her gaze down the hall towards the front door.
Esme turned and looked to see what had caused the matron to harden her expression. A short, round, elderly woman was pushing open the front door. Her hair was covered by a brown headscarf and she clutched a fawn coloured leatherette shopping bag to her as she shuffled into the hall.
The old lady had barely crossed the threshold before Mrs Rowcliffe had swept down the corridor and accosted her.
‘I’m afraid Mrs Roberts is indisposed,’ she announced, as though addressing a crowd of onlookers.
The woman looked affronted. She stared up at the matron, as though lost for words.
‘Eh? What’s up with her?’ she managed, at last.
‘The doctor’s been to see her. She’s asleep at the moment. I’ll tell her you called.’
The woman considered this for a moment. ‘You do that,’ she said in a manner which implied hidden meaning. Then she turned on the step and walked away.
Esme put down her mug on the kitchen counter and joined the matron, who was standing watching the old lady walk down the drive.
‘Who’s that?’ said Esme. Did she need to ask?
‘Mrs Watts,’ said the matron through gritted teeth.
‘I thought so. Excuse me.’ Esme pushed passed Mrs Rowcliffe. ‘Tell Mrs Roberts I’ll see her tomorrow,’ she called over her shoulder.
It took Esme no more than five seconds to catch up with Mary Watts. As Esme came alongside her she received a cold glance from the old woman.
‘Mrs Watts?’ She wasn’t sure what she was going to say but she hoped she would think of something if she could get her talking.
‘Who’s asking?’ The woman showed no inclination to slacken her pace and carried on down the drive towards the road.
‘I’m a friend of Mrs Roberts,’ said Esme.
‘What’s that to me?’ The old lady kept walking, continuing to look ahead. Esme had to increase her stride to keep up. Either the woman was making a determined effort to get away or she was more nimble than she looked and this was her usual speed. Whichever it was, she clearly had no desire to make Esme’s acquaintance. Did that imply culpability on her part?
‘Mrs Roberts seems to be rather troubled about something,’ began Esme.
‘She’s got plenty to be troubled by.’
‘Oh?’ They had almost reached the end of the drive now. As they approached Esme could see the wing of a black car parked at the roadside. Was it waiting for Mary?
Mary was becoming breathless now as the pace was beginning to tell. She stopped abruptly. Esme halted alongside, turning to look at her, waiting for a response.
‘Always gets to us in the end, doesn’t it?’ said Mary, her breathing laboured.
‘What does?’
Mary looked up at Esme, with narrowed eyes. ‘A guilty conscience.’
21
Esme had a restless night, full of dreams of old ladies with evil intent, greenhouses and newspaper articles. She put the last of these down to Lucy’s telephone call about her success at tracking down reports of Leonard Nicholson’s ‘pals’, as Albert had referred to them, and their criminal activities. The headlines were along the lines of, Rich Kids’ Games, and Public Schoolboys Rampage. Their idea of fun had been to disguise themselves with balaclavas and then break in to houses of the parents of their peers. Not satisfied with simple theft – none of them was short of money – they then proceeded to terrorise the occupants for several hours until they got bored and left with a bag full of valuable items, presumably in order to lead the police to conclude that the motive was burglary. Their antics backfired when they made the flawed decision of targeting the parents of one of the gang. Unsurprisingly it was their arrogance which was their undoing. The mother of the gang member in question recognised her son’s badly disguised voice and, such was her abhorrence of the behaviour, had no qualms about reporting him to the police.
As soon as it was light Esme got out of bed. It was unlikely that she would benefit by fitful dozing, so she got dressed and went down to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
Since speaking to Mary Watts the previous day she had been thinking about the old woman’s remark. Was it really a matter of guilt? There were always two sides to a story. Did Mary have an unbiased view of the circumstances? Esme doubted it. She could talk to the police about the implications – the link with Leonard Nicholson and the implied value of Polly’s cottage – but she still felt she owed Polly warning of the can of worms she might be opening. And perhaps in a way she also owed Elizabeth. Polly was her grandmother, after all, however bizarre that idea still seemed.
Esme brewed coffee and poured herself a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. Apart from during her student days, breakfast was a meal she rarely missed, not since she realised how weak and unproductive she got in the middle of the morning if she didn’t eat anything. She’d almost fainted once. Everyone wrongly assumed she was pregnant and it took a long time to live it down where she worked at the time. Since then breakfast had become a favourite meal. She was also convinced that it directly stirred her brain cells. And her brain cells were in desperate need of stirring at this moment.
When she’d finished her muesli and toast, she put the crockery in the sink and slipped on her coat. Fresh air was the next necessity. Her head was still muggy and it was too early to make telephone calls. Besides, there was something she needed to get her head round, even though she didn’t know what it was. A good walk was often effective in releasing the subconscious.
She decided on a stroll around the village. It was so beautiful first thing in the morning, quiet and restful with no one around. She came out of her front door and turned right towards the old priory. The smell in the air was exhilarating. The trees in the lane were sodden with the overnight rain. The evergreen shrubs in the rectory garden were sulking, overwhelmed with the weight of water. The oaks were yet to show their leaves but the branches dripped with moisture as Esme wandered underneath, causing her to pull her coat closer around her neck to avoid the water droplets seeping down her collar.
She spent a few moments looking across at the ruins of the priory and then turned back towards her cottage. She glanced at her watch. The newsagent would be open by now. She’d call in and buy a paper. She took a diversion through the churchyard gate and across the grass to the way out at the bottom of the High Street. The maintenance workers had been at work the previous day with their first cut of the season. Grass cuttings were strewn across the pathway and small heaps of clippings lay in curved channels in corners. They’d missed a few bits, through haste or apathy. Clusters of early daisies were pushing up amongst the new blades of grass on the overlooked edges of the lawn.
Esme stopped abruptly on the path. Daisies. Now she realised what had been nagging her.
She spun round and hurried back to her cottage. She rushed indoors, grabbed the telephone and dialled Lucy’s number. She paced up and down while it rang.
After a few moments a croaky voice came on the line.
‘Lucy, it’s Esme.’
There was a groan. ‘God, Esme. It’s the middle of the night.’
‘I’ve just worked it out.’
‘Worked out what? This better be good. It’s my day off.’
‘Sorry, but it was seeing the daisies. And then I remembered Albert Jennings’s greenhouse. He was writing labels and passing them to me. I should have thought about it before. It all adds up.’
‘Esme, what are you talking about?’
‘The plants in the greenhouse. They were marguerites. The name of the plants. And they were like little daisies.’
‘Esme, I’ve no idea what…’
‘Catherine Monkleigh’s middle name was Marguerite,’ said Esme with undisguised excitement. ‘Daisy and Catherine. They’re both the same person.’
22
‘I hope that’s for me,’ said Lucy sniffing, as Esme showed her through to the warm fug of her kitchen, overlaid with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. ‘I need something to drag me into the real world this morning.’
Esme felt a stab of guilt. ‘I’m sorry, Lu, but I desperately needed to tell someone. Have I really messed up your day?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘You’ve done me a favour. I’ve got a good excuse to avoid the usual day-off chores.’ She took off her coat and hung it over the back of a chair. She nodded towards the sheets of paper on the table. ‘Someone’s been busy.’
‘I’ve just assembled everything we’ve gathered so far, to see if there was anything else which jumped to the fore.’
Lucy sat down and began scanning Esme’s notes. ‘And did it?’
‘Not so far. But everything fits in with Daisy being Catherine – Catherine’s correspondence being sent care of Daisy, the fact that I couldn’t find a birth for Daisy Roberts. But the real clue is in the name. Daisy is a diminutive of Margaret, Marguerite being the French version, and it being Catherine’s middle name. I should have twigged that ages ago.’
‘You didn’t know Marguerite
was
her name until you got the birth certificate,’ pointed out Lucy, charitably.
Esme smiled. ‘True. It’s quite ironic, though. We’d speculated that Daisy’s father was Sir Charles and though it’s not in the way we thought, we now know that he was.’
‘Not necessarily.’
Esme placed a mug of coffee next to Lucy and sat down opposite her. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Catherine’s mother could have been playing away and he wasn’t the father.’
‘That’s possible, I suppose. Would it change anything, though, from a legal perspective? Her birth certificate records Sir Charles as her father, so officially he was.’
Lucy shrugged. ‘Only if someone disputes it, I suppose. Bit late for DNA testing, though, I grant you.’
They both sipped their coffees, deep in thought.
‘The other day,’ said Lucy, ‘when you told me about Elizabeth, you never said whether Gemma knew.’
Esme shook her head. ‘No, she didn’t.’
‘Why do you think Elizabeth kept it quiet? Sorry, Esme, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, that’s all. If you’d rather not talk about it…’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s all part of the mystery, isn’t it? If I want to work out what’s going on I have to deal with it.’ She traced the pattern on her mug with her forefinger. ‘I don’t know why she kept it quiet. I’ve no idea when she first found out. That in itself might be a clue.’
‘She might have only found out recently.’
‘No. The copy of the certificate is dated 1977. Only she could have got that, when the law changed. Perhaps she already knew by then. I don’t have any idea how long ago she made contact with Daisy, either.’
‘And Polly hasn’t been exactly forthcoming.’
‘When I first went to see her, she implied Elizabeth had been plucking up courage to tell us, but I don’t know whether that’s true or not. She may have used it as an excuse for keeping me in the dark.’
Esme leant over the table and waved her hand across her page of notes. ‘I’ve always said it’s got to be linked with the family and now we have the connection, in the fact that Daisy was really Catherine.’ She leant her elbow on the table. ‘But how does that vital clue move us on?’
‘Well,’ said Lucy, considering, ‘the first question is when did Catherine become Daisy?’
‘When she got pregnant with Elizabeth, I thought.’
‘That would make sense.’
Esme continued with her theory. ‘And say Polly had been her nurse, or nanny or whatever when Catherine and her mother had left Sir Charles, then it would be quite straightforward for Catherine to pretend to be Polly’s daughter and go away somewhere to have the baby, incognito. Elizabeth was born in Cheshire, so well away from the Monkleigh area.’
‘But why not go back to the family afterwards?’
‘Perhaps it was only when she got pregnant that she came back from abroad and had never re-established a link with the family since they left. Maybe the reunion came later.’
Lucy sipped her coffee. ‘And you haven’t any idea who Elizabeth’s father was?’
‘None.’
‘What about this nephew?’ said Lucy. ‘He couldn’t be the missing link, could he?’
‘Too young. According to the gardener he’s only in his thirties, so he wouldn’t even have been born then.’
Lucy began drumming her fingers on the table top, absent-mindedly. Esme got up and went and stood by the kitchen door, looking out across the garden. ‘Mary Watts, the woman Polly used to work with years ago, told me that Polly had a guilty conscience.’
‘About what?’
‘She didn’t say. Something that happened when they worked together, maybe? Mary was the employee who was sacked just after Catherine and her mother left.’
‘What for, do you know?’
‘No, but Albert seemed to think it had got something to do with the wife and daughter leaving.’
Lucy put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hand. ‘So what could it be? She knew something about the imminent departure and didn’t tell?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that but it’s hardly a sacking offence. But it can’t be a coincidence that Mary was sacked at the same time as Polly left, with the departing Catherine and her mother.’
‘Whatever Mary considers Polly is guilty of could still be connected with her sacking.’
‘But it’s so long ago,’ said Esme. ‘Surely there’s more to it than that?’
Esme came back over to the table. She collected up the used mugs and took them over to the sink. ‘What could she have done to warrant blackmail?’ She ran the tap and swilled the mugs under the running water. ‘And what about the other fly in the ointment? When I had my theory that there could be a claim on the cottage by someone else I’d thought it must be Catherine but now we know who she really is, that bit doesn’t add up any more.’
‘You haven’t forgotten the nephew?’
‘Of course not. He’s a likely candidate to be involved in some form or other, from what we’ve found out about him, but I still don’t see how the whole thing hangs together. What is Polly being blackmailed about and what’s Mary’s part in it?’
‘So,’ said Lucy, shrugging. ‘Now what?’
Esme turned round and leant her back against the stone sink, drying her hands on a teatowel.
‘What reason might you have for concealing your true identity?’ She said, folding her arms.
‘You mean why did Catherine remain being Daisy, long after she gave up Elizabeth for adoption?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. Maybe it’s not Polly who’s been up to no good. Maybe it was Daisy. Or maybe,’ she said, as the idea occurred to her for the first time, ‘maybe Mary has worked out what we just have, that Daisy and Catherine were one and the same.’
Lucy made a hopeless gesture with her hands. ‘But Daisy’s dead, Esme. What possible difference could Mary’s knowing make now?’
‘I’m not sure, but it will be interesting to find out.’
‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘By seeing what Polly’s response is when I tell her what we know. Confronting her with that might just be the key which unlocks the whole secret.’