British Bulldog (26 page)

Epilogue

We make life by what we give
.

T
he snow was still lying in Durham as Mirabelle and Vesta got off the train. They took a taxi from the station to their destination. It crawled carefully up the hill at no more than ten miles an hour.

‘We should have walked,’ Vesta complained. ‘It would have been quicker.’

Mirabelle paid off the cab. The pavements had mostly been cleared but there were still some patches of ice. From where they stood they could see the cathedral towering over them, fringed in white. It was where Bulldog Bradley had married Caroline Bland and where he was probably buried. Below them the river was frozen over and a group of children were skating on it, only distinguishable one from the other by the colour of their hats and scarves.

‘I think York might have been better,’ Vesta pronounced.

‘Well, we can hop off the train there on the way home. Why don’t you have a look around while I deal with things here?’ Now Vesta had set her wedding date there were endless chores to see to. Today’s was to find shoes to match her dress.

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Not at all.’

Vesta hooked her handbag over her arm as if she was going into battle and disappeared into a promising-looking boutique, leaving Mirabelle to compose herself before she entered the offices of Lovatt and Stone. In the reception area a young secretary sat at a desk, typing furiously. She looked up.

‘May I help you?’

‘I’ve come to see Mr Lovatt.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’ The girl cast her eyes over the diary that was propped to one side.

‘No. But he’ll see me,’ Mirabelle said steadily. ‘My name is Mirabelle Bevan.’

‘I’m afraid Mr Lovatt is with someone at present.’ The secretary crossed her arms.

‘Please tell him I’m here.’

‘He’s in a meeting, Miss Bevan. I can’t disturb him.’

‘I think you should.’

The girl was torn. She got up though, smoothed her skirt, and left the room. A few seconds later she returned. ‘He’ll see you now,’ she said coldly. No one liked being overruled.

In the hallway a man tipped his hat to Mirabelle as he passed her on his way to the door.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I disturbed your meeting.’

‘You can’t help an emergency, love,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘I’ll pop back later.’

Lovatt’s office was panelled in oak. It smelled of respectability – a mixture of thick paper, ink and just a whiff of spirits. A row of embossers teetered on the edge of a set of bookshelves, and every available surface was covered in leather-bound law books and sheafs of paper.

‘Miss Bevan.’ Lovatt sprang eagerly to his feet with his hand held out. Mirabelle shook it and took him in. She remembered the scent of his aftershave. He was as well presented as he had been in Brighton but she’d never trust him now. Never again. He had seemed so above board. It just showed you.

‘I don’t know exactly what you’ve been playing at, Mr Lovatt, but I can’t imagine the Law Society will approve.’

Lovatt blanched. ‘Did you find out what happened to him?’

Mirabelle nodded.

‘Is he … ?’

‘Flight Lieutenant Philip Caine is alive, Mr Lovatt. But I can’t imagine what he means to you that you’d be prepared to risk your whole career to find that out.’

‘Mr Bradley …’

‘Now, now. Mr Bradley didn’t enjoin me to search for Caine. You did. And I think you owe me an explanation.’

Lovatt sank into his seat. ‘The bequest …’ he said weakly.

‘There was no bequest. Please don’t treat me like a fool.’

‘Where is Caine?’

‘He doesn’t want to be found, Mr Lovatt. He doesn’t want to come back.’

‘But he’s alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re going to turn me in?’

‘You altered a client’s will, Mr Lovatt. You tried to misappropriate a client’s money.’ Mirabelle was furious. She despised dishonesty. When he replied, it surprised her to realise that Lovatt’s anger matched her own.

‘Bradley had enough money,’ he spat. ‘And none of it made any difference to him. He was still a bastard.’

Mirabelle stopped in her tracks. To her mind Bradley was a hero, but anyone she met who knew him seemed to disagree. ‘What on earth did he do?’ she asked.

‘Bradley? He did everything. With his bluff manner and his titled wife. We knew each other as children. We all knew each other – Duggan, Bradley, Caine and I. Let me tell you, it’s no surprise that Bradley ended up being called Bulldog. He was a vicious bloody bastard and once he had his teeth in you he never let go.’

‘A bully, you mean?’

Lovatt’s skin was pink in his fury. He looked as if he might attack any moment. ‘A bully. Yes. And after the war … I mean, I was here. I didn’t see any service. Bradley became this ridiculous hero and Philip just disappeared. Matthew said he’d signed
the Official Secrets Act and couldn’t tell me anything. Jack Duggan neither. Bradley held it over me, though. He kept hinting at one thing and another. I thought he’d killed Philip, Miss Bevan. I thought he’d murdered Philip and married his girl. It wouldn’t have surprised me. He hadn’t changed from when we were all at school. That’s exactly what he was like till the day he died. And in the end it was an irony – all his money couldn’t save him. When he knew he was dying I visited him and begged him just to tell me what had happened. Philip was a friend, you see. But Matthew just laughed. “I left him in France in 1942,” he said. “And you’re not cleared to know any more than that. I’m taking it to the grave,” he said. And I could never understand, if Caine was alive, why he didn’t come back.’

‘So you altered Bradley’s will?’

Lovatt nodded. ‘God help me, yes. I added the clause and I wrote that letter.’

‘And you thought ten thousand guineas would …’

‘Hold your interest. Duggan mentioned you once or twice, what a marvel you were. And then I saw you in
The Times
. I’d tried to look into it myself but so many people had died that I got nowhere. I thought if I just tried to commission you, you’d turn me down.’

‘I would have.’

‘I’ve been desperate, you see, all these years. And I still don’t understand. Why didn’t Caine come back, Miss Bevan?’

Mirabelle regarded her shoes for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose he’d been bullied too in a way, and he turned his back on it all. After his mother’s death he blamed Matthew Bradley and Jack Duggan as well as himself. He didn’t want to come home. He was ashamed of what he had to do. He changed his name.’

‘But he’s all right?’

‘Yes, he’s all right. And he has no idea that you have been thinking of him all this time.’

‘After Bradley died I thought that he might want Caroline. I
thought if you found him he’d know she was free and maybe …’

‘He’s married, Mr Lovatt. He married someone else. He has children. Two, I think.’

‘And if I were to write to him?’

‘I could pass on a letter if you like. One letter.’

Lovatt nodded. ‘Thank you. And I’ll see to it that Bradley’s bequest is paid to you. Please don’t concern yourself.’

‘I can’t accept that. It’s stolen money,’ Mirabelle exclaimed. ‘No. That will never do. I shall submit my invoice, Mr Lovatt, on a generous daily rate plus expenses.’ She paused, thinking of the money she’d paid the old main in the attic and her eventual, rather costly hotel bill. And also a sum for donation to the Red Cross. I shall expect you to pay it yourself.’

She stared out of the window onto the street. People were picking their way along the pavement. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Lovatt exactly what Jack had said about her, but then she realised it didn’t matter any more. Jack had either loved her or he hadn’t. He’d either intended to leave his wife or he’d intended to stay. There was no point in dwelling on the past. She didn’t want to end up strangled by all the endless ifs. If Christine Moreau could move on, so could she.

‘I do hope you don’t make a habit of swindling your clients’ estates,’ she managed.

‘Are you going to make a complaint?’

Mirabelle considered. If everything came out in court it would embarrass Mrs Bradley and her daughter, and it would expose Philip Caine. It might even expose her affair with Jack.

‘No,’ she said. She might as well be honest.

Lovatt looked as if he might burst into tears. ‘Thank you,’ he breathed.

‘I’m not doing it for you,’ Mirabelle snapped. ‘I’m doing it for everybody else.’ She got to her feet trying not to think of Evangeline Durand’s funeral and the scars on Christine Moreau’s arms. ‘Good day,’ she said.

*

Back out in the street she followed Vesta into the boutique. Inside, Vesta was arguing with the shop assistant.

‘I want to try them on.’ She indicated a pair of satin heels.

The shop girl’s jaw was set. ‘We can’t have nignogs trying things on in here.’ She sounded at the end of her tether. ‘You’ll get them dirty.’

Mirabelle drew herself up. Her eyes were like Medusa’s as she swung in. ‘Are you aware of the solicitor’s office across the road, young woman? Lovatt and Stone?’ she asked.

The girl nodded, abashed at this well put together woman cutting in on Vesta’s behalf. She seemed to have come out of nowhere.

‘Mr Lovatt is a personal friend of Miss Churchill’s,’ she said. ‘Now you don’t want to end up in court, do you? Over a pair of shoes? Miss Churchill is a size five, I believe.’

‘But,’ the girl stuttered, ‘she’s a darkie.’

Vesta bit her lip.

‘But you’d let me try on the shoes, wouldn’t you?’ Mirabelle spat.

‘Oh, if they’re for you, madam, that’s fine.’ The girl sounded relieved.

Vesta sighed. ‘Blow it,’ she said. ‘I can’t be bothered with this.’

‘I don’t blame you.’ Mirabelle put her hand on her friend’s arm. ‘It’s ridiculous. We fought a war …’ She struggled to contain her fury. ‘We fought a war against this kind of prejudice.’

As they turned to go Mirabelle noticed a display of scarves. Red ones, with a familiar tag that said
Made in Paris
. Vesta followed her eyes.

‘That colour would suit you,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t shop here.’ Mirabelle sounded shocked. ‘Places like this should be closed down.’

Vesta gripped her hand tightly. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and catch the train.’

Questions for readers’ groups

The quotations and misquotations used to open each chapter are taken from the following sources: ‘A thing is not necessarily true just because a man dies for it’ (Oscar Wilde); ‘A little resolution is all that is wanted to bring matters to a happy conclusion’ (Georgette Heyer); ‘Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards’ (Kierkegaard); ‘A man is not what he thinks he is, he’s what he hides’ (André Malraux); ‘One who makes no mistakes, makes nothing’ (Casanova); ‘I want to be with those who know secret things’ (Rilke); ‘There is nothing like a dream to create the future’ (Victor Hugo); ‘All roads lead home’ (Marjorie Holmes); ‘The secret idea she was forming of an afterlife gave her the foothold she needed to endure the agonies to come, a newfound courage and optimism which found instant expression through SHOPPING’ (Lucy Ellmann); ‘My past is everything I failed to be’ (Ferdinand Pessoa); ‘Love never dies a natural death’ (Anaïs Nin); ‘Information is not knowledge’ (Albert Einstein); ‘Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door’ (Saul Bellow); ‘The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know’ (Harry S. Truman); ‘The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it’ (Alan Saporta); ‘The past is a foreign country’ (L.P. Hartley); ‘Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect’ (Samuel Johnson); ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes’ (Marcel Proust); ‘I know what I’m fleeing from but not what I’m searching for’ (Michel de Montaigne); ‘Never give in’ (Winston Churchill); ‘One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger’ (François de La Rochefoucauld); ‘If you aren’t in over your head how do you know how tall you are?’ (T.S. Eliot); ‘Remember that you have a friend’ (L.M. Montgomery); ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food’ (Hippocrates); ‘To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved’ (George MacDonald); ‘A well-dressed woman,
even though her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world’ (Louise Brooks); ‘You must train your intuition – you must trust the small voice inside you’ Ingrid Bergman; ‘Only the dead have seen the end of war’ (Plato); ‘Being good is easy, what is difficult is being just’ (Victor Hugo); ‘Keep going come what may’ (Vincent van Gogh); ‘We are here for the sake of others’ (Albert Einstein); ‘It’s the friends you can call at 4 a.m. that matter’ (Marlene Dietrich); ‘We make life by what we give’ (Winston Churchill).