Deadly Inheritance (37 page)

Ursula suddenly thought of something. ‘Did you not take your brother in your motor vehicle to Salisbury yesterday afternoon?’

He nodded.

‘How did he seem? Depressed? Moody?’

‘You mean, could he have been considering shooting himself? Far from it. He seemed almost light-hearted, like he was when we were growing up together.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘He even said motoring was a damn, forgive me, a damn good way of getting about and he’d go out and get a vehicle like mine!’

‘No wonder you are so sure Mr Jackman is right. What about the coroner and, what did you call him, the Chief Constable? To be called a constable doesn’t suggest a very high rank but I suppose put ‘‘chief’’ in front and it becomes more respectable.’

‘He is the titular head of this area’s police force, a man of considerable standing. Neither he nor the coroner will allow Jackman’s theories to hold much water. It was probably a mistake to mention his name. Then the coroner announced that my mother had insisted they relate their findings to her.’

‘Did she tell them that she believed it was an accident?’

He nodded, his face blank. ‘Nothing would shake her from that view.’ He pocketed the piece of paper and leaned forward. ‘Forgive me for what I am about to say. I do not think for one moment it is the truth but you have to understand it is what my mother believes. Last night she told me we must ensure a verdict of death by misadventure is returned because she is certain Richard shot himself because he could no longer live with the fact that his wife was being unfaithful to him with a series of men. When I challenged her to produce some proof, she told me I was a romantic fool.’

Ursula drew a sharp breath. ‘That is the last thing I would call you.’

He smiled ruefully. ‘I’m not at all sure that is a compliment.’

Ursula moved swiftly on. ‘Surely, though, your mother is desperate to prove your brother’s death wasn’t suicide because of the slur on the Mountstanton reputation, rather than because she doesn’t want your brother’s motives for suicide questioned.’

‘It appears she has succeeded. Both the coroner and Chief Constable left here stating that the inquest would find that Richard’s death was due to accidental causes.’

Ursula was astonished. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

He looked at her steadily. ‘Any other verdict would mean the Mountstanton name spread all over the gutter press, and newspaper men haunting the area; every aspect of the family would be dug up and displayed for the common man to salivate over. When my mother invokes the full power of the Mountstanton name and status, it takes an extraordinarily strong and independent man to stand against her.’ His tired eyes held hers in a compelling way. ‘I was told that the inquest is to be held in private. It will be a rubber-stamping exercise.’

‘Surely, if there is any possibility that someone killed your brother,’ Ursula swallowed painfully, ‘surely every effort must be made to discover whether that is, in fact, the truth and, if so, who it was that shot him?’ Ursula was suddenly very angry. She rose and stalked to the other end of the room.

Charles rose as well.

She turned and faced him, hands on hips. He said nothing but his eyes continued their steady gaze. ‘You are the senior Mountstanton male. You are the strong and independent man you said was needed to stand up to your mother. It seems to me this is now a battlefield. You are a soldier, you must know exactly what has to be done. You can make those officials do the right and proper thing. You did it for Polly, what is preventing you doing it for your brother?’ Her breath coming fast, she finally stopped, too angry to be appalled at her behaviour.

‘Thank you, Miss Grandison. It was what I had decided must be done but I needed someone else to believe it as well. Richard must have justice.’

Ursula sank back into her chair. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘You have your mother and Helen – and Harry – to consider. I had no right to say what I did.’

‘You were absolutely right to speak so!’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘You are an Amazon and I am grateful to you.’

Ursula felt a rare blush staining her neck and face as he sat down again. She sought a return to solid ground. ‘What of the possibility that your brother’s death could be connected with Polly’s? That was why you brought Mr Jackman down, to investigate how she had died. Maybe his questions in Hinton Parva alerted someone to the possibility of something regarding Polly coming to light. Though why that should mean the Earl had to be killed, I can’t imagine.’

‘Now surely you can understand why I need your help? You are not entangled with the bloody, forgive my language, the bloody Mountstanton way of doing things. Our family’s autocratic way of viewing its position can be poisonous. I told you once that I had tried to escape its influence. Now it appears that it is up to me to see that Harry grows up unencumbered with false ideas of what and who he is.’

Ursula thought of the little boy whose shoulders now bore such a burden. Would an investigation of his father’s death mean his life would forever be scarred with scandal?

The May afternoon was gliding smoothly towards evening. Its warmth and beauty were lost on Thomas Jackman as he plodded up the hill and along the wooded path that would take him to Mountstanton.

Frustration ran through his veins like a rat through a run. He’d had no sleep the previous night. Colonel Stanhope’s message had reached the Lion and Lamb as he and Sam Fry, the landlord, were ending a quiet session discussing the locals over a pint of Sam’s Special Ale.

Soon after Thomas had arrived at the Lion and Lamb, he had discovered that the landlord had a dearly loved nephew in the Metropolitan force. To learn all about police work from someone who knew it from the inside was joy to Sam. He had produced jugs of his ale that first night and on subsequent evenings. During their conversations, it was not difficult for the former detective to extract a wealth of information about the villagers of Mountstanton – and about the family up in the big house.

The family up in the big house … 

For a moment, as he negotiated the woodland track, Thomas wondered exactly what he had got himself into. When Colonel Stanhope had first approached him, it seemed a heaven-sent opportunity. Now it looked more like a lifeline turning into a rope that could strangle him.

Losing his job in the detective section of the Metropolitan force had been devastating. His ability as a constable on the beat to search out evidence and assemble cases against various East End villains had quickly produced an offer to join the elite team of detectives. Thomas had soon realised he’d found a totally absorbing career. The cases mostly involved petty thieves, fraudsters and such like, but he had grown increasingly involved with the process of winkling out the truth. Once facts had been collected and witnesses found and interviewed, most cases proved simple enough. The villains he dealt with possessed a certain low cunning rather than high intelligence. Even the craftier type of rascals, making a good living from crime, were no match for Thomas. He learned to disguise his appearance with different outfits, sometimes using a wig or false moustache; nothing too blatant. He learned the value of subtlety. He gained a reputation for being able to crack the most difficult of cases and put what were sometimes called ‘master minds’ behind bars.

It was only later he realised how naive he’d been not to see how eaten-up with jealousy his superior officer was becoming.

The cases Thomas found most difficult were those that involved the upper classes. Humble policemen, even detectives, were not expected to point the finger of responsibility at those who were so far above them in the social scale.

It was a case not unlike the one he was involved with at the moment that had caused the final showdown with his boss. A maid in the home of a marquis had been strangled. Her body had been found in Green Park, no more than a stone’s throw from the back garden of the house where she was employed.

Initially, such evidence as there was had pointed at one of the marquis’s footmen as her killer. He had pleaded innocence, and swore that the girl had been seduced by a member of the household. One of the other maids said the girl had told her she was with child. She had been very cut up, she said, and had declared she would make the man who had brought about her ruin ‘do right by her’.

What was mainly circumstantial evidence had convinced Thomas that the seducer was a nephew of the marquis and that he had most probably killed the girl to protect his reputation. Thomas wanted to take him in for questioning in the hope of extracting a confession. That was when the power of the aristocracy had been brought into play. Thomas was told that one of the down-and-outs, in the habit of sleeping in the park, must have killed the maid. When he asked what evidence there was to support this theory, his boss told him, ‘The case stops here.’

Suddenly Thomas had recognised not only the inspector’s jealousy of the attention his junior officer was receiving as he closed case after case, but also his ambition, the obsequious manner the man used to the upper classes. Thomas respected those in authority but his mission was to see justice done. The vision of the dead girl’s face, the eyes bulging, tongue swollen and lolling out, haunted him. He had pressed for a warrant to bring the man in.

Perhaps if Rose, his wife, had still been alive, Thomas would not have reacted the way he had. Rose had always listened to his worries, shared in his problems, his triumphs. With a few soft words she had the knack of removing pressures and making any difficulty easier to deal with. But Rose had died of a fever.

So Thomas had challenged the detective inspector and accused him of pandering to the power of privilege. He had lost his job.

He should, of course, have accepted his superior’s diktat without question. Instead he had tried to go over his head.

His career had ended in an interview with the Chief Constable. Later, he’d realised how unusual this had been and wondered if there hadn’t been something he could have done to save himself. At the time he had been consumed with righteous anger. He had stood rigidly to attention in front of the huge, highly polished desk.

The Chief Constable had stood looking out of the window, his hands held locked together behind his back, underneath the skirts of his frock coat. He hardly seemed to notice that Thomas was waiting.

‘Well, Jackman,’ he’d said finally. ‘A fine mess you’ve made of things.’

‘Sir!’

The Chief turned. His swarthy face with its strong bone structure combined power and intelligence. He sat down behind the desk and regarded his wayward officer, then said, ‘Your conduct cannot be overlooked. You have to go.’

It had been a vain hope to expect anything else.

For a long moment the dark eyes regarded him without emotion. ‘You’re a good detective, Jackman, probably the best there is at the moment. Trouble is, you are not someone who can accept discipline or who understands what it is to be part of a team.’

Thomas felt resentment join his anger but knew there was nothing he could say.

‘Set yourself up as someone who can investigate privately, man. You should be able to make a good living; perhaps even better than as a member of the force.’

The suggestion came as a complete surprise.

A few minutes later, Thomas was on his way out.

Back in his empty home in Holborn, he tried to ignore the loss of his career and think instead of what he should do now. Lacking any sort of plan, he went round to his local. There the landlord left him alone for a bit, as did the regulars. They had no wish to cross a policeman. The unusual sight, though, of Thomas Jackman sinking pint after pint, uninterested in the doings of the local villainy, finally led the landlord to enquire how things were.

A few days after that, there was a knock on Thomas’s door and there was the pot boy from the pub. Thomas had been scanning his newspaper’s employment columns. A sense of hopelessness rather than curiosity made him answer the landlord’s summons.

It had not taken him long to identify the villain responsible for a number of thefts connected with the pub; the police had given up on the case almost immediately and Thomas was almost certain it was because of a close connection between one of the constables and the villain. He had handed over the miscreant and enjoyed the gratitude of several locals.

Nothing else came along. Thomas took to doing odd jobs while he sought proper employment; anything to get him out of the empty house where everything reminded him of Rose.

Then one morning Colonel Stanhope had arrived on his doorstep.

‘There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Mr Jackman,’ he’d said, introducing himself. ‘Can we go inside?’

Being addressed as ‘Mr’ by his visitor suggested a measure of equality between the two of them. But Thomas had known immediately that the Colonel was a member of the upper class. Everything about him breathed privilege, from the clearly bespoke clothes, classy shoes and military bearing to the well-ordered features and clipped accent.

Yet, despite an air of authority so natural the man had probably been born with it, his attitude as Thomas invited him to sit in the small living room, in the chair that had been Rose’s, was that of a man without a trace of arrogance.

‘The Chief Constable gave me your name and suggested you might be able to help me.’

As he’d listened to the Colonel outlining his problem, Thomas felt how ironic it was. One dead maid in an aristocratic household had finished his career, now it seemed another one might offer him a new chance. Something in this story, though, seemed odd. He took the Colonel through the facts, checking details, establishing the limits of what the Colonel knew about both the victim and her end.

‘Well?’ said the Colonel finally, his keen eyes fixed on Thomas’s. ‘Will you take this assignment on?’

For a moment Thomas sat surveying his visitor. How far could he trust this man? He was a member of the class that had caused his downfall. He might seem to be straightforward and honest, but Thomas could not run the risk of privilege, once again, burying truth. And what about the nursemaid who had died? If someone, as this man seemed to believe, had been responsible for her death, he should at least try to reveal her killer and make him pay for his crime, shouldn’t he?