Last Act of All (24 page)

‘
Oh, no! Surely she can’t — and Lilian? What about Lilian?’

‘
Yes, Lilian too, that was the thing. She had worked herself up into such a state that she just wasn’t prepared to listen to reason. I talked to her, of course — scolded her, really, for being so silly, but in the end the best thing seemed to be just to give her the sedative and leave her till the morning.’

‘
I must go up to her — explain—’ She was on her feet, but Edward gently urged her back into her chair.

‘
Leave her to have her sleep out. She was wildly over-wrought, and she’s much more likely to get things back into perspective once she’s properly rested. Drink some coffee at least, and then you’ll be better able to cope yourself. There’s no point going up in an agitated state and upsetting her all over again.’

It
was sensible advice, but twenty minutes later she could bear it no longer.

‘
I’m going up.’ She sprang to her feet, taking Edward by surprise, but as she hurried up the stairs she heard him come out of the kitchen behind her.

There
was no answer when she tapped on the door; calling, ‘Stephie!’ softly, she opened it.

The
darkened room was in its usual state of frantic disorder, and Stephanie was only a mass of tangled black hair on the pillow. She did not move as her mother came in, but Helena could no longer contain her anxiety.

‘
Stephanie,’ she said, touching the girl’s shoulder, then shaking it a little when there was no response.

It
was as she bent towards her sleeping daughter that the small brown bottle, with the rest of the clutter on the table at the bedside, caught her eye. It was her own bottle of sleeping pills, and it was empty.

Chapter Fourteen

Martha Bateman had never dealt in uncertainties. Through ancestral osmosis, she had always been sure how the Old Ones would have thought, and the principles, until now, had been clear. But her lips were pleated into a thin line as she let herself into her cold, quiet, tidy house.

She
went into the sitting-room and hovered, looking about her, but there was not so much as a stray speck of lint to pick up from the carpet. What she needed to take her mind off things was to give something a good turn out, but there was nothing to do.

She
lifted a cushion which did not need plumping, and shook it vigorously. She turned to pick up another, and, in turning, her eye fell on the photograph on the mantelpiece.

She
picked it up, automatically rubbing the already dazzling brass of the cheap frame on the edge of her sleeve, and looked at the picture of the boy with his too-eager smile and bright, unfocused eyes. She gulped, and her eyes went to the only other photograph in the room; the picture of a woman in late middle age, handsome rather than pretty, with strongly-marked brows and a square, definite chin. Her eyes were clear and commanding.

Martha
’s gaze dropped. ‘I can’t,’ she muttered. ‘You made me promise, but I got to break it — I got to!’

She
jumped at the knock on the door, but when she saw Frances Howarth on the doorstep, her shoulders sagged in a movement that almost suggested relief.

‘
Mrs Bateman, I know you’ve spoken to the police already, but I think it’s time you and I had a talk.’

The
woman did not make the sharp rejoinder Frances had expected. She stood aside, saying only, ‘You’d best come in then, since you’re here.’

Frances
followed her through into the neat living-room: her quick eyes noticed the picture of the boy, laid flat on the table as if it had just been set down.

‘
Your son?’ She picked up the photograph.

‘
He were.’ It was almost snatched from her hands, set up again on the mantelpiece in its accustomed place.

‘
I’m sorry.’

Martha
sneered, openly. ‘That’s the right thing to say, isn’t it? Don’t mean much.’

‘
I didn’t know your son, obviously, but I’m sorry for anyone who has that particular grief.’

Martha
looked away, and the aggression went out of her; she turned, saying, as if to herself, ‘Better off where he is,’ and Frances, looking again, saw with renewed pity the tell-tale signs of retardation. But she had to go on.

With
a confidence she was far from feeling, she perched on the unyielding edge of the moquette sofa: after a moment’s pause, Martha sat down on an upright chair as far from her inquisitor as possible.

‘
Well?’ she said provocatively, ‘Aren’t you going to start asking me them questions?’

‘
It would probably be better to say I just want you to talk to me. I’m a foreigner here, and it’s becoming plain that we need answers to questions we don’t know to ask. But you know, Mrs Bateman — you know, but you’ve chosen not to tell anyone.’

The
other woman became visibly agitated. ‘I’m — I’m sure I don’t know what you mean…’

Frances,
though she did not show it, was surprised. She had expected cold hostility; she had found, instead, a troubled woman, and these she had dealt with before.

Her
tone had been authoritative. Now she sat back, sounding relaxed, almost casual.

‘
Oh, I’m not asking you for a statement, or taking notes. It’s just an informal chat. And I’m not in a hurry. I can sit here all day, until you feel like talking.’

‘
You’ll do no such thing!’ She was definitely shaken.

‘
No? Are you going out?’

‘
My husband — comes home for his dinner, he does; won’t be best pleased to find you’ve forced your way in here.’

‘
Then wouldn’t it be better to talk to me now, so that I can leave you with plenty of time to get his meal ready?’

Martha
glared at the voice of sweet reason and closed her mouth as if it would never open again. The silence prolonged itself and became oppressive.

Unused
to this weapon, Martha’s nerve broke. Jumping to her feet, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, let’s have done with this here nonsense. I don’t know what you want, that I don’t.’

‘
Tell me about the woman in the picture.’ Using the silence, Frances had noted that this was the only other photograph in the room, and that it had a handsome leather presentation case.

Martha
took it up, as if to remove it from the desecration of her gaze. ‘Mrs Radley, that is.
My
Mrs Radley — not that other woman.’

‘
Not Mrs Helena Radley, you mean? You don’t approve of her?’

Martha
sniffed. ‘Nothing special wrong with her, except she were another man’s wife, to my way of thinking. Nothing good comes of that sort of thing, and so I told him. Anyway,
she
said he shouldn’t marry – that I told him too. But he were beyond all by then, paying no heed—’

‘
She? The late Mrs Radley?’

‘
She were a saint, with all she had to put up with, a saint and a wise woman. Owed her everything, I did, would have done anything for her, anything she asked. And now—’

Her
voice shook, and she stopped. Resisting the temptation to prompt her to finish the sentence, Frances said gently, ‘You must have been very fond of her.’

Martha
looked down at the picture. ‘She were kind—’ She faltered again.

‘
Tell me what happened, Martha.’ The detective’s voice was melodious, warm, insistent.

There
were tears on the woman’s cheeks; she stood silent for a moment, then, pulling out a pristine man’s handkerchief, mopped her eyes and blew her nose, savagely. She sat down again on the chair, her spine so erect that it did not touch the chairback.

‘
All right,’ she said harshly. ‘Maybe she’d have wanted it, at that.’ She sat with the photograph cradled in her roughened hands as if it were a talisman.

‘
I were fifteen when I went into service up at the House, fifteen and never been a night over the doorstep. But my pa died, and my ma, she had my sister to help her with the young ‘uns then, and if the wages wasn’t much, I got my keep anyways.

‘
Hard work, it were, but I never been afraid of hard work, nor never knew anything different. And Mrs Radley, she were a good mistress.’

Frances
’s quick ear picked up the emphasis, slight but definite. ‘And Mr Radley?’

The
steely look returned. ‘I don’t never say that bastard’s name. There’s nothing too bad for him, not if he fries in hell till Doomsday. I never spoke of it to no one, but you that’s so clever, you can guess.’

 
‘He got you pregnant?’

She
could hardly bring herself to nod. ‘We was a good family, my ma a regular church-goer, and brought me up to respect myself, but I hadn’t no say, had I? Then she found me crying one day.’

‘
Mrs Radley?’

‘
Blackleading the grate in the drawing-room, I were, worried sick because I were beginning to show — she got me to tell her, had a sort of way with her. You couldn’t help it, not when she looked at you with them great grey eyes. And she believed me. Plenty would have turned me off, but she knew what he were like. Not at first she didn’t, or she wouldn’t never have married him, but by then she did, poor lady. She knew Joe and me had been walking out of a Sunday, and she made it all right with him, gave him the money so he could marry me right away. So if it weren’t for her, wouldn’t be a respectable married woman, would I? I’d be a tart, and I’d have broke my ma’s heart. So there weren’t nothing I wouldn’t do for her.’

‘
And then the baby was born.’

Martha
met her eyes defiantly. ‘That’s right. And he were never quite — right, as you might say. But I loved him anyways. He were my boy, and even if he might be — difficult, a bit rough, maybe, he were all I had. Joe took the money, but he never loved me after that — never pretended to—’

‘
Mrs Radley was sympathetic about your son?’

‘
Well, she would be, being as she knew—’ The woman broke off.

In
the corner of the sofa, Frances became very still. They had come, she realized with a prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck, to the dark heart of it.

‘
Knew?’

For
a moment she feared Martha would not answer. Then the words came tumbling out, as the last defence was breached.

‘All the Radleys. Back as far as we know, they been — strange. Oh, some been all right, mostly. But — violent — anyone could tell you that. Mrs Radley’s ma-in-law, the old lady, she left Radnesfield House after her husband tried to kill her. Oh, we all knew that — but nobody never said. There were never what you might call proof, and we didn’t want nobody poking their nose in here. We all lived with the Radleys, all these years, they’re all right —’

Frances
gaped at her. ‘You don’t mean — there haven’t been murders before?’

‘
No, not murders, exactly. Just — sort of — accidents. Not within the village, mind.’ She seemed to be offering this as an excuse. ‘Just, maybe, a poacher from Limber, something like that…’

The
heart of darkness, indeed. And bloodlines running all through the village, presumably, if the recent late Mr Radley was representative of his ancestors. Sickened, Frances challenged her. ‘Are you saying there is a homicidal strain in the Radleys?’

‘
No, no, not that. It’s just — there was always these — accidents—’ Her voice ran down into silence, and she would not look up.

‘
And the present generation? Edward? Was that why his mother didn’t want him to marry — so the strain would die out?’

‘
That’s right, so they’d be gone, so that was all right.’

She
had spoken too eagerly; with professional instinct, Frances pressed the question. ‘Edward?’

‘
I promised her — promised her when she were dying!’ The words broke from her like a sob. ‘Said I would look after him, like if he were my own boy... And he weren’t like his brother, no; his brother, he were all bad, like his pa, and going the same way—’

‘
The brother who was shot?’ Frances was upright on the edge of the sofa now, and seeing the other woman turn her head away, grabbed her so that she dropped the photograph. ‘Martha, you’ve got to tell me. How — did — he — die?’

‘
It were an accident.’ She was mumbling, ducking and weaving her head in evasion. ‘An accident, that’s what it were, that’s what we was told. Mrs Radley, she said it were a tragic accident, so we knew. Her sons, they was, and he were a desperate bad lot, deserved all he got, we reckoned—’

Frances
dropped her hands as if they had become red-hot. ‘Are you saying that you all knew he had killed his brother, and you —
and
his
mother
— did nothing?’

‘
Not knew,’ she maintained. ‘Not knew, exactly.’ Her look at Frances was almost sly. ‘Police said it were an accident, anyways, didn’t they? They should know, they should. And she’d lost one son. Where would be the point, taking away the other one?’

Frances
had to turn her head to conceal her revulsion. ‘And the murders?’

The
woman shifted, uneasily. ‘We didn’t
know
, rightly…’

‘
Dear god, no wonder Radnesfield has tried to keep strangers out! Heaven knows what may come out in the course of time.’

‘
Well, he’s in a world of his own, we knew that. But he’s one of the old families, and foreigners who come here, ruining everything—’

She
stopped, suddenly aware of where the sentence was leading her.

Professional
detachment had gone. Frances looked at her with open horror. ‘I think you’re all mad — all quite, quite mad! And the sooner we get Radley restrained, the safer everyone will be—’

And
then she stopped. ‘His alibi,’ she said. ‘He’s got an alibi for Neville Fielding’s murder. It’s the only one that holds water.’

Martha
stiffened. ‘An alibi? Do you mean—?’

Frances
could read her face as the emotions swept over it. Relief, first and foremost: then rage, that she had been unnecessarily lured into confession.

Her
shoulders straightened. ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it? And the other — well, I daresay it were just a lot of talk, load of old gossips we have down the village, talking a lot of rubbish. You just forget what I said to you now, it’ll do nobody no good.’