The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) (36 page)

‘Was someone interested in my grandmother’s papers?’

‘That’s why she moved from her old firm of solicitors. She didn’t feel that her interests were being safe-guarded. Literally.’

‘Against who?’

‘Your aunts, of course. Or one of them. In the name of client confidentiality –
their
client confidentiality – I never found out which one, but my money is on your aunt Letitia.’

‘Isn’t that unethical?’

‘Very. But what do you expect from a city company?’ He sniffed. ‘Personally I wouldn’t trust them further than I could spit.’

‘And you helped her draw up a new will?’

‘Yes, but she changed it again, you know. Only a week ago.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s in your favour,’ he continued. ‘You now own thirty-three per cent of the shares in the company, which is more than your aunts combined. It makes you the most influential shareholder.’

‘Me? Really?’ Helen stared at him. ‘That’s just crazy! What am
I
supposed to do with them?’

‘Take control of the company.’

‘That’s a good one. Like I know what I’m doing. Who has the other shares, apart from my aunts?’

‘Various investors. A couple of names spring to mind. The bigger share positions are owned by a small handful. Arseni Stephanov, your uncle. A city bank.’ He sniffed again. ‘And one Derek Moody. You know him,’ he added when he caught her startled expression. ‘He sits on the board. A nasty piece of work, in my humble opinion.’

A thick silence descended on the room as Sweetman waited for her to say something.

‘Why me?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know anything about business. I haven’t even been to a board meeting yet. Aggie’s expecting me to be something I’m not. Like she always did.’

‘Did she really?’

Helen shrugged. Maybe she wasn’t being entirely fair. ‘She certainly expected me to fill some pretty big boots. All her talk about college and that. I just couldn’t get my head around it. I needed to find
me
first.’

‘And have you?’

‘I’m coming to terms with who I am, yes. I just can’t walk in my mother’s footsteps.’ The thought of how it had all ended for her mother made her shudder. ‘I need to do something a bit more … worthwhile with my life. Some good.’

‘It wasn’t your mother Mrs Ransome had in mind. It was your grandfather.’

Helen spluttered. ‘As if!’

‘Your grandfather was a decent human being. As are you. I expect Mrs Ransome only wanted you to do the right thing.’

Her lip quivered with emotion. This faith they had in her, her grandmother and the solicitor, how could she live up to it?

Sweetman, as always, read her mind. ‘I’ll be with you every step of the way. I’ll advise, guide, clear your path through the legal jungle, as it were. Be your right-hand man. That is, if you want me to represent you as I represented your grandmother. All you’ve got to do is say the word.’

She looked at him, at his white hair, his chubby face, and the striped shirt with armpit stains. Aggie had placed a lot of trust in this man, and if she could trust him, so could Helen. ‘Yes, I’d like that. Thank you.’

‘Good, good.’ He slapped some papers down in front of her. One sheet still bore the marks from his teeth. ‘Let’s get to the paperwork, then. This is a contract for my ongoing services. You just need to sign here.’ He flicked to the end of the document and put a pen in her hand. ‘This is a leaflet detailing our services, and here’s a breakdown of our fees.’

She was too stunned by this mixture of efficiency and blatant manipulation to do anything other than sign. The sheet with teeth marks was a will form.

‘Why do I need to make a will?’

‘Makes sense under the circumstances, don’t you think?’

She met his eyes and felt a shiver run down her spine. He wasn’t joking. Without quibbling, she filled in the missing parts of the will form, and passed the papers back to him.

‘Talking about wills, you say I’m the sole beneficiary in Aggie’s will. Won’t my aunts dispute that?’

‘When I said it was in your favour, I meant in the broadest sense. You get the shares, but there’s the house and some valuable possessions which’ll go to them. Sure, they can try, but they won’t look good in court. Two greedy, wealthy women questioning the kindness bestowed on a motherless child? Only a judge with a heart of stone would allow it. I think you’re safe on that score.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘And you’ll have me as a back-up. Now, doesn’t that fill you with confidence?’

As usual she couldn’t tell whether he was being ironic or not. There was something else she needed to ask him, something which had plagued her since she’d found that syringe in Ruth’s cardigan.

‘Is it possible for me to ask for a post-mortem to be performed on my grandmother?’

It was Sweetman’s turn to look surprised. He raised his bushy white eyebrows. ‘A post-mortem? What’s on your mind?’

‘Foul play.’

‘I see.’ He leaned back in his chair, which creaked under his weight. ‘Usually only a relative can request a post-mortem – and you’re not a relative in that sense – unless the death is considered traumatic, unusual or unexpected. Then the doctor signing the death certificate will instigate it. Your grandmother was old, and she was ill. Hardly unexpected.’

‘But it was so sudden.’

‘Death always is for those who have trouble accepting facts.’

Helen glared at him. For a family solicitor he was taking a lot of liberties. Maybe she ought to just sack him. Instead she decided to tell him about the syringe and the confrontation in Ruth’s office.

‘Letitia wanted to get rid of her. She thought Aggie was losing it, and Ruth, well, for some reason she’s always had a bitter relationship with her mother.’

And somehow everything comes back to me, she thought.

‘Mrs Ransome always knew you’d come right in the end.’ Sweetman smiled grimly. ‘Try to persuade one of your aunts, although if they’re involved, as you suggest, they could just refuse, and that’d be that. Unless you have some sort of leverage.’

‘I understand.’

She had just the thing which might help persuade one of them.

Helen hadn’t been to Ruth’s house since she was five. She didn’t remember the actual house nor her reasons for being there, but what stood out in her mind was stumbling upon Ruth weeping into a tea towel in the kitchen.

Alarmed, she’d run back into the drawing room. ‘Mummy, Auntie Ruth has hurt herself. She’s crying.’

Her mother ran a hand over Helen’s hair. ‘Is she? Oh, dear.’ Mimi looked at Aggie and Auntie Letitia, then Uncle Jeremy, who turned away.

‘Someone needs to cuddle her.’

No one said anything, and Helen had a nasty feeling she often had when the grown-ups were around, that they knew something she didn’t. Frowning, she went back into the kitchen and patted Auntie Ruth on the back awkwardly.

‘Where does it hurt?’ she asked. ‘Would you like me to blow on it?’

Auntie Ruth simply stared at her in a way which told her she’d done the wrong thing, then sobbed into the tea towel again while Helen’s chest hurt as if someone had punched her in it.

Years later she’d learned the source of Ruth’s unhappiness: her inability to have children. Her husband having an affair with Mimi must have made things so much worse. A small part of her hated Ruth for rejecting her when her mother died, another part understood it. Reluctantly.

Ruth opened the door in her dressing gown, an old blue towelling robe remarkably tattered for someone so wealthy. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red as if she’d been crying or hadn’t slept.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘What about? I thought we’d done talking.’

‘Aggie,’ said Helen.

Ruth sighed. ‘You’d better come in, then.’ She led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house and flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

Her aunt switched the kettle off again with another sigh.

‘But you have some. Don’t mind me.’

Ruth shook her head and pulled out a kitchen chair. ‘Talking about her won’t bring her back.’

Helen sat down opposite her. ‘I’d like a post-mortem done on Aggie.’

‘A post-mortem? What on earth for?’

‘I don’t think she died of natural causes.’

Ruth covered her eyes with her hand and rubbed her brow as if to massage away a headache. ‘Helen, please …’

‘You and Letitia wanted to get rid of her.’

‘Not in that sense.’

‘And I found your cardigan with a syringe in it. What do you think will happen if I tell the police that?’

Ruth looked up. Her face, with yesterday’s make-up still embedded in her wrinkles, seemed suddenly ancient. ‘I may have wanted my mother dead a million times, but it was just something I said. People do, you know. They don’t mean it. I never quite forgave her for … well, her lack of understanding. I just wanted to be a wife and mother, not some high-flying company executive. And when that dream fell by the wayside, she just brushed my feelings aside as if they were unimportant.

‘Go ahead, tell the police,’ she went on, ‘but Mrs Sanders can back me up that I helped Mother with her insulin sometimes. She told me the nurse was being too rough with her, but I think she just wanted my company and didn’t want to ask because it’d make her look weak. So I went along with it and accepted this was her roundabout way of apologising.’

What could she say to that? Ruth had a point. Aggie had possessed an uncanny ability to be both direct and subtle at the same time.

‘Are you all right?’ Ruth asked suddenly. ‘When was the last time you ate? Would you like me to make you a sandwich? Or I can heat up some soup. You look like you could do with it.’

‘I don’t want a sandwich.’

Ruth touched her hand. ‘I know it’s hard for you to accept she’s gone, but a post-mortem isn’t going to help you.’

‘I get all her shares,’ said Helen pointedly. ‘Sweetman told me.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Letitia will.’

‘Oh, yes, she’ll be bloody furious.’ Ruth laughed. ‘She might agree to a post-mortem but it’ll be because she thinks
you
had something to do with it.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, crazy, isn’t it? We’re all crazy.’

‘I’m not.’

‘That’s because you grew up away from all of it. Small mercies, I suppose.’

‘There’s something else I need to talk to you about.’ Digging into her rucksack, Helen pulled out the roll of chamois leather and unwrapped it. Ruth blanched.

‘This knife is the twin of the one they say Fay used to kill my mother. It disappeared around the time my mother was murdered. So did the murder weapon. I don’t think Fay did it, so perhaps you’d like to explain what this was doing in your grandfather clock, and where you took it from?’

Ruth sat still as a statue with her hands in her lap. Helen could have told her there were two more knives like this one, but she wanted to see her sweat.

Finally Ruth said, ‘You really don’t like me very much, do you? Think me capable of the most terrible things.’

‘Isn’t everyone? Capable, I mean.’

‘I suppose so, but why you think I did it when everyone knows there are three more knives like this one, I don’t understand.’

‘Who’s “everyone”?’

‘Me, Letitia, Aggie. Your mum’s friends. Loads of people. The story goes that those paper knives belonged to a Russian tsar. It’s not something you forget. Everyone also knows your uncle doesn’t keep the best company, and since he has two of the knives, well …’

‘Where did you get it? Did you take it from my mother’s house after she died?’

Ruth sent her a speculative look. ‘If I tell you, will you promise me not to jump to conclusions? I didn’t take it from your mother’s house. I found it at Ransome’s, tucked away in the corner of the packaging hall behind some old ledgers.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

‘I told you not to jump to conclusions,’ Ruth said when she saw Helen’s expression. ‘It could be that your mother dropped her own knife there by mistake, although why she should bring it to work with her I’ve no idea. Then there was Mother. She and Mimi got on well, but they’d recently had a set-to, over what I don’t know. She could easily have taken it for spite. As for Letitia, she was close to your uncle, and when I suspected your mother had used him as a free sperm donor, I thought my sister may have taken revenge for that. That’s why I took the knife. They are my family after all.’ She made a noise halfway between a sneer and a snort. ‘I needn’t have worried about Letitia, though, because she quickly found another man to amuse herself with.’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, just one of our shareholders. Some chap named Moody. He was married, and the affair didn’t last long.’

Ruth didn’t notice Helen jump at the name. Moody. Again.

‘What will you do now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will you tell the police?’

Helen still had DI Whitehouse’s card in her wallet.
Call me if you find anything, no matter how insignificant
. Except she didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle. No way was she making a fool of herself in front of the Cream of the Met again. She’d keep digging.

But she didn’t want Ruth to know that. ‘What’s the point? The knife belonged to my mother, and now it’s been returned to me. The rest is in the past.’

Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. When Helen left, they embraced awkwardly. ‘Come and see me some time.’

‘I will.’

She left Ruth in her big empty house, to her aimless life. Her obsession with her childlessness seemed to have pushed everything else to one side, but surely there was more to life than having babies? Things like friendships, travel. A dog maybe. It saddened her that Ruth couldn’t see it.

Back home she dumped her rucksack on her bed and flung herself down on the sofa in the kitchen. The big house was quiet, almost watchful, without even Lee creeping about. It gave her the emotional space to brood over Aggie’s death and her complex, bitter family, which should have pleased her. Instead it was as if the walls moved in on her, squeezing her chest so she couldn’t breathe.

Shaking off the feeling, she fetched her wallet and headed for the market. As soon as she stepped under the metal arch, she was bombarded with noise, colours and materialistic gaiety, and the numbness, which had started to spread inside her, slowly bled away.