The Philanthropist's Danse (19 page)

Larry MacLean went to Winnie and helped her out of her chair. “Take the time to look at that list now Mrs. Tremethick, it might be the only chance you have before you are asked for your secret.”

“I will, Mr. MacLean, I will. Thank you.”

W
illiam hurried to his office to take a few minutes away from the others. It had been a rough couple of hours, but so far, everyone had successfully confessed their secrets. How could they not when the lure of Thurwell’s fortune was so strong? Already he’d heard admissions of corruption, blackmail and even matricide, and there was more to come. The group would not be the same after this phase of the
Danse
.

Three people still needed to share their secrets, Bethany, Philip and Mrs. Tremethick. William opened the yellow envelope and reread the details of each secret. There was every chance the mood would become uglier than it already was, and that might cause more problems when it came time to divide the fortune.

The alliances of the first day would not survive to the next round of negotiations. The things they learned about each other would make old relationships untenable. Bird saw no way for Junior and Larry to remain allied after MacLean’s admission of his affair with Junior’s mother. The family alliance was in trouble. The first day had gone well for them because they had controlled the outcome of every vote, but that advantage evaporated with the revelation of Larry’s secret shame.

William worried about the next session and read Winnie Tremethick’s secret again. He was apprehensive the old lady might be unable to share it, he believed her when she claimed no memory of Johnston Thurwell. There was a yellow envelope in the safe to open in the event the group rejected her with no share, but he was ignorant of its contents beyond the hand-written note on the envelope.

$

Bethany sat alone in her suite, exhausted after her emotional outburst. She was revolted by Camille’s admission of matricide and still reeled after learning of Larry and Junior’s separate betrayals of her father. She felt drained and her growing anxiety made her snap at the old woman. Bethany feared she too would be judged harshly for her behavior. Her stomach tightened into a painful knot at the coming trial.

Her two brothers would understand that her betrayal of their father was greater even than Junior’s. She had no doubt her father had found out the truth, it explained why he had not wanted her near him when his end came. She also realized the cruel process he had designed for their inheritance was their punishment.

After listening to the secrets from those close to her father, she was shocked that his employees had treated him with more love and respect than his closest friends and family. The Elliots helped put Larry MacLean into a position where he could be destroyed at will, even Betty had aided the effort. Freddie Hagood had turned out to be a close friend and partner, not the ruthless rival they had believed. She shook her head and thought of her father. She was as guilty as the others.

She closed her eyes and prayed for strength, but the only words she heard were Winnie Tremethick’s condemning Camille to hell. She shuddered and hugged herself closer.

$

Philip sauntered into the library. He knew he was going to have to tell his secret, but he couldn’t change that fact and so he didn’t worry about it. He was worried about his sister, she was not herself and he wondered what possible indiscretion she may have committed that had her so rattled. She had loved her father and had been much loved as his favorite. Philip could barely imagine anything she could do to cause his father to reject her.

His thoughts turned to his own pending admission, and the Judge popped into Philip’s thoughts. He smiled, the self-righteous prick was going to be mighty pissed after he heard what Philip had to say, perhaps even more pissed than the Old Man had been.

Philip didn’t care. He had moved on, the events in Georgia seemed a lifetime away. He would tell his story, tolerate the obvious reactions and wait for his share of the money. Then he could get back to the mountains and find some fresh, deep powder. He smiled at the thought just as Jeremy appeared to announce a buffet lunch was ready.

$

Winnie Tremethick sat at the small desk in her room. The sun shone across the teak surface and brought out the wood’s rich glow. She reached into her enormous handbag and found the note Larry MacLean had passed to her. She pursed her lips and prayed it might reveal a connection between herself and the mysterious American.

She unfolded the single sheet of paper and looked over the neatly written list. Her attention was immediately drawn to three dates MacLean had circled in red. He’d told her earlier he thought he’d narrowed it down. She adjusted her glasses and looked at the first date.

1957, October - November

Winnie thought back to the late fifties. She’d been married with two young children and a husband who returned home from the pub later each night. Her son’s birthday was Halloween. He would have turned ten in 1957. There was nothing unusual about that year. No memory of an American. It was just herself, the kids, the farm and Arnold and his drink. She thought about how her life had been when she was 28. She wondered if she might have been happier if she had been stronger and insisted that Arnold not get drunk every night.
If wishes were fishes
, she thought. She moved her finger down the page to the next red-circled date.

1960, January - October

Winnie moved her life story ahead three years and thought about 1960. Her son Ken became a teenager in 1960, a strong young man at the beginning of the decade that would almost ruin him. Joy, her daughter, would have been 12. Shy for her age but already a beauty. Arnold had stopped his nightly visits to the pub, but spent the evenings with a bottle of cheap scotch until he passed out in front of the fire.

Her life had been unimproved from 1957. Her only pleasure was the children. She thought hard, but there had been no American. She shook her head in frustration and moved to the last dates MacLean had highlighted.

1965, February – December

Winnie’s life had changed in the autumn of 1964 when Arnold stumbled and fell into a threshing machine he was repairing. She was a widow at 36. Ken had been gone for two years, drawn to 1960’s London like a moth to a flame. Winnie feared he’d be as consumed, she never heard from him. Joy was seventeen and had taken a job in Glasgow as a hotel receptionist.

Both children wanted to be as far from the farm as they could get. They blamed her for the premature death of their father. It was unwarranted, but a cruel fact nonetheless. Winnie’s heart was heavy as she ran through the memory of her lonely year.

Then her heart skipped a beat as she recalled events that occurred in the springtime of that year. Yes, it had been April or May of 1965. Her memories flooded back, and her eyes opened wide as she remembered a long-forgotten but remarkable time.

She recalled being woken one rainy night by a noise, but being unable to see anything outside in the darkness, had gone back to bed and forgotten about it. The next morning she’d thrown a waterproof over her head to go out and feed the chickens. The percussion of rain on the coat was loud, and at first, she missed the faint sound from the lane as her hens flocked greedily around her feet.

When she heard the noise again above the sound of raindrops and chickens, she went to the gate and looked up the lane. She couldn’t see anything, but she heard something. Whatever it was, it was out of place in her familiar surroundings. Winnie turned to get out of the thick weather and back to the house, convinced she was hearing things, when she heard a voice calling for help.

Winnie left the yard and walked up the lane, cursing the foul weather. She stopped when she saw torn up grass at the side of the road and a much-disturbed hedgerow. She peered into the undergrowth and saw a motorcycle on its side. There was a young man pinned under it, and he was calling weakly for help. Winnie dropped the coat and plunged into the hedge immediately, calling out to the boy. He was so relieved to see a helper he began to cry, which Winnie thought a bit soft until she saw his mangled leg.

It took an hour of hard physical effort to free his leg and Winnie was soaked by the time she dragged the man free of the wreck. She sat him against a tree and gave him a thermos of hot tea and hurried to fetch her sturdy horse. Winnie was a strong woman but she knew that, after the effort of freeing the man, she had no strength to carry him back to the house. Eventually, with the young man grunting with pain at each bump and jolt, she got him slung over the horse and into the dry barn.

She piled straw deep on the floor and helped the stranger onto its softness. She looked at his leg, tutted, and went to get her kitchen scissors and first-aid box. When she returned the man had passed out. It was a mercy for the poor fellow, and she quickly tended his wounds. Nothing felt broken, but he groaned through his unconsciousness when she touched his left shin where the skin was torn and ragged. Winnie cleaned the wound with warm water and stitched the worst of the cuts. When she was finished, she threw thick blankets over him and made her trustworthy dog lay next to the stranger. If the young man tried anything foolish with her, the dog would give him a whole new set of wounds to worry about.

Winnie called her horse to duty once more and together she and the animal retrieved the broken motorcycle. It looked like a complete wreck as it lay on her cobblestone yard, but she covered it with a tarpaulin and returned to the barn to check on her patient.

Winnie trembled at the memory. She had not thought about these events for many years, but the images flooded back with clarity now. She closed her eyes and remembered the rest.

Her patient slept in the barn for the rest of the day, the dog never left his side. She sat in Arnold’s broken old rocking chair that she had intended to chop for firewood and watched the two of them. When the young man’s eyes opened, he looked around and saw the dog, then the barn and the horse before he finally saw Winnie.

“How are you feeling dear? You took a tumble off that bike of yours, been out of it all day.” He sat up and winced at the pain in his body. His leg felt as if it was on fire. He lifted the blanket and saw his pants cut off above the knee and a mess of black and blue bruises, with neatly stitched cuts.

He looked at the woman in the broken chair. “You did this?”

She nodded.

“You’re a nurse?”

“No dear, I’m a farmer. Around here, we make do. The hospital’s a long ways away, and I got no phone for an ambulance.” She pointed at his leg. “Nothing’s broke, you’re just banged up a bit. You’re a lucky young chap, no mistake.”

He looked at his leg again. It hurt, but it looked clean and the stitches were tight and neat. He hurt all over, his arms were covered in scratches, and he felt his face and guessed he was scratched there too.

She watched him closely. “You’re no picture, deary. You must have gone through that hedge headfirst, I reckon. Might’ve got killed if’n your leg hadn’t caught in the bike and kept you from flying too far. There’s a big old oak a few feet from where I found you. I’d guess it’s a mite stronger than your head.”

The young stranger looked at his savior. He couldn’t place an age on her. Her face was naturally tanned and lined from exposure to the weather, but her eyes looked young and kind. He would never forget the kindness in the eyes of the woman that saved him. He stuck out his hand, ignoring the pain.

“I’m Charlie. Charlie Wells. Thank you for your kindness, Miss—”

“Tremethick. Mrs. Tremethick. But you can call me Winnie, everyone does.” She paused and regarded him with a quizzical look. “Where are you from then, Charlie Wells? It ain’t from around here.”

He smiled, but that hurt too. “My accent gives me away I guess. Well, Winnie, I’m Charlie Wells from Toronto, Canada.”

Her head tilted to one side as she thought about that. “A colonial? Funny, I never met me a Canadian before. My Arnold used to talk about you fellows after the war. Said you was all brave lads.” She looked at the scratched face and tried to judge his age. “But you’d be too young to have been mixed up in that.”

He nodded. “My father served. His unit went to France from Plymouth which is why I was there. I wanted to see it. Then I had a notion to visit Land’s End, borrowed this bike and, well, here I am.”

Winnie trembled as her memories came to her in a flood as the dam that had kept them contained for decades opened. A Canadian man called Charlie Wells had fallen into her life in late spring of 1965. Could Charlie Wells of Toronto have been Johnston Thurwell of New York? If he were, she had no idea why he would need to make up a name, but Charlie Wells was her one and only connection to this side of the Atlantic.

She reached for the telephone and immediately heard Jeremy’s voice. She told him that she needed to speak with Mr. MacLean. Jeremy made no comment, but she heard a click, followed by the unfamiliar American single ring-tone and Larry MacLean’s voice. He sounded angry about something, so she talked fast. “Mr. MacLean, it’s me, Winnie. I think I’ve remembered your friend.”

She heard a sharp intake of breath. “Mrs. Tremethick? You have? Tell me, what have you remembered?”

Winnie recounted her memory of the young Canadian Charlie Wells and heard a curse word followed by a laugh. “Yeah. I think you’ve got it, Mrs. Tremethick. Johnston’s middle name was Charles, and it’s not too much of a stretch that he may have used Wells instead of Thurwell. He did pretend to be Canadian from time to time, especially with girls if he thought he could get, um... well, never mind. He sometimes thought it sounded more interesting to be foreign rather than just another guy from the City.”

He agreed to join her and have lunch brought up, so they could talk about what she remembered. Larry slipped on his shoes and hastened down the hallway to see the Englishwoman, his heart beating fast. Winnie’s memory sounded right. It sounded like Johnston.

The old lady was excited when he saw her. Her blue eyes sparkled and she looked more alive than he’d ever seen her. Larry squeezed her hand, and they sat together on the large couch. Winnie held on to his hand, he could feel the excitement in her grip.