Jane looked at him, puzzled. ‘I thought we were going to do some shopping?’
‘Yes, but later in the day. I have to do an estimate on a big extension first.’
After kissing her mother, Jane collected her coat and bag as her father shook Eddie’s hand and thanked him for helping fix the lights and the tap. As he shut the front door behind them, Mrs Tennison started carrying dirty dishes into the kitchen.
‘Well, I doubt that will last,’ she said. ‘She definitely didn’t like the way he cross-questioned her.’.
Mr Tennison sighed. ‘Pity. We could do with some decorating.’
Jane sat in silence as they drove back to her house. Part of her knew that Eddie was right and that she had become obsessed with this case.
‘I liked your parents,’ he said, trying to ease the tension between them.
‘Listen, Eddie, I’m sorry if I got a bit stroppy, but I can’t help going over things in my head. I just query everything. I mean, I was certain that Jason was not aware of our discovery in the shelter, but then when I read Helena’s confession letter...’
‘What letter?’
‘I told you, her lawyer gave me a copy of it. It was not to be opened until after her death.’
‘Oh right, yeah, yeah.’
‘But all the years that Helena sent money to her sister... and she told me that she had been forced to send begging letters.’
‘Who wrote begging letters?’
‘Beatrice Thorpe. She was blackmailing her sister and it would seem Jason was also involved. They got a lot of money out of Helena Lanark over many years. He was even able to acquire power of attorney to gain further access to her finances. It’s even possible Beatrice blackmailed Helena into making them the beneficiaries in her first will.’
‘So what is your point, Jane?’
Jane snapped at him angrily. ‘Helena Lanark paid up so she could get away with murder. And if I hadn’t gone to Australia no one would ever have found out.’
Eddie pulled up outside Jane’s house and got out to open the passenger door for her.
‘Sweetheart, the fact is that the old lady never admitted anything until after she died. And she paid the price for most of her life.’
Jane felt near to tears, as he put his arms around her.
‘Listen, I’m going to take off home to put the MG in the garage. I’ll be over tomorrow about eleven.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the new job?’ Jane asked.
‘It’s not confirmed yet, but as soon as it is, we’ll celebrate.’ He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, before getting back into the car.
Jane watched him drive off, taking out her keys to let herself in. She felt bad about how argumentative she had been with Eddie, even more so as she headed up the stairs and could see how nice the house was looking.
She’d been so absorbed in her thoughts that she hadn’t seen the car driving past her house, then doing a slow U-turn to park on the opposite side of the road.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jane was in her pyjamas, her bag open on her bed as she searched for the leaflets on stair carpets. She suddenly thought she remembered leaving them in the kitchen so got out of bed. She was about to put on her slippers but decided to tip the contents of her bag out on the bed first. She put the copy of Helena Lanark’s letter to one side, then began to sift through receipts, invoices and paint charts, until she found the old envelope containing the family tree that she had inadvertently kept from the photo album.
She tapped it against her hand, frowning. She had not thought the document was of any importance. The only reason she had not given it to Jason when he came to collect the album was that it had fallen out under the kitchen table.
Jane turned the thick, worn envelope over. Could this be what Jason Thorpe had really wanted? Was this why he went to the care home when he found it was not at the back of the album? She chewed her lips as she carefully opened the envelope. The folds in the documents were almost tearing as she eased each page apart on top of her duvet.
The finely scripted writing in looped black ink named the Lanark grandparents and then documented the marriage between Henry and Muriel. Lines were drawn to show the births of Helena and Beatrice, born within five years of each other, and then a ten-year gap before Marjorie was born. The death of Marjorie had been altered — a date had been written and then carefully adjusted to indicate that she was sixteen years old when she died, not twenty-two.
Jane sighed, aware of the implication of incest between Henry and Marjorie. Even Hadley had remarked on the nude photograph of her being strange. She was certain that if he had seen the poses in the photographs she had found in the boathouse, he would have been even more shocked. Henry Lanark had taken sexually explicit photographs of two of his daughters, but not Helena. She glanced down the page of the neatly written family tree that continued up to the death of Muriel Lanark. Henry Lanark’s death was recorded as being five years after his wife and Jane presumed this had been added by Helena.
She carefully put the first page to one side as she picked up the second. It was equally worn, and the creases were splitting. There was the date of Beatrice’s marriage to John Thorpe, and the word Australia underlined. The date was five years before the death of Henry Lanark, and other dates were listed and crossed out. John Thorpe’s death was dated before Henry Lanark’s. There were two further names: Matthew John Thorpe, but there were three different birth dates. The date that was underlined gave his birth date as three years before the marriage of Beatrice and John. This meant that both Beatrice’s sons were illegitimate, and that Jason was the eldest.
Jane was trying to understand what she was looking at, remembering that Beatrice had told her she went to Australia alone and waited for her future husband, John Thorpe, to join her. However, judging from the dates on the family tree, Beatrice was already pregnant and gave birth to Matthew before she got married. By this time, according to the dates, Jason was already two years old.
Closing her eyes to concentrate, Jane remembered Beatrice telling her angrily how she had been widowed with two young sons and she had to pawn her mother’s jewellery to get by, though oddly she kept the pearls. Jane wondered if this was when the blackmail had started, meaning she didn’t need to sell the pearls because she had started receiving money from Helena.
Jane took a deep breath. This had all taken up too much of her time and energy. If there were still unanswered questions, what was she going to gain from answering them? Eddie was right. She had become obsessed and had even put her career in jeopardy.
Jane carefully refolded each page and was about to put them back in the envelope when she noticed, caught in the creases of the last page, a thin folded square of paper. She carefully eased it free and read the faint scrawled writing. John Thorpe, it said, had married Gladys Jones in Lambeth. The date was illegible but not the underlined date of a son born to them and christened David Thorpe. There was a date for the death of Gladys Jones, a year after the marriage, then further underlined dates for John and David Thorpe arriving in Australia.
Jane closed her eyes, recalling Hadley telling her how Helena had reacted when he came back from the walk, whispering to him about the puzzle. She was certain that this had to be it. Jason was not Beatrice’s biological son. Beatrice had simply changed his name to Jason. She now understood what Helena had written in her letter, her reservations about Jason’s bloodline and his right to any Lanark inheritance.
Jane looked towards her bedroom window. Even with her curtains closed, she could tell the porch security light had just come on. She crossed over to the window and eased back the curtains as the lights went out. Probably a cat, she thought, as she returned to her bed and began to put everything back into her bag — then instantly tensed as she heard a scraping sound inside the house. She quietly moved across to the partly open bedroom door and listened. She heard the same scraping sound again. She stretched out her hand to switch off the bedroom lights, then inched the door open further. She crept silently along the landing to the top of the stairs, half hoping that it was Eddie, but knowing it wasn’t.