Joyce looked down at her hands. Vogel wondered what she was thinking about. She had just told him that she felt Stephen Hardcastle was hiding something. He felt pretty sure she was also still hiding something.
‘But this time, well, he seemed uncomfortable, and didn’t seem able to hide it,’ Joyce continued. ‘The whole thing didn’t feel right somehow. He was definitely on edge.’
‘So you thought Stephen had read the letter, that he knew what it said, did you?’ asked Vogel.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ Joyce replied again. ‘But I did have the feeling that he might have done.’
‘Do you have the envelope?’
‘There were two, the one with Charlie’s handwriting on it containing his letter, and then the bigger Tanner-Max envelope that Janet had put it in when she sent the letter on to me.’
Joyce delved into her pocket again and handed the detective the two envelopes. He examined the one carrying Charlie’s handwriting, reading the inscription on the front first: For my darling Joyce, to be opened only in the event of my death. Then he held the envelope up to the light so that he could study its seal.
The envelope had clearly been ripped open. Vogel glanced enquiringly at Joyce. She appeared to understand at once what he meant.
‘I was so shocked I just tore at it,’ she said.
Vogel nodded. It was more or less impossible for him to ascertain whether or not the envelope had been opened before its delivery to Joyce. But he was pretty sure forensics would be able to tell him.
‘Have you any idea what your husband meant by any of this?’ he asked.
Joyce shook her head.
‘No, I haven’t.’
She explained how neither her father nor her husband ever talked about their work, and were both inclined to be secretive about their lives away from the family.
‘Or protective, Dad would say, if pressed,’ she said.
She also told Vogel how her father had always been such a good grandfather, and had been a good father both to her and her dead brother.
‘So was there never anything...’ Vogel paused, searching for the right words. ‘Never anything inappropriate concerning your father when you were growing up?’
Joyce uttered a mirthless laugh.
‘You mean, did he grope us? Is he a closet paedophile?’
Vogel inclined his head. He supposed that was exactly what he did mean. He didn’t speak, waiting for Joyce to continue, which she eventually did.
‘No, Mr Vogel. I will admit it did cross my mind that was what Charlie meant in the letter. Particularly when he said I should protect Fred, but Dad wouldn’t be interested in Molly. Then I thought about it, remembering my own childhood. That was one thing I would have had to have known about Dad, surely, if there was any truth in it. I thought about Dad’s behaviour with William. They always appeared to have a pretty wonderful relationship, and Dad was devastated when William died. They were extremely close, but I can’t believe there was ever anything creepy about it. I would have noticed, wouldn’t I?’
‘And yet your husband specifically warned you that you needed to protect Fred. And now your son is missing.’
Joyce stared at him blankly.
‘Mrs Mildmay, I do wish you had told us about this letter earlier,’ Vogel continued. ‘It does throw a rather different light on things and could be hugely significant. May I ask you why you didn’t show it at once to the officers who answered your 999 call this morning?’
Joyce took several seconds to answer.
‘I think there may be a culture of secrecy in this family,’ she said eventually, an answer that took Vogel by surprise. ‘I’ve been brought up that way. I knew the letter could have all sorts of unpleasant implications. I thought about giving it to the officers, but then, I didn’t. I somehow couldn’t...’
‘Mrs Mildmay, you had just discovered that your son was missing. You’d called the emergency services. Isn’t it surprising, and reprehensible, that you didn’t do and say everything in your power to help the officers who responded to that call?’
Vogel knew he was probably being overly tough on the woman. It was deliberate. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t concealing any more vital evidence, keeping any more secrets.
‘I suppose it is, yes,’ admitted Joyce, stifling a sob. ‘But you have to understand I was still thinking Fred might turn up at any moment. Making myself believe that. Hoping it, anyway. A part of me couldn’t accept that something serious was happening. And I didn’t let myself link it with the letter. Not at first. It was when we found the phone, well Molly found it, she kept going round and round the house looking for anything that might help, it was then that I started to get really frantic. And now, well half a day has passed and nobody has any idea where Fred is. Please find him, Mr Vogel. Please find my son.’
Vogel blinked at her through those thick spectacles as she broke down in floods of tears. He was never comfortable with displays of emotion. For him that was one of the most difficult aspects of cases like this. There was nothing he could do or say that would comfort the woman — and the more he learned about the machinations of this family, the less inclined he felt to offer them comfort. His priority was the welfare of young Fred, the innocent victim in all this.
‘I will do everything in my power to find your son, Mrs Mildmay,’ he said. ‘But if I am to do that I will need to confront both Stephen Hardcastle and your father with the contents of this letter. You have already told me that you suspect Stephen of having read the letter. Do you think your father may have read it too?’
Joyce wiped away her tears. Vogel detected an edge of bitterness in her voice as she told him, ‘If Stephen read the letter then he would definitely have shown it to Dad. Nobody around here does anything without consulting my father.’
‘And you believe that they deliberately withheld the letter from you, is that so?’
‘Well, yes. My father wouldn’t have wanted me to see the things Charlie said about him and the business. I mean, I know it doesn’t make sense — why keep it from me for six months and then send it? I’d have expected them to destroy it. I had no idea it existed, so I’d have been none the wiser.’
‘That’s a question I also would like the answer to, Mrs Mildmay,’ said Vogel. ‘Now, I must ask you again: are you sure you didn’t tell anyone about the letter, even if you didn’t reveal the contents?’
‘No, I was too shocked by it,’ Joyce replied. ‘I decided I would try to find out what lay behind it in a subtle way. That was the idea, anyway. I began by asking Mum. I tried to be casual, but I failed dismally. Mum cottoned on at once that I had an ulterior motive. I denied it. But she knew I wasn’t being straight with her. She kept telling me that she knew something must have happened and demanding I tell her what it was.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘No. Half an hour later I had Dad on the phone; Mum had told him as soon as he got home from work.’
‘And yet you didn’t challenge your father about the letter, not even after Fred’s disappearance. Why is that, Mrs Mildmay?’
‘I don’t know. I was in shock, I suppose. And denial — I kept telling myself that there had to be some simple explanation and clinging to the hope that Fred would walk through the door any minute. That’s how it is in this family: we don’t do confrontation, not with Dad. I just couldn’t. Not then...’
‘I see.’
In truth, Vogel did not begin to see. But then a thought occurred to him. If he hadn’t been so caught up with the implications of Charlie Mildmay’s message from the dead, he would have thought of it earlier.
‘Mrs Mildmay, was there an accompanying letter from Stephen Hardcastle, along with the one left for you by your husband?’