He stared at Lucas unbelievingly.
“I don’t want you to think it has anything to do with this. I’m sorry that you had the bad luck to be turned out of your home. I’ll speak to my brother in any case, but please … please come along and tell the police this.”
“And if I don’t, you won’t get this place for me?”
Lucas said: “I didn’t say anything of the sort. I’m going to try and get this place for you whatever you do. I’ll ask my brother and I am sure when he hears how helpful you’ve been he’ll want to do all he can. I’ll do it in any case. I promise you. But you should talk to the police.”
“We shall have to tell them what you’ve told us. Harry,” I explained.
“It’s our duty to. You see, an innocent man has been blamed for what he didn’t do. So we have to. The police will question you. You have to tell them the truth this time. It’s a criminal offence not to.”
“I ain’t no criminal. I didn’t do nothing. It were the Major. He were the one who fired the shot.”
“Yes, I know. And you are going to tell the truth when they ask you.”
“When?” asked Harry.
“I think,” said Lucas, ‘now. “
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” said Lucas.
“You’re going to ride on the back of my horse, and we are going to take you there … now.”
How right he was. We must get there before the Major had time to get to Harry. I wondered what he would do now that his attempt to murder me had failed.
“All right,” said Harry.
The Return
The months which followed were some of the most wretched I have ever known. I witnessed much of the unhappiness at Perrivale Court, and I knew that, although I had acted as I had to bring justice to an innocent man, I was to a large extent responsible for this misery.
On the very day when the Major had attempted to take my life he had gone back to the Dower House and taken his own.
He had realized that when I had escaped from him, I had taken from him his only chance of surviving in the manner which was important to him.
When I had run out of the wood I had destroyed all that he had spent his life trying to achieve. He had been ready to murder to keep it.
When I looked back and had all the pieces of the puzzle in their place, I could see how much more sophisticated had been his plan to drug me and throw me over the cliff, as had been his first intention.
It was ironic that the granddaughter who so dearly loved him and whom he loved should have been the one to defeat him. His plan had failed on a flimsy coincidence. She had happened to see me leave the house and followed me. If she had not, my death would have been just another mystery.
The second method was not so clever. But of course he had had to plan hastily. He dared not let me live. He was afraid of what information I might pass on to Lucas. I had betrayed myself so utterly when I had visited the nursing home run by one of his friends. He must have been in a panic. He had to dispose of me before I reached The Sailor King. He was convinced, I think, that Harry Tench had betrayed him.
I often wondered what he would have done if he had succeeded. Hidden my body in the copse . perhaps let my horse wander away? Perhaps throw her over the cliff with me, so that it would appear to be an accident. Fate worked against him when Goldie escaped and went to the inn to which she had been so many times.
A great deal was revealed about him and that was very distressing for the family at Perrivale, for there was no doubt that he had been greatly loved by his daughter as well as by Kate. He had been popular everywhere, which was an indication of how complex human nature can be when one considered that he was a cold-blooded murderer as well as a caring family man. His whole life was based on fantasy. He had never been a major as he had led everyone to believe, but he had served in one of the Army’s catering corps as a sergeant-major. He had been cashiered from the Army because of certain nefarious deals regarding stores in which he had been involved. He had narrowly escaped prison.
He was an extraordinary man, a man of great charisma who should have been successful. He had been a devoted husband and the welfare of his daughter was very important to him, so much so that he was ready to murder for it.
A certain amount of this information came out through the Press, but there was a good deal I learned later. He had left a note at the Dower House before he shot himself. He was anxious that his daughter and her family should not be involved in any way. He only was to blame.
He had known that Cosmo would be at Bindon Boys that day and had waylaid him. Cosmo had had to go because he had discovered that Mirabel had been unfaithful to him with his own brother Tristan and he was threatening to make trouble and destroy everything that had been so carefully planned. Lady Perrivale, who had considered the
Major to be her greatest friend, had confided to him that Sir Edward had confessed to a previous marriage. Thus, when Simon had been accused of Cosmo’s murder, it had seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity to remove him from the scene when he would cease to be a threat to Mirabel’s future.
It was Mirabel herself who made me understand a great deal of this, for I became very close to her during the months that followed. The death of the Major had affected the Dowager Lady Perrivale so greatly that she had had a stroke and a few days later had died. Maria had then gone back to Yorkshire, so the household had changed considerably. Lady Perrivale had not been the only one deeply affected by the Major’s death. Kate was in such a state of depression, brought about by the death of her grandfather, that I was the only one who could rouse her from it. I found myself drawn into the family circle, and when the revelations about her father were made known by the Press, Mirabel seemed to find some comfort in talking to me.
There was no longer any pretence. She was quite humble. It was all her fault, she said. She had made such a mess of her life. Her father had wanted so much for her. He had done everything for her.
She had been barely seventeen when she had married Steve Tallon. That was before her father had been turned out of the Army. Feeling it to be a respectable way of life, he had apprenticed her to a milliner.
She had hated the life.
“Cooped up in rooms with three other girls all learning the trade,” she said.
“Long hours at the workbench … no freedom. How I hated the sight of hats! I met Steve when I was out making a delivery. Not that we had much opportunity of meeting people. I used to creep out at night to be with him. The girls used to help me. It was a relief from the tedium. I was headstrong and so foolish. I thought I’d be free if I married him. He was only about a year older than I was.
My father was bitterly disappointed and how right he was. Poor Steve. He tried. He had a job in a foundry. We had very little money.
I soon found out I’d made a terrible mistake. We had been married just over a year when Steve was killed. There was a terrible accident at the foundry. I must have been very callous, because the first thing I thought was that I was free.
“And then … I got a job with a dance troupe. We toured the London music halls. Sometimes there was work … sometimes not. I dreamed of meeting someone … a rich man who would carry me away to luxury. It became an obsession. There was one … I believed him. He promised to marry me, but when I became pregnant with Kate, he went off and I never saw him again. I had made a mess of everything. And when Tom Parry came along he was very keen to marry me and because of the child I took that way out. I seemed then to have a talent for landing in desperate situations. I had gone from bad to worse. I grew to hate him.”
She closed her eyes as though she were trying to shut out memories.