“So it was Lady Fulwell who banished Edmund from the ancestral home?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
“How would you put it?”
“Edmund was never easy, you know. Even as a boy. Robert’s told me all about him. Today we’d say he had some sort of disorder or syndrome.
Then, they didn’t know what to do. He was expelled from school, from several schools. The only person who had any sort of control over him was a woman Robert’s mother employed in the kitchen. She was quite unsuitable as a nanny but that was how she ended up because no one else would put up with him. She was half gypsy by all accounts and not very hygienic. The family found it terribly difficult. I mean, of course one loves one’s children equally but it must have been hard to feel any affection for Edmund. In those days he didn’t seem to be good at anything. Except getting drunk in the Ridley and chasing farmers’ daughters.”
Fraternizing with the plebs, Anne thought. That wouldn’t have gone down very well.
“Besides, he wasn’t thrown out of the Hall. He moved into one of the estate houses because he wanted more independence. More privacy.
Actually I think Robert was generous to him. He lived in that house rent free, and it was space one of the workers could have used. And he never exactly contributed to the running of the business.”
“Was Grace’s mother a farmer’s daughter?” “No,” Lily said slowly. Then: “Didn’t Grace mention any of this?”
“Nothing. I didn’t know you were related. I made a joke out of it.”
“She didn’t tell you even then?”
“No.”
“I wonder why she was so secretive.”
“Perhaps she was ashamed of you, so she didn’t want to admit the connection,” Anne said lightly. “You’re not exactly popular, you know, among conservationists. You’re selling a valuable habitat for development.” She paused, saw Lily gather herself for the old defence about protecting the family’s heritage and added hurriedly, “So, who was Edmund’s wife?”
“She was called Helen.” Lily gave a nervous giggle. “Actually she was the rector’s daughter. Very Lawrentian. Though Robert’s convinced Edmund only seduced her to make his mother cross. She was pregnant of course when they married. Only just pregnant. It didn’t show. And desperately in love. According to Robert, Edmund was very dashing in a wild unkempt sort of way. She thought she could look after him, stop him drinking. She thought she’d make him settle down.”
And did he?”
“He did for a while, surprisingly. He became almost respectable. They bought a little house near the coast. Helen thought he should move away from Langholme and make a fresh start. It was all very suburban.
He even had a job of a sort. He and a friend opened a restaurant.”
“The Harbour Lights.”
“So Grace did tell you about that.”
“No, I’ve eaten there. I’ve met him. Without realizing of course who he was.”
“Ah,” Lily said. “I heard he went back to Rod when he stopped travelling.”
“I take it the suburban dream didn’t last.”
“Oh, it did for a while. A couple of years. The family thought it was the making of him. They liked Helen. She was a docile little thing.
They had her to stay at the Hall after the baby was born. And later. I wonder if Grace remembered her visits there. Perhaps not. She would have been very young.”
“So what happened?”
“Edmund had an affair. I don’t know who the woman was. I’m not even sure Robert knew. Helen took it very seriously. I suppose being brought up in the rectory had left her with old-fashioned ideas.” “Very suburban,” Anne said.
Lily didn’t pick up the sarcasm. “It was rather. It’s usually possible to find a way of working around these things.”
Does that mean you have affairs, Anne wondered. Or perhaps Roberts does. Perhaps Arabella the nanny has taken his fancy. He could easily go for the younger woman. He married Lily when she was still a child, though I’m hardly one to judge.
“But Helen committed suicide,” she said. Like Bella, she thought, but not like me. You wouldn’t catch any man driving me to that.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
And Edmund ran away.”
“I think actually he was very upset by what had happened. He did love Helen in his own way. And the child.”
“But not enough to look after her.”
“Men don’t very often, do they, even these days.”
Nor do women of your class, Anne thought. You pay people to do that.
And how much effort did my parents put into caring for me?
“Didn’t Robert’s mother feel any responsibility for Grace?”
“She was quite ill by then,” Lily said evasively. “She really didn’t feel up to it.”
“Would it have been that much of a drag to have a child in the house?” Anne asked. “It’s a big place. She needn’t even have seen her.”
Lily turned away from Anne and stared towards the horizon. “It wasn’t only Grace, was it?” she said.
It took Anne a moment to realize what she was getting at. “You mean that if Grace made her home here, the family might have to accept Edmund back too.”
Livvy nodded, pleased that she hadn’t had to spell it out. “He was terribly troublesome.”
“Has he been troublesome lately?”
“What do you mean?”
“The police say he’s disappeared. I wondered if he’d turned up at the Hall.”
“Good God, no, we’re the last people he’d turn to. He never got on with Robert and I don’t know him.” She paused. “Grace turned out well, didn’t she, despite everything. I mean, I understand she had two degrees. Edmund must have been proud.”
“She wasn’t very happy,” Anne said.
“No? Oh dear.” But the expression of regret wasn’t convincing. Lily’s mind was elsewhere. With an agility that Anne envied, she extricated herself from the deck chair “Look, I must go. The boys are home from school for the weekend and we have such little time.”
“Thank you for coming.” It had, after all, been very interesting.
Lily was her confident self again. “No problem. Do get in touch if there’s anything. I mean it. Any time.”
Anne walked with her to the yard and watched the Range Rover drive up the lane. When she returned to the garden Vera Stanhope had materialized in the deck chair She sat, bare legs stretched ahead of her, eyes half closed as if she’d been there for hours. She sensed Anne approaching and turned to face her. Her shifting weight made the canvas creak like sails in a storm. Anne imagined it ripping and Vera falling in a heap on the grass.
“What did you make of that then?” Vera asked.
“How much did you hear?”
“Everything,” Vera said with satisfaction. She moved again and nodded towards the open French windows. “From there. I saw the car pass the farm. Thought it might be interesting.”
“Was it?”
“Very. I think I can remember her Robert, you know, at those parties Constance gave. My father dragged me along. We’d be more or less the same age. But Edmund?” She seemed lost in thought.
“She is much younger than Robert,” Anne said.
Vera grinned. “I’m not past it. Not yet. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Do you know if Lily Fulwell met Grace while she was living here?”
“Neither of them mentioned a meeting, but then Grace didn’t say much about anything.” Anne hesitated. “I saw her once on the estate, looking at the workers’ houses on the Avenue. I suppose she was curious to see where her father had grown up.”
Vera remained recumbent, beached on the deck-chair. And I’m bloody curious,” she said with a surprising intensity, ‘ find out where the bugger’s got to now.”
Chapter Thirty-Six.
While Vera sat in the sun Rachael was in Black Law farmhouse trying to convince Joe Ashworth that Bella’s suicide and Grace’s murder were related. The sergeant was polite but unconvinced.