A Dangerous Deceit

Table of Contents

Cover

A Selection of Recent Titles by Marjorie Eccles

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

THE SHAPE OF SAND

SHADOWS AND LIES

LAST NOCTURNE

BROKEN MUSIC

THE CUCKOO'S CHILD
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AFTER CLARE
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A DANGEROUS DECEIT
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available from Severn House

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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
of 9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2013 by Marjorie Eccles.

The right of Marjorie Eccles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Eccles, Marjorie author.

A Dangerous Deceit.

1. Murder–Investigation–Fiction.

2. South African War, 1899-1902–Fiction.

3. Great Britain–History–George V, 1910-1936–Fiction.

4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title

823.9'14-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8322-3 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-457-7 (epub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

The earth is at last beginning to stir from its winter sleep, the snowdrops under the laburnum by the gate are just beginning to show their pale green sheaths, but it doesn't feel like spring yet. It's the end of February, and it's been one of the longest and coldest winters Margaret can remember. The wind is keen enough to bring tears to their eyes as they walk up Emscott Hill from Folbury to the cemetery.

When the snow first came it had been little more than a seasonal inconvenience, and for a brief spell it had given magic to a workaday world. But by now everyone has had more than enough of freezing pipes and the icy draughts that sneak themselves indoors, through the edges of window frames and under doors, no matter what. The snow has turned a depressing grey, speckled with muck and soot blown miles along the valley from the furnaces and factory chimneys of the Black Country conurbation. Coughs and colds are rife, the shops are running out of Snowfire ointment for chilblains, but the thermometer shows no sign of rising and the ground rings hard as iron where the snow has been cleared.

Only the youngsters are still sliding joyfully on the frozen pond in the park, the children of the well-heeled of Emscott careening down the slope of the hill on proper sledges with runners, their shouts echoing on the frozen air, while the offspring of less affluent parents, lower down the hill, do the same on home-made toboggans or tin trays.

In the cemetery, Margaret bends over the grave while Symon strides further on and into St Chad's, a chapel-of-ease to the main parish church, which serves the cemetery and is one of his responsibilities as curate. She gives a last tweak to the flowers in the metal vase sunk into the stone chips within the grave's surround. They are daffodils shipped in from milder climes and the bitter wind will soon wither them, but she never fails in her weekly duty of bringing fresh flowers to her father's last resting place. She gathers up the dead ones she has replaced, ready to throw them on the heap in the corner of the cemetery, but for a moment or two stands where she is, her eyes fixed on the grave.

Why? Why did you keep so silent? How did you bear the pain for all those years without complaint? Was that the reason you were always so hard to understand? And why you wouldn't allow us to see it, until it was too late? Why?

On the headstone, the letters are sharp, gilt incisions into the mottled dark grey marble: Major Osbert William Rees-Talbot, DSO 1873–1926.

‘That's enough,' she tells herself at last. ‘Take a grip on yourself, young lady. Isn't that what he would have said?'

Snuggling the fur collar of her coat tighter round her neck, she turns away and walks rapidly to join Symon in the church.

A few miles away, inside the wild woods that make up the forest at Maxstead, the layers of snow are sparser, partly due to the bare, interlacing branches of the closely growing trees that formed some protection. Even so, birds have dropped frozen from the twig, the badgers, foxes and other denizens of the forest have grown lean and hungry, and the chuckling little streams that run through it have become silent and iced over. That is, inside the forest …

On its perimeter, with nothing to hinder it, the snow has fallen as thick as everywhere else. Outside a little covert where the trees stop are great drifts blown by the wind, and beneath them lies another grave, this one unmarked, undetected, its occupant safe even from hungry animals, since it is frozen solid under its shallow covering of deep-frozen earth topped by a thick crust of unbroken snow.

The hinges creaked on the heavy church door as Margaret pushed it open. Batting her gloved hands together, she waited as Symon strode towards her from the chancel where he had been changing the candles on the altar while waiting impatiently for her to join him.

‘Your nose is cold,' he remarked as he kissed her.

‘I don't wonder. We'd better get moving or there's every chance my circulation might never get going properly again. But you – you look warm as toast.'

He did, too, a large, forceful young man radiating energy and purpose and looking very dark and dashing in the long, swishing black wool cloak he wore over his cassock. Her own cherry-red wool coat, despite its fur collar and cuffs, didn't offer anything like the same sort of warmth. Out there by the grave her feet had turned to leaden lumps of ice, though her cheeks were pink with the cold fresh air.

Symon would have liked to wrap his cloak around her, and did so for a moment, drawing her into the warmth of his arms – but he had his position to think of and this wasn't the time or place for dalliance. As it was he kept as close to her as he could when they left the church, shortening his stride to accommodate hers as they walked forward in the teeth of the bitter wind.

She wore his ring, a twist of three rather fine diamonds, on the same finger upon which, in the fullness of time, he would place a plain gold band. The fullness of time, thought Symon, his dark brows coming together – whatever that might mean. They had met over a year ago, and he had fallen in love immediately with this bright girl with the glancing gleam of laughter in her eyes. Falling in love had not been part of his plans at that moment, and she was nothing like the young woman his mother had had in mind, but Celia Vise had been forgotten in a moment. All the same, the date for their wedding had only recently been decided. This was partly due to the period of mourning after her father died, of course – his unexpected death had thrown everything into disarray and Margaret's grief for him was natural; she had been as close to that difficult man as anyone could be – but there was no denying she had been ambivalent about leaving him before that. Now, at last, the wedding date had been fixed, though the vexed question of where they were to live still wasn't decided.

Symon Scroope, a young man for whom decisions were not a problem, was finding Margaret's untypical hesitation hard to cope with. Certainly, his own place of lodging would not do for a married man, even for one who didn't intend to remain a curate for long. And although a house was available, in which his predecessor and his wife had been forced to live, it was disagreeable in the extreme, both in lack of amenities and in its surroundings, situated as it was in a dark and dismal cul-de-sac behind Folgate Street, overshadowed by Holy Trinity.

On the other hand, there was Laurel Mount up here in Emscott, on the market and ambitiously described as a gentleman's residence, which they had already seen the previous week and to which they now walked after leaving the churchyard. It was not, unfortunately, in Folbury.

In many ways unique, to some extent still the same quiet market town it had always been, Folbury was now a buffer between the clamour of industry and the gentle, rolling Worcestershire countryside that lay on its far side; an agreeably haphazard sort of place, with interesting black-and-white timbering, crooked streets and little, time-forgotten courts, snickets and alleys interspersed with newer buildings. It boasted the remains of a medieval moated castle and a few elegant period houses surrounding the ancient church of Holy Trinity, while the spread of the mellow stone buildings of a minor public school, the sounds of its chapel bell, and of cricket on summer evenings, added to its attractiveness. Folbury had so far successfully confined its working parts and its meaner housing to its furthest limits, on the Birmingham road, near the canal and the railway.

Emscott, perched three miles up the hill, was considered Folbury's most desirable suburb, although it had only two or three shops and was not yet on a bus route. Tree-lined streets and houses of polite middle-class dignity, of which Laurel Mount was a prime example, now outnumbered the few cottages extant in the village it used to be, and which most of its residents liked to fancy it still was, and would remain.

The agent had only too willingly handed Symon the keys for another viewing, and this time they were free to roam around the empty rooms unencumbered by his eager exaggerations or his glossing over of the house's defects. Together, heels ringing on Minton tiles and bare boards, they completed a second tour, commenting as they did so on the changes and redecoration that would need to be done – should they ever take up residence. Greatly in its favour, Laurel Mount already had electricity and a telephone installed. It was the fifth house they had inspected. But it had been empty for weeks and it was almost as cold indoors as it had been outside.

‘We'll have a hot water system put in, of course,' Symon said expansively, pressing the advantage as Margaret folded her arms across her chest and shivered.

‘A hot water system,' she echoed. She had lived all her life without one so far. ‘I'm used to cold houses.'

For that matter, the Reverend Symon Scroope was no stranger to them, either. Waking up as a boy in his bedroom at Maxstead Court with the windows frosted up inside, scooting along its draughty corridors, through freezing cavernous rooms, most of them not very warm even in summer – especially the great hall, where the heat from a fire big enough to roast the proverbial ox barely extended more than a few feet away from the hearth. An ancient roaring boiler that grudgingly gave out only faint indications of lukewarm heat in exchange for being fed with tons of fuel had once been installed, but not updated. The Scroopes had never been a family directed towards changing what had been thought good enough for hundreds of years, nor to acknowledging the fact that times had moved on. But Symon – Symon with a ‘y' because that was the way Scroopes had always spelled it – was of another generation.