The Cuckoo's Child (19 page)

‘Why?' Una asked sharply, brittle as a piece of glass.

‘It's necessary in a case of this sort, Miss Beaumont,' the sergeant explained.

‘I would rather call it an intrusion,' she returned, giving him an icy glance. The beauty he had been conscious of was less admirable when she became so sarcastic and haughty. ‘Anything you need to know, we can tell you, without the need to riffle through his personal affairs.'

She drew a deep breath, as if prepared to carry on, but Gideon, making a huge effort, had pulled himself together, and he gave her a warning glance, aware that he himself had said too much, wary of how she might provoke them. The police didn't know what they were up against. Even when they were young children, he himself had been bested by Una when she was in this humour, when she stood up for her ‘rights'. But Womersley gave her no chance to continue.

‘I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, Miss Beaumont. Questions don't always reveal everything. Things that may seem unimportant to you may strike us very differently. I'd like you to appreciate,' he went on, ‘that what brought this about is, at present, as much a mystery to us as it is to you. We need to look at every aspect of your grandfather's life, his circumstances, his family, the people he knew – and not only any enemies, but also his friends, that we can talk to – and hope that will lead us to find out who was responsible. I simply need you all to cooperate, answer any questions we may put to you truthfully, talk to us about anything you, or we, think might help.'

It was a long and oddly formal speech for Womersley, and surprised Rawlinson even more than the others, but they heard him out, though Una's face remained tight with resentment.

‘So you see,' Womersley continued, ‘that's why I need to look over his papers, his will. For a man in Mr Beaumont's position, especially, his will is important.'

‘If you must,' said Gideon flatly, looking determinedly away from his sister. ‘Whatever papers there are, you'll find in my grandfather's study.'

‘Show me where that is, if you'd be so kind.' Womersley stood up. ‘We shall need to talk to you all more fully, and to the servants, but meanwhile we'll leave you to get on with your dinner while the sergeant and I are busy. I don't want to disrupt things any more than we have to.'

Una Beaumont looked as if the thought of eating made her feel physically ill. ‘I shan't be taking dinner. You'll find me in my workroom if you want me, Inspector. I have a deadline to meet.' She stood up.

‘Deadline? Are you a writer, Miss Beaumont?'

‘I write pamphlets, leaflets, Sergeant. I publish a quarterly magazine.
Unity
,' she added, as though they must know it. Neither of them did. Oh Lord, thought Womersley tiredly. He might have known.
Unity
had never come to his notice, but he had no doubt it was the same sort of publication as many others which had. Una Beaumont, then, was one of these attention-seeking women who were demanding the vote and equality for everybody, those pesky women he suspected Rawlinson secretly admired, though he'd more sense than to make his views publicly known.

‘I may go, now?' she asked with a cold little smile. ‘I
am
very busy, but I have no desire to be obstructive, and I'll answer any questions if it means you get the coward who took such advantage of my grandfather.'

‘Murderers of this sort don't think of themselves as cowards,' Womersley told her dryly. ‘Only how to get away with it without being found out. But thank you, I'd appreciate your cooperation.'

Rawlinson sprang up and opened the door for her as she marched out, her head held high, followed by the dog which gave him a savage glance as he passed. He was thankful it was nothing more.

Mrs Beaumont watched her go, then stood up herself. She had been silent throughout, following the conversation but keeping her feelings to herself behind those unfathomable eyes, and now she said merely, ‘Ask, if there's anything you need.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Beaumont.'

Gideon held the door open for his mother and then showed the policemen into the study. Although the master was no longer here, the routine of the house had gone on and a fire had still been lit, warming and lighting the comfortable room. ‘You'll find all you need to see in the desk. There's not all that much. He didn't believe in paperwork.' He opened a drawer. ‘Here's a copy of the will, it's quite short.' He stood stock still for a moment, in command of himself now. ‘He made it only last week, and of course it supersedes the old one he'd made. But Mr Richard Broomhead, our family solicitor, confirms that it is fully in order.'

Womersley accepted the long envelope, intrigued by the ambiguity, as Gideon extracted an expanding, concertina-type wallet from another drawer and put it on the desk, saying, ‘You'll see what I mean after you've read the will – and this. This is self-explanatory.'

It was soon very evident that Gideon had spoken the truth: the master of Cross Ings had not complicated his affairs with paperwork, not even with a diary – he evidently kept his appointments in his head, believing he would not forget them – nor were there any personal letters or anything of that sort. In the top drawer was the detritus which accumulates in any desk drawer: pencil stubs, a worn down rubber eraser, a tiny tin box of new pen nibs, several old keys of various sizes: door keys, clock keys and so on. Half a dozen little round cardboard pillboxes, some with a herbalist's label, some with that of Widdop's surgery, all of them empty except one, half-full of small pink pills.

In other drawers Womersley found bank statements and a passbook, and after a quick glance passed this over to Rawlinson. ‘Take a look at that.' He pointed to the withdrawal of five hundred pounds in cash, two days previously.

Rawlinson whistled. ‘That's a heck of a lot of money. What did he want that much for? Was that why the killer left him with all his other valuables? He simply got what he was expecting – money to keep him quiet, like?'

‘Blackmailers don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,' Womersley grunted, going on to sift through the rest. Deeds for ‘a small plot of land on Syke Beck Lane and the building thereon, for the purposes of trading as a newsagent and tobacconist'. A large envelope containing proposals for building a row of two-up-and-two-down houses, also off Syke Beck Lane; letters thanking Ainsley Beaumont for heading a subscription list towards the building of the local fever hospital; an acknowledgment for a privately donated sum towards the construction of a proposed new reservoir; and a record of yearly payments into a Goodwill scheme to provide assistance for Wainthorpe's widows and orphans.

This, then, was that other face of Ainsley Beaumont, the private man Widdop had obliquely referred to, a man of good intent. Perhaps that cash he had withdrawn had been used for a similar philanthropic purpose, Womersley reflected, finally turning his attention to the will.

The bulk of his personal estate and the Cross Ings business was to be shared between his grandchildren and a generous annuity had been left to their mother. A tidy sum was bequeathed to Whiteley Hirst. Gifted to Sarah Illingworth – the woman he had once intended marrying, according to Widdop – was the house she now lived in down at Cross Ings, and to her son, Tom Illingworth, the return of an already paid debt. He speculated about that, even as his eyes were travelling to the surprise which came at the end of all this. To Laura Harcourt, of London . . . His lips pursed into a low whistle.

‘And I wonder who
she
is,' he said aloud, ‘Laura Harcourt, of London?' There was no indication in the will, just her name and the city.

‘Someone he – er – met, on his visits to the capital?' suggested Rawlinson with a grin.

‘Happen so.' Beaumont had lost his wife early in his marriage and had never married again. A discreet and convenient arrangement would have been understandable in the circumstances: a woman in the capital, one he could visit when he chose. Playing safe, away from home, gossip and possible repercussions. All the same, it took your breath away – fifteen thousand pounds, regardless of the extent of the millowner's wealth, for that sort of connection!

He leaned back in his chair, thinking, watching the play of firelight on the long case clock in the corner. Lovely old moonphase clock it was, with its rich walnut case and a brass face. Just as he was sitting here, so had Ainsley Beaumont sat, in this comfortable, slightly shabby room, concocting his schemes while it steadily ticked the minutes and hours away.

By then Rawlinson had come to the end of the only folder in the concertina wallet Gideon had presented to them. ‘Before we jump to conclusions, I think you should read this.' He passed it over. ‘Seems to be in date order, starting at the back.'

The binder had a spring spine which nipped the contents together. Letters. Dozens of letters, written over many years, which had passed between Ainsley Beaumont and the same firm of London solicitors, Carfax, Arroway and Carfax, who had drawn up the will, some of them dating back nearly twenty years. Duplicates had been kept, painstakingly copied by the sender, of each of the original letters to the firm, along with their replies; together they provided the answer to the question of who Laura Harcourt was, which was not the one which had first sprung to mind. Amongst the early letters to Mr William Carfax, nearly twenty years previously, was the request to find adoptive parents for an eighteen-month-old child, a little girl named Laura, and from Mr Carfax were regular reports charting her progress and well being, right up to a more recent letter that Ainsley had written, presenting Mr Carfax with a decidedly odd request: that he should endeavour to persuade Miss Laura Harcourt to accept a paid position to sort out his library, putting it before her in such a way that she should not suspect she had been specially earmarked for this task.

Not a London mistress, then, but almost certainly a child whom Ainsley Beaumont could not, or would not, acknowledge. The letters showed that over the years, he had evidently been at some pains to ensure that the relationship which existed between them was concealed from her, but – probably because he had discovered he was a mortally sick man – he had decided he now wanted see her and make amends: hence the request about the library – and the new will. Was Miss Harcourt, the one who'd evidently been working on the books in the library, still here at Farr Clough House? If so, they would need to speak to her. It would also be interesting to see what the members of the family thought about that bequest and what, if anything, they had known about her. And if any of them, perhaps especially Laura Harcourt herself, had known about the will before Ainsley met his death.

As Rawlinson pushed the file back into the wallet, something prevented it from going in easily. Fumbling inside, he withdrew a little brass key, too small for a door, the kind which might fit a drawer or maybe a document case, and small enough to have been dropped into the file accidentally and never found. He shrugged and dropped it into the desk drawer alongside all the other unidentified ones.

At the same moment, a maid came in with a tray, not Jessie this time, but a very young girl with fair hair and a quick blush, shyly saying that Mrs Beaumont thought they might like a sandwich while they worked. There had been plenty of beef left on the joint – none of the family had eaten anything much. And would they like some tea, or a glass of beer to wash it down?

Neither man had eaten anything since breakfast, apart from a couple of Ada Crawshaw's ginger biscuits, and the smell of roast beef had been tormenting Rawlinson for an hour. His opinion of Mrs Beaumont went up a notch at the offer of this hospitality.

For that first journey Laura had made to Huddersfield, George Imrie had booked her a first class ticket in a Ladies Only compartment, but she had been in too much of a hurry on her way back down to London to think about such niceties and had booked her fare, uncaring that she had been given second class. Tom was fortunately also travelling second. At King's Cross, they found an empty compartment, where they sat on facing seats, watching the other passengers embark and hoping for the privacy which first class might have helped to ensure.

Laura wore black borrowed from Lillian, since she had none of her own to wear in a house of mourning. Because the clothes had belonged to Lillian they were inevitably elegant and modish, and at least lighter than the stuffy, and by now despised, saxe blue tweed, but black was not a colour Laura ever wore and in it she felt sallow and unattractive. She rested her head on the back of the seat, elbow on the window sill, a hand shading her eyes. The whistle blew, and with a jerk the journey began; she closed her eyes, trying to obliterate the nightmares of the previous night. But sleep would not come, it was as elusive as it had been last night. Between periods of snatched, troubled dozing, she had lain awake, worries chasing each other, hardly knowing where dreams ended and coherent thought began. And now they moved behind her eyes again: images of Ainsley Beaumont and the horrible way he had chosen to die, as awful in its own way as the way in which his son had lost his life; flashes of the house, Farr Clough, and the fire that had left that stark ruin; Amelia's unconcealed animosity towards her . . . and Tom. Oh yes, Tom.

It was not until the train had gathered speed and left the northern suburbs of London well behind, when they were steaming north and safe from any other passengers showing a desire to share their compartment, that she felt a light touch on her arm and opened her eyes with a start to see him leaning towards her. She must have dozed, after all. ‘I'm sorry, did I wake you? I didn't realize you were asleep.'

‘I wasn't.' She shook herself thoroughly awake. ‘Just dozing.'