The Lorimer Legacy (2 page)

‘How did this get here?'

‘I found it in the boxroom with all those old pieces of furniture. I was helping Betty to look for a chair to put in Robert's bedroom, and there it was, propped against the wall and covered with dust. It seemed a pity to let such a handsome picture become dirty. I thought perhaps you had forgotten it was there, so I asked Parker to hang it this morning, as a surprise for you. Who is he?'

Margaret sat down. She was white-faced, and for a moment it appeared that she did not wish to reply. And yet the answer, when it came, was not one which should have caused any hesitation. ‘That,' she said, ‘is John Junius Lorimer. My father.'

‘Then why didn't you hang the picture before? I should have thought –'

‘Because it would have offended Charles to see the portrait here,' Margaret said.

It was Alexà's private opinion that husbands should not be allowed to have everything their own way, especially when they happened to be dead. But she realized how tactless it would be to say so. ‘Tell me about him,' she begged instead. ‘You never talk about your parents. What was your father like?'

‘He was an autocrat,' said Margaret. ‘Rich and respected. He was chairman of Lorimer's Bank until it
collapsed at the end of his life. He ruled it as though he were God, and his family was given much the same treatment. The portrait gives a good indication of that, I think. But he was generous as well. That may not be so easy to recognize from the painting.'

‘Did you inherit anything from him?'

‘My red hair,' said Margaret lightly. ‘And I didn't think much of the inheritance when I was young, I can tell you.'

‘But nothing else? If he was as important as that, surely he left you some kind of legacy. Some money, or some of his things?'

There was a sudden coolness, a barrier between them. If Alexa had not known that her guardian was always completely honest in everything she did and said, she would have suspected that Margaret was about to tell a lie. But that was only the most fleeting of impressions. The answer itself came with a definiteness which could only be sincere.

‘No,' Margaret told her. ‘I loved my father very much, and he loved me; but he left me no legacy at all.'

A question asked in innocence takes on an unintended significance in the mind of someone who is reluctant to answer it. Margaret found Alexa's interest in legacies disturbing, for her thoughts went at once to the black leather case which she had concealed in an unused attic. Had the child been ferreting about in the cupboards under the eaves as well as in the little boxroom? Was she hoping by her enquiry to elicit an official confirmation of something which she had already discovered for herself?
But Alexa's continuing questions suggested that she had accepted the answer at its face value. Margaret had been careful to tell no actual lie. It was perfectly true that she had inherited nothing from her father.

‘Was it because he was angry about your wanting to be a doctor?' Alexa pressed. ‘Did he divide everything between his sons? Or did he believe in leaving everything to the eldest?'

‘I never dared so much as hint to my father that I wanted to take a medical training,' Margaret confessed. ‘That came later, after he was dead. No; there was no quarrel. It was just that by the time he died he had nothing to leave. He lost all his fortune in the last months of his life, when the bank crashed. My brother Ralph is just as poor as I am. And if William is rich, it is because he had already taken over the family shipping line before the crash, and he has inherited the Lorimer talent for business. The most enduring legacy in any family is that of character.'

‘How can you say that!' Alexa demanded. ‘Your two brothers are quite different from each other. And you are different again.'

Margaret recognized that it must seem so to Alexa. For one thing, the physical differences were so pronounced, especially between her two brothers. William had always been small and sharp-featured, and he had inherited his mother's brown hair. Ralph, on the other hand, tall, broad-shouldered and blond, had been as handsome as a young god before he left England. If he was sallowed and desiccated now, that was the result of years of exposure to a tropical sun. It seemed worth while to explain, though, how in one way they were the same.

‘William and Ralph are both very hard-working,' she told her ward. ‘Able men, and ambitious too, in their different ways. William has put all his energies into
running a business, and he has been wonderfully successful. Being well established before our father died, he was very quick at that time to seize every opportunity to increase his fortune. Ralph was only a schoolboy then, when Lorimer's Bank collapsed. He saw the crash as a judgement on the family for the years of slave-trading which brought us our wealth. That was why, as soon as he was old enough, he chose to go out to Jamaica as a missionary. But as far as I can tell from his letters and Lydia's, he seems to have taken charge of a congregation which was debilitated and unemployed and achieved a miracle by turning his parish into a thriving agricultural community. I hardly understand how he has done it, but clearly he must be as good a manager as William. What they each inherited was an insistence on being at the head of their own affairs, and a determination to succeed. My father had both these qualities to a very marked degree.'

‘And you?' asked Alexa. ‘What about you?'

‘If I seem less successful, you must remember that I started from a lower level of expectation. I was brought up as a rich man's daughter, with everything provided for me. And might have expected to marry young and simply to move from one gentleman's care to another. To carry me through a medical training I needed the same will to succeed that I have just been describing in William and Ralph – and I had to face much more opposition than they did. I confess that I have been less ambitious since I qualified, but I still share my brothers' liking for independence. To manage my own household seems as much of a triumph to me as the running of a plantation is to Ralph, or of a shipping line to William. So you see, we all enjoy a fair inheritance.'

‘I wish I could have shared it,' said Alexa. There was a touch of envy in her voice. For a moment Margaret
hesitated, wondering whether to take this opportunity of telling Alexa something about her own parentage. But it was not a subject to be approached without preparation. The turn of the conversation had taken her by surprise and she had not had time to think what she might want to say and how it would be best to say it. She stood up and looked her father in the eye again.

‘You were right, Alexa, to think that John Junius Lorimer should not be condemned to cobwebs for ever,' she said. ‘I hope that as you practise you will find him an appreciative audience.'

Even as the door closed behind her, she heard the sound of the piano begin again. It seemed a good moment to dispel any remaining suspicions about Alexa's explorations. She hurried to the top of the house. The attics there were designed to accommodate a far larger domestic staff than Margaret could afford to maintain, and in one of the unused rooms was concealed the only treasure which Elm Lodge contained. It might have been wiser to entrust it to the strongroom of a bank, but Margaret had good reason to be suspicious of banks, and she had no fear of burglars. All the villagers knew that their doctor often had as much trouble as themselves in finding one penny to rub against another.

Her anxiety proved to be unfounded. The cupboard was securely locked, and when she unfastened it with the key she wore round her neck, the dust lay undisturbed on the old newspapers which she had piled high to conceal the box.

Margaret opened it and stared in silence at the black leather case whose contents had been the cause of so much trouble to the family, and to herself in particular. It was true enough, as the careful framing of her answer had suggested to Alexa, that her father had left no
material inheritance to any of his three legitimate children. But it was not the whole truth. In the year before he died, John Junius Lorimer had contrived – by a ruse which fell only a hair's breadth short of being criminal -to salvage one treasure from the wreck of his fortune. And that treasure was in front of Margaret now.

Conscious of what it had done to her life, she could hardly bring herself to look at it. But how foolish it would be, she told herself, not to check its safety now that she had begun. Reluctantly she unlocked the case, raised the lid, and drew out one by one the three velvet-lined drawers.

For a long time she knelt in front of it without moving, mesmerized by the sparkle of the gems. The centrepiece was a necklace of rubies, with a pendant in the form of a rose; its petals were formed from more rubies, set in silver and framed with tiny diamonds. In the bottom drawer nestled a pair of delicate drop ear-rings which repeated the rose motif on a miniature scale. At the top, even more richly elaborate than the necklace, lay a tiara in which yet another ruby rose was surrounded by trembling leaves of silver and diamonds. These were the objects which alone could be said to constitute the Lorimer legacy; and they had not been bequeathed to Margaret.

Instead, John Junius Lorimer had left them to a baby whom during his lifetime he had not publicly acknowledged as his child. It was his mistress, Luisa Reni, who on her deathbed had handed them to Margaret and asked her to keep them until her little girl, Alexa, should come of age. That was the moment – nine years ago – when Margaret had first learned the name of Alexa's father.

Alexa herself did not yet know that she was a Lorimer by birth as well as by adoption. When Margaret accepted the responsibility for bringing up her orphaned half-sister,
she needed her brother's help. William offered them both a home at Brinsley House only on the understanding that Alexa should not be told the truth about her birth. He had laid down the condition for the sake of his father's reputation, and Margaret had accepted it for Alexa's. She had resolved to tell her ward the truth on the same day that the rubies were handed over – on her twenty-first birthday. Even then the taint of illegitimacy would be hard to accept.

Like the rubies, the portrait of John Junius belonged, unsuspected, to Alexa. Poor Luisa had almost as little money in her purse as Margaret on the terrible day in 1879 when the contents of Brinsley House were auctioned for the benefit of the bank's creditors, but she had spared what she could to make sure that Alexa would one day see what her father looked like. Fortunately, there was no one else in Bristol at that time who wished to be reminded of John Junius Lorimer, and the portrait had been knocked down to her for only a few shillings.

Thoughtfully Margaret packed up the case and locked it away in the cupboard. As she briskly snapped the lock on the door, she snapped shut her own memory at the same time. What had happened in the past was of little importance to her life today. All that mattered now was that the legacy which John Junius Lorimer had left behind him was safe, and no one but Margaret knew of its existence.

Even the most unsophisticated girl knows that the simplest way to secure a young man's company is to pretend an enthusiasm for his hobbies. Alexa had no talent for painting or carving, but she knew them to be Matthew's passions, so she took care to prepare her watercolour box before he arrived. Carrying a picnic hamper between them, they strolled each morning through the fields until Matthew found a flower or a view of the village church to inspire him. Margaret was fully occupied with an epidemic of measles which was spreading through the village, and asked few questions about how they spent their time.

On the last day of his visit Matthew's concentration appeared to be disturbed. He had been drawing a foal, making a series of quick sketches as it tossed its head or rolled on its back or trotted up to its mother to feed. Alexa heard the firm strokes of his charcoal faltering, although she pretended not to notice.

‘Do you remember your mother?' he asked, so unexpectedly that Alexa blinked with surprise.

‘Of course. I was nine when she died.'

‘What was she like?'

‘She was Italian. Dark-haired; not like me. Until she became ill, she was very beautiful. She had a lovely singing voice, and played the piano well. She was a teacher of music, you know; very patient. When I was small, she had to take me with her to the lessons, and I can remember all the things she used to say, over and over again. It's been a great help to me: I can give lessons to myself.'

‘How was it that Aunt Margaret came to adopt you, then?'

‘She came – as a doctor – to visit my mother, who was dying by then of consumption and starvation. But they had known each other earlier, as teacher and pupil. After my mother died, there was no one in the world on whom I had any claim. I was very fortunate to escape the workhouse. Why do you ask all this?'

Matthew was slow to answer. He had sounded awkward even when he asked the question, and now he was obviously embarrassed; but Alexa waited until he spoke.

‘When you first came to live at Brinsley House, we were told that you had been adopted,' he said. ‘But you look – I just wanted to be sure – I only wondered whether Aunt Margaret could possibly be your mother.'

His face was scarlet as he stared down at his sketching pad. Alexa gave an incredulous gasp.

‘What an extraordinary idea! Why, she wasn't even married when I was born.'

‘I know.' Matthew's voice was apologetic. ‘I shouldn't have suggested it. You won't tell Aunt Margaret I asked, will you?'

‘Certainly not. She would be very shocked. Why –?'

But Alexa had no need to finish the question. Without asking, she understood why he had needed to know. For six years they had studied and played together as though they were brother and sister. Matthew had known that she was not really his sister. What he was checking was the possibility that she might be his cousin.