The Shadow at Greystone Chase (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 10)

Copyright

© 2015 Clara Benson

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The right of Clara Benson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

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The Shadow at Greystone Chase

After her bruising encounter with the law, Angela Marchmont has vowed to give up detecting, and is doing her best to forget the events of last winter and the terrible lie she told to save herself. So when a letter arrives from beyond the grave requesting her help and reminding her of the past, she is anything but pleased. Drawn reluctantly into one final case and spurred on by her guilty conscience, Angela soon discovers a viper’s nest of family betrayals and hidden enmities which have lain undisturbed for years, and which may have led to the deaths of more than one person. Despite her unwillingness to reopen old wounds, Angela knows she must put aside her own feelings and solve the mystery if she is ever to find peace. Can she get to the heart of the matter, right the wrong she has done and be happy at last?

M
RS. ANGELA MARCHMONT was not a woman who liked to admit weakness. Having worked hard and overcome numerous obstacles—not least the inconvenient fact of her sex—to achieve material success, she had, over the years, found it politic to adopt a serene and cheery demeanour which was intended to convey the impression of a person who was not easily daunted, and who could be relied upon to undertake any task with little fuss and a reasonable degree of competence. As time went on, this outward appearance became so natural to her that it grew to be quite a habit, and she had found it so useful on various occasions that she saw no reason to abandon it. So convincing was she that many people—including some of her closest friends—assumed that she really was as permanently sanguine and untroubled as she seemed, and Angela never bothered to disabuse them of the notion, for she had discovered that there were decided benefits to be had from the ability to present an unruffled façade to the world at large. True, there were some who considered her a little cool—unfeeling, even—but since Angela was also happily possessed of a great deal of personal charm, those people tended to be in the minority. The majority, meanwhile, took her smiles at face value, and it never occurred to them to wonder whether there might be anything more below the surface than that which she chose to display above it.

Following her trial for the murder of her husband, Angela, true to character, resolved to put the events of the past winter behind her as soon as she could, and was determined never to reveal to a soul how bruised and battered she had been by the whole experience. To that end, she immediately accepted every invitation she received from her many concerned friends, who were in unanimous agreement that she ought to leave London for a while—at least until the days grew longer and memories began to fade. Angela was more touched by their kindness than she could say, for she had been uncertain of how they would react to the revelations which had come out in court about her past. It is not everyone who is prepared to take with equanimity the discovery that a friend has been concealing the existence of an illegitimate child for fourteen years, and Angela was not entirely surprised to discover that there were some whose affection for her cooled markedly after the event. Still, she was by no means a pariah, and so she put on a brave face and affected not to notice the defection of those who had decided they wanted nothing more to do with her. This was partly for her daughter’s sake, for now that Barbara knew the truth Angela was determined to do right by her, and therefore firmly refused to give any indication that she might be at all ashamed of the girl. Barbara had already lost quite enough because of her mother’s mistakes, and the last thing she needed was to feel as though Angela did not want her now that there was no longer any good reason for them to be apart.

Between social engagements, therefore, Angela took care to visit Barbara at school as often as she could without causing embarrassment, and to write at least twice a week, and as far as she could tell (although who knew what went on in the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl?) Barbara was happy with the new arrangement. Angela knew her daughter well enough to be fairly certain that if there were anything to complain about, she would hear about it soon enough, and so after a few months her anxiety began to lessen and she started to believe that perhaps she was not
quite
the worst mother in the world, which had been her firmest conviction up to then. A little to her surprise, she found herself enjoying Barbara’s company more and more, and had some ado to suppress her self-reproach at having left things so long. Barbara was kind enough not to mention it, however, and Angela hoped that the guilt would wear off in time.

So the months passed, and spring came and went. Since February Angela had spent two weeks in the South of France, a week in Bournemouth, and various weekends in Hampshire, Somerset and Leicestershire. She had attended the races three times and been hunting once. In April she went sailing and in May attended a flower show. She also visited her brother and his wife in Surrey—an uncomfortable experience in which they all did their best not to mention the trial, and Humphrey went into agonies over whether or not he ought to acknowledge the existence of his hitherto unsuspected niece. Angela had already departed before he made his decision, and in a fever of guilt he sent a letter after her in which he meant to indicate his support (although not his approval), but which was full of such tortuous language and flowery expression that it would have conveyed nothing to anyone who did not know him as well as his sister did. Angela smiled when she received it, and appreciated his intentions, but decided not to visit again for a long while.

Thus was she kept busy. She was not tactless enough to throw herself into the usual round of gaiety, evening-parties and night-clubs, for although she was not at all sorry at her husband’s death, Angela was fully aware of the hypocrisy which was required of her, and so she was careful to accept only invitations to the more muted sorts of engagement, at which she put on a brisk manner that was intended to discourage anyone from asking too many questions. Of course, it would have been unnatural to refuse to talk about the thing at all, and so whenever the conversation floated in that direction (as it invariably did sooner or later), and someone asked a hesitant question as to how she was, Angela replied with a smile, and agreed that yes, it had all been dreadful, but that she was doing her best to forget it now. Something about the way she replied tended to discourage further inquiry, but occasionally someone of little perception would venture further and say how fortunate it was that they had caught the
real
murderer in the end, and at that moment Angela would nod and change the subject abruptly, and nothing more would be said about it.

Hardly anyone knew the real truth about what had happened that day in court, and Angela had no intention of enlightening them. It was an uncomfortable feeling, to say the least, to owe one’s life to a man for whom one had harboured a guilty—infatuation, she supposed it must be called (for she would not dignify it with a higher name), and who had turned out to have done something unspeakable. Angela was disgusted at herself for her own stupidity in having been drawn in by Edgar Valencourt, who had killed his wife, but she hated herself even more for the terrible lie she had told in court, which had allowed him to take the blame for her husband’s murder onto his own shoulders. Even though it had been the only way out for her, and he had fully meant her to do it, she knew she had done him a great wrong, and she struggled daily with her conscience, for it did not do to pin a crime on an innocent man, however bad he was in other respects. Still, it was all too late now; he was dead and the thing was over and done with, and Angela was determined that nobody should ever know of her broken heart, for she felt she did not deserve pity.

She therefore put on her usual cheerful face and went about her business, and no-one could have guessed that she was anything other than tremendously relieved at her acquittal and keen to return to normal life as far as possible. True, she was thinner than she had been, and perhaps she laughed a little less, but not so much as to be especially obvious. She slept badly these days, too, but the dark circles under her eyes were easy enough to conceal with a touch of make-up. Only Marthe, her faithful maid, observed the hours Angela spent staring out of the window apparently unseeing; noticed, too, her mistress’s increased absent-mindedness, which meant a question often had to be repeated two or three times before it would be answered. She also knew that Angela had taken to rising early and going for restless walks, although on her return she often could not say where she had been. Marthe saw all this and worried for her mistress’s health, but Angela dismissed her concerns and said she was perfectly well.

It was towards the end of May when Angela returned to her flat in Mount Street one evening, after having spent several days with some friends in Oxfordshire. These days the flat had the tidy, empty appearance of someone who lived in it little, and the post tended to pile up. Angela glanced through the heap of correspondence which awaited her attention.

‘I seem to be running up rather a lot of bills lately,’ she remarked, as Marthe busied herself with the luggage. ‘Now, if I were as respectable as I ought to be, I should have a nice, stuffy, middle-aged husband, who would regard me sorrowfully over his spectacles as I prostrated myself at his feet and confessed my profligacy, and then pay them all for me with a sigh.’

Marthe’s wrinkled nose indicated quite clearly what she thought of that.

‘Oh, an invitation from the Atchisons,’ said Angela, reading. ‘They want me to go to Edinburgh on Thursday. Do we want to go to Scotland? It’s a long way and he’s rather a bore. Perhaps I’ll say no this time. What else? A postcard from Barbara to say that she
almost
passed the French exam, whatever that means. Now, what’s this?’ she went on, opening another letter, whose postmark and appearance indicated it as being of a legal nature. ‘Don’t tell me Mr. Addison has found something else to charge me for. It’s quite extraordinary how they manage to bill one for things that one might have supposed were included in the service—’