The Shadow at Greystone Chase (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 10) (26 page)

Jameson was staring at her, astounded, and she looked away.

‘I know it was wrong of me,’ she said. ‘Very wrong. But—well, what’s done is done. I didn’t approve of myself at all, but my intentions were good, at least.’ She laughed sadly. ‘If you want to know where I was on the night of my husband’s death, I was in Faversham, forcing Edgar to return a stolen brooch through a letter-box. Silly, isn’t it?’

‘I remember that,’ said Jameson. ‘It had the Kent police scratching their heads for a while. So it was you, was it? I didn’t realize Valencourt was part of the Boehler gang.’

‘He wasn’t,’ said Angela. ‘He stole the brooch from them and they killed him for it. At any rate, you can see why I didn’t have a satisfactory alibi for that night. I was driving around the countryside with a notorious thief and couldn’t have proved it even if I’d wanted to.’

‘I see,’ said Jameson. ‘But Angela, lying in court is a very serious matter.’

‘I’m perfectly aware of that,’ said Angela. ‘And you might as well give it its proper name, perjury. I can’t even claim I did it for any higher purpose. I lied to save myself. I didn’t come here to throw myself on your mercy, Alec. I fully expect to be prosecuted for what I did. But I didn’t want to have to tell everything to Inspector Scott or someone equally unsympathetic, and I knew you would be kind, if only for old times’ sake.’

The last part was said in a low voice, and it would have taken a much harder man than Alec Jameson to withstand such an appeal.

‘Stop looking at me as though you expect to be hit over the head and arrested at any minute,’ he said at last. ‘I won’t deny I’m surprised—and the super won’t be any too happy either, since it looks as though we’ll have to reopen the investigation into your husband’s death, but I’m not going to throw you in prison quite yet.’

‘I’m not asking for preferential treatment,’ said Angela, who, now she had decided to admit the truth, was determined to be punished for it.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Jameson. ‘Now, listen, Angela. You’ve given me rather a lot to think about, so I suggest you go home and let me get on with it. If you want to do things properly then I don’t mind telling you not to leave London without letting me know, but other than that you’re free to go.’

‘But—’ said Angela.

‘I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, because I don’t know,’ said Jameson. ‘I’ll have to speak to the super. As I’ve said, perjury’s a serious matter, but he may decide there were extenuating circumstances, since you’d probably have been hanged for murder had you told the truth.’ He shook his head, as though to clear the cobwebs from it. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything like this in all my years as a policeman,’ he said. ‘Now, you’d better go before I change my mind.’

Angela did as she was bid and went home, feeling slightly deflated, for she had fully expected to be arrested. Jameson, meanwhile, sat at his desk for a good twenty minutes after her departure, staring into space unhappily and wondering what to do.

T
HERE WAS NO denying that Angela’s confession had come as something of a shock to Inspector Jameson. During her trial certain facts had emerged which had revealed a darker side to her character, so it was not as though he had considered her to be a model of virtue. She was not the first woman to have been caught out in that way, and nor would she be the last. However, this latest revelation that she had deliberately allowed herself to be drawn into an illicit entanglement with a criminal and had lied about it before a court was something which was more difficult to understand and forgive. She was a sensible woman—far too sensible to engage in such nonsense, and so it seemed to him that she had done it out of a sort of arrogance, an assumption that her position in society meant that she might do what she liked and nothing could touch her. In fairness, it must be admitted that she had been punished for that arrogance; her public humiliation had been thorough and complete, and yet Jameson was still unhappy at what had been revealed about his old friend, and what it meant for the cases they had worked on together. He had always supposed her to be completely honest, and on that supposition had been happy to accept her help in solving several murders in the last three years. But could she be relied upon? Had any of the cases been compromised by what he now knew about her? As a conscientious policeman he had to admit the possibility that innocent people might have been condemned. He set himself to consider each case one by one, and to his relief came to the conclusion that there were no problems on that head; he himself had been in charge on each occasion and he flattered himself that he had not been taken in. But, then, what was he to think about Angela? And what was he to do about the fact that she had lied in court?

He wrestled with the problem for some while longer, then decided to go home, which lately had become his comfort and his refuge from the cares of his job. His wife Kathie welcomed him with her usual smiles and kisses, and saw immediately that he was troubled by something. She did not ask about it, for she knew that if it were something she was permitted to hear he would tell her about it sooner or later. And he did, for she, too, was a friend of Angela, and indeed had been helped by her in one of their earlier cases—might even have been in prison now had it not been for her. Kathie was certainly surprised by what her husband had to say, but she was less disturbed by the knowledge of Angela’s indiscretions than by the fact of her undoubted suffering, for she would not admit for a second that Angela was anything less than the person she had always appeared. As she pointed out, there was no need for Angela to have investigated the de Lisle case at all, and the fact that she had done so, even though she knew that the game would be up for her, proved her to be as honourable as they had always known her to be. As for her association with Edgar Valencourt—why, who had any choice in the matter when it came to falling in love? Alec might remember that not so long ago he had himself fallen for a murder suspect, despite all his best efforts. It had turned out very well for the two of them—but poor Angela had no such comfort to receive, for she was all alone, with nothing ahead of her except the likelihood of another court case and further notoriety.

Jameson looked at his lovely wife and thought of the happiness she had brought him, thanks in part to Angela Marchmont. It was thanks to Angela’s curiosity and determination that he could now look forward to the prospect of passing on his name to another generation—he and Kathie had even talked of naming the child Angela if it was a girl. As his wife had said, who was he to pronounce judgment? Angela had done wrong, but she was now doing her best to put things right, and surely the intention was to be applauded. Very well: he would follow Kathie’s example and forgive, although that still left the matter of the perjury to be resolved, for he could not keep that to himself, given that it was an essential part of the explanation in not one, but two murder cases.

The next day, therefore, Jameson presented himself before his superintendent with the documents he had been given, and did his best to tell the story so as to present Angela in the best light he could. The super was not a good-tempered man as a rule, and was inclined to take the worst side of things, but as it happened he had a long-standing and immovable dislike of the superintendent of the Kent police, and the idea of putting one over on his deadly rival by proving him to have been wrong in the de Lisle murder put him in a most unaccustomed good mood, and inclined him to look at other matters a little more leniently. Besides, the press had got wind of that case, thanks to Freddy Pilkington-Soames, and dozens of reporters were sniffing around Scotland Yard and writing congratulatory pieces about the return of Angela Marchmont to the world of detecting, marvelling at her magnanimity in helping to prove that her husband’s murderer had not, at least, killed his wife. It would hardly look kind to reward her by charging her with an offence which, had the police got things right in the first place, she would never have needed to commit.

‘Consider yourself officially reprimanded,’ Jameson said to Angela, when he came to tell her that she was not to be prosecuted. ‘The super is pretending not to have heard what I told him, but I think we can expect the Mount Street case to be quietly dropped—not that anyone was looking into it too hard anyway after Valencourt died.’

‘Thank you,’ said Angela. ‘I know I don’t deserve it, and I’m sure it was all your doing, but I confess it is something of a relief not to have to worry about going to gaol again. Don’t think I don’t feel guilty about it, though, because I do, and probably always will.’

‘If any lie could be justified, I think this one could,’ said Jameson.

‘I might almost have believed that until I found out that Edgar didn’t kill his wife,’ said Angela.

‘But you didn’t know that at the time,’ said Jameson. ‘He didn’t have to do what he did, and you had nothing to do with his death, so perhaps you ought to try and—I won’t say forgive yourself, but perhaps try and worry about it a little less.’

He then went away, and Angela was left to her own unsatisfactory reflections.

Meanwhile, Freddy had also been reflecting on sundry matters. He was not a young man generally given to useless self-doubt, and at twenty-two he had the assurance and self-confidence of a man far older. However, he now found himself faced with something of a moral dilemma, for he knew full well that Edgar Valencourt was still alive and in hiding, and yet he had purposely kept the fact from Angela. He had told himself that he had done so because it would upset her to find out the truth, but now it occurred to him to wonder whether that were indeed the case, or whether, in all honesty, he had withheld the news from her because he disapproved of Valencourt and did not want Angela to become entangled with him again. There was no doubt she was better off without him. If the police knew Valencourt was not really dead then they would arrest him immediately, for although he was now known to be innocent of murder, that did not make him a good man, for he had lived a life of crime for ten years or more and there were still many black marks against his name. Surely Angela deserved better than an unrepentant thief?

And yet Freddy could not help thinking about Angela’s sudden outburst on the train. It had been so unlike her to admit her true feelings, and he had seen nothing of the kind from her since, but what she had revealed in that unguarded moment had affected him more than he cared to say, and caused him to wonder whether he had done the right thing. After all, who was he to decide what was best for people? Angela was old enough and wise enough to make her own decisions without any interference from him. He did not want her to be made unhappy by his actions—but she was already unhappy, and who was to say whether his actions might not have the opposite effect? It was a question to which he did not know the answer, and he was hesitant to take the risk for fear of doing the wrong thing.

He was still trying to decide what to do when Angela summoned him one morning a week or two later to tell him that all the arrangements for her departure for the United States were now complete.

‘Then you’ve decided to go,’ he said. ‘As your adopted son I’ll miss you terribly, of course, but I can’t say I blame you. Life is easier out there, I understand.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Angela, ‘but I do want to see New York again. It’s a splendid city, Freddy. You must come and visit. I’m sure you’d like it.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he promised. ‘But what about Barbara?’

‘Barbara is still thinking about it,’ said Angela. ‘She’s staying at the Ellises’ for a few weeks, just for the summer holidays, then she’s going to come and join me. We’ve agreed she shall spend a term at school in America, and if she hates it we’ll come back to England. I rather think she’ll like it, though. I have an apartment near Central Park, and there’ll be plenty of room for both of us, and lots of things to do.’

‘Marvellous,’ said Freddy. ‘I should like a place like that—you know, somewhere to run away to whenever I liked.’

Angela was disconcerted, for his remark reminded her of what Barbara had said only a few weeks earlier.

‘I’m not running away,’ she said. ‘It’s just there’s nothing much for me here any more, so there doesn’t seem any sense in staying.’

‘Of course,’ said Freddy. ‘I quite understand. I shall come and see you off, of course.’

‘I shall expect it,’ said Angela with a smile.

Freddy went out and down into the street, thinking about what had just passed. He set off briskly in the direction of Regent Street, whistling cheerfully, then stopped suddenly, causing a woman who was just then leaving a shop to collide with him heavily. She snapped at him and he begged her pardon and moved out of her way. There was a telephone box on the other side of the street and he regarded it thoughtfully for a few moments, then, making up his mind, crossed the road and entered it. After a moment’s hesitation he picked up the receiver and asked to be put through to a number in Chancery Lane.