Rattling the Bones Read online

  ‘Records Office,’ I said simply.

  ‘Nosy-parker, aren’t you?’ Adam sneered.

  ‘No, I’m a detective.’

  He shrugged and turned to Jessica. ‘We can get back to the Walters sisters later, if at all. I want to know how you mean to persuade me you are Edna’s and my grandfather’s daughter. I knew my grandmother. She and Henry had a very good marriage. There was never any talk of his sleeping around. Anyway, I’ve known him all my life and he was always a very proper and upright sort. He made his money peddling church vestments, for crying out loud! He sold them all over the world. Name your brand of religion and he’d supply you with everything from cassocks and surplices to birettas and skullcaps - a bishop’s mitre if you wanted one, designed to order! You’re going to tell me he had a secret life? I don’t believe it.’ He thrust out his chin pugnaciously.

  ‘Then let me explain,’ Jessica said, unfazed by this onslaught. ‘My mother and Henry met in the late nineteen fifties. Edna was only sixteen and so pretty. You can’t picture it now, of course, but I’ve seen photographs.’

  ‘Where?’ rasped Adam.

  ‘Henry has several. He kept them hidden away for years, all through his marriage. He couldn’t bring himself to part with them.’

  Adam looked thunderstruck but Jessica looked sad. We were about to hear a tragic tale of star-crossed lovers, not that it would make any impression on either Lottie or Adam.

  ‘Henry was seventeen years older than Edna when they met but he fell for her hook, line and sinker. He was married, of course, married quite happily in lots of ways, as you rightly say, Adam. But passion takes over, doesn’t it? It knocks all the rules out of the way and won’t answer to any reason. He and Edna fell madly in love. He told me she made him feel as young as she was and that it was the first real love for him just as it was for her. Yet he didn’t have a bad marriage. It was what the French call a coup de foudre. I don’t think Henry understands to this day just how it all came about. He asked his wife for a divorce but she refused. It must have given her a terrible shock.

  ‘She fought back. She said she’d contest any divorce action bitterly and there would be a hell of a scandal. Anyway, she was the injured party and in those days if she chose not to ask for a divorce, there was little Henry could do about it. His wife took the view that Henry was temporarily infatuated and he would get over it. Her solution was that they take a holiday abroad somewhere, repair the crack in the marriage, and return home just the way they’d been before the hiccup in relations.

  ‘As for Arnold Walters, Edna’s father, well, his reaction was even worse! He was a martinet of the old school.’

  Jessica shrugged and said almost apologetically, ‘Arnold’s wife had died when the girls were young and perhaps he thought he had to be extra strict because the girls had no mother to watch over them. Perhaps, if their mother had been alive, it might all have gone so differently, but we’ll never know, will we?

  ‘Predictably the old man hit the roof and wouldn’t even discuss any possibility of Henry getting a divorce and marrying Edna. In those days the age of majority was twenty-one. Even if Henry had got his divorce, they’d have needed Arnold’s permission to marry. If they had applied to a court they would have been unlikely to receive a sympathetic hearing, given the age difference and everything else. It’s more likely that my mother would have ended up as a ward of court.

  ‘Henry’s business partner stepped in then and put the case pretty crudely. Word was getting round and it wasn’t doing the firm any good. They were in the church supplies business, just as you said. Scandal would mean cancelled orders on a big scale. Henry had to put his house in order sharpish, which meant reconciliation with his wife and dumping Edna. Otherwise, he would be obliged to sell out to his partner. Henry couldn’t afford to do that. He’d have been forced to accept a miserly amount for his share of the company and, even if he got his divorce, he would have alimony to pay and there would still be his children to educate - plus the cost of starting up anew with Edna.

  ‘As for Edna’s elder sister, Lilian, she was in a panic because she had just got engaged, very respectably, to just the sort of chap her father approved of, strait-laced, old-fashioned principles, family to match. If they got to hear of Henry and Edna’s affair, her fiancé’s family would be horrified. They were all so dreadfully respectable in those days. We tend to forget. They didn’t care who got crushed in the process so long as an outward appearance of all being absolutely normal was maintained. It was a kind of hypocrisy but it sprang from fear of being ostracised by society.’

  Lottie glanced up at the wall as if still expecting to see her grandmother’s wedding photograph there and then, when her gaze fell on the blank patch, frowned as if she had forgotten she’d removed it.

  ‘Then Arnold played his trump card. He told Henry that with no possibility of marriage, Edna’s reputation would be ruined. It was Henry’s duty to put an end to the affair. With everyone ganged up against him and being told he was set to ruin Edna’s life, Henry gave in. He patched things up with his wife and business partner. They even went off on that holiday his wife had suggested. They went to Switzerland. By the time they returned, Edna had been discovered to be pregnant. But by then it was too late and no one was going to give an inch.

  ‘Lilian’s wedding day had been named. Lilian, her fiancé, Henry’s wife and business partner and Arnold Walters all almost went into orbit. The whole affair had to be hushed up. Abortion was illegal then and Edna refused point blank to go along with any of the ploys for getting round the law. So she was sent to a Mother and Baby Home for her confinement. It sounds a cosy name for it, doesn’t it? But they were far from cosy places. All the girls were there because their families had rejected them or wanted to hide the “shame” of an illegitimate birth; and because the fathers of the babies couldn’t or wouldn’t marry them. Few of the girls would be allowed to keep their babies. Everyone assumed they would be put up for adoption, as I was.’

  I also looked up at the empty patch on the wall, remembering the photograph and the bride’s tense expression and brittle attitude. The whole wedding had come within a whisker of being delayed and probably even eventually cancelled, all because her little sister was in a Mother and Baby Home and the father of the child caught in a web of his own making, as novelists used to write.

  Jessica shook her head. ‘You’d think it couldn’t get worse but it did. Edna suffered a complete nervous breakdown after the birth. She had been parted first from the man she loved and then from her baby. She probably had what we now call “baby blues”, postnatal depression. How could that poor little sixteen-year-old, sitting in that cold and unwelcoming Home surrounded by censorious faces and the misery of the other girls, cope with such a dreadful situation? So from the Mother and Baby Home she was moved to the first of a string of psychiatric wards.’ A bitter expression crossed Jessica’s face. ‘That’s how they dealt with depression then. They locked you up.’

  ‘And her family rejected her completely,’ I said, unable to keep silent any longer.

  Jessica nodded. ‘Oh yes, a daughter or sister off her trolley was as bad as one with an illegitimate baby. Old Arnold Walters never mentioned Edna’s name again and wouldn’t allow anyone else to mention it in his presence, either. The years went by and the old fellow died. In his will he left everything to Lilian and because by then Edna had been forgotten, left to rot in a psychiatric ward, no one contested it. Lilian chose to say nothing.

  ‘As for me, things turned out rather better than they might have done. It was still possible back then to arrange adoptions privately. A childless couple, who knew Henry and what had happened, asked if they might adopt me. I was never to know, of course, that was the agreement. Henry and his wife moved to a different area. Henry was at least satisfied that the couple who adopted me were decent people. It was the best of a bad job.

  ‘Times change and so do ideas. By the time I was eighteen my adoptive parents - of whom I can’t
speak too highly - had rethought the decision that I should know nothing of my origins. They now decided I ought to be told. Arnold Walters was dead. They were all more afraid of him than of anyone else.’

  Unexpectedly Lottie murmured, as if to herself rather than to any of us, ‘His daughters were scared stiff of him. Lilian told me so.’

  Adam shifted uneasily in his chair and gave her a hard stare. ‘Shut up!’ it ordered but I don’t know if Lottie saw it. Adam then turned his attention to Jessica.

  ‘You,’ he spat with sudden venom, ‘decided to trace them! Were you just meddling? Or did you think there might be money in it? My grandfather is worth quite a bit.’ His face and neck had turned an ugly brick red.

  I thought the accusation might shake Jessica’s calm but she just shook her head and carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I did nothing for years. I felt that while my adoptive parents were alive, I couldn’t. Later it got put off until after my divorce. Then I thought, I’ve got no one now, no husband, no children. But I have got natural parents somewhere, so why not seek them out? I still hesitated but I eventually set out on the trail.

  ‘My mother appeared to have vanished off the face of the planet. She had finally been released from the last psychiatric ward in the early nineteen eighties. No one knew where she had gone.

  ‘My father was traceable. I was wary of approaching him at first because his wife was still alive as was his legitimate daughter, the mother of Adam and Becky. Poor Henry, he lost both women in quick succession, his wife to cancer and your mother, Adam, as a result of a skiing accident. For a while it seemed unfair to intrude on his bereavement. Eventually I plucked up courage five or six years ago. He was delighted to see me. But we decided not to tell you or Rebecca, Adam, at least not for the time being. In retrospect, that was a mistaken decision. But I suppose, like our families all those years ago, we thought it was for the best. You might say we never learn. It’s always better to tell the truth, however awkward.’

  Lottie had been listening intently to all of this and her mind was racing ahead. ‘This house is mine,’ she said sharply. ‘Lilian made it over to me just before she died. She wanted to avoid inheritance taxes. The necessary seven years passed between her doing it and her death, so the tax people have nothing to say about it.’

  Jessica nodded. ‘But also,’ she said quietly, ‘because Lilian was about to make a new will and she didn’t want you to feel that you had been overlooked. In the new will she made generous provision for her sister and she feared you might contest it. It suggests that by then she had reason to believe my mother was still alive out there somewhere. Perhaps she attempted to find her only to lose the trail. But whatever she found, it was enough.’

  ‘We can’t know,’ I interrupted, ‘but I think she did find Edna, that is, she found out that Edna was living as a bag lady on the London streets. I think that old respectability kicked in again. She couldn’t tell any of you that, Lottie, you or your dad, her son, of the shocking state of affairs. But she did try and fix things up, just like they fixed them up all those years ago. But Edna had bitter experience of people making decisions on her behalf and running her life. She said something about it to me once. If Lilian came forward, Edna would’ve told her to take a running jump. Lilian backed off and later she died, only Edna didn’t know her sister was dead now. How could she? She just knew that Lilian had found her once and might do so again.

  ‘So, when Edna discovered someone was following her - Duane - she thought it was Lilian again, trying to get in touch. But it wasn’t Lilian. After all these years it was her ex-lover, the man who had, even if he hadn’t meant to, ruined her life.’

  We all sat silent for a while until I added, ‘I always believed Edna had some idea who might be following her. She was wrong about the instigator, as it happened. The man she’d spotted and feared was her sister’s granddaughter’s boyfriend but he’d been set on the track by the grandson of her old flame.’

  Adam muttered, ‘Rubbish . . .’ but he didn’t sound convincing.

  Lottie’s eyes were flickering round our group, studying first one of us and then another.

  She spoke now. ‘It was just a job,’ she said. ‘I had no personal interest in it. Adam said his grandfather wanted the old woman traced, so we said we’d do it. We were professional private investigators. We did - do - anything legal. Duane said it was a good piece of business, paying well. It didn’t even depend on results. We’d be paid a daily rate plus expenses. What did I care about the old bat or who she was? I never knew her.’

  ‘Oh, I think you cared very much, Lottie,’ Jessica told her. ‘And I know why.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Henry and I . . .’

  Jessica paused to give a wry little smile and added, ‘I’ve never called him “Father” and to do so now would be pointless and confusing. Henry and I, then, agree with you, Fran. Towards the end of her life Lilian suffered pangs of conscience where her sister was concerned. She set out to find her and she did. If she had discovered Edna living happily somewhere, her mind would have been easy. But Edna was living as a homeless person. Lilian knew she ought to try and make some amends for the years of neglect, also for the way Edna had been deprived of any inheritance from Colonel Walters’s will, years before, an inheritance to which she was entitled. Had she contested that will at the time, a court would almost certainly have awarded her some part of it. Or Lilian might have been obliged to make some settlement to avoid protracted and public dispute. The scandal thing again, you see.

  ‘Lilian had failed her little sister then. If she made her own will not mentioning her sister, then Edna would be cut out for the second time, and Lilian would have failed her again. She made over the house to you, Lottie, because that was something she could settle in a straightforward way and there were tax advantages. A decent legacy still went to your father, Lottie, didn’t it? I have been to the probate office, by the way, and got a copy of the will. The residue of her considerable estate was left to her sister Edna Walters. Lilian didn’t feel she was being unfair to her own descendants. You’d been taken care of. Besides, you weren’t in need. You were young, Lottie, and your father not short of money. But Lilian knew Edna was in desperate need and she carried the extra pressure of guilt. The nearer you get to death, the more the sins of years ago return to haunt you.’

  She hesitated and we all waited. ‘Lilian felt she had cheated her sister,’ Jessica said softly. ‘After she herself was widowed she had a long time, sitting alone in this house, to think about it.’

  Unexpectedly Lottie burst out, ‘It was that damn solicitor! I told him, when Lilian’s will was read, that there was no one else, only my dad and me. Dad’s Auntie Edna must have died years ago. But he said that in the absence of a death certificate we must make all effort to trace my grandmother’s sister. We could apply to have her declared dead if all attempts failed, but that could be years from now. I thought it stupid and told him so. But he put a notice in The Times and some other papers. You know the sort of thing, you’ve seen them. “Anyone knowing the whereabouts or having information . . .” That sort of thing. Mad old Edna didn’t see it, of course.’

  ‘But Henry Culpeper did,’ Jessica said softly.

  ‘He bloody would,’ said Lottie bitterly. ‘If he hadn’t, none of this . . .’

  Jessica looked at me. ‘It gave Henry a terrible shock to read it. He’d never forgotten my mother. He’d always hoped that eventually she’d found happiness with someone else somewhere. The thought that Edna might still be alive began to obsess him. He needed to know not just where she was but if she was happy or if she needed help. The idea came into his head that he could hire detectives himself. But at the same time, he wanted to keep it in the family.’

  Jessica shrugged. ‘Henry is a man of his generation, after all. The instinct to bury scandal is still there. It’s not so strong but it’s like the remains of a once-virulent disease lingering in the body. We don’t throw off the way we were bro
ught up. Then he remembered that you, Adam, knew a young couple who ran a detective agency locally. What’s more, one of them was Charlotte Forester, Lilian’s granddaughter. You couldn’t keep it more in the family than that. The Forester family also had a powerful interest in finding Edna, so no effort would be spared.’

  ‘He wrote to my father and to the solicitor,’ mumbled Lottie. ‘He told them what he meant to do and my dad said that was all right then; Duane and I would look into it without letting the whole world know about it. My dad’s got a way of burying bad news, too. He didn’t know the whole world in the shape of her . . .’ A ferocious glare came my way.

  ‘It was a bad choice, anyway,’ I said. ‘Henry didn’t stop to think how much the prospect of Edna turning up might horrify Lottie or his own grandchildren. Lottie envisaged money from her grandmother’s estate being handed over to someone she’d never heard of. Adam and Becky feared he might write some provision for Edna into his own will. They didn’t know the details of the relationship between Henry and Edna, of course. They just thought she must be an old flame.’

  ‘We feared more than that! Old flames have got married before now,’ rasped Adam. ‘Look at the websites and magazine features that reunite old pals. Middle-aged and elderly people, who haven’t given one another a thought for years, get in touch and suddenly decide they can’t live without each other. Gramps sits in that great house all on his own except for Alice. He tolerates her because he needs her, but she bosses him around and he doesn’t really like it. Becky and I know he’s lonely. We visit him but it’s not enough. It was bad enough when Jessica appeared a few years back with some tale of being the daughter of old friends. We thought it fishy then and should have done something about it. But well, her visits kept Gramps happy so we decided not to interfere. But there’s a limit to how many people we could accept turning up on the doorstep! Who knows what he might do? He might grab a chance to remarry and give Alice the boot.’