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

  Of course, you know how bad I’ve been—it’s not as though I’ve kept it a secret from you, and it would be ridiculous of me to try and deny it now. The police have been looking for me for a long time, and with good reason. I’m a thief and a criminal and probably worse besides. I’ve done things that any right-thinking person would be ashamed of, and felt no remorse—at least until recently. But Angela, I’m not a murderer. I was tried and convicted, and I escaped from prison by a stroke of pure luck, but if they’d succeeded in hanging me they’d have hanged the wrong man. I spent ten years and more running away from ‘justice,’ as they like to call it, with no possible means of clearing my name. I was marked down as bad, and in a fit of defiance—rage—I don’t know what—I went on to show them just how bad I could be. If they thought me guilty then it seemed to me that I might as well live up to the description. So that’s what I did—at least until I met you. You were kind to me even though I’d deceived you, and I can’t tell you how much it lifted my spirits to feel that there was one person at least who saw a little good in me, when everybody else, including myself, considered me to be wholly bad.

  Now I’d like to ask you to be kind to me one last time. I’ve never been one to abandon hope, and it seems to me that you’re the only one I have left, so I’m afraid I’m going to be terribly selfish once again and ask for your help. Selina did not die at my hands. Of that, at least, I’m completely innocent. I don’t expect you to believe my word, of course—the police didn’t, after all—but I should be so very obliged if you would consider taking a little time to look into the matter yourself and to come to your own conclusions. I was found guilty on quite circumstantial evidence, and I should like as much as anyone for the real culprit to be brought to justice. It oughtn’t to matter, but while I’m still alive to care about it, I’d like to think there was a chance that one day this particular stain on my character might be removed.

  I know there’s nothing you can do to help me now—that’s not what I’m asking, and in fact I’ve instructed Charles not to communicate with you until after my death. You’ve had quite enough on your own plate and it would hardly be kind of me to add to it. But I will confess to feeling comfort at the idea that someone might be prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt long enough to try and find out what really happened that day, and I should very much like that someone to be you. I know you have a deep sense of justice, and won’t be swayed by all the other things you know to my disadvantage, and I believe if anyone can discover the truth and clear my name, you can. Then perhaps one day you will come to think better of me than you do now.

  If you do decide to help me, Charles can give you all the details of the case. If you don’t, then there’s no harm done. For myself, I wish you every happiness.

  Yours ever,

  Edgar

  Angela’s first reaction on reading the letter was one of anger. Was it never to end? Was she never to be free of him, even after his death? How dare he call her darling and demand her help, as though none of the last few months had ever happened? As though he had not hidden his murderous past from her until it was revealed so dramatically that day in court? As though he had never offered himself up as a sacrifice and put her in his debt forever?

  Here her anger receded as quickly as it had arisen and she sagged a little, because of course that was the real heart of the matter: her own deep-seated guilt at having allowed him to do it. She was less angry with him than she was with herself. She was under a great obligation to him, and they both knew it, although—drat the man—he had not been so tactless as even to hint at it in his letter. He had not asked her to return any favour, but had expressed his request merely in terms of her doing him a kindness. There was no begging or pleading, and—except for the initial endearment—no indelicate hinting at anything more than past friendship to embarrass her. Had the letter come from anyone else she would most likely have been moved to pity and agreed to the request immediately.

  But why had he asked her to investigate the murder of his wife at all? Surely he must be guilty. Of course he was guilty. Why, the alternative was unthinkable, for if he really were innocent of murder then that made his sacrifice for her all the greater, and all the more incomprehensible. Just then Angela was struck by a thought which had not occurred to her before, and she drew in a sharp breath. Why had she never realized it? Of course! The reason Edgar Valencourt must have come forward and confessed to the murder of Davie Marchmont was because he believed that she had done it. There was no other explanation for it, for had he believed in the culpability of a mysterious third party then he would most likely have assumed that Angela’s defence would produce some evidence of it, and that Angela would be acquitted on balance. But the fact that he had stepped in pointed to his belief that there was no evidence, for the real murderer was already standing there in the dock. She had told him herself that she had been frightened she might kill her husband one day, but that did not mean she had done it. On the contrary, she had run away to avoid the temptation. Davie’s death had been entirely his own fault, caused by his own greed and stupidity.

  At that her anger returned. She had not thought it possible to resent Edgar Valencourt any more than she already did, but the idea of his suspecting her of being as bad as himself and patronizing her with this grand gesture of his irritated her to a quite extraordinary degree. She was on the point of tearing the letter up as she had originally intended when Marthe came in with the tea things, perhaps suspecting that her mistress was in need of a restorative. Angela had no desire to work off her fit of pique before Marthe and expose herself to the girl’s raised eyebrows, and so she put the letter aside and took a cup. The tea went some way to calming her temper, and on reflection she began to think that she was being somewhat irrational. Perhaps some fresh air would clear her head.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said to Marthe, and without further ado went out. In a very few minutes she was in the Park, and almost without intending it found herself drifting towards the Serpentine and the bench on which Valencourt had joined her on that fateful day all those months ago. He had told her that he was going to retire, and she had believed him—for a little while, at least. But he had had no chance to keep his promise, for later that day everything had gone horribly wrong and nothing had been the same since.

  She hesitated, then sat down. The sun was shining but there was a brisk breeze which chilled the air, and Angela pulled her coat about her. A few hardy children were throwing themselves into the water with shrieks of glee and she watched them idly for a few minutes. Her anger had dissipated now, and she was merely thoughtful. Quite aside from all other considerations, after her trial she had vowed to give up detecting, for her conscience would no longer allow her to act on the side of justice when she had lied under oath in court. On the other hand, she did owe Valencourt an enormous debt of obligation for his having induced her to tell that lie—for there was no doubt at all that she would have been found guilty and hanged had he not done what he did. But which argument held the greater force? She wrestled with this for several minutes, hoping that some unassailable point would strike her which would demonstrate beyond all doubt that she ought to keep well out of the thing, but it was no use; her sense of fairness would intrude and insist that his having been prepared to give up his life for her trumped her delicacy of conscience hands down.

  She sighed. If she had not known him, he had certainly known her well enough to be sure that she would do as he asked, if only out of a sense of duty. And yet what good could it do? He was dead now and would never know whether his name were cleared or not—and she was convinced it would not be, for surely he must be guilty. There was no doubt that he was an accomplished enough liar for his protestations of innocence to sound believable enough, but by his own admission he was a criminal, and a mostly unrepentant one at that. The investigation would be a waste of time and would result in nothing useful, she was sure of it. His request for help was just yet another way of drawing her in ev
en after his death. And yet she must do it. Little as she liked it, it was the only way to repay her debt.

  ‘I AM RELIEVED to see that my first letter didn’t frighten you off,’ said Mr. Gilverson, as Angela took a seat. ‘This is an unusual case, and it didn’t occur to me until afterwards that perhaps I ought to have been a little less abrupt.’

  ‘No, it didn’t frighten me off,’ lied Angela. ‘The letter happened to arrive while I was away, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, it’s not at all the sort of thing I am accustomed to dealing with, which is why my approach was perhaps less than sensitive, shall we say.’

  ‘What do you usually deal with?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a very quiet practice I have here. Most of my clients are of very long standing, and come to me for wills and deeds and contracts, and that kind of thing. As a matter of fact, I shall be retiring soon and giving it all up for a life in the country.’

  ‘How delightful,’ said Angela politely. She had the oddest feeling that she had met Charles Gilverson before, and was racking her brains trying to place him. She had arrived at his office in some trepidation, still half-expecting to be confronted with his knowledge of her perjury and presented with a demand for money, but Mr. Gilverson looked in no way like a blackmailer (whatever a blackmailer looked like), and indeed had a polite and genial manner which went some way towards reassuring her that she was not about to be drawn into an unpleasant dispute of a financial nature.

  ‘So, then, I take it my unruly nephew has managed to persuade you to look into this sorry mess,’ said the solicitor. ‘He always did have a way with words, although much good it did him in this case.’

  ‘Your nephew?’ said Angela in surprise. She looked more closely at Mr. Gilverson. So that was why she had thought him familiar. There was a distinct resemblance between the two, and now she saw that he had the same deep blue eyes as Valencourt. Presumably it was a family trait. The revelation did nothing to make her feel any more at ease, however.

  ‘Yes. I am his lawyer as well as his uncle,’ said Mr. Gilverson, ‘although I fear his activities in later years were outside my usual sphere of expertise, and so I had rather washed my hands of him until last January, when he wrote to me from prison with this very unusual request.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Angela, nonplussed.

  ‘Now, I shall begin by being abrupt again,’ said Mr. Gilverson. ‘Please understand that I did not call you here to discuss the death of your husband or the events of the trial last January. I think we may consider that matter closed, and whatever may or may not have occurred in court is not the question at hand today. I am not interested in making you uncomfortable by resurrecting the thing, so please do not worry.’

  Angela took this to mean that he understood her fear of blackmail and was reassuring her, but would not allow him to labour under any misapprehension.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘However, before we dispense with the subject entirely I should like to make it quite clear to you that I was not in any way responsible for my husband’s death.’

  She would have liked to explain further, but knew she would not come out well in the story, and so she left it at that.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Mr. Gilverson with a smile. ‘Now,’ he went on briskly. ‘To the present matter. As you know, in July of nineteen eighteen my nephew was put on trial for the murder of his wife. He maintained his innocence throughout, but of course, as you know only too well, the police do on occasion make mistakes, and a jury can hardly be expected to reach the correct conclusion when they are presented with only a limited set of information. The situation was not helped by the fact that he did not receive the support of his family, most of whom turned their backs on him and left him to his fate. The outcome was therefore inevitable: he was found guilty and sentenced to death. It was his good fortune that a few days before he was due to hang there was a disturbance at the prison at which he was being held, during which several prisoners escaped, including my nephew. He went on the run, as I believe they call it, and when I next heard of him, he was on the Continent and was being sought by the police for the theft of an emerald necklace and bracelet from some minor Austrian aristocrat.’

  ‘Had he ever done anything of the sort before?’ said Angela curiously.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Mr. Gilverson. ‘There were one or two scrapes in his student days, I believe, but nothing quite as serious as this. Still, it seems the life of a thief appealed to him, and he continued with it until his arrest in January of this year.’

  ‘Didn’t the police ever realize he was the same man they wanted for murder?’

  ‘Not as far as I can tell,’ said Mr. Gilverson. ‘And why should they? Unlike theft, murder is not the sort of thing in which one generally engages as a career. They are two quite different types of crime. There was no reason for the police to think that Edgar de Lisle and Edgar Valencourt were one and the same. Of course, there was always the possibility that someone might see the name and put two and two together, but it seems they never did.’

  ‘Were you in communication with him while he was on the run?’

  ‘On occasion. Not all the time, of course, but every once in a while I would hear from him.’

  ‘And you never told the police of his whereabouts?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr. Gilverson. ‘Strange as it seems—and not that he deserved it—I was fond of my nephew, and didn’t want to see him hanged. A terrible breach of ethics on the part of a solicitor, of course, but in my experience, whenever the head and the heart come into conflict, the heart wins every time.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Angela without thinking.

  Mr. Gilverson regarded her with seeming sympathy.

  ‘I see we understand one another,’ he said.

  Angela looked away, for his eyes made her uncomfortable. He went on:

  ‘So, then, we come to last January, after my nephew turned himself in and was arrested. I visited him in prison before he escaped again, and he told me then that he thought he had found someone who might be prepared to investigate Selina’s murder. I won’t deny I was surprised when he gave me your name, but he seemed certain that you would be kind enough to accept his request for help.’

  Angela opened her mouth to speak, but knew not what to say. She longed to know what had gone on between the two of them in prison. More must have been said than Gilverson had told her, surely. How much did the solicitor know? Obviously he knew of her acquaintance with Edgar Valencourt, in which case he must also know that she had lied about it in court. Did he believe Valencourt to be guilty of Davie’s murder? It was impossible to broach the subject without everything coming out, however, and so she gave it up.

  ‘Do you believe he murdered his wife?’ she said instead.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Mr. Gilverson.

  ‘But the rest of his family do?’

  ‘So one would suppose.’

  Angela looked up, suddenly alert.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Do you think they believe him innocent too? But then why should they have turned their backs on him, as you said?’

  ‘That is a very good question,’ said Mr. Gilverson. ‘Yes, a very good question indeed.’

  He had her curiosity now.

  ‘You had better tell me the whole story,’ she said at last.

  ‘VERY WELL,’ SAID Mr. Gilverson. He laid his hands on the desk in front of him and placed his fingertips together. ‘First of all, I had better tell you something about the de Lisles. The French side of the family are descended from Louis the Fourteenth—or so they claim; whether that is true or not I cannot tell you. However, what is certain is that the de Lisles were rich landowners who owned much of the wine-growing country around Rheims and developed a certain fame in France as producers of champagne. In recent years they formed alliances in the old mediaeval manner—that is, through marriage—with one or two great English families, which had the effect of increasing their fortunes considerably. The mother of R
oger de Lisle, Edgar’s father, was English, as was Edgar’s own mother, Evelyn, and the family spent much of the time in England and in other places around the Continent.

  ‘When the war broke out, the family left Rheims, which was too close to the front line for comfort, and decamped to Kent for the duration. Their house, Greystone Chase, had originally belonged to the English part of the family on Roger’s side, and was only one of the de Lisles’ many properties here and abroad, so it was merely a case of removing from one home to another. It was fortunate, in fact, that they had such a home to remove to, for during the war their house just outside Rheims was completely destroyed and the vineyards laid to waste.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Angela.

  ‘Yes, they had a lucky escape, as I understand it,’ said Mr. Gilverson. ‘Still, it did not prevent Roger and Evelyn de Lisle from spending the war in comfort. They lived at Greystone Chase, as did their eldest son, Godfrey, who spent most of the war in London behind a desk, since he was exempted from active service following a bout of pneumonia in his youth, which left him with weak lungs. Edgar spent some time in France on intelligence duties, although he also fought on the front line, and by all accounts served his country honourably.

  ‘It was while he was home on leave in nineteen sixteen that Edgar met and married Selina Lacey. She was the orphan daughter of a Canterbury family, and was very young when they met. She was under the guardianship of her brother Henry, who was not much older than she and pretty much allowed her to run wild. He was certainly more than happy to allow her to marry into the de Lisle family, since the Laceys, although once wealthy, had come down in the world, and Selina brought almost nothing with her.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Angela. ‘Did the de Lisles approve of the arrangement? I thought you said they liked to use marriage as a way to increase their fortunes, rather than admit people to the family who could not benefit them.’