‘I’ve seen her,’ I said.
‘Well, it seems she’s going to marry Lindley Simpson, the MP.’
‘Jesus, this is making my head hurt.’
‘The Parkers did very well for themselves, didn’t they? But you were threatening to bring it all down. You and your blessed Great-Uncle Samuel. So Hadfield set about finishing the Buckleys off completely.’
‘I never trusted him anyway, not really.’
Rachel laughed. ‘I know you didn’t. But you men — you don’t listen to what your hearts are telling you.’
And then I had to ask her the thing I needed to know most. ‘What about Laura?’
She smiled, and her fingertips moved in my palm. ‘I’ll let her talk to you for herself. She’s here, waiting to see you. She has something to explain.’
I groaned. ‘Not more explanations. I can’t stand it.’
And then she came in, the woman calling herself Laura Jenner. She carried no flowers and no chocolates, not even a bunch of grapes. And she spared no time beating about the bush.
‘My name isn’t Laura Jenner, of course,’ she said.
‘I know. You’re a Parker.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘Not at all. I’m Karen Mills.’
In my woozy state, the name didn’t click at first. I knew I’d heard it before, but couldn’t place it.
‘I was Samuel Longden’s secretary,’ she said. ‘His personal assistant.’
Karen Mills? Who had mentioned that name first? Frank Chaplin? Or had it been Leo Parker? Then I remembered how it fitted.
‘You were in the car with Alison when she was killed.’
She nodded. ‘I was driving, in fact. Alison was going shopping in Birmingham, spending Samuel’s money, but she didn’t like taking the train. She used me as a chauffeur sometimes. I didn’t enjoy that very much, but Samuel was always pleased when we were together, and he was paying me well. So I was driving her car that morning, a sporty Toyota that Samuel bought her. Ridiculous, really — she was fifty years old by then, you know. But Samuel still thought of her as his young bride.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, Alison was a bit frightened of the car, and wanted me to drive her. We were on the A38, the dual carriageway stretch between the A5 roundabout and Moneymore. I suppose I might have been going too fast, but it was the lorry veering across the central reservation that caused the crash. The car turned over when we hit it. Alison was killed instantly. But it took them about two hours to cut me out of the wreckage.’
‘At least you survived.’
‘Oh, I survived. With two broken arms and broken ribs and lacerations on my body from the shattered glass. And this.’ She flicked back her black hair to show the scar on her forehead. ‘But there were also internal injuries.’
‘So why did you stay in Lichfield?’
She shrugged. ‘I was still working for Samuel. He took me back on after I recovered. But he began to use me more as a researcher than a secretary. I had less and less to do with his business affairs, and I got more and more involved with his other interests. You can guess what I was researching for him, I suppose.’
‘The Buckley family.’
‘The Buckleys and the Parkers, yes. As well as the family history, Samuel particularly wanted to keep an eye on Leo Parker. But he also kept track of what you were doing, Chris. I was the one who found out about the dot-com venture, by talking to Dan Hyde when we identified him as your friend.’
‘Some friend.’ I was gradually focusing on what she was telling me. Was she the one person who could give me the answer to a question that had been perplexing me? ‘Samuel must have been tormented by the accident that killed Alison. He got a strange idea in his mind, from what I hear.’
‘What idea was that?’ she said.
‘He told Leo Parker that Alison was pregnant when she died. That she was carrying his son. But, as you said, she was fifty years old.’
Karen Mills shook her head and looked away. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong.’
‘But that’s what he told Frank, too.’
‘Frank Chaplin misunderstood. Of course Alison wasn’t pregnant.’ She paused. ‘But I was.’
‘You?’
Her manner was cooler and more distant now. I couldn’t see how I’d ever found her attractive. She told me the facts without passion, as if they referred to somebody else entirely.
‘Yes, I was six months gone at the time of the crash. There were no air bags on Alison’s car, and thanks to the impact of the steering wheel I wasn’t pregnant any more by the time they got me to hospital.’
‘The internal injuries.’
‘Exactly. A ruptured uterus, among other things. My unborn baby died in that car.’
There seemed to be little to say that would sound sympathetic. Not that she gave the impression of wanting sympathy.
‘But I still don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I might have got that part wrong. But Samuel specifically claimed it was his son who died in that crash on the A38.’
She nodded, her lips held in a tight line, and she began to gather herself ready to leave. I watched her movements, willing her to answer the final question that I didn’t want to ask. Samuel had been an old man already at the time of the crash, while Karen Mills had been no more than twenty-one.
‘As I told you,’ she said. ‘He was paying me very well.’
54
Nine months later, The Three Keys was published. A local publisher had agreed to take it on, counting on the publicity from Andrew Hadfield’s trial. The police had been successful in producing evidence only of manslaughter in Great-Uncle Samuel’s case, and of assault on me at Fosseway. There was nothing to connect Hadfield to the fire on board Kestrel. And Godfrey Wheeldon, of course, had died of a stroke.
But the details of the case had been enough to provoke interest for a while after Hadfield was sentenced to ten years in prison. There had been a certain amount of speculation in the papers, fuelled by ambiguous references by the prosecution to an ancient feud between the Buckleys and the Parkers. The speculation had been heightened by Hadfield’s steadfast refusal to offer a motive for his actions.
The result had been a happy publisher as the book sales took off, if only on a local basis. There was a curious, pleasing symmetry to the structure of the book. It started with William Buckley and his role as resident engineer at the birth of the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal, then dealt with Josiah and Hannah when the canal trade was at its height. Great-Uncle Samuel himself had become the subject of the third part of the book — he was the man who brought the story full circle.
One morning, buoyed by a glowing review in the Lichfield Echo, I decided to do a job I’d been putting off for years. I found a roll of black bin bags in the kitchen cupboard, and walked slowly upstairs. I hesitated for only a moment on the landing, bracing myself mentally, then pushed open the door of my parents’ bedroom. The trace of my mother’s perfume and the sight of my father’s suits in the wardrobe were no longer associated with any memories I wanted to keep. It was time to put the past aside.
I worked quickly, and didn’t stop to examine anything. It all went into the bin bags. Clothes, shoes, make-up, hair-brushes, even that pair of favourite cufflinks. I’d take everything to the tip.
It was only when I’d finished and the last bag was twisted tightly shut that I stopped, straightened up, and took a deep breath. I found I was sweating, and the room was full of an acrid dust that bit at the back of my throat. I remembered reading once that ninety per cent of house dust consists of fabric fibres or flakes of human skin, and the thought revolted me.
I threw the window wide open, the first time it had been opened for a long time. A cool breeze blew in from the street and stirred the curtains. And suddenly I laughed as I felt the wind on my face. I was sure I could see all those old memories being swept away over the roofs of Lichfield in a swirl of musty air.