The Sculptress Part 30

"I've no objections," he said, placing it on the table and returning to his place by the door.

Olive prodded it towards Roz.

"Read it. He says the chances of tracing my nephew are virtually nil."

She reached for another cigarette, her eyes watching Roz closely. There was a strange awareness in them as if she knew something that Roz didn't, and Roz found it disturbing. Olive, it seemed, now held the initiative in this unnatural gla.s.shouse relations.h.i.+p of theirs but why and when she had taken it, Roz couldn't begin to fathom. It was she, wasn't it, who had engineered this meeting against the odds?

Surprisingly, Crew had handwritten his letter in a neat, sloping script, and Roz could only a.s.sume he had composed it out of office hours and decided not to waste company time and money by having it typed. She found that oddly offensive.

Dear Olive, I understand from Miss Rosalind Leigh that you are acquainted with some of the terms of your late father's will, princ.i.p.ally those concerning Amber's illegitimate son. The bulk of the estate has been left in trust to the child although other provisions have been made in the event of failure on our part to trace him. Thus far, my people have met with little success and it is fair to say that we are increasingly pessimistic about our chances. We have established that your nephew emigrated to Australia with his family some twelve years ago when he was little more than a baby but, following their move from a rented flat in Sydney where they remained for the first six months, the trail goes cold. Unfortunately the child's adopted surname is a common one and we have no guarantee that he and his family remained in Australia. Nor can we rule out the possibility that the family decided to add to their name or change it entirely. Carefully worded advertis.e.m.e.nts in several Australian newspapers have produced no response.

Your father was most insistent that we should be circ.u.mspect in how we traced the child. His view, which I endorsed wholeheartedly, was that great damage could be done if there was any publicity a.s.sociated with the bequest. He was very conscious of the shock his grandson might suffer if he learnt through an incontinent media campaign of his tragic a.s.sociation with the Martin family. For this reason, we have kept and will continue to keep your nephew's name a closely guarded secret. We are pressing on with our enquiries but, as your father stipulated a limited period for searches, the likelihood is that I, as executor, will be obliged to adopt the alternative provisions specified.

These are a range of donations to hospitals and charities which care entirely for the needs and welfare of children.

Although your father never instructed me to keep the terms of his will from you, he was very concerned that you should not be distressed by them. It was for this reason that I thought it wiser to keep you in ignorance of his intentions.

Had I known that you were already in possession of some of the facts, I should have corresponded sooner.

Trusting you are in good health, Yours sincerely, Peter Crew Roz refolded the letter and pushed it back to Olive.

"You said last time that it mattered to you if your nephew was found, but you didn't enlarge on it." She glanced towards the two officers, but they were showing little interest in anything except the floor. She leaned forward and lowered her voice.

"Are you going to talk to me about it now?"

Olive jammed her cigarette angrily into the ashtray. She made no attempt to keep her voice down.

"My father was a terrible MAN." Even in speech the word carried capital letters.

"I couldn't see it at the time but I've had years to think about it and I can see it now." She nodded towards the letter.

"His conscience was troubling him. That's why he wrote that will. It was his way of feeling good about himself after the appalling damage he'd done. Why else would he leave his money to Amber's baby when he never cared s.h.i.+t for Amber herself?"

Roz looked at her curiously.

"Are you saying your father did the murders?" she murmured.

Olive snorted.

"I'm saying, why use Amber's baby to whitewash himself?"

"What had he done that needed whitewas.h.i.+ng?"

But Olive didn't answer.

Roz waited a moment, then tried a different tack.

"You said your father would always leave money to family if he could.

Does that mean there's other family he could have left it to? Or did you hope he'd leave it to you?"

Olive shook her head.

"There's no one. Both my parents were only children. And he couldn't leave it to me, could me?"

She slammed her fist on the table, her voice rising furiously.

"Otherwise everyone would kill their f.u.c.king families!" The great ugly face leered at Roz. YOU WANTED TO, mouthed the sausage lips.

"Keep the volume down, Sculptress," said Mr. Allenby mildly, *or the visit finishes now."

Roz pressed a finger and thumb to her eyelids where she could feel her headache coming back. Olive Martin took an axe she tried to thrust the thought away, but it wouldn't go -and gave her mother forty whacks.

"I don't understand why the will makes you so angry," she said, forcing her voice to sound steady.

"If family was important to him who else is there except his grandson?"

Olive stared at the table, her jaw jutting aggressively.

"It's the principle," she muttered.

"Dad's dead. What does it matter now what people think?"

Roz recalled something Mrs. Hopwood had said.

"I've always a.s.sumed he must have had an affaira" She took a shot in the dark.

"Do you have a half-brother or sister somewhere? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Olive found this amusing.

"Hardly. He'd have to have had a mistress for that and he didn't like women." She gave a sardonic laugh.

"He did like MEN though." Again the strange emphasis on the word.

Roz was very taken aback.

"Are you saying he was a h.o.m.os.e.xual?"

"I'm saying," said Olive with exaggerated patience, *that the only person I ever saw make Dad's face light up was our nextdoor neighbour, Mr. Clarke. Dad used to get quite skittish whenever he was around."

She lit another cigarette.

"I thought it was rather sweet at the time, but only because I was too b.l.o.o.d.y thick to recognise a couple of queens when I saw them. Now I just think it was sick. It's no wonder my mother hated the Clarkes."

"They moved after the murders," said Roz thoughtfully.

"Vanished one morning without leaving a forwarding address.

No one knows what happened to them or where they went."

"Doesn't surprise me. I expect she was behind it."

"Mrs. Clarke?"

"She never liked him coming round to our house. He used to hop across the fence at the back and he and Dad would shut themselves in Dad's room and not come out for hours. I should think it must have worried her sick after the murders when Dad was all alone in the house."

Images, gleaned from things people had said, chased themselves across Roz's mind. Robert Martin's vanity and his Peter Pan looks; he and Ted Clarke being as close as brothers; the room at the back with the bed in it; Gwen's keeping up appearances; her frigid flinching from her husband; the secret that needed hiding. It all made sense, she thought, but did it affect anything if Olive hadn't known it at the time?

"Was Mr. Clarke his only lover, do you think?"

"How would I know? Probably not," she went on, contradicting herself immediately.

"He had his own back door in that room he used. He could have been out after rent-boys every night for all any of us would have known about it. I hate him."

She looked as if she were about to erupt again but Roz's look of alarm gave her pause.

"I hated him," she repeated, before lapsing into silence.

"Because he killed Gwen and Amber?" asked Roz for the second time.

But Olive was dismissive: "He was at work all day. Everyone knows that."

Olive Martin took an axea Are you raising her expectations by telling her your book will get her out?

"Did your lover kill them?" She felt she was being clumsy, asking the wrong questions, in the wrong way, at the wrong time.

Olive sn.i.g.g.e.red.

"What makes you think I had a lover?"

"Someone made you pregnant."

"Oh, that." She was scornful.

"I lied about the abortion. I wanted the girls here to think I was attractive once." She spoke loudly as if intent on the officers hearing everything.

A cold fist of certainty squeezed at Roz's heart. Deedes had warned her of this four weeks ago.

"Then who was the man who sent you letters via Gary O'Brien?" she asked.

"Wasn't he your lover?"

Olive's eyes glittered like snakes' eyes.

"He was Amber's lover."

Roz stared at her.

"But why would he send letters to you?"

"Because Amber was too frightened to receive them herself.

She was a coward." There was a brief pause.

"Like my father."

"What was she frightened of?"

"My mother."

"What was your father frightened of?"

"My mother."

"And were you frightened of your mother?"

"No."

"Who was Amber's lover?"

"I don't know. She never told me."

"What was in his letters?"

"Love, I expect. Everyone loved Amber."

"Including you?"

"Oh, yes."

"And your mother. Did she love Amber?"

"Of course."

"That's not what Mrs. Hopwood says."

Olive shrugged.

"What would she know about it? She hardly knew us. She was always fussing over her precious Geraldine."

A sly smile crept about her mouth, making her ugly.

"What does anybody know about it now except me?"

Roz could feel the scales peeling from her eyes in slow and terrible disillusionment.

"Is that why you waited till your father died before you would talk to anyone? So that there'd be no one left to contradict you?"