Duplicity Page 29

  ‘He told me years ago what he’d done, but it was only about a hundred pounds or so he stole. They surely wouldn’t wait twenty years to arrest him for that.’

  ‘There must have been more to it than that, Mum.’ The detective had said something about a body being found, but she couldn’t believe that they suspected her father of being a murderer, and she was definitely not going to tell her mother about it.

  ‘I can’t cope with this, Dilly. I don’t know what to do. I need a man to be there for me. I need Roddy.’

  Her daughter agreed wholeheartedly with this. She, too, desperately needed Roddy. Then she remembered a man who would be more than delighted to give them support. ‘Why don’t we go to back to see Frank? I’m sure he’d know what to do.’

  ‘But I don’t want to bother him. It’s not long since he lost Helen, and we can’t saddle him with our troubles as well.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be glad to help, Mum. Go and pack a weekend bag for us and I’ll let the police know we’ll be down there if they need us.’

  ‘You’d better phone Frank, as well, to let him know we’re coming.’

  ‘No, he’ll worry about us till he knows what’s what. We’ll just go, he won’t mind.’

  After their evening meal, Frank Milne and Roddy were taking it easy by the fireside. They had spent the whole afternoon working in the garden, Roddy mowing the patch of lawn and trimming the edges, and Frank hoeing the paths and weeding the little rockery.

  ‘I’m glad that’s done,’ Frank observed suddenly into the comfortable silence that had fallen. ‘The longer I keep putting it off, the worse it gets. Helen always used to keep me up to the mark.’

  ‘With two of us now, though, we’ll manage fine.’

  ‘Once you’ve got a job, you won’t have time. Have you written to your mother yet?’

  ‘I will when I’m back on my feet properly. I don’t want her worrying.’

  ‘Roddy, lad, she’ll worry more about not hearing from you.’ The older man had been on the verge of calling her several times, but had thought better of it. If he alienated the boy, he’d most likely up tail and off.

  He closed his eyes again, thinking about the strange coincidences that had happened to him recently. First, though it had been in response to a letter, his son had turned up after years of more or less ignoring his mother and father; second, Roselle had appeared with Dilly out of the blue; third, Roddy had popped in and it was like having a son again. He was a lucky man, a very lucky man, especially having had a woman like Helen for a wife for almost fifty years.

  The doorbell rang, breaking into his pleasant thoughts, and even before Roddy was halfway to answer it, it rang sharply again. He couldn’t hear who it was, his hearing wasn’t good nowadays, but he was not left long to wonder. In came an avalanche of bodies, tangled through each other and making for his chair. It took him only a split second to recognise the older woman, and he struggled valiantly to get to his feet.

  ‘Don’t get up, Frank,’ the older woman laughed. ‘It’s just Dilly and me, and I see Roddy’s here already.’

  There was much hugging and kissing, and it didn’t escape the old man that Roddy, although obviously trying to fend his twin off at first, eventually gave an affectionate, if very brief, greeting.

  When the emotions had subsided a little, the explanations began, and by the time the young man went out to get fish and chips for four, he and Frank were acquainted with the stark facts of Brian’s arrest and, like the women, they could not believe it.

  ‘I knew he’d embezzled some money,’ Roselle remarked sadly, ‘But he swore it was only a hundred pounds or so, and it was over twenty years ago. I wouldn’t have thought the police would still have been looking for him for that.’

  Dilly had not taken much part in the discussion - the other three mentally excusing her for three different reasons - but now she said, ‘It wasn’t just the money Mum. That ‘tec said Dad was wanted for … murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ The word was ejaculated on three levels -contralto, baritone and bass - as the others voiced their horror.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what he said. And he said Dad’s name wasn’t really Brian Lewis. It was Robin Pritchard.’

  The worry disappeared from Frank’s face. ‘That’s it, then,’ he declared, positively. ‘They’ve got the wrong man. I knew there had to be some mistake. This Pritchard must look a bit like Brian, and some stupid bobby’s got it into his head that Brian is guilty.’

  Four very relieved people went to bed then, Roddy opting for the old bed-settee to give his mother and Dilly the bed he had been using. Not one of them, however, had a decent night’s sleep, each going over the events of the day as he or she knew them, and coming to the conclusion that the trauma could be put behind them now, although a tiny niggle of doubt refused to be ignored.

  The following forenoon brought a telephone call from Peterhead to tell Roselle that her husband had been taken to Belfast, to be charged with, and eventually to stand trial for, embezzlement and murder. At that point, the receiver fell from her lifeless hands, to be picked up by Frank, who more or less took over the role of a defence lawyer.

  ‘There has definitely been a grave mistake,’ he said, authoritatively. ‘I have known Brian Lewis for over twenty years, and I know him to be an honest, hardworking, loving husband and father. Perhaps he did embezzle a small amount of money when he was much younger, but there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that he has never, ever, committed a murder. What?’ His face chalk-white, he listened for several minutes before replacing the receiver and almost collapsing into his chair.

  ‘What did they say?’ Roddy demanded. ‘What’s wrong, Frank?’

  Casting an apologetic glance at Roselle, the old man said, ‘It’s all true, I’m afraid. He’s admitted everything. Oh, God, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

  His arms round his mother and his sister, Roddy said,

  ‘I can’t understand. Why did he have to embezzle any money, for a start? And who did he murder? And why?’ He looked round at Roselle accusingly. ‘Did you know anything about it?’

  She plumped into the other armchair, face drawn, eyes displaying a deep emotion. ‘I knew about the money. He told me … I heard him praying when we were in the hospital waiting to hear what was wrong with Dilly when she had meningitis, remember? He was asking God not to punish Dilly for the crimes he had committed. It didn’t really mean much at the time, I was so worried, but I thought about it later and asked him. He said he’d stolen money, but he’d done it for me and you two, so we could have a better life.’

  ‘He never said anything about a murder, though?’

  ‘If he had, I’d have told the police.’ She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts, and added, ‘Maybe I wouldn’t have, though - I loved him too much.’

  A brooding silence fell, Frank wishing that he could do something to help Roselle, Dilly praying that it was all just a nightmare, Roddy wondering how any man could have lived a normal family life for so long after having killed somebody. Roselle herself was hardly capable of any rational thought, until a tiny flash of memory suddenly made sense.

  ‘Whatever happened,’ she murmured, ‘that was what made me forget everything that had happened before it. What Brian wanted me to forget.’ Her eyes glazed for a moment, as if she were trying to recall it. ‘He took us away from here after Helen told me Andrew was a policeman in Northern Ireland. It’s all fitting now. He’d been scared Andrew would recognise him if he ever came to see you, Frank.’

  Frank’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Andrew did recognise him. When he was here, Roselle. He was looking through Helen’s photo albums, and he asked if I’d mind if he took the snap. He sent it back very quickly, though.’

  ‘He’d likely taken a copy,’ Roddy pointed out.

  ‘But I never gave him
your address, Roselle, so he couldn’t have …’

  ‘I wrote it in Helen’s address book.’

  ‘So my son’s responsible for breaking up your family. Oh, Roselle, you don’t know how sorry I am.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Frank.’ She leaned across and patted his hand. ‘It was Fate, and you know this? I’m glad. The murder must have had something to do with the money, and if he stole because of me and the twins -well, he wasn’t really to be trusted, was he?’

  Roddy stepped in now. ‘I think we’d better stop playing guessing games. We’ll likely find out soon enough what happened.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Brian Lewis - real name Robin Pritchard - was subjected to several days of questioning, over and over again, getting at the truth from a dozen different angles, until the police were in no doubt that he was guilty of all charges. On one point, however, he was adamant. ‘I refuse to give Roselle’s real name. She knew nothing about it.’

  Written Statement of Robin Pritchard

  It all started when I met Roselle waiting for a bus in a deluge of rain. I heard someone saying there had been an accident and all traffic had been held up. I asked if she would like to come for a coffee with me to pass the time and that was it. We made a date, even though we had both said we were married. She had a three-month-old daughter and I had a baby son, less than a week older.

  We fell madly in love, and kept seeing each other, though she always said she felt guilty. Another factor that drove us together was the fact that her husband was often away on business, and my wife was involved with so many charities that she was hardly ever at home.

  I began to dream of taking Roselle away, of buying a house somewhere and bringing up the children together. The trouble was, of course, that I couldn’t afford this, so I began to fiddle with my clients’ moneys. The old ladies, who trusted me implicitly, never knew that I was cheating them, and the hundreds of pounds soon grew into thousands , until I had enough to buy a new home for us somewhere else.

  Unfortunately, my boss had discovered that the books did not tally, and suspecting that I was the culprit, he came to confront me. Young and hot-blooded, I let fly with my fist and knocked him to the ground, but he hit his head on the corner of the dining-room table and never got up again.

  First making sure that he had definitely stopped breathing, I dragged him to the kitchen, lifted the trapdoor to the cellar and tipped him in. I was lucky. He had told nobody of his suspicions and when the auditors discovered the discrepancies, they thought he was the thief and had run away to avoid being caught. He was a bachelor, so no one else suffered.

  I might never have had the courage to carry out the plan I had made if it had not been for Fate. A gang, who pretended to be IRA, had been experimenting with explosives, and one night they decided to try them out on Roselle’s street. Her husband was away at the time, and I had just left her when the noise began. Realising what was happening, I ran back just as the house next door got it, and I managed to get her and the baby away a few seconds before her house was flattened.

  My wife had gone on a week’s holiday with an old friend, so I got my son and told the babysitter to let my wife know when she came home that I had taken him. I also took all the false identity papers I’d had made in readiness and, under our new names, my family left Belfast for good - a man and his wife with twin babies.

  Luckily for me, Roselle had been so traumatised by the bombing that her previous life was blotted from her mind, and the children, of course, were too young to remember anything. I have lived an exemplary life ever since, and the only thing I have ever regretted was the accidental killing of an innocent man, although I did toy with the idea of finishing off the detective who arrested me, but only because he was putting an end to my idyll.

  Signed Brian Lewis

  which I will remain till the end of my life, but if you insist -

  Signed Robin Pritchard

  The statement read, agreed upon and signed, he had two questions to ask. The first was, ‘I can’t understand how you found the body’, to which he was told that workmen had found it after his wife reported a vile smell coming up from the cellar, something that had never crossed his mind.

  His second question was, ‘How did you manage to find me, after all this time?’

  A detective he had never seen before stepped forward now. ‘I saw a snap of you in a photograph album.’

  ‘Where? Not in Cruden Bay I’m sure.’

  ‘In my father’s house.’

  ‘How did he come to have a snap of me? Do I know

  him?’

  ‘You knew him very well at one time - and my mother.’

  ‘The only person who ever took photos of me and my family was …’

  ‘My mother, Helen Milne.’ Andrew was taken aback by the half-strangled laugh that escaped the prisoner.

  ‘Helen Milne? Even after her death she’s causing trouble for me.’ He stopped, looking sheepishly at the other man. ‘That was unforgivable, and I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘My mother never knew about you.’

  ‘I’m truly sorry. But what about Frank?’

  ‘He is very well, thank you.’ After a brief hesitation, clearly wondering whether or not to say it, Andrew went on, ‘As a matter of fact, he is doing what you should be doing - looking after your family.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  After being told all that had happened, and why and when it had happened, Brian said, seriously, ‘I’m glad he’s looking after them.’

  ‘And they’re looking after him,’ Andrew pointed out.

  ‘How is Roselle bearing up?’

  ‘I believe she has decided to stay there and be Father’s housekeeper. He’s getting a bit doddery in his old age.’

  ‘I’m glad she’ll be with him. He and your mother were very good to us when our Dilly was so ill.’ Brian stopped momentarily, recalling events he had forgotten for many years, and then pulled a wry face. ‘What about them? Dilly and Roddy, I mean. How are they dealing with this?’

  ‘Much better than you’d imagine, I think. Knowing they’re not twins has made a big difference to them. Dad says they’re—’ He broke off, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Brian assured him. ‘I knew they loved each other, have done since they were kids, and that love grew deeper as they grew older. That’s another thing I regret, now I come to think about it. I should have told them the truth long ago, but at least they can get together properly now. I’m pleased for them.’

  ‘So am I. They make a lovely couple.’

  At that precise moment, Dilly and Roddy were in Cruden Bay packing all the personal items they were being allowed to keep, before the house was sold. With the proceeds from the sale of the contents of the rented house, plus what was left in his London bank account and which had been gaining interest every year, most of the money he had embezzled would be made up.

  ‘I can’t really believe this,’ Dilly said now. ‘It seems too good to be true, and we can be married and live happily ever after, just as I always knew we would.’

  ‘It’s not all happiness, though,’ Roddy reminded her, ‘but thank goodness a murderer doesn’t get hanged nowadays.’

  ‘But Dad’s not a real murderer. It was an accident.’

  She looked so woebegone that he was sorry for pricking her balloon. ‘Of course it was, and the court will take that into account. Now, have we got everything, do you think? We’d better be going if we’re going to catch that train.’

  While he turned the key in the lock, however, he couldn’t help thinking that their future wouldn’t be as rosy as Dilly believed. No matter how innocent they were - it was their father who had told the world that they were twins - public opinion would probably be against them. People would believe that they had been lovers for years, and they’d
have to be really strong to withstand all the knowing looks and whispered scandal.

  ‘You’re awful quiet, Roddy,’ Dilly said, as they walked away from what had been their home. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Looking at her, his heart swelled with love and he cast aside all his doubts. ‘Nothing’s wrong, Dil,’ he smiled. ‘In fact, I’ve never been so happy in all my life.’

  Roselle was engrossed in the book she was reading, and as Frank Milne looked across at her bent head, some silver hairs already showing in the brown, he thanked God for his good luck in having such a woman, nearly as industrious as his Helen had been in her younger days, willing to look after him and his house, as well as her twins. He shook his head at his stupidity. They weren’t real twins, and it was a blessing things had turned out so well for them, too. By the look of things, it wouldn’t be long before they were getting married and setting up house on their own, and he wished them all the luck in the world.

  It was poor Roselle that was getting the rough end of the stick. The man she’d thought was her husband wasn’t her husband at all, and was going to be locked up for who knew how long. The man who had been her real husband had declared her dead after seven years and married somebody else. That didn’t seem to bother her, though.

  Of course, Brian had come off worst of all, but it was his own fault, wasn’t it? Stealing was a crime, and punching a man hard enough to knock him down wasn’t much better. He’d be punished for that, as he should be, but it was more than likely that Roselle would be there for him when he came out of prison.

  Not that he would live to see that, Frank thought, smiling a little. He didn’t care, he’d had a good life and he wasn’t done yet. Roselle, the daughter he had never had, had told him he should take up bowling, and by Jove, he might just do that. He wasn’t seventy yet, and it would be something to look forward to.