The Illusion of Innocence by Jacqueline Jacques

Author:Jacqueline Jacques
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 111-1-11-111111-1
Publisher: Honno Press
Published: 2015-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Next morning a letter arrived from Ida Sutton, his ex-model and the new Mrs Fitzell. She told him that because of his father’s sad and cruel demise, Fitz and she had had a quiet wedding. As executor of the will and sole beneficiary, poor Fitz was now up to his ears sorting out the estate. He intended selling it all off, house and contents. ‘Imagine, Archie,’ she wrote in her crabbed little hand, ‘living in a house stuffed to the gunnels with outlandish things like monkey paws and shrunken heads! I would be scared witless. The place must be haunted, if only by Jeremiah himself? Think what a miserable ghost he must be, having died in that horrible way!’ Not that she and ‘Fitz’ believed in the supernatural. They were both thoroughly modern people. Give them fresh air and bicycles and they’d be content.

They were soon moving into one of the big new houses on the Woodford High Road. With Jeremiah’s money they wouldn’t need a mortgage. First priority, though, was to find his father’s murderer. She had seen Archie’s posters, and to spur more people to action they were putting up a £500 reward. That was the one good thing to come out of all this: they could afford to do that for poor Papa Fitzell. As for selling the collection, that was going to be a real ‘bind!’She had offered her bookkeeping skills to help, but dear Fitz, bless him, wouldn’t hear of it. It was a dirty job, he declared, and she wasn’t to soil her pretty hands. She did have pretty hands, didn’t she, Archie? Wasn’t that one of the things he’d always complimented her on? She often thought of him and the times she had posed for him and hated to think of him so indisposed. ‘Get well soon, Archie! Kisses, to make it better, from your friend, Ida x x x x x’.

Archie’s wet eyes, as he refolded the letter, were in memory, not of Ida Fitzell, whose paper kisses were meaningless, but of Lizzie who, to please her little daughter, used to kiss his injuries better. Lord, he needed her now.

‘Oh, what a long face, Archie!’ Mr Norris came in from the terrace to offer Archie a piece of toffee from a small crystal dish. He’d gained access to the kitchen the night before and made a tin of the stuff. ‘Stick-jaw, they call it, back home. Don’t do your jolly old teeth much good, but it lifts the spirits tremendously.’ Archie couldn’t refuse. ‘Bad news?’ the old man asked, licking his lips, his good eye devouring the kisses on the bottom of his letter as though they might be made of sugar.

‘No, no.’ With sticky fingers Archie refolded the letter and put it in his jacket pocket. ‘On the contrary,’ he mumbled with a full mouth, trying not to dribble.

The churchman waited, but when no more information was forthcoming, he carried on. ‘I, too, am in receipt of a letter this morning.

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