The Cuckoo's Child by Marjorie Eccles

Author:Marjorie Eccles [Eccles, Marjorie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

‘You’ve come to tell us we can go ahead with the funeral,’ he said directly to Womersley when he entered the library, after Womersley had introduced himself and his sergeant. He could otherwise see no reason for the police to be here.

‘Before we come to that, will you ask the rest of your family to join us, sir? They’ll want to hear what I have to say.’

For a moment it looked as though he were about to demand further explanation, this youthful heir to the Beaumont tradition. He was young, very young to be burdened with what recent events had thrust upon him, but Womersley recalled that both the doctor and Whiteley Hirst had spoken well of him; there was intelligence and a firm set to his jaw that spoke of his ability to cope when he had overcome the initial shock his grandfather’s death had brought, thought Womersley, himself a good judge of young men’s potential. Gideon left the room and came back, accompanied by his mother.

An imposing woman, Amelia Beaumont, plainly dressed in severe but well-cut mourning, a jet brooch at her neck. Womersley tried, not very successfully, to reconcile what he saw with the picture Widdop had painted of the light-minded young woman Theo Beaumont had married. Flightiness was not a quality he would have associated with this guarded, unsmiling and outwardly utterly respectable woman. He rose from where he was sitting and moved to offer the tabby-covered chair when she entered, but she obviously preferred to subject herself to the torment of the unyielding horsehair, and he stepped back, rebuffed.

She was followed into the room by her daughter, a tall, slender young woman, also in black, accompanied by a fierce-looking and somewhat malodorous cross-breed Airedale, who fortunately sat obediently when commanded and put his square nose on her feet. Gideon stood with his hand on the back of her chair. There was no point in beating about the bush, no way in which he could lessen the impact of what they were about to hear. Womersley gave it to them straight, translating the medical language of the report of their grandfather’s death, in so far as he understood it, into plain English, and indicating what this might mean.

An appalled silence fell when he had finished.

During the last melancholy few days they had all been trying their best to accept the unacceptable manner of the head of the family’s death as an unfortunate accident. Some sort of freak accident perhaps, but an accident nonetheless. The idea of Ainsley committing suicide had obviously never been considered as a serious possibility by any of them. But now, there was this staggering revelation, which they were prepared to believe even less. Una sat with her eyes fastened on him, her very silence a refutation.

Gideon, too, was speechless. He had gone very white. For all his outward self-confidence, the lad needs to grow a thicker skin, Womersley thought.

Before they came in, he had asked for water to be brought. Rawlinson, ever alert, saw this was the moment to pour out a tumblerful.

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