Chapter Twenty-Two
About ten minutes later, Miranda, who had been staring blindly into space, heard footsteps. She looked across the room to see Ryan and Col follow Libby in to join her and smiled at them all. She might not have family but she did have good friends now.
She was feeling calmer. Well, sort of calmer. Behind that self-control, she was still shocked by these revelations, not only shocked but angry and even more deeply hurt than usual by her old witch of a great-aunt.
This wasn’t the first time she had found out that something she thought had happened by sheer hard luck had instead been set up deliberately by Phyllis to upset her!
There was no reason that she could figure out for depriving her of knowledge about the real facts of this family situation, only there had to be more to it than simply hurting her out of sheer spite, surely? Even with her great-aunt. Why go to such lengths? She had never found out the reason for Phyllis’s hatred, though she’d felt its impact enough times to be utterly certain that it existed.
But though she’d been helpless to do anything about it before, she wasn’t as helpless now. Money could achieve a lot, money and kind people like Libby. The two men seemed kind as well and she hoped to get to know them a lot better.
Perhaps, with the others’ help, Miranda would at least be able to find out some of the details of what had been done to her and her family in the past and she might even manage to set some of the records straight. That would make her feel a lot better, she felt sure.
They moved most of the miscellaneous papers to one of the smaller tables stationed here and there round the edges of the room, their only function seeming for each to hold one of her great-aunt’s ornaments standing in the exact centre on a neat lace mat. They stood the china crinoline ladies and their mats on a windowsill for the time being but if Miranda had her way, they were not coming back into her home or life.
After that she and Libby settled down at the much larger table in the centre of the room and began doggedly sorting through the items from the two oldest folders while the men each put one of the bundles of documents on a smaller table ready to begin sorting through them.
‘How about we take it in turns to patrol the interior of the house, Ryan?’ Col suggested as the men were settling down. ‘You can see a lot of what’s going on outside from the various windows.’
‘Good idea. And I’ll enjoy stretching my legs at the same time. I could never do an office job again.’ He shuddered at the thought.
Their alertness made Miranda feel a lot safer. She hadn’t had other people to rely on before and had never trusted anyone as she did the three other people in this group.
The key to this puzzle was here, she felt sure. It had to be. But there seemed to be so many papers and some were quite crumpled from being crammed into smaller folders for years or possibly even decades. She and Libby sorted out some loose birth certificates into groups, dated by decade and then found some others here and there, which seemed to have been stuffed into folded pieces of paper rather haphazardly.
As Miranda opened one of the folded pieces, its contents slipped out and revealed some crumpled papers. When she smoothed these open and started to read them, she said, ‘I’ll have to check these carefully, but I can’t do everything at once.’
Some were for the decade of her mother’s birth, others for the next decade and then a couple were dated closer to the present, for Miranda’s own birth decade. Only, she’d never heard of these people, either children or parents.
Libby looked at her sympathetically. ‘It has to be your great-aunt’s doing.’
‘Who else could it be?’
‘It must have taken a lot of effort for Phyllis to keep you almost completely in the dark about your family background. Why go to such lengths? It’s all bizarre. That’s the only word for it.’
‘This is like a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces still missing.’
As one thing sank in, she looked at Libby and couldn’t prevent tears from welling up in her eyes and overflowing.
‘What is it?’ her friend asked gently.
‘I do recognise a couple of surnames from my childhood, and these individuals must be fairly close relatives. Phyllis had convinced me I had faulty memories because of being so young but I didn’t have, did I? I remembered correctly and she persuaded me otherwise. Why?’
‘Because she was a wicked woman.’
Miranda continued to frown. ‘But she must have had a reason, mustn’t she? I don’t understand what that could be.’
It was left to Libby to say the unpalatable truth aloud. ‘Because she hated you.’
There was dead silence, then Col asked, ‘Do you think it was why she was trying to keep control of you?’
‘She found out I wouldn’t do as she wanted after I grew up and was able to earn a living.’
‘All right, then. What’s puzzling you most? Let’s start with that and not try to solve all those other mysteries at once.’ He waved one hand dismissively towards the papers on the other table and then looked questioningly at her.
‘There could also be a positive side to this,’ Col added quietly.
She splayed one hand across her chest above her heart and nodded, saying in a husky whisper, almost as if speaking to herself, ‘I know. I’m trying to think about that. Surely some of them are correct and they mean that I’m not alone in the world, as I’d always believed.’
‘You’re not alone in the world anyway, now. You have some good friends.’ Ryan laid his hand briefly on hers and squeezed it gently. ‘You must adopt us. It’ll make me very happy for one.’
The smile he gave her was so warm and caring it made her feel better straight away and she was talking to him mainly when she replied. ‘I now also wonder if I do have some other blood kin, kinder people than my great-aunt. That could be very comforting. I’ve always refused to count my great-aunt as a genuine relative because I’d rather not have any at all than just her. And anyway she’s always behaved more like an enemy than a friend.’
A hand clasped hers briefly and Ryan said, ‘She was a wicked woman and not just when dealing with you. Most people in the village disliked her intensely.’
‘She must have set this up on purpose to cut me off from my family, but why? I always come back to that: why would anyone do such a cruel thing to a girl who’d lost her mother and had no relatives other than her in the world?’
‘Criminals can do the most inexplicable things at times, and I consider your great-aunt to have been one, not just for the way she treated you, but for the way she treated her tenants,’ Col said quietly. ‘I’m finding a lot out about her, and little of it good. But one thing that comes to my mind is that money is often at the heart of all sorts of crimes, so let’s look at that first as possibly the main reason for this.’
‘Yes, but most people are fond of their relatives, or at least loyal to them,’ she said bitterly. ‘They don’t put money ahead of them.’
‘She doesn’t sound to have cared about anyone from what people say about her. Except perhaps Selma Parnham.’
Ryan looked across at Miranda. ‘How old was Miss Westerby exactly when she died?’
‘Just turned sixty-five.’
‘That’s considered young these days, too young for dementia in most cases and she wouldn’t have expected to die for another decade or more, would she? These days, lots of people live till around eighty at least. Well, all the people I know do.’ Col gave them a wry smile. ‘Not that I’m in that age bracket yet, but I certainly do have certain long-term aspirations about how long I’ll live because my family has already spawned three centenarians during the past century and a half, and I’d love to follow their example.’
‘I hope you do make a hundred,’ Miranda said warmly. ‘Or a hundred plus, even. What do they call that? A super-centenarian?’
‘No, that’s people over a hundred and ten.’
‘Well, the world needs more decent people like you so I hope you make it. You should certainly ensure that you have several children to carry on your genes. And perhaps offer to donate some to a sperm bank as well.’
Col went a little pink at that forthright set of advice and Ryan took pity on his friend and diverted the conversation away from him by tapping the nearest few papers. ‘At least your great-aunt couldn’t have had all these people killed. Some will have died of natural old age, given their dates of birth, but some of them should still be alive and if we trace any of them that would give you a chance to start pulling your family together again.’
She nodded, her eyes suddenly bright with hope – and tears. ‘Yes. And I’ll have the money to do it now. I never knew how wealthy the Westerbys were. It’s going to be a difficult puzzle to solve but you’re right. I’ll be able to afford to do it now because I don’t want to hoard money but use it wisely to make people happier. And perhaps also to start to pull my family together.’
‘Sounds like a good idea. You go for it,’ Ryan said.
They exchanged smiles, then she said, ‘It won’t be unrealistic to hope that I can find some genuine relatives, will it, even if I have to hire a detective to help me?’
She’d do whatever she could, she decided there and then, search for the scattered family members by any means she could think of and surely she’d find some relatives!
Col’s voice was as gentle as ever. ‘I’m sure you’ll succeed in finding several of them. You’ll have enough money to hire an investigative genealogist to help you, for a start. They can work wonders.’
‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten there were people who specialised in that sort of detecting. I haven’t got used to the idea that I’ll not have to do everything myself from now on. I’m not used to having enough money to hire the necessary expert help. That still hasn’t really sunk in. And I think you were right about the main thing that drove her to do this, Col: money. And perhaps that was because of her inability to create her own children.’
The others were all looking at her with kind, patient expressions, giving her time to pull the facts together into patterns that made sense.
‘It was money and the power that gave her, wasn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘The two often go together. My great-aunt wanted to retain total control of the family money, which means the trust. To do that she’d have had to stop others from inheriting and keep a child as the heir. That would leave her in charge for several years to prepare for the next stage.’
Col nodded. ‘I’m sure an adult would have become much more aware of what she was doing than you could have been.’
‘But how could she have been sure of keeping that child under her control?’ Ryan frowned.
‘She was either very lucky or even more of a criminal than we thought.’
There was another silence as the horrendous implications of that sank in.
‘Would it be unrealistic, Col, to think she’d not have balked at murdering one or both of my parents?’
‘Not totally, but we’ll never really know, will we? The time for pursuing that possibility is long past. Don’t waste your life obsessing and trying to find out, Miranda. Move on. She’s dead. However wicked they have been, criminals can’t be brought back to life and punished.’
Her voice was spiky with anguish. ‘I suppose you’re right. My great-aunt managed to retain control of the trust for decades by using me.’
‘If she was breaking other legal rules, the family lawyers ought to have been aware of it,’ Col said. ‘But they didn’t seem to be. So she must have been very convincing.’
‘Until this new lawyer took over the management. He’s very shrewd and has been asking questions. The one he replaced just fiddled with papers on the few occasions I met him, looking bored.’
‘Your great-aunt managed to twist the rules over the decades. From what I’ve found out, no one else has ever been in charge of it all for as long as her but the lawyers dealing with her probably changed every few years, so they must have let her guide them as to how things were done.’
Miranda’s voice was bitter. ‘I understood from an early age that she was dangerous and was frightened of her, so I tried to stay out of her way.’
‘Probably you did just what she wanted you to, so she didn’t feel the need to get rid of you.’
‘But her own body let her down in the end, didn’t it? She didn’t live nearly as long as she always told me the Westerbys do.’ She sighed. ‘I wish I weren’t part of a family that breeds women like her. I wish … that I came from a gentle, loving, normal family.’
Ryan looked at her sadly, starting to understand more of what she must have gone through during the years of being without any real family. He couldn’t even imagine how he’d have coped with that, because he’d always had family to turn to, always known he was loved, always had what this lovely woman seemed to have longed for in vain.
Miranda stared into space then sighed. ‘I’m only just beginning to understand how deep her obsession about money went and I’m amazed she got on so well with Selma Parnham.’
‘Perhaps her housekeeper was also fond of money, as well as being a useful tool for many years.’
‘Who knows?’
‘Well, we can speculate all we like about her motives but we’ll never really know for certain,’ Col said quietly. ‘Don’t waste your life on angsting about it, Miranda. Some famous criminals in the past have acted in a similar way. They were talented people, who could have done positive things for humanity but instead turned to darker deeds because all they cared about was money or property or some other obsession.’
He paused then looked across at Miranda with an expression that was both gentle and kind. ‘I hope you’ll let me help you try to sort out your present situation. As a police officer, I have access to databases which most of the public don’t even know about. Some of them may come in useful to you and to us as your fellow searchers for the truth.’
‘I’d welcome any help you can give me and I know you’ll keep all this to yourself, Col. Indeed, I trust you two guys absolutely.’
She looked across at Ryan, feeling a little sad. She had been hoping that the spark she felt whenever she looked at him would flare into something brighter and more lasting. But now, she felt that it couldn’t do that at a time when her whole life was being turned upside down, and when she was trying to right old wrongs.
For years she’d recognised her own intense need for some genuine biological connection to others. It was a need lodged deep in her soul after all the years of feeling so utterly alone. She was sure knowing more about her family background would make for a happier life one day both for her and any man she cared about.
As Col turned to say something to Ryan, Libby touched her friend’s arm to get her attention and murmured in a low voice, ‘You won’t go without an extended family of some sort whatever comes of this, Miranda dear. There are other people in the world who will love you over the years as much as I do now. I’m quite sure of that, because it stands out a mile to me and to all normal people that you’re innately decent and lovable.’
Miranda blinked her eyes furiously. ‘That’s a … a wonderful thing to say.’
‘I meant it. And hopefully one day the guy you love will become more than a friend, and you’ll be able to create a brand-new family together, a family that no one can take away from you.’
Libby hesitated then added, ‘A happy marriage was something I always wished I could find for myself but it never happened, and I saw enough unhappy marriages to know I would never want to take second best.’
‘Perhaps it’s not too late for you.’
Libby’s expression was suddenly bleak. ‘It’s too late for me to have children.’
It was Miranda’s turn to give her friend a comforting hug.
After that, Libby couldn’t help shooting a quick glance at Ryan and hoping he would stay around long enough to get to know her adopted niece much better. He was obviously attracted to Miranda but she guessed he was sensitive enough to hold back to allow her the freedom to sort out the other aspects of her life first. Only a truly good man could or would do that. Unless she’d read the situation wrongly, of course. Or they encountered other problems.
In the meantime, Miranda was deeply upset by what they’d found out and needed loving support. Who wouldn’t be upset when they found out they’d been the victim of such vicious manipulations for most of their life? People needed relatives and close friends who cared about them, not ones who tried to destroy their hopes.
It was a good thing for Miranda that the horrible old great-aunt had died. Libby couldn’t even have imagined being glad that someone had died until now, but that old woman seemed to have caused nothing but misery and often by villainous actions.
She was going to keep her eyes open for the Parnhams from now on. Selma seemed so attached to the memory of her former employer with whom she had clearly shared a close bond, and Libby worried that she would still be hoping to carry out Phyllis’s final wishes and ruin Miranda’s future if she could.
But no one was going to hurt Miranda from now on if Libby could help it, whatever it took to prevent trouble.