Chapter 41
‘No!’
The cry was not loud but it cut through the room and every face turned towards the sound.
‘He didn’t kill her. It wasn’t Richard.’
There was a collective intake of breath.
‘I killed her.’
Margaret Linton was sitting bolt upright, the hands that were grasping the arms of the chair were rigid and white.
Abby let out a satisfied sigh in Lara’s ear. ‘And now, Miss McGregor, I think the tale unfolds.’ Abby stepped aside from Lara and looked with pity at the small compact form of Mrs M. ‘I believe that Margaret will help you tell her story.’
‘You couldn’t do it, could you, Mrs M?’ Lara stated.
‘But I did do it,’ she was pleading now.
‘I know,’ Lara said simply. ‘What I meant was that you couldn’t let Richard take the blame.’
Mrs M studied Lara closely. ‘You knew? Was that why you said all those things?’
Lara nodded. ‘She… I… didn’t think you’d let him suffer for something you’d done. After all he may have been a terrible son, not in any way worthy of her. But he was her son. He is also your nephew.’
‘So you do know,’ Lady Porter’s sister said quietly.
The effect on the rest of the room was electrifying. Everyone spoke at once. The voice that penetrated the cacophony was Richard Porter’s. ‘YOU are my aunt?!’ His tone left them in no doubt as to what he thought of that.
‘Hardly a fitting response to the woman who has saved him from prison,’ Abby commented.
Lara waited until the room became quieter and, looking directly at Mrs M and ignoring everyone else, said, ‘You were Margaret Abbott and your sister was Elizabeth Abbott. Have I got that right?’
Mrs M nodded. ‘Linton was my married name. How did you know?’
‘I saw an envelope with “E Abbott” on it and an address in Nottingham when I was looking for the vases Lady Porter left me. When I asked about Lady Porter’s maiden name you seemed flustered and when I looked back, I thought maybe you said “Brown” as it was such a common name and the first thing you thought of. ’
‘I almost said “Smith”,’ Mrs M told her with a twisted smile.
‘Do you think you’d be able to tell us about Nottingham? About your childhood?’
A look of bleak misery shrouded Mrs M’s face and she took a handkerchief from her pocket, which she began to twist in her hands.
As she started speaking, Lara recalled Mrs M once saying that there had been no love lost between Lady Porter and her parents. She knew now Mrs M was speaking from experience.
Mrs M spoke while looking at her hands. ‘Our dad was a brute. First it was our mum, she took the bulk of the beatings. Tried to keep us safe,’ Mrs M shrugged, ‘but she was only a little woman and, well, what could she do?’
Something suddenly occurred to Lara. ‘Was your mum a bit of a fan of the Royal Family?’
Something lifted in Mrs M’s expression and she looked up. ‘She certainly was. A great one for reading news of the Royal Family.’
‘Is that where you got your names?’
Mrs M nodded. ‘That’s it. Elizabeth and Margaret. I was a few years younger than—’
‘Lilibet,’ Lara interrupted.
‘How did you know that?’ Mrs M queried, but she smiled as if remembering.
‘I thought you once called Lady Porter “Lily”, but I misheard. I believed you had said “Lily, but…” whereas you had called her “Lilibet”.’
‘Ah,’ Mrs M said, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Yes, Mum took a great interest in those two princesses and she said we were her princesses. So in private we took up their nicknames. Just between ourselves mind, she was Lilibet and I was Margo. It was our private world.’
‘You have another private world, don’t you?
Mrs M looked resigned now. ‘So you’ve seen the room.’
‘You don’t have to say anymore, Margaret.’ Dr Patil turned towards her.
‘So you knew?’ Lara looked quickly at him.
‘Oh, he’s known. He’s known all along and helped us. I told you he was a good man, Lara.’
Lara heard Abby murmur, ‘Of course he knew. He understood that determination ran in the family.’
Lara felt there was so much she still didn’t know, most of all she wanted to make sense of why the woman in front of her would kill the sister she so clearly loved. Lara glanced around the room, everyone was sitting transfixed listening to the person they had known as Mrs M.
‘Can you talk about the room at the top of the house?’ Lara asked gently.
‘I suppose in a way it will be a relief,’ Mrs M said, sighing.
‘I think when you called us all together, I had pretty much decided I couldn’t go on.
Knew it had to come out. You start with one lie and then it just grows.
It’s no way to live,’ said the woman who had been living a lie for the past thirty years.
Lara thought she looked absolutely exhausted.
Abby murmured in her ear, ‘I believe it was one thing keeping a secret between the two of them, another thing altogether when suspicion was thrown onto others.’
Maggie Linton took up her story, ‘When the beatings started. And they did start. First with a belt, then fists and finally with any weapon that came to hand. We did our best to hide and, as I said, Mum tried to help us. But it was Lilibet that saved me. She used to make a tent with the bedclothes and oh, she would tell such stories,’ Mrs M recalled.
‘She made us forget. I think she believed the stories gave us some place to hide. She would hold my hand and tell me tales of tigers and princesses and gardens filled with lakes and flowers. We were the princesses, like our mum called us, but transported to a different place. She said she wasn’t going to let him win. She was always the strong one.’
Lara remembered the pile of children’s books that had been stacked on the counter next to where she was now standing. Belongings that Mrs M had packed up.
‘So you never lived in India?’
Mrs M laughed softly. ‘Only in our heads. Then we certainly did. For a short time, it took us away from it all. I think Lilibet chose India because she hated the cold and always said when she read me The Secret Garden she preferred the bossy version of Mary Lennox and if she had been her she would have stayed in India.’
Lara smiled sadly, remembering the feisty, humourous woman she had known. ‘And the room?’ Lara asked.
‘When I came to live here, she showed me the room she had made us on my first birthday with her. She knew we weren’t going to tell the world I was her sister and I was happy with that, in fact I was the one who insisted, but that was our secret.’
‘But that room!’ Richard Porter blurted, in shocked tones, ‘that bed!’
‘I do wish that Richard Porter was not only a kinder, more intelligent man, but that he would use the eyes God has given him. There were two beds in that room. Twin beds that had been pushed together,’ Abby commented crossly.
Lara continued, ‘Could you tell me what happened between the two of you?’
Mrs M was quietly crying now, slow tears fell and the twist of cotton and lace in her lap resembled a rag.
Dr Patil reached out and took her hand and Lara thought of all the times the doctor had blocked her questions about Elizabeth’s family and how he stuck so firmly to the idea of suicide.
Had he always known, or at the very least suspected what her sister had done?
‘I left home at fifteen. I couldn’t stand it any longer.
Lilibet begged me not to leave her, but I just couldn’t bear it.
I’d met a man at the lace factory where I worked.
I was an embroiderer and he was a machinist.’ Mrs M shook her head.
‘Like many before me, I chose a man just like my father. George was a giant of a man. I knew Dad would think twice about taking him on and so, like the fool I was, I thought I would be safe. At first he made a great fuss of me but then the beatings started. But he did seem sorry afterwards, unlike Dad. So I convinced myself he loved me and I stayed. Not that I had anywhere else I could have gone,’ Mrs M admitted.
‘One night, Lilibet ran away and came to me. She said she would never let Dad touch her again. When I first opened the door, her face was so bloody I didn’t recognise her.
The rain was pouring down and the blood was running in rivers on her clothes.
I even found blood in her shoes. George let me take care of her and didn’t let our dad know where she was.
I couldn’t let our mum know as I reckoned what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. ’
Mrs M hung her head. The sense of shame she felt as she told the next part of her story was palpable. For a moment, it seemed like she couldn’t go on. Then Sarah reached out and took her other hand. ‘You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,’ she said, her voice rich with sympathy.
Mrs M looked at her and sighed. ‘I think I need to Sarah. It’s become too heavy a burden to carry on my own.’ But Lara noticed that as Mrs M continued, she spoke her words to Sarah, as if blocking out the rest of the room.
‘George had always had an eye on Lilibet and she tried to keep out of his way as much as possible. She was trying to save up for another place to stay and was about to move out when George attacked her. I came back from the shops one evening and she was huddled against the banisters. She didn’t cry and she wouldn’t speak.
George had gone out. I slept with her that night on the couch.
George didn’t make a fuss about this, and I should have guessed then what was wrong.
In the middle of the night she whispered to me what had happened.
George had raped her.’ Mrs M said each word as if it was being dragged from her.
‘I said I didn’t believe her. I was furious with her.
I thought she was breaking up the only place I could think of that didn’t mean going back home.
So I wouldn’t listen and just screamed at her.
Can you believe it, I was jealous?’ Mrs M’s voice was close to breaking and Lara saw Sarah squeeze her hand. Dr Patil leant further forward.