Chapter 25 Roddy
RODDY
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
Sienna finishes reading the newspaper article with a flourish of her hand. Her reading was filled with dramatic tension as promised. Where did today’s teenagers get their confidence? Roddy felt old.
‘That’s wild,’ says Lottie, frowning. ‘An excellent performance, by the way. Can you send that to my email? I’ll print it out.’
The old printer behind the shop counter sputters into life and Lottie hands Roddy a copy of the article. He reads it again.
THE LONDON STANDARD, 30 July 1975
Police Hunt for Nanny; Body of Viscount Discovered in Manor House Grounds
Police investigators are conducting extensive searches across the fields and woodlands around Bleddesley House near the village of Little Petersham in Cambridgeshire today, following the discovery of the body of Lord Edward Fitzhenry, Fourteenth Viscount of Bleddesley.
Lord Fitzhenry died in what police are calling suspicious circumstances.
Preliminary reports suggest he sustained shotgun wounds.
His remains were found concealed in an outbuilding on his country estate.
Scotland Yard detectives are keen to interview Miss Dorothea Ann Stewart, a member of staff at Bleddesley House. Miss Stewart is reported to have disappeared from the manor house, at approximately the time Lord Fitzhenry is believed to have been killed.
There are also reports that Lord Fitzhenry’s abandoned Land Rover was found yesterday on the outskirts of Watford.
The late Lord Fitzhenry, aged 48, is survived by a nine-year-old son, Francis Fitzhenry, and his second wife, Celia ‘Cricket’ Fitzhenry, nee Applegate, daughter of Sir Winston Applegate, proprietor of the Evening Record.
The Fitzhenry family endured a previous tragedy in December 1972, with the sudden death of Lady Adeline Fitzhenry, first wife of the late Lord Fitzhenry, when she suffered a fatal fall inside the manor’s historic seventeenth-century walls.
Dorothea Stewart, aged 29, is described as standing approximately five feet in height, with slight build, large brown eyes and long dark hair.
Miss Stewart’s background also attracts attention.
She is the youngest child of the late Beatrice Stewart, nee Montgomery, who was reported to be estranged from her family after her father, Lord William Montgomery, the Sixth Earl of Soster, refused to attend her wedding to a Scottish horse-racing personality whom he reportedly called an ‘unworthy miscreant’.
The Cambridgeshire Constabulary have asked members of the public to come forward without delay if they have any information about the death of Lord Fitzhenry, or the whereabouts of Dorothea Stewart.
Roddy looks up from the article, feeling vaguely faint.
He stares out the shop window. Across the road sits a small stone church—Saint Luke’s—the grass around it is brown and brittle from the summer heat.
He has an urge to enter it and sit on a pew and ask unanswerable questions to some higher authority; someone who might be across the detail.
If this sorry tale is part of Phyllida’s background, it doesn’t bode well.
And it’s tragic. The boy, Francis, clearly had a crappy childhood; losing his mother in a fall, then his father to a shotgun wound.
‘I wonder how his mother fell to her death,’ asks Roddy.
Lottie shrugs. ‘Maybe she slipped getting out of the bath.’
Sienna is tapping on her phone. ‘I can see an article from a few years later that Dorothea Stewart was never found, and that she was still wanted in connection with the murder.’
Roddy asks her for his new login details for The London Standard news archives. He finds another article with details about the crime. ‘She must have remained under suspicion for the murder, because she’s still listed as a wanted person, years later.’
‘Nineteen seventy-five was like, ages ago,’ says Sienna. ‘Old mate Dorothea’s been a legend at evading the cops.’
‘You can’t call this Dorothea old mate,’ says Roddy irritably. ‘She was the granddaughter of an earl.’
‘Bro, what’s your problem?’ Sienna screws up her face at him. ‘Also why are you defining her by her grandad? That’s so misogynistic.’
Roddy sighs.
‘Anyway,’ says Sienna. ‘Don’t we need to focus on the kid?
Francis? That’s who Phyllida must have meant.
He’d be, like, sixty by now. We can get private detectives who can do interviews and surveillance and stuff.
I can email one for you.’ She hasn’t bothered to look up from her phone as she speaks. Her fingers are flying over the screen.
‘What are you doing? Don’t contact a private detective! You need to get off your phone,’ splutters Roddy.
‘Can’t. Doing my streaks.’
What on earth did that mean? She is taking selfies, making different faces each time at a rate of approximately one every three seconds. He looks across at Lottie for help.
‘She’s answering her friends’ Snapchats,’ says Lottie, looking back at the article on her laptop. She is tapping her fingernail on the desk repeatedly, a woodpecker into Roddy’s tired brain.
‘Is it lunchtime?’ he asks. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Sure. I brought stuff in. You’re on sandwich duty.’ Lottie grins.
He heads into the kitchen, puts together some sandwiches and boils the kettle again, trying to quell the rising unease he is feeling about what they are digging into. When he takes the lunch tray out, Sienna looks up.
‘I found a true crime podcast about cold cases,’ she says. ‘Lottie and I were about to listen. It’s got two episodes on the murder of the old Lord Fitzhenry.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Help yourselves.’ He puts the sandwiches on the table.
‘Any Vegemite ones?’
‘Sorry. Ham or cheese.’
Sienna makes a dismissive face and looks back at her phone. ‘In episode two it says here they interview a midwife who reckons she delivered a baby at Bleddesley House the month before the murder, and that the birth must have been covered up. Want to listen to that bit first?’
‘Yes! How intriguing,’ says Lottie.
‘It’s from four years ago. The episodes are called Murder at the Manor. Not very original.’
Roddy brings the office chair across as Sienna turns on the recording.
After twenty-five minutes (including three minutes of ads), they look at each other, digesting the contents of the podcast.
Lottie says, ‘She wasn’t that convincing.’
‘She’s eighty-three. Her memory’s probably not that good,’ says Roddy, pondering the details of the interview with the old woman who claimed to have delivered a baby.
‘She was young when it happened,’ says Sienna. ‘And she swears the baby came at the beginning of July, which was just before the murder. You guys are just being ageist.’
‘But she could be making it up,’ says Roddy. ‘Everyone wants their five minutes of fame.’
‘Why would you want fame when you’re eighty-three?’ asks Sienna.
‘Who’s being ageist now?’
Sienna rolls her eyes at him.
Lottie taps two fingers against her lips as she stares out the window.
‘Let’s think about this. She’s called out to the manor house in the middle of the night.
The girl giving birth is very posh and sobbing and freaked out.
The man, who she says was definitely Lord Fitzhenry, is giving orders to another man and another young woman and being super bossy.
When the baby is born, he takes it and refers to it as his son.
’ Lottie turns to Roddy and he nods at her summary.
She gets a nod from Sienna before continuing: ‘They tell the midwife the doctor is going to do the follow-up visits and they pay her off. She never hears anything more, but years later, when she is reading about the case, she realised it was like this Fitzhenry baby never existed. And that Francis Fitzhenry was brought up an only child. That is a weird scenario.’
‘Maybe they used the baby as a devil’s sacrifice,’ says Sienna. ‘It could all be part of the lead-up to the murder of Lord Eddy.’
Roddy and Lottie both frown.
‘If they worshipped the devil or something,’ she adds, shrugging.
‘If the baby died for some reason,’ says Roddy, ignoring Sienna, ‘there would have been a funeral. It would have been reported. I mean, wouldn’t the staff have known about it? It sounds like they were there.’
Lottie and Sienna are both on their phones, scrolling.
After a minute Sienna says, ‘Can’t find anything about a baby in 1975.
The story is a bit sus. Maybe she did make it up,’ she concedes.
‘I mean, like, it’s a coincidence that she says she moved to France a week later and never saw the English papers about the murder so she didn’t report the baby. ’
‘But … she was very particular, wasn’t she?’ says Lottie. ‘I mean, she described the baby as being about nine pounds with a shock of dark hair and a beautiful face. Came into the world not making a sound.’
‘And she described details of the birthmark,’ says Sienna. ‘A pink crescent moon on his arm. That’s a totally weird thing to make up if she’s lying.’
Roddy is feeling slightly guilty that they are letting Sienna get involved in this. It’s probably not what Donna had in mind when she asked him to be a good male role model for her daughter.
‘What if there was a baby born in the July.’ Lottie does a slow 360-degree swivel on the stool behind the counter.
‘David—Phyllida’s son; my father—was born in the July of nineteen seventy-five.
Phyllida would have been about … twenty-nine when he was born.
’ She closes her eyes, apparently calculating. ‘Yep, twenty-nine.’
‘So that means Phyllida and baby David were about the same age as Dorothea Stewart and the mystery baby,’ Sienna pronounces, pleased by this.
Lottie takes a deep breath. ‘Mary said Phyllida and David arrived here in Brookbank just before Phyllida turned thirty, and that David was about two months old. I think they lived in Sydney for a few weeks before that.’
‘Oh my god,’ says Sienna, grinning. ‘Diva.’
‘It’s not out of the question they might be the same people, is it?’ Lottie is looking at Roddy.
‘You think Phyllida is Dorothea?’ He frowns. ‘That she’s capable of murder? And what, she stole the Fitzhenry baby?’
‘Everyone’s capable of really terrible stuff,’ says Sienna. ‘Even your heroes. Look at JK Rowling.’
‘What did she do?’ asks Roddy.
‘Those stupid tweets about only women getting their periods,’ she says, clearly disgusted, although he’s not sure if the disgust is for him or JK Rowling.
‘Right.’ Roddy squints and says uncertainly, ‘And, that’s … not right?’
Sienna narrows her eyes. ‘She’s a total transphobic loser.’
Roddy rubs a finger and thumb across his eyebrows. He has a feeling he is way out of his depth. He is ancient and irrelevant but, still, he feels the need to provide some middle-aged perspective. ‘That’s not quite … murder, though, is it?’
She huffs.
He turns to Lottie. ‘Phyllida can’t possibly be Dorothea, if that’s what you’re implying.
It’s just a coincidence.’ The heat must be doing something to their powers of reasoning, he thinks, because the idea that it is Phyllida who has been on Scotland Yard’s Most Wanted list for half a century is completely stupid. Ludicrous.
‘Why on earth would she murder this viscount?’ He peers into the shadows at all the books on the dark blue shelves.
There is a message here somewhere for him, he thinks.
Some kind of bookish test. Phyllida likes puzzles.
She likes the obscure and the old and the forgotten.
But she also likes to laugh. Was she laughing at them?
Was that why she’d sent Lottie on this ridiculous quest to find Francis?
So, her granddaughter would take an interest in the past?
Delve into a strange unresolved story that is missing its final chapter?
No, he thinks, fanning himself with a piece of paper as the room becomes oppressive. Phyllida liked to see the lighter side of things, but there was nothing light in this. Phyllida was not Dorothea. She was simply not capable of ending a man’s life.
He heads to the kitchen to get the fan, a niggling memory tugging at him.
David, as they swam across the river, a length of rope twisted over his shoulder.
They had climbed the huge river gum and were lying along the length of its overhanging branch to tie the rope swing.
David, swinging from the tree like Tarzan, lithe and strong, the crescent-moon-shaped birthmark on his right arm as perfectly pink as the sunset.