The Girl in the Picture Read online

  ‘Ah ha,’ Ben said in triumph. ‘As I predicted.’

  I frowned at him. ‘I think I was the one who predicted that,’ I said. ‘But I thought it was a bit boring.’

  ‘Sometimes life is boring,’ Ben said. ‘So Frances knew about the affair then?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘Frances wasn’t sure what was happening between Violet and her husband, but she really cared.’

  ‘Was she angry?’

  ‘No, I mean she cared about Violet,’ I said. ‘She was worried about her. She was older than Violet, who was only eighteen at the time and she seems to have felt a bit maternal towards her.’

  ‘Sweet,’ said Ben.

  I was thinking. ‘If I was writing this, the two spurned women would team up to kill Edwin and make it look like an accident …’ I said.

  ‘Do you think that’s what happened?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t think Frances would kill anyone. She just seems so …’ I searched for the right word. ‘Nice.’

  Ben had turned to the end of the diary entries. ‘Have you read all of it?’ he asked, rubbing his nose in concentration.

  I shook my head. ‘Didn’t get that far,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Frances thought her baby had died,’ he said. ‘That’s why she didn’t leave – she thought she wasn’t pregnant any more.’

  ‘But the baby survived the beating,’ I said. ‘Little Charles survived.’

  I leaned over to see what he was reading. A thought struck me. ‘Or maybe Violet was pregnant,’ I said. ‘Maybe Frances gave her the escape plan and that’s why it’s here in our house – in Violet’s house. Maybe Violet got away. We should be looking for her relatives – well, relatives of this Florence Bennett.’

  I paused. ‘Oh no, hang on. Dad’s found Frances Forrest’s relatives. This is confusing.’

  Ben looked at me. ‘If you were writing this – if it was a Tessa story – what would you do?’

  I thought and then I spoke slowly, because I was still working it out as I talked.

  ‘If this was my story, I’d have Frances go – run to Scotland – just before the murder,’ I said, staring at my whiteboard without really seeing it. ‘Then Violet – who knew Frances had gone and taken a fake name – could see her chance and steal her identity after the attack. Maybe she was pregnant. If she became Frances Forrest, respectable widow, she would be able to keep her baby without any shame. Maybe that’s why Violet disappeared.’

  Ben looked at me, impressed. ‘You’re good at this,’ he said.

  I laughed. ‘Could you have a word with my agent?’

  ‘Any time,’ Ben said, kissing me. ‘So Violet and Frances were in cahoots.’

  ‘Good word.’

  Ben ignored me. ‘They were in cahoots, Frances escaped, and in all the confusion of the attack, Violet told everyone she was Frances?’

  ‘That’s how I’d write it. Although I’m not sure how I’d get round Violet telling her own dad she was Frances …’

  Ben screwed his face up. ‘So if your theory is correct, these relatives your dad found should actually be Violet’s descendants – not Frances’s?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, scrolling through my phone to find Dad’s email.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Ben said. ‘Mystery solved. Let’s go and get a glass of wine.’

  Laughing, I followed him down the stairs.

  Chapter 49

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  So, last night I was at a dinner with lots of other dusty old academics (would you believe, these things are always much more fun than they sound?) where I got chatting to a historian, who is an expert in nineteenth-century industrialists. She was interested when I told her what you were up to. She knows about Marcus Hargreaves and she said to pass on her details and she’ll see if she can help, so I’m doing just that.

  Gx

  ‘It’s so kind of you to spare the time to meet me,’ I said, as George’s new friend, Louisa, led me along the corridor to her office. ‘I really appreciate it.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ she said, showing me inside and pulling out a chair for me to sit on. ‘I must admit, it’s not entirely kindness on my part. I’ve always wondered about Hargreaves’s story.’

  I sat down on the chair and looked round. Her office was in a modern part of the university building in Canterbury. It was lined with bookshelves and a huge wooden desk with a pile of papers on one side, where Louisa sat.

  ‘Marcus Hargreaves is an interesting character,’ she went on. ‘He was among the first generation to come of age in post-Industrial-Revolution Britain. He made a fortune selling equipment to the colonies – the Caribbean mostly – and to factories here too.’

  I nodded. I knew all of this, but I liked hearing Louisa tell it. She had an easy, interesting way of speaking that made me think her lectures would be popular among her students.

  ‘He used his money to do a lot of good work,’ she said. ‘Orphanages, hospitals, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I found a school he’d set up.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Louisa smiled at me, and I felt like her favourite pupil.

  ‘But then things went wrong,’ she said.

  ‘Because his daughter disappeared?’

  ‘Well, before that really,’ she said. She got up and went to one of the shelves where she pulled out a book.

  ‘His personal life isn’t written about much, because most historians from the time focus on his factory work, or his philanthropy,’ she said. ‘But every now and then I have come across a mention of it.’

  She had a pair of glasses perched on top of her head. Now she pulled them down on to her nose and looked at the page she’d found in the book.

  ‘Here’s one,’ she said. She handed it to me.

  ‘His wife died,’ I said, scanning the pages until I found a mention of her name. ‘I found the record of her death. And then he sent his daughter, Violet, away.’

  Louisa nodded, pulling out another book. ‘But he didn’t want to send her away,’ she said.

  I blinked at her. ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘This book has quite a detailed account of his wife’s death,’ said Louisa. ‘Take it away with you if you like.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, genuinely pleased that she trusted me with her own books, but not able to wait until I read it to find out what happened. ‘Where did Violet go?’

  ‘She went to her mother’s sister,’ Louisa told me, sitting back down at her desk and resting her chin on her hand. ‘Marcus wanted to keep her with him, but apparently he was told it wouldn’t work, that a girl needed to be brought up by a woman, and that he couldn’t care for her on his own. There are letters between him and other family members, telling him how wrong it would be for him to keep his daughter with him.’

  ‘So he sent her to her aunt,’ I said, marvelling once more at how similar our lives were, more than a century apart. ‘But she came back?’

  ‘She came back because her aunt’s husband went to work in India,’ Louisa told me. ‘The family all went to live there and according to records, they were more than willing to take Violet with them. She’s listed on the initial travel documents.’

  ‘India,’ I breathed. ‘Why didn’t she go?’

  ‘Marcus didn’t want her to,’ Louisa said. ‘He brought her home to Sussex and engaged a governess to look after her.’

  ‘Because he wanted her with him,’ I said. ‘So there was some happiness for them at least.’

  Louisa smiled at me. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘It must have been a lonely existence for Violet. Marcus travelled a lot and he would have been away from home for weeks at a time. She must have been quite isolated and I imagine rather bored.’

  ‘She painted,’ I said, suddenly realizing why Violet had thrown herself into her artwork so passionately. ‘It must have been her only pleasure really. Poor Violet. And poor Marcus.’

  I thought about Violet and Edwin Forrest – an older
man, certainly handsome from the look of the pictures Violet had drawn, perhaps charming and funny. No wonder she had fallen in love with him. Daddy issues, much? She must have been vulnerable and lonely. Thank goodness I’d met my lovely Ben, or perhaps I’d have gone the same way.

  ‘What do you know about Violet’s disappearance?’ I asked Louisa.

  ‘Actually, not much,’ she said. ‘It’s referred to in some of the mentions of Marcus Hargreaves but not in a lot of detail so I’ve often wondered about it. You probably know more than me.’

  ‘Violet went missing one evening in 1855,’ I began. ‘The night she disappeared, her neighbour who I think was possibly her lover, Edwin Forrest, was murdered. So was a man called William Philips who worked for the Hargreaves family. Edwin’s wife, Frances, was also attacked. And Violet vanished.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Louisa. ‘I hadn’t realized there were other people involved.’

  I shrugged. ‘There’s no proof that it was all connected,’ I admitted. ‘But it has to be. Such awful tragedies all happening on the same day? I actually have a feeling it was something to do with Forrest. He doesn’t seem to have been the most trustworthy chap.’

  ‘Do you have any theories about what happened to Violet?’ Louisa asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing concrete,’ I said. ‘At the time they thought she might have drowned – they found her hat on the beach – but I’m wondering if she perhaps faked her own death and ran away.’

  Louisa made a face. ‘Would she do that to her father?’ she said. ‘It’s one thing being bored at home, but breaking his heart like that?’

  ‘You think it’s too cruel?’

  ‘I know Marcus spent a lot of time looking for Violet,’ Louisa said. ‘He organized search parties and spent a lot of time and money trying to track her down. He never really got over losing her.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ I said. I’d not thought much about Marcus before now, other than as a heartless uncaring father who’d sent his daughter away. Now my opinion was shifting.

  ‘He organized reconstructions of the crime to see if they sparked anyone’s memory – they were among the first ever recorded, I believe – every year,’ said Louisa. ‘But as time passed, people lost interest.’

  Ridiculously I suddenly found myself close to tears. This story was so sad. ‘He really loved her,’ I said. ‘He was a good dad.’

  ‘I like to think so,’ said Louisa. ‘Distant, perhaps. But not cruel.’

  I blinked furiously, trying to stop myself from crying.

  ‘Frances Forrest was pregnant,’ I said, in a voice that quavered much more than I wanted it to. ‘I’ve been tracing her descendants. It’s a bit complicated but she was planning to leave her husband, so I wondered if maybe Frances had left before the attack, then Violet had taken her identity.’

  ‘So Frances could be the missing person, not Violet?’

  ‘It’s a crazy theory but you never know,’ I said.

  ‘Keep me posted,’ Louisa said. ‘I’m intrigued.’

  After I’d thanked her profusely for making Marcus a real person in my head, and promised to keep her informed of every lead I followed, I headed back to my car. I couldn’t stop thinking about Marcus, who’d stopped his daughter leaving the country and had devoted his life to finding her when she vanished.

  ‘He didn’t want to send her away,’ I said to myself as I sat in the driving seat. ‘He just thought he ought to.’

  On a whim, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the numbers until I found my Aunt Sally.

  ‘Sal?’ I said when she answered. ‘It’s Ella. I wondered if I could pop in?’

  Chapter 50

  Sally lived not far from where I’d grown up with Dad. Sort of halfway between his house and our new place. It was an easy drive from Canterbury and I felt when I said I was passing I wasn’t even lying.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you, Ella,’ Sal said when I arrived. ‘I want to hear all about your new house.’

  She handed me a cup of tea and paused to look at me. ‘You’re so like your mum,’ she said, as she always did when I saw her.

  ‘I’m older than she was now,’ I pointed out. It was a strange fact that made me feel a bit funny.

  Sally gave my arm a squeeze. ‘She’d have been proud of you,’ she said.

  Sally was my dad’s older sister and she looked a lot like him, or rather he looked like her. I had older twin cousins – Stephen and Simon – who’d both grown up to be scientists, and who I didn’t have a lot in common with. Though I loved Sally and my Uncle Bill, I couldn’t imagine growing up with them all.

  ‘Actually,’ I said as we settled in the lounge after I’d admired photos of Simon’s new baby girl and showed Sal some pictures of the house and of my boys, ‘it was Mum I wanted to talk about. Sort of.’

  Sally frowned. ‘What about her?’

  I took a breath. ‘About her funeral, really.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I might be remembering things wrong,’ I began. ‘Because I was very small, and very sad, but there was something I overheard and I wanted to talk to you about it.’

  Sally looked worried. ‘Oh love,’ she said. ‘Did you hear your dad talking to me?’

  I nodded, pressing my lips together tight.

  ‘You heard him ask if I would look after you?’

  I nodded again.

  Sally sighed. ‘Do you know, I always had a niggle that you were there, that day. You didn’t let your dad out of your sight after the accident and I thought you’d be somewhere watching us. But I hoped you hadn’t heard.’

  ‘I was on the stairs,’ I told her. ‘I’d forgotten that I watched Dad. I was so scared when I went back to school in case he died too.’

  Sally’s eyes filled with tears and she took my hand. ‘He was worried he wasn’t enough for you,’ she said. ‘He thought he couldn’t look after you and that you needed a mother figure. That’s why he asked me to take you.’

  ‘And you said no?’ I was on the verge of tears myself.

  ‘I did say no,’ Sally admitted. ‘But not because I didn’t want you. I’d have taken you in a heartbeat. You were an adorable little girl and I loved you so much.’ She smiled at me. ‘Still do.’

  ‘So, then why?’

  ‘Because your dad wanted you, sweetheart. He was just worried about how to look after a little girl. He was lonely without your mum and he was heartbroken and he didn’t know what to do for the best. Of course he wanted you.’

  ‘I was so scared he would send me away,’ I said, beginning to cry properly now. ‘I was so scared if I did anything wrong he would get rid of me.’

  Sally pulled me into a hug and I sobbed on her shoulder.

  ‘He’d never have sent you away, you silly thing,’ she said.

  When I’d recovered enough to finish my tea and eat the biscuits she offered me, Sally looked at me.

  ‘I heard you and your dad fell out,’ she said.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Barb?’ I asked. She and Sally were good friends.

  Sal nodded. ‘I have a feeling it’s all rooted in what you told me,’ she said. She patted me on the knee. ‘You need to speak to him, lovey. You can’t just pretend it never happened and hope everything’s going to be okay. Tell him what you heard that day. He’ll want to know.’

  She was right; I knew that. I had to talk to Dad. I didn’t want to have tension between us. I thought about Marcus Hargreaves looking for Violet for so long, and how much she must have missed him when he was away at work, and I thanked my lucky stars that I’d been born all those decades later when Dad was encouraged to look after me, and had Sally’s help to juggle childcare with work, and my grandparents, and later Barb. How different Violet’s life could have been. And how different mine had been.

  Chapter 51

  I looked at the fading photograph of a petite woman with neat grey-black hair and felt completely deflated. Whoever this was, it wasn’t Violet.

  I looked over at my dad
and gave a tiny shake of my head.

  ‘Is she not the person you’re looking for?’ asked Winnie Flood, Frances’s great-granddaughter.

  I smiled at her. ‘She’s exactly who we’re looking for,’ I said, aware I sounded a bit odd. ‘It’s more that I was hoping she wouldn’t be.’

  I’d been confident in our theory about Violet stealing Frances’s identity when I’d explained it to my dad. He’d been excited about tracking down Frances’s relatives, and I still wanted to talk to him about Mum’s funeral, so I’d impulsively invited him along to meet Winnie Flood, who was a seventy-four-year-old widow living in Eastbourne. I imagined a little old lady sitting on the prom, wearing a winter coat in the middle of summer.

  ‘You seem very involved in all this,’ Dad had said as we left the quiet streets of Heron Green and headed towards Brighton, Dad easing his Audi (a retirement present to himself) into the heavier traffic.

  I glanced at him, wondering if he was criticizing me, but he was smiling. He loved driving.

  ‘Do you think you might write this story, like Barb suggested?’

  ‘I’ve been trying not to,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve been doing my best to write what I should be writing, but this story just keeps getting in the way.’

  ‘Tell me the latest.’

  ‘Violet was in love with Edwin Forrest,’ I said. ‘He’s the man who put his name to her work, of course. But I don’t know if he did it with her consent or without.’

  ‘Surely without her knowing? Because why would she consent to that?’ Dad asked.

  ‘As a way to make a living from art,’ I said. ‘Or as a way to trick the establishment? A statement on a woman’s place in the world? All sorts of reasons.’

  ‘Or he was taking advantage of her, exploiting her talent for his own financial gain,’ said Dad.

  ‘When did you get to be so cynical?’ I said.

  Dad paused as he swung the car round the roundabout and on to the Eastbourne road.

  ‘It’s sad,’ he said. ‘If she couldn’t claim credit for her own work – whatever the reason. It must be hard to have a passion for something and be prevented from doing it. It’s easy to forget how hemmed in people were in the past, by their social class, or their gender, or their financial situation. We have a lot of freedom nowadays.’