DAVID LEWES – murderer
The room heated up in an instant, as her eyes focused then blurred on the grainy newsprint image. Shaking, Alice held up the clipping and looked into her father’s face. There was no striking resemblance, but she could see some hints to her parentage in the dark eyes. He had been a handsome man, her father … Slowly Alice turned her eyes on the photograph next to his. Underneath it, read:
CATHERINE LEWES, daughter of ‘Judge’ Arnold, savagely murdered by her husband at the family home, The Dower House, Werneth Heights, 12 November.
Her hands trembling as she held the paper, Alice read on. Her mother had been butchered with a knife, her father was missing. She read the sentence twice. Then again. Her father had butchered her mother and run away … Alice could feel her pulse quicken and stood up, pushing the book from her. Her heart was banging in her chest. Faint, she leaned against the wall, then she walked over to the window and leaned out, gulping air. A man was walking with his small daughter, holding her hand and smiling.
Her hands went up to her forehead and massaged her temples fiercely. She had grandparents, so why had she been sent to the home? Why …? She wanted to know but at the same time was afraid of the truth.
After several minutes she turned and walked back to the newspaper cutting. She sat down, pulled the book towards her again, read on. Her grandparents had gone abroad after the tragedy, her grandmother suffering a stroke which left her a semi invalid. Her aunt, Dorothy, had been treated for shock, as she had been the one who had found her sister’s body. Alice scanned the next paragraph, looking for any mention of her. Finally there was a brief line – ‘David and Catherine Lewes had two children, who have been taken on by relatives.’
Taken on by relatives … Two children … Alice felt her heart pumping again. She was reading it wrong, she thought wildly. She must be. Everyone had told her that she had no relatives when she had been dumped in a home. And all along she had belonged to the Arnold clan. Finding it difficult to gather her thoughts, Alice remembered the titbits she had overheard over the years about the Arnolds. Ethel had talked about them occasionally, and Mr Grantley had often referred to them in obsequious tones. They were probably the richest family in Lancashire.
And all that money and power had succeeded in what? In wiping Alice off the family tree. She had been abandoned and forgotten. Given away. It was a bitter blow. Alice tried to swallow the anger she felt. Why would they cast her off? And not just her. She had a sibling. So where was he or she? All the time she had believed that she was alone, they could have been together. It was cruel enough to cut off the children, but to separate them too – that was unforgivable. Hurriedly Alice read through the remainder of the report and then moved over to an article in the Manchester Evening News.
This report went further into the background of the Arnolds. Their power and influence, the old man’s ruthlessness in business. Apparently Judge Arnold had had few friends, but many enemies … His photograph repelled Alice: Judge Arnold had squat features, almost coarse, with unruly grey hair and flat, unreadable eyes.
Coldly she stared at the photograph and then looked at the picture of the murder house. It was huge and impressive, but sombre. In the photograph it looked as welcoming as Netherlands, with only the gardens to soften its stern walls. God, she thought, they had real money. And they had given her away. Let her live meanly whilst they lived in luxury.
But why did they give her up? Alice wondered again, shattered by another rejection coming so soon upon the last. Why couldn’t they just keep her at a distance? Let her keep her name at least? But no, Alice thought, looking with hatred at old man Arnold – no, he had taken everything away from her, given her a commonplace name, and no history. He had blamed her for her mother’s death as surely as though she had committed the murder herself.
Alice jumped as the door opened behind her.
‘You finished?’ the tall woman said, trying to see what Alice had been reading.
Nodding, Alice closed the book and stood up. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
Alice glanced down, afraid that her face might give her away. ‘I found a lot of things I didn’t know before,’ she answered honestly.
The woman walked past her, then slammed the books back on the shelf, sighing noisily. ‘That’s the thing about history. Always full of surprises.’
The family had returned to the house at Werneth Heights, Oldham two months earlier, but before long Mrs Arnold and her daughter, Dorothy, would be off again to winter in the sun. Somewhere in France, although no one outside the family knew exactly where. Old man Arnold liked to keep his life, and that of his family, private. He also liked to have time to himself, so he encouraged Alwyn and Dorothy to go away each year. After all, he wasn’t left alone.
There was Dorothy’s husband, for a start. Poor stammering Leonard, left with the old man of whom he was terrified. Ten years earlier Leonard Tripps had been introduced to Dorothy Arnold by mutual acquaintances. He had been smitten at once. She was handsome, easy to fall in love with. Her father had been another matter …
Leonard watched the old man unfasten his jacket and sit down at his desk in the den. He liked to think that he had won Judge Arnold over by his personality, but he knew he was fooling himself. His family’s fortune was what had cemented the alliance between the Trippses and the Arnolds, an impressive rubber business being far more appealing that any of his personal virtues.
Their marriage was a great – though private – event in Oldham, and Leonard never once complained about taking on the upbringing of his wife’s nephew, Charlie. He never complained because it would have done him no good; Dorothy had taken over the care of her nephew since her sister’s death and thought of him as her child. What could Leonard say in the face of such commitment?
The tragedy which had left Charlie homeless was seldom referred to, but Leonard was well aware of the background. He knew that Catherine and David Lewes had had a daughter too – a baby, very much her father’s pet. So much so, that when he killed the child’s mother Dorothy could no longer stand the sight of her niece and had her sent away.
Years earlier, whilst the event was still fresh in some people’s mind, Leonard wondered if anyone realised how great a part Dorothy had played in the banishing of her dead sister’s child. He supposed that they did not, instead jumping to the conclusion that it had been Judge Arnold’s decision. After all, people would never believe that the gentle Dorothy would do anything so callous. But Judge Arnold didn’t give a damn what people thought – ‘If they want to make me out to be even more of a monster, let them. I should worry.’
‘Leonard.’
Startled out of his reverie, he looked over to his father-in-law. ‘Y-y-yes, sir?’
‘I’m wondering where Charlie is.’
Leonard smiled weakly. Charlie would be up in his room, writing. Charlie was convinced that he was borderline genius, and his grandparents and Dorothy had encouraged the delusion. Yet Charlie’s historical plays – so interminably long and so frequent – were, to Leonard, a subtle, innovative form of torture. He believed with all his heart that if the Army had had the use of Charlie’s literary ramblings in the war, the Germans would have surrendered at the second paragraph.
‘I t-t-think he’s upstairs, writing.’
‘Good boy,’ Judge Arnold said approvingly. ‘I always wonder where he got his talent.’
Leonard thought it came naturally, like belching, but simply smiled. What could you say about the favourite which wouldn’t sound like sour grapes? In fact, despite himself, Leonard had grown quite