‘We’ve been out riding,’ Lady Bentham said.
‘Father likes to show off his wines. Mother doesn’t drink often, and I can’t tell a Merlot from a Shiraz.’
‘Philistine,’ Geoffrey Bentham jokingly said to his daughter.
‘I’ll be back in five minutes,’ Amelia said. ‘We can talk then.’
‘We’ve another bottle to test,’ her father said.
‘Sergeant Gladstone can stay for dinner. And besides, she’s not in a fit condition to drive back to London tonight. I knew them both better than anyone else. Strange, I should be more upset, but it wasn’t as if I ever knew Matilda really.’
‘What’s the reason that got Matilda’s brother evicted from the family home?’ Wendy asked.
‘I can’t remember it being mentioned. You’ll be asking me how Matilda could afford such a lovely house, won’t you?’
‘I will.’
‘Then have your drink with father, praise his wines, and after dinner, you and I will talk.’
‘As I was saying, seventeen months in French barriques,’ Geoffrey Bentham said.
Wendy nodded in acknowledgement, spoke about the wine – the intensity, the colour, the nose – taking the lead from her teacher. She did not have any idea what a French barrique was.
After her introduction to wine tasting, Wendy was shown her room by the haughty butler.
‘I’ve laid out clothes for you, and there are clean towels in the bathroom,’ he said.
‘Casual for dinner?’
‘Always,’ the man said as though he regretted it.
‘What time?’
‘Eight o’clock. Don’t be late. It’s fish tonight. His lordship’s chosen a Cabernet Blanc from his cellar for you.’
‘I don’t think I could drink any more.’
‘Not so from where I was standing,’ the butler said. ‘You looked as though you were just settling in for the long haul. They’re good people.’
‘Yes, they are.’
‘I hope they’re not in trouble.’
‘So do I,’ Wendy said.
***
Upstairs in the Montgomery house, Larry and Constable Sands found Janice Montgomery’s room, the woman answering from the other side of the door.
Elaine Sands turned the door handle. ‘It’s locked,’ she shouted out.
‘Stanley locked it. He has the key. He doesn’t want me to see you,’ Mrs Montgomery replied.
‘Is there a spare?’
‘Downstairs, hanging from a rack in the kitchen.’
Larry ran down the stairs, found the key quickly enough and returned. He put the key in the lock. It turned, and the door opened. Inside, Janice Montgomery was sitting up in bed.
‘Are you alright?’ Larry asked.
‘Yes. Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Your husband…’
‘That’s Stanley. He cares in his own way, wants to protect me from the nastiness outside.’
‘Don’t you leave the house?’ Elaine asked.
‘Sometimes, but I prefer it here.’
The room was well decorated and bright. In one corner, a budgerigar in a cage. It was chirping. In the centre of the room, a queen size bed with a wooden headboard. Mrs Montgomery seemed to be consumed by the voluminous pillows that supported her.
‘Stanley has made it very nice for me, don’t you think?’
Larry could only agree, but it was still a gilded cage, and the woman looked as if she had become institutionalised, a captive to her husband’s paranoia, his need to control. Getting answers from her would be difficult, but he had to persevere.
‘Mrs Montgomery, your husband is helping us with our enquiries into the deaths of your children.’
The woman sat still in her bed. She clutched a doll. ‘Matilda loved this doll,’ she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. ‘Why did she have to die?’
‘We need to know,’ Larry said. Elaine Sands dabbed a handkerchief on the tearful woman’s cheek. Janice Montgomery clutched her arm, as in an act of affection.
Larry, not a psychologist, just a detective inspector, thought that the woman had been deprived of affection for a long time. The young police constable had supplied what she had wanted.
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Montgomery said. Elaine Sands went downstairs, returning after a few minutes with a cup of tea and toast for her.
‘We need to talk,’ Larry said. The circumstances of the woman in her room did not indicate neglect or maltreatment, though she was childlike, a mere shadow, perilously thin.
‘You want to know about Matilda?’
‘And Barry. We don’t understand why Matilda needed to die.’
‘My husband is a good man, you must understand that. It is just that he is…’
‘Controlling?’
‘He wants everything and everyone his way. Barry could never accept it, although Matilda was more forgiving, and she loved her father, I know she did.’
Loving the father seemed more than Larry could accept. Nobody could love a tyrant, other than from fear of causing displeasure, hanging on to the only thing they had ever known. But Matilda hadn’t been a child. No one calmly throws a rope over a beam, not unless their life has taken a turn for the worse, a broken heart, a financial crisis, guilt.
The last reason, the most viable of all the possibilities, was hard to contemplate.
And now there was Stanley Montgomery, a man who had no friends, a family that he ruled with an iron rod, just his wife remaining.
‘How did Matilda leave this house?’ Larry asked.
‘She was a good girl, did well at school, and then there was university. Always the best for her, but she would spend more time away, not always coming home every night.’
‘What did your husband do?’
‘He confronted her at a house she was sharing, accused her of cheapening herself, cheapening the good name of Montgomery. Not that she could cheapen it any more than it already had been.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Check on the Montgomery family history. You’ll find out what I mean.’
‘We will, but first, can you tell me?’
‘Stanley’s great-grandfather fought in the Boer War in South Africa.’
‘A long time ago.’
‘Not to Stanley, it wasn’t. Cecil Montgomery,
