Faith - Lesley Pearse [191]
By the time they got back she had put the paper down and was staring into space, her face suddenly pale.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Why would she give me Brodie Farm? How did she find out about my sisters, and why is she giving Kirkmay House to them? I thought it belonged to Belle and Charles. And why hasn’t she left them anything? Is that a mistake?’
Stuart got out Jackie’s letter to him and let her read that so she would understand.
David had watched this interchange silently and was surprised that Laura showed horror, not delight. Stuart had told her when they first got there that an appeal was now in the bag, though he hadn’t told her that most of the new evidence they had gathered pointed to Charles being Jackie’s killer. They thought that better kept to themselves for now. So why wasn’t she happy about this development which would set her up for life if she was acquitted?
A tear trickled down Laura’s cheeks as she read Jackie’s letter. She put it down when she’d finished and covered her face in her hands.
‘What is it?’ Stuart said, looking stunned by her reaction. ‘We expected you to be thrilled.’
‘Belle will hate me for this,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘Everyone will. I didn’t want anything from Jackie, just to keep all the wonderful memories of her intact.’
‘She had no idea that any of us would ever read it,’ Stuart reminded her. ‘She thought she would live for ever. But she put down what was important to her at the time of writing. And that was that she loved you. Thank God she did, for this will and the letter prove how she felt.’
‘Why didn’t she tell me she knew about my sisters?’
‘I dare say she thought you’d be so embarrassed that you’d never come near her again.’
‘I would have loved it if she’d told me,’ Laura said brokenly. ‘It would have given me the chance to tell her the whole story, to get it off my chest. I can’t go and live at the farm even if I am acquitted. Can you imagine what it would be like? Never mind the horror of what happened there, unless the police find the real murderer, everyone will carry on believing I killed her. I couldn’t bear that.’
‘We think that as soon as the appeal gets underway they will start a new murder investigation,’ David said. ‘We’ve found they were very remiss in the original one, so they’ll be forced to pull out all the stops this time.’
‘I kind of knew Jackie wasn’t all that happy when Belle and Charles moved up to Scotland,’ Laura said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. ‘But I thought that was because she didn’t think they’d fit in, not because they were broke and expected her to bail them out. I believed they were still stinking rich, Belle always implied that. And I was giving Jackie so much grief at that time too!’ She broke off, looking helplessly at Stuart.
‘People tend to conceal problems within their own family,’ he said soothingly. ‘It was no reflection on you.’
‘But poor Belle,’ Laura said sadly. ‘She’ll be devastated. As if it wasn’t bad enough losing her sister, without then being made to leave her home.’
David wondered if she would manage to find any compassion for Belle if he and Stuart were proved right about the accident which killed Barney.
‘I shouldn’t waste any sympathy on her,’ Stuart said. ‘Jackie wasn’t a vindictive person, she would have had good reason. I’m sure there was a lot more she hasn’t told us. But I’m surprised you even care about Belle – she hasn’t been very kind about you.’
‘When you’ve been fond of someone when they were a child, you don’t stop caring about them just because they didn’t turn out as you expected or hoped,’ Laura said reproachfully. ‘I think she always felt she was living in Jackie’s shadow and I’m sure she only married Charles because she felt that would