A Set of Lies Read online

  A Set of Lies

  Carolyn McCrae

  Copyright © 2015 Carolyn McCrae

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

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  Matador®

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  ISBN 978 1784629 236

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

  “History is a set of lies agreed upon”

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by CAROLYN McCRAE

  What if?

  List of Main Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Also by CAROLYN McCRAE

  The Last Dance: Iniquities Trilogy 1

  Winner 2007 David St John Thomas Prize for Fiction

  Walking Alone: Iniquities Trilogy 2

  Runaways: Iniquities Trilogy 3

  Highly Unsuitable Girl

  All published by Matador

  *

  Her Parents’ Daughter

  Published by New Generation Publishing

  What if?

  In 1999 Carolyn McCrae and her husband

  sat in a restaurant in Plymouth waiting to be served.

  He looked at the map on the wall beside their table,

  one of the harbour dated 1815,

  and he asked ‘What if?’

  List of Main Characters

  The Laceys

  Sir Bernard: the writer of the diaries

  Lady Constance: wife of Sir Bernard

  Sir Henry: elder son of Sir Bernard

  William: younger son of Sir Bernard

  Lady Mary: wife of Sir Henry

  Sir Augustus (Gussie): son of Sir Henry

  Lady Lucille: wife of Sir Gussie

  Sir Augustus (Bertie): son of Sir Gussie

  Sir Bernard: son of William and Josephine

  Lady Catherine: wife of the second Sir Bernard

  Sir William: elder son of the second Sir Bernard

  Henry: younger son of the second Sir Bernard

  Rose: wife of Henry Lacey

  Rowan: daughter of Henry and Rose

  Lady Eva: wife of Sir William

  Sir Arthur: son of Sir William; politician

  Audrey: daughter of Sir William

  Skye: illegitimate daughter of Sir Arthur

  Lady Barbara: wife of Sir Arthur

  The Olivierres

  Claude: gentleman from the island of Jersey

  Patience: wife of Claude, sister of Constance

  Mary Lettice: infant daughter of Claude and Patience

  Josephine: daughter of Claude; wife of William Lacey

  Others

  Lady Frances Frensham: friend to the first Sir Bernard

  Sir Robert Frensham: husband of Lady Frances

  Ennor Jolliffe: Cornishman

  Iain McFarlane: lawyer, friend to Sir Gussie

  The 21st century

  Professor Carl Witherby: historian

  Fergal Shepherd: assistant to Sir Arthur Lacey

  Gayle Shepherd: politician

  Jilly Bouldnor: television presenter

  Historical characters

  (to whom many of the actions described cannot truly be attributed)

  The Duke of Wellington: soldier and politician

  Napoleon Bonaparte: sometime Emperor of the French

  Joséphine de Beauharnais: wife of Napoleon Bonaparte

  Prologue

  1822

  Since Sir Bernard Lacey was already past sixty years of age when his twin sons were born he was always aware that he would not live to know them as grown men.

  From the time it became certain that his sons would survive the trauma of their birth he ensured that his Oakridge estate was well run and that they and their mother would never want for the means to maintain their comfortable life. One element of the legacy he would leave his sons, however, did concern him.

  He spent many hours debating with himself the question of how much they should be allowed to know of his long career, through which he had fought hard against England and then equally hard against England’s enemies. And what, if anything, should his sons be allowed to know of his relationships with the only two men he had ever called ‘friend’?

  When they had fought together he had shared much hardship with the first man, Major Arthur Wesley, but as Wesley became Wellesley, and subsequently achieved power and fame as Wellington, that friendship ended and Bernard Lacey became simply one of the many tools used by the Duke to defeat the second man, England’s greatest enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French.

  There were times when Sir Bernard felt that his sons should not be left in ignorance of the story that only he could tell. On those days he would shut himself in his study and commit his memories to paper.

  But there were days when he was concerned that he could not know what kinds of men his sons would become or what judgements they would make of him. Then he would place the pages in the fireplace, set light to them and watch the flames until all the words had faded to nothing.

  Perhaps it was his wife’s quiet strength or words spoken by his neighbour, Claude Olivierre, but the day came when he stopped burning the pages.

  Sir Bernard had decided that his story was too important never to be told.

  *

  It was ten years before his testimony was complete, by which time there were four folders containing many sheets of paper held securely in his desk alongside the small notebook in which he had recorded the different ciphers he had used for those sections of his story he deemed too sensitive to be written in plain text.

  In those years there had been many occasions when he had considered in what year it would be safe for his words to be read.

  He knew he could not allow the world to know the truth during the lifetimes of his wife and sons, nor while Claude Olivierre, his wife or his daughter still lived. There were also others to consider; men and women who had risked their reputations, and their lives, for him. They had much to lose if the lies were exposed too soon, and they also had children who would be hurt by the truth.

  In time Sir Bernard made his decision.

  The plan had finall
y been put into action on the fifteenth day of July 1815. At any time up until that evening they could have retreated with nothing lost but from that day they were committed. And so it was that Sir Bernard decided that the fifteenth day of July 1915, one hundred years on, should be the day of truth.

  As he wrote that date on the covers of each folder, and on the codebook, he could not know that on that day in 1915 the world would be in turmoil and no one living would know of their existence.

  *

  Nor could he know that it would be a further one hundred years before his diaries would be found, his story told and the lies exposed.

  Chapter 1

  2010 to 2014

  The kitchen of The Lodge was an unusually large and comfortable room. When the house was first built it had been the dining room but in the extensive renovations undertaken in the nineteenth century it had been remodelled into a kitchen suitable for the dozen or more cooks and kitchen maids who served the prosperous household.

  Over two hundred years later, when staff were no longer employed, the room had taken on a new life. It was where meals were consumed as well as cooked, where books and newspapers were read, where radio was listened to and television watched, where homework was done and where conversations and discussions were held. It was the heart of the house.

  Skye Lacey had lived with her aunt for all but the first two of her seventeen years and she could not remember a time when the main reception rooms had been used. She understood that they belonged to an era, long past, when the Lacey family had been an important one.

  *

  “Have the bloody builders gone again?” Audrey Lacey asked tetchily as she watched her niece shut the back door behind her. “They never seem to stay much longer than it takes them to drink a flask of tea.”

  “Yeah, they’ve gone.” Skye replied, concentrating on prising off her boots.

  “Did they say when they’d be back?” Audrey could not keep the irritation from her voice. She hated the disruption and was increasingly worried about the cost.

  “No, they didn’t. They said they can’t do much while everything is so wet.” Skye took off her coat and draped it over a stool. “But it’s not raining now; it’s not even particularly cold. I reckon they could easily be getting on with it even if the wind is getting up a bit.”

  “Hang your coat up, dear.”

  Skye obeyed her aunt with a good grace, as she did more often than not.

  “What did you say the builders were doing?” Audrey asked again.

  “I told you, they’ve gone.” Skye sat down next to her aunt at the large table in the bow window.

  “They should have known not to start in December if bad weather was going to be a problem,” said Audrey tetchily.

  “They’ll probably be back when it improves.” Skye tried to sound encouraging.

  “But that could be ages. I’m not sure I can stand the idea of months more of that dreadful scaffolding and all the mess, not to mention the expense. No doubt the builders will pass on the extra costs and we can’t expect my brother to help, can we?”

  “You could ask him. It is his house after all.” Skye pointed out the unwelcome fact.

  “It shouldn’t have been.” Audrey had always felt a strong sense of injustice that the home she loved belonged to her brother. “If it weren’t for that bloody stupid idea that a man inherits everything it would be mine. And then, out of the kindness of his heart, he allows me to live here as long as I am able.” She paused briefly before abandoning sarcasm as pointless and continuing in a determined voice. “And I will live here as long as I am able. I won’t ask him for a penny. If he paid anything he’d feel he has the right to kick us out.”

  “He’s probably claiming for it on his expenses anyway. We don’t know, but I bet you anything he is.”

  “Thieves, crooks and bloody bandits, isn’t that what everyone calls politicians now? You’re quite right, of course he’s claiming for it. My brother is a dishonest man as well as a completely deranged one.”

  “Well I really hope that they haven’t given up on investigating him. They can’t have tried very hard. All they had to do was ask us and we can prove he hasn’t paid anything towards the costs of The Lodge.” Skye had no reason to think well of her father.

  “He’ll be claiming every penny he can get away with despite never having spent a night under this roof since 1946. And the house shouldn’t even be his. If there were an ounce of natural justice it would be mine and then, when I’m gone, I should be able to leave it to you. Instead, the moment I’m dead he’ll sell up and kick you out without a second thought. I won’t be able to stay here much longer anyway. I’m eighty years old. I can hardly walk, even with this wretched thing.” Audrey poked at the walking frame that was parked next to her chair. “And you’ll be off to university in September so I suppose I’ll have to leave the old place then and move to a bungalow in Yarmouth or Freshwater or somewhere.”

  Skye knew from experience that it was best not to interrupt while her aunt talked herself out of one of her bleak moods and it was a few minutes before Audrey straightened her shoulders, jerked her neck to free its stiffness and returned to the subject of the builders. “As I was saying, we should never have let the builders start at this time of year.”

  Skye was relieved that her aunt had turned her thoughts back to the chimney. That, at least, was a problem that could be solved.

  “We’ve been through all this. We need the Aga to cook on and keep us warm and we can’t keep that going for much longer without the chimney being fixed. The surveyor said the stonework wouldn’t last through the winter, especially if we have storms like we had last year.”

  “Well it certainly had more chance of survival before the bloody builders started dismantling it and attaching scaffolding poles,” Audrey pointed out sharply before turning her back on Skye and concentrating on the weather forecast on the television. “And now look what’s on its way, storm-force winds, thunder and lightning, the lot.”

  *

  The Lodge had been built on the lip of a ridge, in a position that took advantage of a commanding view across the north of the Isle of Wight towards the Solent and the mainland beyond. The location did, however, leave the building exposed to the weather.

  For over two hundred years The Lodge had survived many storms but few had been as bad as the one that blew up that night in January 2010.

  Neither Skye nor Audrey could sleep as the wind raged around The Lodge and the sky lit up with almost continuous flashes of lightning and deafening claps of thunder.

  A particularly loud crack made Skye sit bolt upright in her bed. For a minute, as her hearing adjusted, she struggled to think what could have caused the extraordinary noise. Pulling on her dressing gown she ran down the stairs into her aunt’s bedroom. “Leave me be.” Audrey snapped, “Go and see what it was. It sounded like a bomb went off.”

  Skye checked all the rooms as she headed for the kitchen and was surprised to see no signs of damage, but just as she reached the hall the lights went out.

  Power cuts at The Lodge were not infrequent and Skye moved into a familiar routine. She felt her way into the kitchen and found the candles and matches in the dresser drawer and lit them. She turned on the battery radio, filled the kettle and put it on the Aga.

  “What time is it?” Audrey asked as she appeared at the kitchen door.

  “Just after five.”

  “Have you found out what that bloody noise was?”

  “I think we must have been struck by lightning, though I’ve looked in the big rooms and couldn’t see anything. I’ll have to have a look outside.”

  “Don’t go out until the storm has died down.”

  Skye heard the rising panic in her aunt’s voice and decided she would have to do as she was asked. “OK. I won’t, even though it seems to be dying down a bit. At least there’s a bit of a gap between the flashes now.”

  “We’ll have to do something to take our minds off it. I certainl
y don’t want to spend the next three hours worrying about what you’ll find.”

  “Scrabble?”

  “I’d rather talk.”

  As the thunderstorm passed Skye listened, occasionally asking the questions that prompted well-remembered stories, as Audrey talked about her Uncle Henry “However much I loved him I always think it would have been better for him if he had died in The Great War”, his wife Rose “A lovely lady, a miner’s daughter from Wales” and their daughter Rowan “She was my best friend and it was so unfair that she was killed, but then there was much that was unfair about 1943.”

  Audrey’s recollections strayed to her father “He was not a nice man, though I never really knew him and always think of him as Sir William.” As the hours passed she talked of William and Henry’s parents. “My grandparents died before I was born, but Henry always called them ‘the feeble Bernard’ and ‘the dreadful Catherine’, but then he was biased by the way they had treated him.”