Page 84 of Marble Hall Murders

‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort this out.’

That was the Elaine I remembered. No fussing around, just making a decision and getting on with it.

I felt less anxious after that, although it took me another thirty minutes to reach the house. Roland had told me that Eliot was living in his parents’ home in Notting Hill and my first sight of it provided striking evidence of the Crace Estate’s wealth. It was a gorgeous, white-fronted jewel of a house standing on the corner of a street that didn’t feel like London at all. Everything about it was ordered and symmetrical, a complete contrast to Eliot himself. Only the front garden, with its unloved hedges and patchy lawn, along with a rusting bicycle lying on its side, hinted that it wasn’t owned by a banker or a lawyer or, indeed, by anyone who was proud to be living here.

I parked in a residents’ bay and walked up to the front door, which opened as I approached. Elaine had seen me arrive. She was as smartly presented as ever in a cashmere jersey and jeans, but I saw from her face that things were as bad as I’d feared.

She got straight to the point. ‘Gillian’s inside. I should warn you, Susan, she’s not looking pretty. He hit her in the face and she’s badly bruised. And there’s something else you need to know before you go in. She’s pregnant.’

‘Oh my God!’ I thought about what she’d just said. ‘Does Eliot know?’

Elaine looked at me reproachfully. ‘I haven’t asked her and she hasn’t told me. One step at a time!’

The house was beautiful, but the moment I walked in, it told me another sad chapter in the history of the Crace family’s life. It was untidy and unloved. The parents had gone, leaving the children home alone. The first thing I noticed was a large wine stain on the hall carpet. There was a smell ofcigarette smoke and cooking oil in the air. A table opposite the entrance had a huge scratch running across the surface and there was clutter everywhere. A bag of rubbish was waiting to be carried out to the bin. This was where Edward and Amy Crace had lived immediately after Miriam Crace’s death and I guessed it was Miriam’s money that had originally purchased it. But now Edward and Amy were in America, Roland presumably had a bachelor pad somewhere in town, and Julia was working at a private school in Lincoln. That just left Eliot and Gillian, not so much living here as squatting. This wasn’t their house or even their life. It was the temporary home of two people who had nowhere else to go.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ Elaine said in a low voice. ‘Gillian’s in the kitchen.’

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘I got here twenty minutes ago. I was in Kensington when you called me. You did the right thing, Susan. I had no idea how bad things were.’

We went into a kitchen that needed cleaning … or replacing. The surfaces were cluttered with old bottles and glasses, and the white goods had turned a faint yellow. A door was hanging diagonally off one of the cupboards and the oven had been defeated by grease and neglect. The far end of the room had a seating area with doors leading into the garden, and this was where I saw Gillian, sitting on a sofa with her legs curled up, her feet bare, cradling a hot drink that Elaine must have made for her. She was wearing her NHS nursing uniform. At first sight, she seemed unharmed, as pretty as I remembered her, but hearing me arrive, she turned her headand I saw that her cheek was bruised and swollen, her eye half-closed.

‘Hello, Susan,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming. But you really didn’t have to …’

I turned to Elaine. ‘Have you called a doctor?’ I asked.

‘I don’t want to see anyone,’ Gillian said. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

I went over to her and sat on the arm of the sofa, keeping a distance between us. I was still wondering if I had been right to come. I was Eliot’s editor, not a member of the family, and it was a great relief to have Elaine here with me. ‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

‘An hour before you rang.’ She glanced at Elaine. ‘Have you told her?’

Elaine nodded. It was obvious what she meant.

‘How many weeks?’ I asked.

‘Two months. I’m expecting it in January.’ Perhaps it helped that Gillian worked as a nurse. She had to deal with difficult personal issues every day of the week and it had taught her to keep her emotions in check.

Despite Elaine’s reticence, I had to ask her. ‘Have you told him?’

‘Yes. I told him. That was when he did this.’

That shocked me. He had hit her knowing she was pregnant.

Elaine had taken a seat opposite us. She looked grim.

‘I’m grateful to you for coming over here, Susan. Both of you. But I want you to understand that it’s not Eliot’s fault.’ There was a dull quality to Gillian’s voice, as if she was describing events that had happened to somebody else. ‘I metEliot when he came into the hospital and of course I knew he was trouble. I mean, he’d just taken a drug overdose. It wasn’t as if he’d been hit by a car while helping an old lady cross the road or something like that. He almost died that first night and it was twenty-four hours before we knew he was going to make it. I think by that time I’d fallen in love with him. It was as if we were made for each other. I mean, I was a nurse and he was in so much pain. He was almost like a child. I could tell he was hurting and I wanted to help him.

‘It’s hard to imagine what it was like for him growing up in Marble Hall. Miriam controlled every inch of his life. She’d started with her own children – Eliot’s father and his uncle – and then it continued with the grandchildren. They all suffered and in the end it killed Jasmine, Eliot’s cousin. She was only twenty-one when she died.’

‘Eliot told me it was an accident,’ I said. ‘She fell under a train.’

‘That’s what they all say. That was the official story when it happened. She fell under a tube train at Sloane Square station. But it’s not true. They all know it, even if they pretend they don’t, but Eliot told me the truth when he was drunk. She didn’t fall. She jumped. She wrote them a long letter, telling them that she wanted to get away from the Little People, that they’d been following her all her life. She’d said the same thing to her therapist, but he couldn’t help her. The next day, she was dead. Maybe that gives you an idea of what Eliot had to live with. Even the suicide of his cousin had to be covered up so that it wouldn’t do any damage to the lovely image and the wonderful stories of Miriam Crace.’

It was another secret hidden in Eliot’s book. He haddescribed the death of his cousin, Jasmine, but he had given it to Marion Waysmith, Elmer’s first wife.

‘If you don’t believe me, you should talk to Julia. I don’t see her very often because she lives so far away and she doesn’t like visiting us. It brings back too many memories. But she knows how it was at Marble Hall. She couldn’t wait for Miriam Crace to die. She and Eliot used to talk about it all the time …’

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