Foxden Hotel (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 5) by Madalyn Morgan (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

sideways and cried into her pillow. Frank climbed onto the bed and lay next to her. Still crying, Bess brought up her knees. Frank brought his up too, until they were lying as close as two spoons in a cutlery drawer. With Bess safely in his arms, Frank stayed there until she calmed down.

‘I’m sorry Frank,’ Bess said, when she stopped crying.

‘You have nothing to be sorry for. All that matters is you forgive me.’

‘Forgive you? For what?’

‘For having an affair with an imaginary woman.’

Bess couldn’t help herself and laughed. ‘I might.’ She turned over and looked at her husband. ‘Did McGann keep the letters?’

‘No. He got so cheesed off with me repeating the same story over and over again that he eventually stormed out of the interview room. When he didn’t come back I gathered them up and slipped them into my pocket.’

Frank leant back thoughtfully. ‘You know, I was going to burn them after Sutherland’s body was found. I thought, if the police discovered he was blackmailing me, it would look as if I had a motive for shoving him into the lake. But there was so much going on that week I forgot all about them.’

‘It’s a good job you did. If you’d burned them, you’d have no proof Sutherland was alive in January.’

‘I’m not sure the letters prove that, or that they were written by David Sutherland, because he didn’t sign them. They are only initialled.’

‘Where are the letters now?’

‘Locked away in the safe. And that’s where they are going to stay until this damn enquiry is over. Then I shall take great pleasure in lighting the fire with them.’

‘Frank?’ Bess said. Then she stopped and took a shuddering breath.

Frank laid his head on her shoulder and whispered, ‘What is it?’

‘Did McGann read the letters?’

‘No. He glanced at the first and the last, which he said were so ambiguous they could have been written to anyone, by anyone, about anyone. Then he left the room. He came back brandishing a pocket diary that he said had been found in the lining of a suitcase in Sutherland’s room at Hawksley’s place. Sutherland had written D. and a financial amount on the first day of every month for six months. McGann checked the dates and amounts on the blackmail letters with the entries Sutherland had made in his diary.’

‘And did they match?’

‘Yes, within a day or two, all but the last envelope. The letter I received on January the second didn’t have a stamp on it, so there was no post mark or date. And the fifty pounds I left under the bench in the walled garden was never deposited at Sutherland’s bank.’

‘Surely six out of seven letters with matching deposits are enough to prove your innocence.’

‘The letters only prove Sutherland was blackmailing me, and if the last letter he wrote was on January the second it goes part way to proving he couldn’t have died on New Year’s Eve - when he thinks I had an alibi. McGann made it quite clear that I was still his main suspect.’

Bess looked up at Frank. Her face was red from crying, but her eyes were bright and questioning.

‘What is it, darling?’

Bess swallowed hard and took a deep breath, garnering the strength and willpower she needed to ask Frank the question she had wanted to ask him since he first told her that Sutherland had been blackmailing him. ‘I’d like you to tell me what Sutherland said about me in the letters.’

Frank lowered his gaze and shook his head. ‘Why, Bess? What good will it do?’

‘I need to know Frank. I have to know! What did he say?’

Frank exhaled and thought for a moment. ‘In the first letter he said he knew your dirty secret from your time in London. If you paid him £50 it would go away.’

‘So you paid him?’ Frank nodded. ‘But it didn’t go away?’

‘No. He wrote and threatened to expose you every month, so I paid him every month.’

‘But it was only the first and last letters that you showed McGann?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about the others?’

‘They were similar to the first, getting progressively worse. In some he said you loved it, loved him. But don’t worry, McGann didn’t see any of them,’ Frank assured her.

‘You know none of what Sutherland said in those letters is true, don’t you?’

‘Why would you even ask me a question like that, Bess?’ Frank held her in his arms a while longer, and then said, ‘As much as I would love to stay here with you all day, I think I should go down.’

‘Couldn’t we stay in bed for just a little longer?’ Bess whispered. ‘Ena and Maeve are quite capable of looking after things. Besides, I’m ever so tired,’ she teased.

Frank laughed. ‘How about an early night tonight? Catch up on the sleep we missed last night. What about it?’

‘Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.’ Bess laughed, brought her feet up and kicked Frank off the bed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘What is it, Frank?’

‘No wonder McGann didn’t believe me when I said I hadn’t killed Sutherland.’ Bess walked across to the back of the desk and looked over her husband’s shoulder. ‘Look? This is the first letter; the one I told you about, the one that I showed him - and this is the last letter.’ Frank laid the letter that he had received on January the second on the desk next to the first, flattening it with the palms of his hands. ‘What do you see?’

‘Two letters.’

Frank tutted. ‘That’s not what I meant. Look again.’

Bess screwed up her eyes and looked closer. ‘Sorry, I can’t see anything. Both letters are addressed to D. There isn’t a signature on either of them, but they are both initialled, DS.’