by Kirsty Ferry
The door to Alex’s wing was standing open and she shouted through to announce herself before entering.
‘In here!’ called Cassie from the kitchen. ‘I’ve been working on this locket.’
Elodie followed her voice and found her friend sitting hunched up at the breakfast bar, rubbing at the silver oval. It still looked a little grungy, but it certainly wasn’t as bad as it had been.
‘Are you hungry?’ Elodie asked. Cassie, for all she was a stick of a thing, could certainly put away her food.
She nodded without looking up, giving the locket another rub. ‘Alex has absolutely nothing to eat in here. I’ve cleaned out his biscuit barrel but my tummy is still empty.’
‘Would you like some of this, then?’ Elodie opened the casserole dish. Cassie spun her head around so fast she truly thought it might fly off.
‘I love you Elodie!’ she said. ‘Ohhhh, that smells good.’ She closed her eyes and gave a deep, satisfying sniff. ‘You’re staying as well, of course.’ It was more of a statement than a question.
‘There’s more than enough for three of us. I always over-estimate.’ Elodie looked ruefully at the casserole. ‘That’s why Delilah hates me dishing up food in the café. Especially cakes. I can make a cake that should feed twelve, feed six.’
‘I’ll get the plates, then.’
Cassie hopped off the bench and Elodie took the opportunity to peer at the locket. ‘Is it ready?’ Elodie indicated the piece of jewellery and Cassie followed her gaze.
She sighed. ‘No. I’m going to rub it gently with cotton. I’ll go and find some soon, and then I’ll look for some oil in the garage.’ She checked the clock, which was a replica of one from Paddington Station. ‘I’d best go and close up the Hall, anyway. Alex has disappeared somewhere assessing damage. I’ll throw the tourists out and then I’ll come back and deal with this.’
It was the perfect opening.
Trying to keep her voice steady, Elodie said, ‘Don’t worry. You plate that all up, and give me the keys. I told Alex I’d lock up for him, but you’d dashed off along the corridor from the attics by then with the locket, so you probably didn’t hear me. And at least if you’re in charge down here, we should all get an even amount of dinner.’
‘Oh, really?’ Cassie grinned. ‘You trust me with this stuff? It would be splendid if you could lock up tonight. Do you know what you’re doing?’
‘Of course. I know which route to follow, I’ve done it plenty of times for Alex.’
‘Thank you. You really are very wonderful.’ Cassie turned and deftly unhooked a huge bunch of keys from the hook behind the door. ‘You know they’re all in order, right?’
‘I do.’ Elodie smiled. Her heart was beating so loudly she felt sure Cassie would hear it. But apparently, she didn’t, as she handed her the keys and turned her attention to the casserole.
‘Oh. Just one thing,’ Elodie said.
‘Hmm?’ Cassie had the plates warming in the Aga and turned around quizzically.
‘You know that old picture in the attic – the one of Georgiana?’
‘The one we weren’t allowed to touch?’ asked Cassie wryly. ‘No matter all the times I touched it before.’
‘That’s the one.’ Elodie smiled and twitched at her skirt. ‘Is it okay if I sort of borrow it?’
‘Borrow it?’ Cassie looked astonished, and Elodie thought with a stab of horror that her plan could go horribly wrong.
‘Yep. Just for a little while.’
‘For what? I’m not sure – like I said, she belongs here. I know the tomb is shattered and all that, but the painting won’t help repair her face. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Ah – and there we have it, in the word “repair”.’ Elodie smiled, she hoped, engagingly. ‘Like I said, I have a friend in London who could clean her up for us.’
‘And you were serious?’ Cassie’s eyebrows rose. She was always intrigued by Elodie’s tales of theatre-land, but this was something she mustn’t have heard before today. ‘You really have friends who do that sort of stuff?’
‘Well, one friend. Simon. He’s married to Cori, remember?’
‘Oh! Cori. Of course.’ Cassie nodded. She’d heard of Cori. ‘And he’s said he’ll do it? Really?’
‘Well not yet – but I know he will.’
‘Gosh. I don’t know.’
Elodie played her last, desperate card before she had no option but to turn to theft. ‘To be honest with you, Cass, I want to do it for Alex. It’s going to be a surprise. He’s had a rubbish day, and I want to do something nice for him. But it’s fine, I’ll leave it.’ She crossed her fingers behind her back. She wasn’t going to leave it at all.
‘For Alex? Well why didn’t you say so?’ Cassie smiled suddenly. ‘Take it, by all means. There’s not many reasons I’d let that portrait leave the premises, but if it’s to make my brother happy, then you can take it, with my blessing.’ Cassie looked down, and her face shadowed. ‘He gave up so much to come back here, you know. He moved back from Oxford and he’d made a life down there. He had a great job, and a lovely house, and a girlfriend, although I didn’t rate her much and it fizzled out before long. And he came back. It was only going to be temporary – he was going to get the estate sorted, get things tidied up and leave it ticking over until one of us was ready to come back permanently.’ She shook her head. ‘It didn’t work out like that at all. Once he saw how many debts there were, and how much had already gone, he knew he had to sell this place or open it up to the public.
‘He had to let so many staff go, he felt terrible – but they’d been whittled down to the bare bones anyway. Your Dad did what he could, but of course he had retired by the time things reached breaking point – the new guy, one of my own father’s so-called racing friends was as much use as a chocolate fireguard. I swear he gambled half the money away on horses. I would have signed his dismissal papers myself, if I’d had the chance.’
Elodie had heard the story before, of course, but it seemed different coming from Cassie, rather than as gossip from the village. Elodie’s father hadn’t even talked about it – he simply refused to get involved in the gossip and had always remained loyal to the Earl and to Alex, despite the way things had turned out. He was lucky though – when he retired, Elodie’s parents had at least managed to buy their little cottage.
Other people Elodie knew, from hearsay, had their rents raised or simply lost the tied cottages and had to get jobs and move elsewhere. The impact of the estate’s collapse on such a small village was horrible, and she still felt ill on Alex’s behalf if she let herself think about it.
‘He’s never told me that much about it,’ she admitted to Cassie. She certainly hadn’t heard about the girlfriend.
Cassie looked up at her. ‘No, well he wouldn’t. I only found out because I saw his computer on and poked around the files. He wanted to protect me, I think, so I never told him I’d seen anything. He had a few demons when he came back – he was very bitter and very angry and wouldn’t open up to anyone. He drank too much and he was never happy, you know? In fact, he only started coming out of it when—’ She closed her mouth, as if she’d already said too much.
But Elodie wanted to know. ‘When what?’ Her heart was pounding; it was as if she already knew what Cassie was going to say.
‘When you came back,’ Cassie finished softly. ‘Sorry.’
‘No need to be sorry. I do care for him, despite – well – everything that’s happened. I hate to think of him hurting.’ Cassie could interpret that how she liked; she might choose to think it was because of Elodie’s failed marriage and the fact that she too had returned to Hartsford under something of a cloud. Or she might not. But she wasn’t going to go into details.
‘I know you care, it’s plain to everyone who knows you. And getting the portrait restored for him is a lovely thing to do. Thank you, Elodie.’
Elodie’s face burned. Was it really so obvious how she felt about him?
But Cassie had decid
ed it was time to change the subject slightly. ‘I think he might go off on Hughie after he’s seen the damage – especially if he knows we’re around to close up the Hall. He’ll just want to escape real life for a while. You nip up and get the picture, and we’ll say nothing to him. But don’t bump into any ghosts up there!’
‘Thanks.’ Elodie smiled, almost sagging with relief. For all of her grand schemes, she wasn’t really a thief and didn’t know how she would have slept, let alone looked one of the Aldrichs in the face afterwards. It was hard enough looking at Alex at the moment anyway, as the image of him in Ben’s black clothes seemed to have haunted her since that morning. ‘I think I’ll be fine up there. It won’t be anyone I haven’t seen before.’ And that, at least, was true.
Elodie left Cassie to it with the plates and the Aga and the casserole, and hurried towards the connecting door along Alex’s corridor, to enter the grand space of the Hall. She loved the Hall near closing time. It was like a sleepy old duchess settling her skirts around her for a snooze. You knew she was still there, imperious and ever-watchful, but this was the time of day you could slip past her and not have her attention on you.
Cassie’s words were still playing on her mind though – had her return really been the thing that dragged Alex back from the brink? She certainly knew that when her life fell apart in London and her health began to fail so drastically, his face was the one thing that kept her going. It was him she wanted to see when she was in hospital on a ventilator – not Piers. There was too much unfinished business between them, and she fought so hard to pull her life together afterwards, simply because she had to see him one last time to make it all right again.
And when she was stronger, and she felt a bit silly and dramatic about it, she still knew that she had to leave Piers and everything that he represented. She could have gone anywhere, really. There were theatres in towns all over the world that would have taken her on with only a cursory glance at her CV. But no. It was Hartsford, always Hartsford, where she wanted to be. Where she needed to be. Her confidence had gone, her health was following suit and she just wanted to escape.
Yet when she got back, just being near him seemed to be enough; and the urge to sort the past out didn’t seem so important any more. Because she was still with him and he was in her life again and it was safe.
With those thoughts spinning around in her mind, Elodie headed down to lock up the kitchens first, then came back up into the service corridor. She quite liked the pictures of animals and landscapes along here; there were so many dreary family portraits hanging up elsewhere on the walls that she sometimes felt watched in the Hall – but she wasn’t intimidated by any of them – apart from Georgiana’s father who glared out at everyone from his perch above the fireplace in the dining room. Elodie always averted her eyes from him. She had once asked Alex where the portrait of his wife was, and Alex had shrugged and said he didn’t know, but from what he’d heard, she was a hideous woman anyway so it was maybe better that she was missing.
Alex called the dining room the Christmas Room. They had always had Christmas lunch in there when he was growing up. In latter years, however, he’d gone to Margaret’s house and, seeing the room like this, as it was this evening, all mellow with the parkland golden and green beyond the huge windows and the sweeping driveway heading away from the Hall, Elodie thought it was such a shame that it might not be used like that again unless Cassie ever brought her future mini-Aldrichs over.
Because she still refused to think of Alex meeting anyone and producing small people any time soon. Elodie had a sense of possessiveness over him that she knew, deep down, was unfair and unwarranted. She’d moved away as soon as she could, then got married – what was wrong with Alex marrying? Surely she should be pleased if her old childhood friend found someone to make him happy? She knew, however, that she, Elodie, wouldn’t be happy at all. Whoever he married probably wouldn’t want her hanging around the Hall, despite the fact they’d grown up together.
Her cheeks burned as she remembered Prom Night again …
‘So say we just forget about going to the Faerie Bridge and stay here?’
He had leaned down and brushed her lips with his and it was the first time she’d been kissed properly. Her knees wobbled and she clung onto him, half of her thinking it was the most wonderful thing in the word, and half of her wanting to run away screaming because, my God, this was Alex!
‘Alex, what if anyone finds us’
‘They won’t. Who’ll be in the Hall stables at this time of night?’
The Prom had officially finished an hour ago. It had been hosted at a marquee in the Hall grounds, and most people had drifted away from around ten o’clock.
‘I don’t know. Cassie?’
‘Cassie’s in bed, you dolt.’ His words had been affectionate, a smile on his lips as he brushed hers again. ‘Where we should be.’
Her legs had wobbled again, and she’d clung to him as she felt his hands snake around and undo the zipper at the back of her sea-green prom dress …
‘Urgh!’ Elodie cringed and hurried through the dining room from the service corridor, refusing to look Georgiana’s father in the face in case he could read her mind with his arrogant, all-seeing eyes.
A couple of straggling visitors were chatting to a tour guide as Elodie passed through the main hall and locked the library door behind her – but as that was the first and last place on the tour, Martin would be ushering them out rather swiftly. Fourteen clipboards were stacked up on the oak desk where they stocked the guidebooks, and Laura in the corridor was clutching the fifteenth. They only had one per tour guide so there were no guides in the house anymore and therefore no tourists.
Martin nodded to Elodie and managed to take the guests outside, closely followed by Laura, and Elodie quickly locked up the main door, loving, as always, that satisfying clunk you get with old locking mechanisms.
She worked through the rest of the house; she clunk-ed the drawing room, the music room, the Chinese parlour, the ballroom and then walked up the wonderful cantilever staircase that terrified people with its gravity-defying design. Hurrying along the gallery, she locked all the bedrooms and bathrooms. Then up she went onto the third floor. She secured the nursery, and wished “Goodnight”, as tradition demanded, to any little spirits that might be playing in there. Just outside the door, however, Elodie paused for a moment. It seemed busier than usual up there, but she couldn’t put her finger on it – the atmosphere was heavier, more unsettled; but it might, she reasoned, be something to do with the storm. It was a nursery though – she shook herself. Nothing to fret about, they’d calm down before long. ‘It’s fine,’ she whispered, into the empty room to try and reassure the little spirits inside. ‘It’s all fine.’
From there, she moved along the corridor and shut up the servants’ rooms. Then she saw the connecting door back into Alex’s wing. Taking a deep breath, Elodie steadied her nerves and leaned into the door, listening hard to establish if anyone was roaming around behind it in the private quarters – and then decided that Alex, if he had returned, would be consumed by the promise of casserole and probably wouldn’t have got further than the kitchen anyway.
And if he was, by any remote chance in the corridor by the attics, Elodie’s excuse was that she was simply taking a short cut after her business of locking up.
Still, she opened the door as quietly as she could and stepped through it. There was a funny little shiver as a draught swept past and she remembered little Lucy, hurrying back here after encountering Georgiana and Ben in the attics. Putting the thought out of her mind, she shut the door firmly behind her.
All she had to do now was creep along there and get into that attic. Thanking her lucky stars for the emptiness that pressed around her in that corridor, she climbed the short flight of stairs, reached the room and tried the handle, and the door swung open easily. Now she just had to get the picture, hide it in her magazine, get back to the kitchen, sit and have dinner without
Alex realising, look dutifully at the pistol – and then escape.
It seemed an awfully long time until that part of her plan would be complete. But it was pointless thinking that far ahead at the moment.
She eyed the trunk that Alex had so carefully shut and hunkered down by it. A quick fiddle with the catches released the lid and it opened with an overly-loud creak in the silence of the attic.
It was the work of a moment to find the portrait, put it inside the magazine and roll it all up. Exhaling, she sat back on her heels and let her heart rate return to something close to normal. Casting a look around to make sure she’d left no trace that Alex could find, she saw the little silver coin that had rolled onto the floor. Something clicked into her brain, because it had rolled onto the floor, hadn’t it? And it wasn’t there anymore. It was on the window sill.
There was that draught again, and it curled up around her, sitting as she was on the floor beside the trunk, and she stood up hurriedly.
Then she felt the tiniest of pushes. She stumbled and turned around, a cold sweat breaking out and making her strappy top feel too constricting.
‘Who’s here?’ she asked, looking around the room. There was, of course, silence. Elodie looked at the window sill again and the coin glinted in the sunlight. Another push and she took another lurch towards the window sill.
She swore at that point. ‘Look, whoever’s in here, stop it! If you want me over there, I’ll go over there. Why not just show me who you are and ask me? It would be much easier for us both!’ And before anyone could shove her again, she took two strides and was there, reaching over to pick the coin up.
‘See, I found the coin!’ Lucy was standing next to her, dancing from one foot to the other. Her lemon satin gown danced in the light with her, the skirt sticking out with the extra petticoats underneath, the way she always liked to wear it. ‘It was exactly where he said it would be. Down by the lake. I’m clever, aren’t I? Do say I’m clever, Georgiana.’
