Season of Storms

by Susanna Kearsley

  I wasn’t having any luck at all today, I thought. The afternoon’s rehearsal, even with Madeleine there, hadn’t gone any better than this morning’s—while the weather had improved a little, Rupert’s mood hadn’t, and by the time we’d ended everyone had been a bit on edge. I’d longed all day to tell him that he’d misunderstood what he’d seen between Den and myself, but there was no point in trying to talk to Rupert when he got like this. He didn’t listen, not to me. Only one person I knew had learned the knack of reasoning with Rupert in a mood, but that person was miles away in London and I couldn’t get in touch with him.

  My first thought had been to e-mail Bryan, asking if he’d please ring Rupert this evening and talk him round, only I hadn’t been able to find Alex, or anyone who knew where he might have gone, and I couldn’t very well use the computer without Alex there. Or the telephone.

  So I’d come here, instead, to the call-box at the bottom of the hill, where the long road winding down from Il Piacere met the busier thoroughfare leading from town.

  The walk down the hill wouldn’t have been too bad, actually, if it hadn’t started raining halfway down, and if I hadn’t had to pass the spot where Giancarlo had died. The rain had eased and finally stopped while I was in the call-box, but now that I’d come out it started up again, colder now and hard enough to make me draw up the hood of my raincoat.

  Across the street, a man and woman stood locked in a passionate embrace beneath the shelter of an awning-covered doorway. It was envy more than anything that made me notice them to begin with—envy because they were dry and quite clearly enjoying themselves, whereas I was sopping wet and feeling wretched. But my initial glance across at them was followed by another, longer look; a growing sense of recognition. Not that I could see either of them very clearly. The man’s back was to me, and his body blocked a good part of the woman’s. Still, he had a curiously heart-shaped bald patch on the crown of his dark head, one I fancied I had seen before. And when the woman moved and raised her head to look at him, I knew for certain.

  So, I thought, Daniela’s man from Venice was in Mira, now—the man I’d seen her with at the basilica, and later, at the restaurant. I’d thought her brazen to fool around with Nicholas under Alex’s nose, but apparently she was even more of a risk-taker than I’d given her credit for. I was tempted to call over to them, wave hello, and let her know I’d seen her, but the rain was already beginning to soak through my shoes and in the end I decided it simply wasn’t worth the effort.

  Turning, I started my long uphill trudge, head tucked down, keeping close to the hedge to stay out of the way of the cars. I was passed only twice, but both times the spray of water from the speeding tyres arced up and caught me squarely in the side. Dejected and drenched, I squelched up to the great iron gates of Il Piacere and pressed the buzzer for the intercom.

  The temporary housekeeper answered. She started out suspicious, and she wasn’t good with English, and the fact that my name meant nothing to her didn’t help. “No, no,” she said, and severed the connection.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” I buzzed a second time.

  She came back on. “No, no,” she told me firmly, as though sending off a salesman, and again the line went dead. She wasn’t going to let me in.

  “I don’t believe this.” It was raining harder now, and when I moved my head the water from my hood sluiced down my neck. I buzzed again with a force that must have alarmed the poor woman, because there was a long pause before anybody answered; then a different voice said, “Celia? Is that you?”

  Alex. I felt a small rush of relief. “Yes. Let me in.”

  “Where on earth have you been? We’ve been—”

  “Alex,” I told him, “it’s raining. Please, just let me in.”

  The latch clicked as the gate began its inward swing. “Don’t use the main steps, they’ll be slippery,” he warned me. “Come round by the terrace.”

  Apparently he didn’t trust me to follow instructions—he met me at the bottom of the drive, with an umbrella. I must have looked a sight. I saw the concern in his eyes change to quiet amusement. “So, where have you been?” he repeated his question, holding the umbrella out to cover me as he walked with me round to the back of the house, past the garage.

  “I went to use the call-box.”

  “The call-box?” He lifted an eyebrow. “But why? We have phones at the house.”

  “It’s a long story. And anyway, I wouldn’t have needed to go at all if you’d been here, so instead of asking me where I’ve been you might tell me where—”

  “Milan,” he cut me off, remaining admirably calm in the face of my temper. “There was something that I needed to arrange.” Starting up the terrace steps, he slanted me a quick look of apology. “I must have gone straight past you, in the car. I’ve only just got back myself.”

  At least his car hadn’t been one of the ones that had splashed me—those had both been older cars, not like anything I’d seen in his garage. Relenting a little, I said, “Yes, well, I was probably in the call-box at the time, so you wouldn’t have noticed me.”

  I sloshed across the terrace, pausing inside the door while he shook out the umbrella and reached to take my raincoat. “Here, I’ll hang these up to dry,” he said.

  It was then I heard the laughter from the dining room. Laughter! And Rupert’s voice mingling with all of the others. It didn’t seem fair, I thought. Here I’d gone and risked pneumonia trying to find a way to pull Rupert out of his mood, and he’d managed to do it without me.

  The laughter came again, more raucous this time, and I frowned and started walking past, preparing to go upstairs to change out of my wet clothes.

  “Celia!” Rupert called me as I passed the open doorway of the dining room. “You’re back, how lovely. Look who’s here.”

  I looked.

  The man beside him looked me up and down and grinned a welcome. “Angel, looks like you could use a hug,” said Bryan, rising from his chair to give me one.

  v

  “I like your Alex.” Bryan stepped out on my balcony to test the night-time view, his voice drifting back through the open French windows.

  Fervently hoping there was no one on the terrace underneath him, I replied, “He’s hardly mine.”

  “Well, whomever he belongs to, he’s all right. Will you look at that lake? Bloody gorgeous,” he pronounced it, as he turned and came back in again, shutting the windows behind him and drawing the curtains. “Bit cold, though. I wouldn’t have expected this for Italy. You might have warned me.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming, did I?”

  “No, you didn’t, to be fair. I didn’t know it myself until yesterday,” he admitted. “Not for certain, anyway. I had a job finding a flight.”

  “And Alex was in on this too, was he?”

  “From the beginning.” He sat on the end of my bed with a smile that told me how pleased he still was at the way his surprise arrival had gone off. “It was his idea, actually, my staying at the house here. I e-mailed him last week to ask if he could recommend a good hotel in Mira, but your Alex wouldn’t hear of it. Like I said, he’s a very nice bloke. I approve.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” I said, with patience. “But he’s already spoken for.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’ve got my eyesight, Angel,” he said, sending me a dry look. “I was sitting between you at dinner, remember?”

  “And?”

  “And if you’d both been ten years younger, I’d have sent you to your rooms for misbehaving.”

  Drawing my legs up beneath me I leaned my back against the headboard. “Bryan, don’t exaggerate.”

  He only shrugged and changed the subject. “So what’s Roo been doing that’s got you upset?”

  I sighed and pulled my hair back with one hand, trying to explain. I told him what had happened earlier that morning, how I’d gone backstage and thought someone was with m
e in the dark, and how I’d run to Den for reassurance, and how Rupert had leapt to conclusions. “I mean, I know it wasn’t only that. He hasn’t been himself this week to start with, and then Nicholas was pushing all his buttons at rehearsal. Seeing me with Den was only one more thing. But . . .”

  “But?”

  I blinked the moisture from my eyes, glad to be sitting with someone who knew how upsetting Rupert’s disapproval was for me. “He gave me that look. You know—the one he always gives when he’s been disappointed. And he wouldn’t even let me explain . . .”

  “Oh, Angel.” He moved to my side; put his arm round my shoulder and held me against him in sympathy. “Don’t cry, it’s all right.”

  I wasn’t crying, not exactly. Sniffing, I said, “There is nothing between me and Den.”

  Bryan rested his chin on the top of my head. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised. “Don’t you worry.”

  “Thanks.” I sighed again, the small heaving sigh of a comforted child. “Bryan?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I felt his jaw move and I knew that he was smiling. “Well, I was getting bloody lonely in that flat, I don’t mind telling you. I can only eat meals out of tins for so long.” Sitting back, he made a show of looking round my room, noticing the evidence of luxury. “I should have come a damned sight sooner.”

  I followed his gaze. “It is nice, isn’t it?”

  “Very posh.” Nodding at the giant portrait hanging over my bed, he said, “That’s the lady herself, is it?”

  “Celia the First, yes.” I twisted round, looking up. “Beautiful, wasn’t she?”

  “Sad-looking, I’d have said.”

  I studied the portrait more closely and saw it as well, the shadows in the large blue eyes, the almost wistful smile. “Edwina said she had an unfortunate aura.”

  “Edwina?”

  “Alex’s grandmother.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, having been kept up to date by my e-mails. “The gypsy queen.”

  “Laugh all you want,” I invited him, “but you wouldn’t have laughed if you’d been here for the séance. I mean, I know it’s all rot, but Edwina can be dead convincing. And I’m sure she isn’t doing it for show—she truly does believe that spirits can speak through her. It was really rather creepy.” The eyes of Celia’s portrait held mine for a moment, compelling. “I wonder,” I said, “if she really was murdered?”

  “It certainly would explain why she never attempted a comeback.”

  “I’m being serious. What if she didn’t run off with that actor chap? What if someone actually killed her and buried her here, in the gardens?” It would have been simple enough to do, I thought, recalling the freshly damp soil of the recently turned-over bed in the rose garden . . . even in this day and age someone could easily have popped a body in there and no one would have been the wiser.

  “You think old Galeazzo bumped her off?” He looked at the portrait again, with a shake of his head. “I can’t see it, myself.”

  I argued that it needn’t have been Galeazzo. “It could have been one of his other women, someone who was jealous.”

  “Me, I’d put my money on the wife,” said Bryan, joining me in speculation. “She can’t have been too pleased to see Celia the First muscle in on her man.”

  I flushed a little, looking down, debating whether I should tell him anything about Daniela and her threats. In the end I decided against it. Bryan hadn’t even met Daniela, yet—she hadn’t been at dinner—and at any rate I was too old now to have him fight my battles for me every time I chanced to meet a bully.

  He was talking. “Though on second thought, it can’t have been the wife. Not on her own, at least.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, my little Miss Marple, crime novels aside, I don’t think the average woman could dispose of a body without someone helping her.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Anyhow, you don’t want to be talking about all this just before bed,” he told me. “You’ll have nightmares.”

  “I have those anyway.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s how you always did react to stress.”

  As he started to stand I looked up at him, curious. “What makes you think that I’m stressed?”

  “Angel.” The word was a gentle admonition. “I’ve known you since you were a baby, I know your expressions and moods—they’re just the same now as they ever were. Besides, it’s common sense. You’re in your first lead role, in a play with Maddy Hedrick, yet, and only a week or so left before opening night. That’s plenty of pressure for anyone. And then on top of everything, you go and trip over a dying man. I shouldn’t wonder that you’re seeing ghosts and goblins in the dark,” he said. “You’d have to be bloody superhuman not to be affected by all that.”

  “You’re right, I suppose.”

  “I’m always right,” he reminded me. “Now, be a good girl, get into bed and put the light out, get some sleep. It’s nearly midnight.”

  “Are you going to tuck me in?”

  He laughed. “How old are you?” But he did it anyway, tucking the blankets up round me and brushing my hair with a kiss as he’d done countless times through the years. “Sleep tight,” he instructed me. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I felt five years old again, and safe, and loved, and so I should have slept quite soundly. But the nightmares came.

  I woke to hear the wind against my windows, then rolled and tossed and slept again to dream of being chased. It was dark in my dream, and dead silent except for the sounds of my breath and the footsteps that followed me, first through the labyrinthine corridors of the house itself, then out into the gardens where I ran in panic, searching for a place where I could hide. I found the Peacock Pool, and pressed myself behind a pillar of the mausoleum, in amongst the row of carved stone dogs; felt the coldness of the marble on my skin as from the shadows I watched the approach of my unknown pursuer. I couldn’t see his face—I only glimpsed him from the back as he went past me, moving stealthily. I saw the heart-shaped bald patch on his head, and caught my breath, and at the sound he stopped and, as I watched in mounting horror, started turning . . .

  I woke with a jolt, my heart racing. Blinking in the semi-darkness, I let my gaze flail wildly round the room, seeking reassurance from my surroundings. There was my window, my nightstand, the chair in the corner, the pale life-sized portrait of Celia the First, and the door to the bathroom . . .

  My eyes fluttered closed.

  It was only when I’d nearly drifted off to sleep again that it struck me—the image of Celia had been in the wrong place. It should have been over the headboard behind me; not standing alone, at the foot of my bed.

  vi

  “YOU don’t look like you’re sleeping well,” said Madeleine.

  “I’m fine.” I showed her a smile as Poppy danced ahead of us along the garden path, momentarily distracting her mother’s attention.

  “Darling,” Madeleine begged her, “slow down. You’re too ill to be running like that.”

  “I don’t feel ill.”

  “Perhaps not, but you know what happened yesterday—you wore yourself out early and then had to spend the rest of the day in bed.”

  Reminded of this, Poppy slowed to a more suitable pace, with only the occasional skip now and then. She did seem to be getting her colour back, along with these moments of energy, but her eyes were still shadowed and bleary, the eyes of a convalescent.

  From the way Madeleine was looking at me now, I could only guess that my own eyes looked something like that, too. She frowned.

  “You’re not worrying about the play, are you? Because you shouldn’t. You’re doing brilliantly. You’ve really got the role in hand.”

  I couldn’t help feeling a little puffed up by the praise. After all, I had never expected an actress like Madeleine Hedrick to say such kind things about me. It seemed faintly surreal. “Thanks,” was all I
could think of to say.

  “I suppose I can’t talk,” she said, looking away with a smile of remembrance. “The first time I had to appear in the lead role, I don’t believe I slept at all for at least a week beforehand. I still get nervous, even now.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh heavens, yes. Rehearsals are one thing, but facing that opening night audience . . .” She left the thought unfinished, knowing I would understand. “Mind you, I wouldn’t want it any other way. The day I don’t get nervous I shall know that I’ve stopped caring, and it’s time that I retired.”

  “I hope you’re always nervous, then. No, really,” I said as she sent me an indulgent glance. “I can’t imagine the West End without you. And anyway, people like me who are still down the ladder need people like you at the top to inspire us.”

  “My dear girl,” she said, “you are sweet.”

  “Mummy?” Poppy turned back on the path. “Do we have time to go and see the stone dogs?”

  Madeleine glanced at her watch. “I suppose so. But only for a few minutes, mind—Celia and I have to get to rehearsal.”

  “Me, too,” she said, importantly. “Den said that I could be his assistant this morning, and help with the prompting.” She went on ahead of us, forging her way up the path to the Peacock Pool.

  Madeleine shared her amusement with me. “She’s certainly got the memory for it. I think she knows everyone’s lines now by heart.”

  It was actually not a bad move on Den’s part, I thought. He had so many things to keep track of in rehearsal that I didn’t know how he had managed this far, on his own. He seemed to have six hands, two sets of eyes, and separate brains that could take note of every detail, every movement that we made. Even Rupert had said that Den was far and away the best SM with whom he’d ever worked, and given Rupert’s background that was saying something.

  Madeleine must have been reading my mind. “At least,” she told me, “Rupert ought to be a little happier today, don’t you think?”

  “With Bryan here, you mean?” I nodded. “Yes, I hope so.”