“Kate. You beggar me sometimes, do you know that?” He’d turned me around in his arms and slipped something around my neck, clasping it with nimble fingers before I could object. “A wedding gift. You’re not allowed to say no.” Then he’d turned me back around and started kissing me, not with the usual tantalizing deliberation, but as if his life depended on it.
So until this exact second, I’d forgotten it was even there.
I fingered it now, large round pearls the size of gobstoppers, black alternating with white. “I can’t sell these. They were his wedding present.”
“I’d take them with you, though,” Hollander said practically, “just in case. Put them in your pocket.”
I fumbled with the clasp; my fingers were trembling too violently, and in the end I had to ask the professor for help.
I took them over to the closet, where I’d hung my raincoat, in case of typical English weather, and slipped the pearls into the inside pocket.
Hollander cleared his throat. “As I said, you’ll have to make your way to France. I’d suggest the Folkestone crossing; the passage from Dover may be quicker, but possibly more dangerous. U-boats, you see. If we were in my office, with all my research notes, I could tell you which ships to avoid.”
I nodded and sat back down in my seat.
“I can tell you exactly where to find him in France,” the professor went on. “He spent the previous few days before his patrol on a seventy-two-hour pass to Amiens, in order to meet with some of the divisional heads about new tactics. Arthur helped him to arrange it all. He’d been after them with memoranda for months, you see, trying to change…” He shook his head. “I don’t suppose that matters. In any case, early the first morning, he attended matins at Amiens cathedral. That’s well established, with an exact timeframe. You could wait for him outside.” A frown passed across his face.
“Matins? What’s that?”
He roused himself. “The early morning service in the Catholic liturgy.”
“Julian’s Catholic?”
“He converted in the weeks before he disappeared. You didn’t know that?”
“No. I didn’t.” Another unopened box. I stared down at my Diet Coke, counting the bubbles.
Hollander fell silent. I lifted my head and watched him, watched his fading blue eyes stare out of his round heavy-jowled face, all of it weighed down as though the struggle against gravity were becoming too much to bear. Why him? How him? How could this ordinary mortal have that kind of extraordinary power?
“Professor,” I said at last, leaning forward and taking his hand, where it lay limp on the table, “we have about two hours left before we land. You’re going to need to tell me everything you know. Just in case.”
SOUTHFIELD LAY SIXTY MILES to the southwest of Manchester, and as each precious yard spun out from the tires of our rental car, it became harder and harder to force down the panic. Julian’s plane would have landed two hours earlier, I knew. Plenty of time for Geoff or Arthur to drag him to Florence Hamilton’s grave; plenty of time for all kinds of scenarios, each one more unimaginable than the last.
I forced my brain to concentrate on other things, immediate things, like remembering to stay on the left-hand side of the road. How to go around a roundabout without getting killed. How to convert kilometers per hour into miles.
Not that that mattered much. I pushed the little tin-box Fiat to its limit, and we still weren’t going much faster than the tractors harvesting the fields on either side of us.
“Your husband’s a billionaire,” grumbled Hollander, “and you couldn’t rent a car faster than this one?”
“It was the only one they had left. We landed late, remember? All the morning flights had taken the good ones. Besides,” I added, throwing the gearshift back into third in an attempt to bring more power to the failing wheels, “you’re the freaking tree-hugging Marxist around here. I’m all for Maseratis.”
I was trying to joke, but in reality I was terrified: each lost second put Julian closer to his fate. Farther, possibly, away from me. I didn’t want to have to go back to 1916 to save him. I wanted to be in time, to save him now, to stay with him here.
Unlike many of the grand English country estates, Southfield hadn’t been transferred to the National Trust at some point during the long mid-century of 90 percent tax burdens. The Ashford family still spent much of the year there, not quite in the same style as Julian’s day, with its foxhunts and house parties and eleven full-time gardeners, but still resident. Not open to the public. Which presented a problem, because it meant there were no helpful signposts along the roadways to tell us where to go.
At least I had Hollander, who’d visited the place several times while researching his book. It had been an admiring biography from the beginning, and so the family had taken him up with enthusiasm, sharing papers and showing him around the estate. “The cemetery is a bit off the beaten path,” he told me. “You have to know where it is.”
“We can do that? Just walk onto the estate and wander over to the cemetery?”
“Walking rights are fiercely defended around here; besides, who would know?” Hollander shrugged. “The house is a good mile or so away, and at the moment it’s only the dowager in residence. Her son likes to spend his time in London, shagging models, as they say.” His tone didn’t convey any particular disapproval.
“And the son is what? Julian’s cousin?”
“Distant. Here’s the turnoff.” He pointed to a small drive on the left.
“Seriously?” I swung the ungainly Fiat onto the track.
“It’s not the main drive, just one of the estate access roads.”
“Jeez,” I muttered, concentrating on not getting the car stuck in one of the enormous potholes cratering the surface of the drive. “I guess you know it pretty well.”
“My dear girl,” he said, “I’ve spent most of my life researching your husband and his contemporaries.”
I shook my head in wonder. It looked like the area had seen a fair amount of rain recently: mud slipped under the Fiat’s tires, slowing us down, and the newly stubbled fields on either side of us lay tired and wet and brown. “These are all part of the home farm,” Hollander said absently, “the land the estate farms for itself, as opposed to letting it out to tenants. Coming up at the end of the drive is the start of the parkland.”
I peered ahead and saw a stand of trees, the leaves still lush and green, huddled around a hillside. A few drops of rain splashed down on the windshield; I pressed the wiper button once, whisking them away. “It had better not storm,” I said.
We bumped along as fast as I dared in the mud and potholes, with our ridiculously underpowered car. I should have stood my ground at the car rental place, I realized. I wasn’t used to this billionaire thing yet; I could have demanded better. I could have made some irate phone calls, flashed my obsidian credit card, demanded a Range Rover. Bought a freaking Range Rover, for God’s sake. What was I thinking? Julian’s life was at stake.
“How do we know they came this way?” I demanded. “Shouldn’t there be tire tracks?”
“They might have taken another access road. Come up the other side of the estate.” He was peering ahead too, looking for some sign of human activity.
I swiped the windshield again. A few sheep crouched in the field to my right, stirring anxiously. Was it going to storm? “How much longer? I can’t see anything, just the trees.”
“I don’t know. It’s been years,” he snapped. “A few hundred yards, maybe. Then it’s a good half-mile walk through the park.”
“And no one’s going to see us?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know the conditions anymore! Maybe a gamekeeper, who knows?”
I shut my mouth and kept driving, until we came to the end of the track and parked the car next to the fence and jumped out. I checked my watch. Nearly two o’clock. “Where do we go? Hurry!” I urged him, slipping in the thin layer of mud. The rain began to patter lightly on my coat, turning
more earnest. I looked up at the shifting iron-gray sky, mottled with threatening clouds, and turned up my collar. Just all I freaking needed: British weather.
I spied a stile along one side of the fence and slipped down the muddy track toward it, hearing Hollander grunt along behind me. “Come on,” I said, holding out my hand to help him cross. His tall awkward body lurched over the rungs, narrowly avoiding disaster, just as I felt a gust of wind spray my cheek with stinging rain. “I think we’re going to get nailed,” I said. “We’ve got to hurry.”
A footpath wandered out from the stile, and we scrambled along it, following the slope of the hill toward the trees. “The edge of the lake is just on the other side,” Hollander said, breathing with effort, “and the cemetery is laid out near the shore, between the ledge and the water. You can’t see it right away, because of the overhang.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, trying not to panic; he’d winded himself, just walking up the hill at three miles an hour. My own muscles were ready to burst with energy and adrenaline. All that running with Julian, all that training. I wanted to sprint, to fly.
“Fine, fine. Go on ahead. I’ll be right there,” he said.
“I can’t leave you…”
“I’ll be fine!” he puffed. “Just find him!” He gestured impatiently, brushing me away.
“Okay. I’ll run ahead and see what’s up. I’ll yell if I see anything.”
I didn’t know what to expect. It seemed like a lonely chance they’d come this way. We’d just speculated, Hollander and I, based on the fact that Julian’s plane had landed in Manchester.
And what the hell would we do if we saw them? Trust me, Julian had said. Go home. Wait for me. He’d be furious with me now. If he were still alive.
I sprang forward into a jog, sliding over the rocks and muddy bits in the footpath, past shivering trees flinging off droplets into my hair. My raincoat flapped wildly in the strengthening draft, and I slipped my hand into my pocket to secure the pearls inside.
I crested the hill and dropped down to a walk, scanning the ground below me. The slope dropped away to a ledge, along which the footpath stretched until it dipped down through a shallower portion to the grassy lakeshore at the bottom.
Where was the cemetery? I wondered, confused. I could only see the lake, rimmed by trees and meadow grass, gray and fitful under the uncertain skies. I tripped down the footpath at a jog, drawing close to the ledge, and abruptly it came into view, perhaps a quarter-mile to my right, hunched up against the shelter of the ledge: a few short rows of plain marble tombstones, surrounded by a waist-high white fence.
It was empty. The air whooshed out of me. Relief not to see Julian’s dead body in a heap at the bottom of some grave marker; alarm now, that we’d been wrong, that they hadn’t come this way after all. Now what did we do?
I fingered the BlackBerry in my coat pocket. I’d sent several e-mails to Julian, even a phone call, but nothing had come back. The phone hadn’t even rung, just gone straight to voice mail. Probably he’d left it in the restaurant, or Arthur had taken it. I drew mine out anyway and tapped in another message.
Where are you? Getting desperate. My fingers hovered for an instant, and then I added, I love you. Send. I put the phone back in my pocket and looked again toward the cemetery.
Three figures now moved warily among the tombstones.
The breath seized up in my chest. I couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t even discern hair color in the murky cluttered air, but I knew who they were. I could hear their voices, raised in argument, carried directly to my ears by the wind off the lake.
I wanted to run, to fly to them, but my muscles had frozen into horrified immobility. What were they doing? What were they saying? One of them was backing up, hands raised, palms outward. Was that a flash of gold in his hair? I couldn’t tell. “Julian!” I croaked out, but the wind, blowing in my face, swallowed my words whole.
Then another one raised his arm, pointing it, something dark and gleaming in his hand. Julian—was it Julian?—started slowly toward him, hands still forward, coaxing. “No!” I heard myself scream.
They couldn’t hear me, of course, not with that wind in my face, but then the man with the gun glanced in my direction. He stilled for an instant, and then he turned and ran into the trees.
“Wait!” I yelled, but the other two were already after him, running out of sight toward the lake, hidden by the branches and leaves.
I scrambled down the ledge, not bothering to take the footpath down the easier way. Pebbles skittered out from under my sneakers, slick with rain. I jumped down the last few rocks, landing heavily on my feet, and started running toward the cemetery.
Julian’s ancestors had chosen this spot well. It was high enough to overlook the lake, and sheltered from the aging effects of the weather by the ledge behind it and the surrounding trees. I hardly felt the rising storm at all now. My feet beat against the turf, the damp sparse shaded grass, until I reached the burial plot and spun around.
Nobody. Just a dingy white fence, looking as though it could use a coat of paint, and the tombstones laid out in a grid, with gravel tracks that badly needed raking; each grave looked identical to the others, words chiseled at the top in plain Roman lettering, names and dates and Latin tags that meant nothing to me.
I looked toward the trees, trying to discern which direction they’d run, and at that second an unmistakable sound cracked along the wind.
“No!” I screamed, and then I heard another one.
The sensation of cold trickled down my spine, as though someone were pouring ice water onto the back of my neck. Stay calm, I thought. I felt my brain begin to float upward, detaching, trying to see the situation objectively. Just another problem to solve.
“Kate?”
I started and looked around. “Who’s there?”
“Up here. Did you find anything?” It was Hollander, of course, standing at the top of the ledge and looking down anxiously.
“No one’s here,” I heard myself say, “but I think I just heard gunshots from the woods. I’m heading over to check it out.” Why didn’t I sound panicked?
“Good God. Wait. I’ll be right down.”
He turned to the right, to follow the path, and I scanned the area around me, the grassy lakeshore with its stands of birch and chestnut and English oak, all rustling erratically in the rain-dashed wind, smelling of cool damp earth. Where had they gone?
Something moved in the trees. I gasped reflexively and looked hard, straining my eyeballs. Was it just the storm? I walked closer, each step deliberate, my heart starting up a steady quick rhythm against my ribs.
There it was again! A flash of muted color, just for an instant, at the base of a large mature chestnut. “Who’s there?” I demanded.
No answer.
“It’s Kate,” I called out. “Where’s Julian?”
A figure stepped away from the tree, a slight brown-haired figure, wearing a tweed jacket over chinos, collar turned up protectively against his neck. Arthur Hamilton.
“Kate?” I heard Hollander call from behind me.
“Arthur.” I stepped nearer. “Arthur, it’s me. Kate. How are you? Can you tell me where Julian is?”
He shrugged. His hands were shoved in his pockets, moving around restlessly.
“Arthur, you can tell me. I won’t be angry. You’ve had a difficult time.”
“Bad show,” he muttered. “Very bad show.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, ignoring the frantic ringing in my ears, the rising panic. “Very bad. So where’s Julian, huh? Where’s Geoff?”
I was only fifteen feet away now. I could see the expression on his face: dazed, wondering, a little cross maybe. He had a small cut below one eye, beginning to swell, and a dark splash of a stain marring the weave of his jacket, just below the upturned collar.
“Come on, Arthur,” I said. “You can tell me. Let’s sit down.”
He shook his head. “The boathouse. All dead,” he to
ld me. “Bad show.”
“No,” I said, “they’re not all dead. You didn’t kill them, did you?”
“Geoff. I couldn’t manage it. Never could. Geoff did it.”
“Geoff did what?” I begged. “He couldn’t shoot Julian. He didn’t. Tell me he didn’t.”
“So it’s good night, sweet prince,” Arthur said, staring at the ground. “At last. Flights of angels… all that… rubbish.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Oh no.”
“I loved him,” Arthur said. He looked up at me. “The rest is silence,” he added, and pulled a gun out of his pocket.
“Oh no,” I repeated.
He raised it to his mouth and fired.
I CRUSHED MY HANDS over my head and whipped around and ran back toward the cemetery, toward the ledge, running into Hollander. “They did it! They killed him! Geoff shot him! Shot Julian!”
“Oh God,” he cried, shutting his eyes. “Oh God!”
“He just shot himself! Right there behind me! His brains…”
“Who?”
“Arthur Hamilton! So do it, Professor. Do it now! Send me back! Please, I can’t stand it!”
“Oh God!” he cried again.
I grabbed his shoulders. “Do it now! Before I pick up that gun and shoot myself!”
His eyes snapped open and he stared at me.
“Do it!” I screamed. I fell to my knees at his feet and bent my head.
I felt his hands on my shoulders, gripping me, and the wind and rain lashed at me, hard, in one long unbroken gust. “Do it!” I screamed again, and the air emptied out of my ears, and I was tumbling, tumbling endlessly through a frozen void, and then I woke up to the steady beat of a March rain streaming on my face.
Amiens
I never slept that night. How could I waste a single minute of my final night with Julian? I couldn’t have slept, even if I’d wanted to. Every nerve vibrated, as though a magnetic current looped continuously through my body.
Overseas Page 41
