by Charles Todd
Beside her a constable and another man were pulling another victim out of a ruined stairwell, lifting a table off her legs. The woman’s face was a mask of blood and plaster dust, her body limp. The constable shouted and someone, a doctor, came leaping across the debris to bend over her and lay a hand on her throat. He began to give swift orders, pointing toward a section of the road that was clear and already becoming a makeshift surgery. The woman was alive.
Francesca hugged the children tight and told them.
Leighton, heedless of his own injuries, was suddenly beside her. He pulled out a whimpering dog, who crawled to the children and began to lick their faces, his tail wagging with joy. Singed but unhurt, she thought, except for a cut near his shaggy ear. She led the children out of the way of the rescuers and took them along with the dog to a group of other children, handing them over to a badly shaken gray-haired woman who gathered the newcomers warmly into her brood. Francesca touched her shoulder and then returned to the digging.
It was two hours or more before all the victims, alive and dead, had been accounted for. Townspeople, coats and shirts and trousers thrown on over their nightclothes, were already passing out tea to the workers and making the wounded comfortable. Someone had laid out the dead under sheets. The white line of bodies seemed somehow pathetic in the destruction all around them. A priest moved among them, touching each and briefly praying. The damage was shocking. Francesca saw an elderly woman wandering about in a daze, trying to find her own front door. Someone came to lead her away, and she began to sob.
Francesca, weary to the bone, stood by the motorcar, drinking hot tea and speaking with the doctor. Leighton looked ghastly as he came toward them, and the doctor gave him a searching glance.
“Old wound,” Leighton said tersely, and the doctor let it go. He was too tired to do more.
Leighton moved to stand next to Francesca and without fanfare put an arm across her shoulders, as if they had just come through a hard-fought battle. A comradely gesture that was intended to comfort both of them. She leaned against him for a moment, grateful. Peter would have done the same, she told herself. But Peter was dead, like the rest of her cousins. She ached for human warmth to fill the void.
“Where are you heading?” the doctor asked Francesca. “Not too far, I hope! You’re not up to it.”
“To Essex,” Leighton answered for her. “Any chance of a place to stay here?”
“’Fraid not. Any spare rooms will be needed for those poor devils.” He gestured with his teacup to the survivors, still milling in the street, as if lost. “And there weren’t that many extra to start with. Sorry, you’ve earned a bed—”
Francesca thanked him and opened the motorcar’s door. “I’ll drive,” she said, thinking of Bill’s age. But the old man shook his head and got behind the wheel. It was an hour or more before they found rooms in a small inn where it was possible, nearly, to pretend the war didn’t exist. But for their bloody clothes and streaks of dust and ashes across their faces and smearing their hands. The owner went down to the kitchen and made thick sandwiches. Famished and weary, they sat there with him, telling him about the raid in exchange for his hospitality.
At the top of the stairs, as they were about to go their separate ways, Leighton paused, then took Francesca’s hand. He said nothing, as if waiting for her reaction. She stood there, startled and unable to think what to do, trying to read his eyes. Remembering the warmth earlier of his arm across her shoulders, she realized she wanted to be held. Even if he still hated her tomorrow. It would wipe away the images of death and despair. Was that what he wanted as well? But when she didn’t respond, he let her hand go.
She felt utterly bereft.
“Good night,” he said brusquely. And walked on down the dark passage to his room.
She waited, hoping he might look back. But even as she did she realized that it was something a woman might do. Not a man . . . She listened as his door opened and then closed before turning to her own room.
The next morning, as the sun was struggling to pierce the clouds, they found the house of Leighton’s friends locked tight, the shades drawn. No one answered his knocks.
But a neighbor, opening her door to peer out at them, said with some relief, “Oh, it’s just you, Mr. Leighton! They’ve gone away to Wales, you know. An aunt isn’t well, and they were summoned.”
“Did they tell you when to expect them back again?” he asked, taking off his hat and turning to smile at her.
“They couldn’t know that, could they? I’d be happy to let you in, but they didn’t leave me the key! The little dog went with them. I expect it will be a while yet.” She looked back at the motorcar standing before the cottage gate. “Did you drive all the way from London? What a pity! They say there was a terrible raid at Marbrook last evening. People killed. I hope it wasn’t too bad, coming through today!”
Leighton thanked her, and turned away.
Something in his face—was it satisfaction?—made Francesca wonder if he had counted on this man Geoffrey and his wife being away. Had he already been told that they were summoned to Wales—?
She sat there watching him stride back to the motorcar. He was saying to Bill as he stepped in, “You can drop me at the nearest station. There will be trains back to London.”
“We haven’t the petrol to turn back,” Francesca said. “As you well know. There may be a railway station later on. Even if you must change in Cambridge.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She was sure now it didn’t . . . Suspicions began to rise and simmer. Once he learned she was going to Essex, he’d never had any intention of stopping in London! He believed she would lead him to—what? How could she have been so blind?
They found Mercer half an hour later, and asked directions at a smithy on the outskirts of town. Bill turned the bonnet of the motorcar east, and near a bend in the road a mile on they saw the drive marked “Willows.”
Whatever Francesca had been expecting, it wasn’t the house that came into view. Built of old rose-colored brick, it was set among broad lawns that ran down in the back to a winding stream bordered by a wood. A solitary bench had been placed where the sun would rise directly over the stream and through a break in the trees, etching the water and the east front with golden fingers.
It spoke of something that touched Francesca on the raw. Of love and protection. Of permanence.
Who had sat there, side by side, watching the morning come awake?
And what had lain between them?
She walked about the grounds, looking up at her grandfather’s house from different angles, noting the trim gardens that ran up to the south terrace, the smooth lawns that spread like a carpet around the eastern approach, feeling the warmth and beauty that surrounded the property, the grace of the architecture, the sense of welcome that seemed to reach out from the dark wooden door with its elegant brass knocker in the shape of a pineapple. On either side of it stood urns that held small topiaried trees, and a flight of graduated steps curving down to meet the drive.
So different from the Valley! With the wide, bright sky of Essex arching over the land, embracing the trees of the park, clouds banking high in Constable fashion, and the late sun gilding the glass of the west windows, it was—
“Why did you never tell me?” she asked her grandfather under her breath. “It’s— I would have loved to visit this house . . .”
But something had drawn Francis Hatton here. Something—or someone—had persuaded him to keep this house a secret even from his own family.
Tragedy? Happiness? Bitterness?
Leighton was speaking to her, but Francesca ignored him, the hurt she felt going too deep to listen.
Bill was standing by the motorcar, staring at the house with no expression on his face.
Francesca went to him and asked, “Did you bring my grandfather here? Did you know about this place? Please, tell me!”
“I never came here. Nor heard of it from him.” He turned to
look at her, something in his eyes. “I don’t know why, but it reminds me of my sister Bethie. Somehow.”
“Your sister?” Francesca hadn’t been aware that he had a sister. “Did she live here?”
“Lord, no, Miss! She died at eighteen.” He was silent, then said, “There’s too much sky here. I don’t think I like that.” The countryman in him spoke as he added, “But then, it’s not River’s End, is it? Nor like Cornwall, neither. Although at a guess, I’d say the soil is rich enough, and not stony ground.”
She walked up the steps and lifted the brass knocker. There was no immediate answer. Yet someone had kept up the gardens and the lawns. Someone had maintained the drive and prevented the shrubs from encroaching, someone had polished the window panes and ironed the linen drapes hanging in the room she could see to her left. The roof and the brick, the outbuildings and the stables were in good repair, unlike those in the Valley. Here there was help, and someone who worked hard to maintain every blade of grass.
Leighton said dryly, “Have they, too, gone to Wales to visit a dying aunt?”
Before she could answer, a coverall-clad man appeared around the side of the house. Middle-aged, he was limping from what appeared to be a clubfoot. He said roughly, “It’s Mrs. Perkins’s day off. She’s the housekeeper.”
“Who are you?”
The dark face grinned. “I’m Mr. Perkins, when I’ve left my Wellingtons outside and scrubbed the earth from under my nails. Out here, I’m called Ben. Who may you be?”
“I’m Francis Hatton’s granddaughter. I’ve come to see the house.”
He studied her for a moment, not with insolence but curiosity. “I was wondering when you’d come. I said you would. Mrs. Perkins has gone into Cambridge to spend the day with her sister. There’s no one to take you through the house.” The words were colder, as if she threatened a very comfortable life, intruding like this. “And I can’t let you in myself, can I, because I haven’t a key. There’s a room in the stables I use when the housekeeper’s not here.”
“What’s the size of the property? Can you tell me that?”
He shrugged and answered reluctantly, “The house and the land around it. Three good-sized farms. A dairy. Not large, but prosperous enough.”
“I’ll come again tomorrow,” Francesca told him, turning on her heel. “You may send word to Mrs. Perkins to expect me!”
In the event, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to return to Willows.
The house and the land had been restored with such loving care that she was jealous of it. As if in making Willows beautiful, her grandfather had shut her out of something so powerful in his life that no one, not even his granddaughter, was allowed to share in it. But where was the need? Francesca would have taken an oath that so much beauty had to do with a woman. Why couldn’t her grandfather have said so? Was it because the woman he’d imagined walking the passages, touching the flowers in the gardens, sharing that bench by the stream with him was already wed—to someone else?
I wish I could have come here free of ghosts—my own and Richard Leighton’s. Why couldn’t I have walked through that door and rejoiced for Grandfather’s happiness? Instead she had been shown only shadows of something she could feel and not understand. She felt somehow betrayed.
Taking rooms at the tiny hotel on the High Street in Mercer, Francesca discovered that Mrs. Perkins had another sister, this one the innkeeper’s garrulous wife. The establishment was small, nearly empty, and Mrs. Kenneth was happy to spend the dinner hour chatting with her only guests. Rumor must have already told her that someone had been asking about Willows, and she was no doubt as curious about Francesca’s party as Francesca was about the house.
Francesca asked Mrs. Kenneth if she knew how long the estate had been in Mr. Hatton’s possession.
“Not quite a quarter of a century, I’d say. My father always told me it was the best thing could happen to it, that house. The previous owner, a Mr. Walsham that was, being a man who cared for naught but money and London, let it go something terrible. It was in a grievous state, according to my father, before Mr. Hatton took a liking to it. But you’d never guess that now, would you?”
“I understood there was something about a gambling debt of the previous owner’s?”
“As to that, I’d have no idea, Miss. My father never said. I don’t think he cared much for the Walsham family, father or son. And I wouldn’t put gambling past either of them—they were always up to no good! Two-faced and sly!”
Having seen Willows, Francesca thought it was no small wonder that the Walshams were eager to reclaim it. How much money had her grandfather lavished on the estate, over the years? And why—if he never lived there?
Francesca, remembering the gardens at River’s End, observed, “My grandfather was fortunate to find people like your sister and her husband.”
“My aunt was the housekeeper then,” Mrs. Kenneth replied affably. “And now my sister. There’s those of us who say Ben married her for Willows—he was that taken with it. And he works hard, there’s no mistaking it. Mr. Hatton could drive up to the door any day he chose, and the house was always ready to receive him. My sister kept everything neat as a pin, but if he sent word ahead, we’d turn out the cupboards, beat the carpets, change the beds, order in food—it was a whirlwind, I can tell you. But she’s that particular.”
“Did Mr. Hatton sometimes bring guests with him?” Francesca asked.
“Not as a rule. He’d come alone and stay for a few days, then be gone. But there was a lady one spring, 1895 or thereabouts. Oh, I must have been no more than fifteen at the time! Mr. Hatton hadn’t sent word he was bringing her. My aunt was that surprised when she stepped out of the carriage. She’d been crying, and pulled her veil over her face to hide the tears. They stayed nearly a week, mostly sitting on that bench down by the stream when the weather was fair, or by the fire in the sitting room. Mr. Hatton introduced her to the staff, but somehow my sister didn’t think it was her real name.”
Francesca was silent, digesting what she’d been told.
Leighton asked, “Where did they go when they left?”
“Back to London. She told him one morning she wanted to go to London. She seemed a bit happier that day. As if making up her mind had been hard, and now it was done, she could be comfortable again.”
“Are you sure of the year?” Francesca asked.
“I remember it well, because it wasn’t more than a month later that Mr. Hatton’s daughter-in-law was found murdered in her bed, along with her husband. A tragedy, the newspapers called it. And the police never to my knowledge discovered who had done such a terrible thing!”
THE COUSINS
Harry . . . the charmer
I’ve heard people say I’ve lived a charmed life. It’s most likely true. I’ve been happier than most. But there’s a dark side to that, shadows that spread across the face of the sun sometimes and leave their stain.
As if I’d be called to pay one day for the luck that had come my way.
I never knew my parents. I was barely toddling when they died, and so there was no empty place where they’d been. Not even a faint echo of a voice, soft silks against my cheek, a special scent. Just—a blank—that was more than filled by the family I did have. My brothers, my grandfather. Cesca. I never pined—I don’t suppose any of us did. Neither my grandfather nor the servants ever spoke of my parents, or Francesca’s, come to that. Later I was to wonder if my mother or my father would have wished us to know about their childhoods—how they had come to meet—how they might have planned for our futures. But it had never been a pressing question, and so it was never asked. I accepted life as it was, with a smile, because unpleasantness had never touched it. I even escaped the measles that sent my brothers to bed for ten days.
It was our grandfather who brought us up. We were urged to make the most of everything that came our way. I thought sometimes that Grandfather wasn’t as pleased with Simon’s war games as he might have been, though the H
attons have a long history of battle honors over the generations. But Grandfather tolerated them, and encouraged us as well to study our lessons and look at the world as a place where we could take any path we chose.
Simon yearned toward the Army, and Peter read everything he could lay hands on about the Suez Canal, Hadrian’s Wall, the pyramids, the railroads across the American West—he was afraid sometimes that there would be nothing left to build by the time he was a man. Freddy would have been happy enough composing for the piano and playing his own works. Robin was drawn to the land, and although not the eldest, he would have run River’s End with the care and love that any good estate deserved. But he wasn’t the eldest, and so—ever practical—he had decided to become an explorer.
I was the only one who was never certain just what it was I wanted to do with my life. I sometimes had the feeling that it didn’t matter, that I’d not live to any great age. As if the legacy from my parents was a brief life, never intended to bloom and grow.
Those were the dark shadows behind my happiness.
Grandfather listened when I told him I had no great expectation of living to his age. I was all of twelve at the time. He assured me quite sternly that illness had killed my parents, not a curse . . . although that word hadn’t really crossed my mind. But it had crossed his, I could see that.
Still, I’d never known him to lie to us.
When I stopped and thought about it, his own life had been filled with loss. His wife, Sarah, my grandmother, had died young. As had both his sons. He had been lucky to have grandchildren to carry on the family line. The six of us, my brothers and my cousin, would more than make up for his griefs, I hoped.
