The Layton Prophecy

by Tatiana March

  I crossed the room, crouched down. The smell was stronger. The gas fire had no pilot light, only a mechanical button to make a spark. To turn the appliance on, you had to twist a dial to open the gas pipe, and then press the button to make a spark that would ignite the flame.

  I tried the dial. It wasn’t shut properly. Gas had been leaking into the room since the fire had been last used. A rush of adrenalin shot through my body, making every muscle clench, as if a giant fist had slammed into me. I scrambled up, raced around the house, opening windows, flinging the front door wide.

  I was positive that I hadn’t used the gas fire on Sunday night. Unless Aunt Rosemary had turned it on during the week, and I couldn’t see any reason why she would have done, Miles had been the last person to use the appliance. Turning off the dial, he’d extinguished the flame but he’d left the valve open a fraction. I shivered as I thought what might have happened if I’d pressed the button to make a spark. There might have been enough gas in the room to cause an explosion.

  If I hadn’t been so preoccupied when I walked in, I might be dead.

  I closed my eyes, trying to recall the previous weekend. An image rose in my mind of Miles standing in front of the fire, warming his hands over the flames, his back toward the room. That was on Sunday morning, after he’d made a trip up to Layton Manor on his own to check the doors one more time.

  I hauled in deep breaths. It was an easy mistake for someone who wasn’t used to gas appliances. I decided not to say anything to Aunt Rosemary. If I told her, and Miles came back to Layton Village, she’d keep on and on at him about the dangers of being careless. I’d suffered enough of those lectures in my childhood to want to spare him the experience.

  I waited until I stopped shaking. Then I went next door.

  “I’m on the phone,” Aunt Rosemary called down from upstairs when I let myself in. I had to wait fifteen minutes before she climbed down from her study. “It was Steven,” she said, her eyes shining. “He’s come up with a new idea. He is sending me an email with three megabytes of files. Thank God we have broadband.”

  She clattered back up the stairs without waiting for a reply. I made a cup of tea and lingered in the kitchen until I could be sure that Rose Cottage would be fully aired. I didn’t think Aunt Rosemary even noticed when I left. I toured the rooms to close the windows. Then I gritted my teeth and pressed the ignition on the gas fire. Nothing happened, beyond normal. I made a few more sparks. When I felt reasonably confident that the place was safe, I opened the gas valve and pressed the button once more. The flame caught, and grew into a steady orange glow over the coals.

  To take my mind of the incident, I fetched my bag and took out the Francis Layton diaries I’d brought with me.

  Look at the dates, Miles had said.

  I picked up one of the volumes and turned over the front page. The first entry was in January 1928. I leafed to the end. The last entry was in June of the same year. The next diary started on the day after and finished in December 1928. The final diary was in much worse condition than the other two. The leather cover was crumbling, and some pages were so badly damaged that the text had faded away.

  I recalled Miles speculating the last diary had been recovered from Francis Layton’s corpse in the desert. About two-thirds of the pages were blank. The first entry was in July 1929, which left a six month gap unaccounted for. The last entry was only a few weeks later. I read that one first. The handwriting was uneven, as though he’d had difficulty holding the pen.

  “I have perhaps one more day before the end. I choose not to pray. No doubt I’m already the Devil’s own, and he will not relinquish his hold. I cannot help wondering if it is the Layton Prophecy that brings my downfall, or the more recent deeds. I have no regrets. I made my choices, and I am prepared to die by them, just as I was prepared to live by them.”

  Underneath, he’d signed his name and the date.

  I turned back a few pages. Some were illegible, the writing too smudged. The first clear entry was two weeks earlier.

  “I wanted to leave him injured and without water and let nature take the final responsibility. That way, I would only cause death indirectly. In the end I decided I could not take the risk of a miracle that might bring about a rescue. I had to shoot him. Not in the back. If one kills a man, one must face him and see the look in his eyes as one extinguishes the spark of life. I did it with the steady hand and the ceremony that was required of the occasion.”

  My head shook in disbelief. Such arrogance, even in murder, and when facing his own death.

  I turned back the pages.

  “I have reasoned with him for hours but he will not be swayed. Although he has kept the secret for six months, he insists that after this trip we shall have enough. He wants to share our good fortune with the unkempt masses that comb every dry riverbed from here to the ocean. He will not accept that what are riches for two men will be diluted to nothing when shared by thousands. He will not see reason, despite having witnessed the chaos at Lichtenburg only two years ago, when a hundred thousand men swarmed to the diamond fields like ants, and each claim was restricted to a ten-yard square. He leaves me with no choice.”

  I lowered the book into my lap. Francis Layton hadn’t betrayed his partner to keep the other man’s share. He’d killed to his partner in order to stop him from announcing their discovery to the world and starting a stampede.

  I found nothing more of interest in the final diary. Each entry had a date but didn’t indicate a place. I leafed through the other two diaries. They followed the same pattern. The only clues to his location were the occasional descriptions of his surroundings, and the receipts and invoices and other documents stuck between the pages.

  In 1928, half way through the year, he’d received a remittance of one thousand pounds from England. There was a flurry of receipts after that, leading me to believe he’d been building up debts while he waited for the funds to arrive.

  He seemed to visit a particular place between his trips into the Kalahari Desert—a farmhouse called Happy Valley, somewhere near Stellenbosch, in the wine country to the northwest of Cape Town. Shortly after he’d received the money and settled his debts, he spent one final week there before heading off into the desert with his partner.

  “I have never known a woman to love like she loves. Without reserve, without conditions, without expectation of being loved in return, without promises of a future. She has sold her jewelry to help us with our journey. And I know that she will be waiting, however long it will take before we return.”

  I read page after page, but nowhere did Francis Layton say who she was, or what his partner was called. My eyes began to hurt from the strain of reading the faded text. I wanted to go to bed, but I had almost reached the end of the second diary and decided to keep going. A few pages later I came across an entry that sent excitement tingling all over me.

  “Alluvial diamonds. There is poetry in those two words, but even more poetry in what I hold in my left hand as my right hand guides the pen that writes these words. An uncut diamond is like a star freed from the sky. Every man dreams of finding a star that will guide his path. I have found a whole constellation. May they shine on me and guide me on my path.”

  Diamonds. There was no doubt that Francis Layton had found diamonds in the Kalahari Desert. What we didn’t know was what had happened between December 1928, when the second diary finished, and the summer of 1929, when the last diary began. During that period, he had brought a fortune in diamonds out of the desert and done something with it.

  It was up to us to discover what.

  Back to contents

  Chapter Fourteen

  I decided not to return to High Wycombe on Saturday after all. Instead, I read all three diaries again and wrote out a summary of the key entries. Much of the rest was ordinary travelogue, tinged by the arrogance of Francis Layton.

  Aunt Rosemary typed up my notes and emailed them to Steven. We decided that there was no point in sending a copy
to Miles. He had already read the diaries, after all. That’s what Aunt Rosemary and I said to each other, but both of us knew that suspicion had already fragmented our little team.

  I ached inside when I drove to High Wycombe on Sunday night. How could Miles treat me so badly? How could he make love to me with such devastating thoroughness and then seem to forget that I existed?

  It wasn’t even a betrayal any more. It was lack of basic good manners.

  I loved him, but I learned it was quite possible to hate someone you loved.

  The days crawled by at work. Professor Maitland watched me with concerned eyes as he sent me off to the stacks to fetch books for him. I suspected that Aunt Rosemary had said something to him about my feelings for Miles. I knew that they were emailing each other every day, comparing notes and dividing up the work.

  On Friday morning, I called Aunt Rosemary to let her know that I wouldn’t be going to Layton Village for the weekend. One of my neighbors in High Wycombe was throwing a party, and I decided it was time I made an effort with my social life.

  I suffered the noise and the pointless small talk for a few hours, and then I slipped out. Early on Saturday morning, I got in my car and headed down to Layton Village. Halfway there, my eyes misted so badly that I had to pull over on the roadside and calm down before I felt safe to drive again.

  Damn him. Damn Miles Kendrick.

  By the time I parked along Mill Lane behind the boxy car with a disabled sticker on the window, I felt calmer. It was just after nine. I expected Aunt Rosemary hadn’t had breakfast yet. I could cook something for us. I unlocked the door without ringing the bell, just in case she was still asleep.

  The rich aroma of frying bacon wafted at me. There was no smell of burning.

  “No, Rosemary, no,” a gruff voice came from the kitchen. “For God’s sake, use the brain the good Lord gave you. Turn the bloody bacon over, so it will cook on both sides.”

  My bag made a thud as it hit the floor.

  “Who’s there?” shouted Professor Maitland.

  Steven. I would have to learn to call him Steven.

  “It’s only me, Alexandra,” I managed.

  “Hello, darling,” Aunt Rosemary called out. “Just in time for breakfast.”

  I eased my way into the kitchen. “Sorry. I should have telephoned.”

  “We guessed you were coming,” Aunt Rosemary said cheerfully. “I tried to call you earlier and there was no reply. We assumed you were on your way down.”

  She was standing by the stove, wearing a striped apron I’d seen in the kitchen drawer. It had been a Christmas present years ago from someone who had no idea that she hated anything to do with food preparation.

  “Steven is teaching me to cook,” Aunt Rosemary told me.

  “I’m not foolish enough to try the impossible,” Professor Maitland said. He was sitting in his wheelchair by the window, looking like a general marshalling the troops. “I’m in charge of the cooking. You’re merely the production line.”

  “Charming,” Aunt Rosemary said with a happy smile on her face.

  I looked from one to the other, and to my surprise it made perfect sense.

  Aunt Rosemary didn’t like to leave the house, and she thought the most important muscle in a man’s body was his brain. Steven was perfect for her. All they needed was a chairlift for him to get up and down the stairs, and enough computer hardware, and they’d live in perfect harmony.

  “I’ll just go and take my bag next door,” I said. Then it occurred to me that they might suspect I was sneaking out to recover from the shock of seeing them together. I hesitated. Perhaps I ought to hang around for a while instead, to avoid creating the impression that I disapproved of their relationship.

  “Breakfast will be ready in five minutes,” Steven said.

  I grinned at him. “Perhaps I’ll stay after all.” I motioned toward Aunt Rosemary. “Is she going to lay the table?”

  Aunt Rosemary gaped at the empty expanse of the pine tabletop. “Oh my God,” she moaned. “I forgot. Can’t we make it self-service?”

  Steven spread his arms. “Just how do you expect me to reach for things in the top cupboards?”

  “Alexandra?” She turned to me, her eyes imploring.

  “No,” Steven said firmly. “For once in your life, you’ll make an effort to look after your guests properly.”

  “I can’t,” Aunt Rosemary wailed.

  “Of course you can,” he told her. “Turn down the grill.”

  Aunt Rosemary flapped and flustered, but she managed to adjust the gas flame.

  “You’re doing fine,” Steven assured her. “Now, take out some plates and put them under the grill to warm them up.”

  Aunt Rosemary opened a cupboard and counted out three plates.

  “Not on top of the bacon,” Steven yelled. “At the bottom.”

  I squirmed with suppressed laughter, but contrary to all my expectations, five minutes later we settled down to a very acceptable breakfast. Aunt Rosemary had a blister on her finger and a grease stain on her sleeve, but nothing was broken in the kitchen.

  “This is good,” Steven said between bites. “I might come again.”

  I waved my fork at him. “When did you get here?”

  “Last night, and before you ask, I slept on the sofa downstairs.”

  I smiled at him. “I was more concerned about what she fed you for dinner than what you got up to during the night.”

  “We went to the Royal Goat. I checked with Ron in advance. He has a ramp to go over the front step,” Aunt Rosemary said.

  “Nice place.” Steven helped himself to another rasher of bacon. “Nice crowd. Friendly.”

  Aunt Rosemary shifted one shoulder. “I guess they’re not a bad lot. I’ve known most of them all my life.”

  “Do you have plans for the day?” Steven asked me.

  “Not really.” I gave him a thoughtful glance. “I brought Francis Layton’s diaries. You might want to take a look at them.”

  “Good.” He lowered his half-empty coffee cup, appearing to be in a rush to finish his breakfast. Then he gripped the wheels of his chair and backed away from the table. “Let’s go into the living room,” he said, addressing his words to me.

  I contemplated him, wondering why he’d suddenly started acting as if I was the one he’d come to visit. “I should do the dishes,” I said hesitantly.

  “No. I’ll do them.” Aunt Rosemary sprinted to her feet.

  “If you put the apron back on, you won’t ruin your nice clothes,” Steven told her. Then he turned to me. “Could you help me over the threshold?”

  I wheeled him into the living room. I was sure he would have no trouble clearing the small obstacle, and I got the impression that he was manipulating the situation to get an opportunity to speak to me alone.

  In the living room, a folding table had been set up in the centre. On top of it, two laptops stood side by side. Normally, Aunt Rosemary didn’t even like someone in the room while she was working. I don’t like anyone looking over my shoulder, she’d told Miles when we started researching the Layton Prophecy.

  Steven lined his chair at the table. “Are you all right with this?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  My brows rose in an unspoken question.

  “Seeing me with your aunt?” he added.

  “There isn’t anyone else I’d rather see her with.”

  He leveled his eyes at me, his expression sincere. “Will you tell her that?” he said. “She values your opinion.”

  I gave him a slow, reassuring nod. Then I returned to the kitchen.

  “Are you sure?” I asked Aunt Rosemary as I sidled up to her at the sink.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because he doesn’t deserve to get his heart broken.”

  “Can anyone ever really be sure?” She lifted a plate from the soapy water and rinsed it under the tap. “Is it ever possible to promise not to hurt someone?”

  I thought of Miles and his silenc
e. “No, I guess not,” I said slowly.

  “I’m going to take one step at a time, see where it goes,” Aunt Rosemary said. “I know it won’t be easy. We’ll both have to make adjustments. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll both be hurt.”

  “I’m surprised you took him to the Royal Goat.”

  She finished with the plates and started scrubbing the frying pan with the same vigor that she applied to most tasks. “I did it on purpose. To get out of my comfort zone.”

  “And to let everyone take a look at him?” I suggested, flicking a shrewd glance at her. “To see how it makes you feel if people stare?”

  “That too,” she said calmly.

  “And?”

  “I discovered that I wasn’t out of my comfort zone after all.”

  “Good.” I stepped back from the sink. “I’ll go and give the diaries to Steven.”

  She nodded at me over her shoulder. “Thanks. For everything. It’s good to know that I can count on your support.”

  “You did the same for me with Miles,” I said with a taut smile.

  She sighed. “And I’m already regretting it.”

  “Don’t,” I told her. “I’ll get over it.”

  “The man’s a fool.”

  “I know.” I spun around and went back into the living room. And to my surprise, I realized I’d meant it. Miles was a bloody fool to throw away what he could have with me.

  ****

  I spent the entire Saturday afternoon on my own in Rose Cottage. I didn’t want to deprive Steven of his precious moments alone with Aunt Rosemary, and, to tell the truth, their endless ramblings over the obscure verses of Nostradamus made my head spin. By two o’clock I’d run out of household chores to occupy myself with. That left me with no means of pushing Miles out of my thoughts.

  How could he?

  Unlike my other boyfriends, who’d been justified in dumping me, since I’d kept them at an emotional distance, I’d let my guard down with Miles. I had loved like that woman in Francis Layton’s diary, without condition or reserve. But the similarity with that unknown female ended there.