The Layton Prophecy

by Tatiana March

  “The front wheel on this side is in a ditch,” I called out.

  Petra too had hopped out and was circling the rear. “All the other wheels are making contact,” she said as she crouched down to inspect a tire.

  “Is this a four wheel drive?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She straightened and tossed her long braid over her shoulder. “If I switch all wheels on, we should be okay.”

  We climbed back inside. Petra gripped a lever between the front seats, yanking it into position to engage the four wheels. The engine roared in protest, but we had enough grip to sway out of the ditch and reverse onto the tarmac.

  Before setting off, we got out again and examined the bodywork for damage. Everything seemed fine. We resumed the journey with caution, picking up speed little by little. After a few uneventful miles, Petra calmed down. I remained awake during the rest of the drive. We talked about her work and the places she’d been. It amazed me to learn about the great expense magazines incurred for fashion spreads. It wasn’t unusual to fly teams of models and make-up artists and stylists and photographers to exotic locations, just to get the desired scenery for the background.

  When we got to the Happy Valley, Petra told me she had some vineyard business to attend to. She accompanied me to a guest room and suggested that I take a nap. I didn’t exactly feel like a prisoner, but I certainly hadn’t been invited to go out and explore on my own. There seemed nothing else to do, so I drew the heavy curtains and curled up on the big canopied bed, and fell asleep.

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  Chapter Nineteen

  When I woke up, I checked my watch and discovered it was already half past four. I’d slept more than three hours. I stripped out of my crumpled dress and took a quick shower in the en-suite bathroom, a palace of chrome and marble and gleaming mirrors and an array of expensive cosmetics on a glass shelf. Whether it was the vineyard or Petra’s modeling, something certainly paid.

  I dressed in a pair of jeans and my trusty cotton cardigan, and inched the door open. The corridor outside was bare of furniture, and the wooden floor made the voices drifting from downstairs echo around. I recognized one of the speakers as Petra, and headed out to the stairs.

  I spotted her as soon as I reached the galleried landing. She was standing in the middle of the big reception hall, surrounded by stacks of white and green cardboard boxes. Two black men in matching khaki shorts and green polo shirts were picking up one box at a time, and carrying them out through the front door.

  I called out a greeting. All three of them looked up.

  “Hi,” Petra said, smiling. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Great,” I replied, and began to descend.

  “This is a wine delivery,” Petra explained. “There’s been a mix-up and we had to unload the van and check the address labels on each box.”

  “How do you manage the vineyard, if you spend most of your time traveling to photo shoots?” By now, I was close enough to see that she was ticking off entries on a list attached to a clipboard.

  “I don’t do much at the vinery,” she said absently. “I just like to meddle, to remind the manager that I own the place.” She scored another tick on her list and said something in Afrikaans to one of the men. He laughed, his dark eyes flashing with good humor as he bent down to pick up a box.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Petra said to me. “Do you want to get a coffee while you’re waiting?”

  I told her I’d love a coffee. She directed me to a door on the other side of the hall. It led into a huge kitchen with a big, scarred oak table and a clutter of brass pots and pans stacked on open shelves along the walls. A sturdy black maid with a pockmarked face asked me what I wanted. When I told her tea, she bustled around a moment and then served me a fragrant brew in a delicate china cup.

  Petra appeared ten minutes later. She gave the maid a hug before flopping down next to me. “I haven’t had time to say hello to everyone yet,” she explained as she accepted a cup of coffee from the smiling woman.

  “Who lives here?” I asked.

  “Me, the manager with his family, and Matilda live in the main house.” Petra nodded at the maid, and I gathered she was Matilda. “There are another six men who work in the vineyard and live in the staff quarters. The girls who work in the shop live in town. One of the men picks them up every morning in the delivery van and takes them back in the evening.”

  I took the last sip of my tea. “You have no family?”

  Petra shook her head. “My parents are divorced. My mom’s from Iceland, and she went back when she split up from my dad. He died three years ago.” She stole a glance at Matilda and lowered her voice. “I don’t have much contact with my mother. We don’t get on.”

  A cold shiver rushed up my skin. Cleo, Petra, and I. Our fathers were dead, and we were estranged from our mothers. How far could one regard it as a co-incidence? I pushed the worry to the back of my mind and decided to wait until we had the results of the DNA test before I stirred up Petra’s grief by asking how her father had died.

  “Do you miss this place when you’re in New York?” I asked

  Petra shrugged. “Of course I do. When my father died, I wanted to come home, but I can’t afford it. This place barely breaks even. I need the income from modeling to keep things afloat.”

  Surprised, I lowered the empty cup I’d been cradling between my hands. “It looks like a well run operation. I thought it would be profitable.”

  Petra sighed, sounding defeated. “It used to be, but there’s a glut of wine, has been for several years. In France, vineyards are going out of business. Grapes are being dumped because it doesn’t pay to process them into wine. Some growers are trying to diversify into making grape juice.”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  She gave me a strained smile. “Every time I look in the mirror, I thank God for my looks. If it wasn’t for modeling, I’d have to close down the vinery, and everyone would lose their jobs.”

  Matilda refilled my tea, and I picked it up, curling my hands around the warmth, studying Petra over the rim of the cup. The more I learned about her, the more I felt ashamed of how I’d misjudged her, initially mistrusting her for no other reason than her beauty, and the fact that she had gone after the man I was in love with.

  “Enough of me,” Petra said briskly. “Tell me about this prophecy thing.”

  “Didn’t Miles tell you?”

  She pulled a face. “Miles is a man who does exactly what he wants, and he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  I considered my options and decided that Petra had the right to hear the whole story. Then she could make up her own mind over what to believe, and what not to believe. I launched into a long explanation about the Layton Prophecy and everything we’d discovered so far.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Petra said. “Miles really believes in this shit?”

  “Yes. And so does Professor Maitland, who according to Miles is about to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in chemistry.”

  “Heavens.” Petra grabbed her long silver braid and played with the end, her face furrowing with concern. “Are you telling me that if my DNA test comes up trumps, this thing might kill me?”

  I shrugged, reluctant to speculate. “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “The lorry,” she said slowly. “It came out of nowhere and hurtled right at us. It felt spooky, the way it forced us off the road, and then it vanished.”

  “We don’t know yet how your DNA test will turn out.”

  Petra leveled her pale blue eyes at me. “It doesn’t matter,” she said solemnly. “If it isn’t me, it’s you. We were both in the car.”

  “Yes,” I said, equally grave. “If Miles is right, at least one of us is in mortal danger, perhaps both of us, depending on how the curse works.”

  Tossing the end of her long braid down her back, Petra surged to her feet. “The suitcase,” she said. “Let’s go and open it. I told Matilda to get it down from the
attic. She’s dusted it off, although she said she couldn’t find the key.”

  I followed Petra up the stairs. Her room was another surprise. Large and airy, it was furnished with worn pieces that didn’t match. The plaster on the walls was peeling with age, the paintwork no longer brilliant white.

  Petra noticed my scrutiny. “I had the guestrooms done up,” she explained with a rueful curl of her lips. “When my model friends from New York come to visit, they expect a certain standard.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “I grew up here,” she said, crouching down to pull the suitcase from under the narrow sleigh bed. “This is home, perfect as it is.”

  The piece of luggage was small, with steel reinforced corners. The tan leather was covered in stickers. I recognized Cunard and White Star, and assumed the others were also shipping lines, although I’d never heard the names before.

  “A well-traveled man, Francis Layton,” I remarked.

  “You can say that again,” Petra agreed as she hoisted the suitcase on the bed.

  “Have you really not looked inside?”

  “I must have, as a kid, but I don’t remember what’s in there. I assume it’s only old junk. Anything of value would have been sold by now. My father was fanatical about preserving the history of this place, but he could only afford to hang on to things that could be put on display, like paintings and furniture.” She ran her fingertips over the leather surface. “It’s a shame about the missing key. We’ll have to break it open.”

  “Maybe not.” I edged past her and bent to inspect the locks. “Sometimes you can open these things with a hairgrip.”

  She stared at me, eyes wide. “You know how to do that?”

  I send her a mischievous grin. “I grew up with an aunt who had a garage full of interesting stuff that I wasn’t supposed to touch.”

  Petra laughed. She crossed the room to an antique dressing table and returned brandishing a hairgrip. “Here you go. Show me your criminal talents.”

  I knelt by the bedside and got to work. It took fifteen minutes, and my fingers were scraped raw, but eventually I conquered the pair of locks. I clicked open the metal clips and turned to look at Petra over my shoulder.

  “Moment of truth,” she said, nodding for me to go ahead.

  I lifted the lid. I don’t know what I expected to find, but by now anticipation had risen to such a frenzy that anything but a pile of diamonds would have been a disappointment.

  The contents were neatly packed and sparse. Books in leather bindings. I picked them up one by one, glancing at the spine, and handed them to Petra. Most were classics. Austen, Hardy, Dickens. A set of evening clothes that smelled of mothballs took up the rest of the space.

  “I guess he didn’t plan to attend dinner parties in the desert and left these behind,” Petra said as she lifted out a yellowing dress shirt.

  “He was quite a small man,” I observed.

  “What’s that?” Petra pointed at a tiny wooden box that had been hidden beneath the clothes.

  I picked up the box. It rattled in my hand. My fingers trembled as I pried open the lid. A pile of opaque round stones clustered inside, and for a second I thought we’d found the diamonds. Then I understood they were the studs that fastened the front of the dress shirt.

  Petra reached over and examined one. “Mother-of-pearl,” she whispered. Her voice returned to normal as she dropped the stud back among the rest. “Shit. For a while I thought we were rich.”

  “There’s no diary.” I stared at the empty suitcase, fighting not to show my disappointment.

  “Hold on.” Petra knelt down next to me and began to run her hands along the frayed silk lining.

  “Aha!” She halted her searching motion and focused her fiddling in one corner. “Ta-da!” She slid a leather-bound volume out through a tear in the fabric. The oblong shape and the faded purple cover were identical to the other three diaries, so I knew that we’d found what we’d been looking for.

  “How do you want to do this?” I asked, not quite sure who had the strongest ownership claim to Francis Layton’s legacy.

  “I’d like you to read it and tell me what it says,” Petra said promptly.

  I accepted the diary she held out to me. “I could do it tomorrow. It will keep me busy while you go out to the photo shoot.”

  “I thought you might like to come with me.” Petra rose and dusted the knees of her army pants. “It’s in Soweto. You’ll find it interesting.”

  I got up too, and stood beside her, tracing the gilt border on the leather cover with my fingertip. “I’d really like to read this as soon as possible.”

  Petra hesitated. “I don’t want to be rude, but I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind being left on your own tonight. I’m still jet lagged, and I need lots of sleep to get rid of the shadows under my eyes for the fashion shoot. I was just going to grab something in the kitchen, and then have an early night.”

  A smile of relief curled my lips. “Perfect. That way I can read the diary tonight and come with you tomorrow.”

  “Brilliant.” Petra headed for the door. “Let’s go into the kitchen and see what Matilda has left for us.”

  ****

  After a quick bowl of soup and a green salad we said good night. I settled with the diary under the covers in my canopied bed. Too impatient to make an orderly progress, I flicked through the pages, scanning passages at random.

  Much of the content wasn’t about South Africa at all. It was about Francis Layton’s plans for spending his diamond fortune. I chuckled out loud when I realized what had been on his mind. He’d planned to modernize Layton Manor and fill the place with art treasures he’d bring home from his travels. He didn’t say much about his partner. I got the impression that in his arrogance he’d almost regarded the other man as irrelevant to the outcome of their venture.

  “All the plans for keeping our discovery secret are mine, as are the strategies for maximizing its value. I hold the diamonds we brought out on this first trip. Some I have traded for gold bullion. I have protected our discovery by convincing the curious that the stones are from Lichtenburg. I will take sole charge of selling the gold and the diamonds and investing the proceeds on the stock exchange in London. Sometimes I get the impression that he doesn’t even care.”

  I found the shipping receipts attached between the pages. The company was called Rotterdam Line, and in March 1929 Francis Layton had sent two shipments to England on two different steamers. The first ship had been Andromeda, and the second Neptune. A list of contents was pasted into the diary.

  Andromeda had taken nothing but “Six cast iron plant pots with date palms. Each palm in excellent condition with no pests, but the shipping company will not accept liability for damage to plants during the journey”.

  Neptune had “Six sealed crates weighing eighty kilograms each”. Four were listed as mineral samples and rocks of scientific interest. One was native ivory carvings, and one was domestic chattels and personal effects.

  There it was.

  Francis Layton had shipped his possessions home to England before he made his final journey into the Kalahari Desert. The loot had to be in Layton Manor, either somewhere in the ruins, or in the contents that Francis Layton’s widow had taken with her when she returned to America fifty years ago.

  Because of my long nap, I didn’t feel tired. I went back to the first page and started to read in sequence. By nine o’clock I’d almost finished. When I came to the penultimate entry, my heart started to race.

  “That a woman like her prefers Daniel to me is beyond comprehension. She has sold her jewelry to provide him with a financial stake, which makes us equal partners. I would understand if she had gone to him after we returned as rich men, but she loved him even before then. A farm laborer chosen over Lord Layton! Or course, I am in my forties, which gives Daniel the advantage of youth, and I am a widower with a grown daughter, which would complicate life for Beatrice, should she come to her senses and consent to marr
y me.”

  There was one more passage after that. It must have been written in anger, as some sections had been crossed out, presumably later. The bold lines that struck out the text were drawn in a different shade of ink.

  “I found them together tonight at the barn, her pale skin glowing like marble in the moonlight, his mouth and hands greedily defiling her purity. I wanted to …”

  The next part was scored out so violently that I couldn’t decipher the original writing, not even by holding the page against the light. Only a few lines at the end had been left intact.

  “How can this love burn so strongly inside me? Even now, knowing that she has given herself to Daniel, I would have her. I would have her even with the prospect that she might be carrying his child.”

  I lowered the book into my lap, recalling the previous entry about her in one of the other diaries that I had left with Aunt Rosemary in England.

  “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 had been a woman called Beatrice, but it hadn’t been Francis Layton she’d loved. It had been a farm worker called Daniel. The two men had found a fortune in diamonds in the Kalahari Desert, and had kept their discovery secret in order to return for more, only they’d been divided by their conflicting beliefs.

  Daniel had thought there was only so much wealth one man needed. He had wanted to share their good fortune with the ragged multitude of prospectors who combed the dry riverbeds throughout the region, but Francis Layton had wanted to keep it all.

  I barely slept that night.

  ****

  Petra knocked on my door at dawn to announce that breakfast would be served at nine. She was dressed in tight jeans and a skimpy top that left her midriff bare. Her skin had regained its luminous sheen. The centipede eyelashes were back framing her pale blue eyes.