The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  With the memory of that passionate kiss still tingling on my lips, I felt strangely shy when I entered the kitchen, though of course, relief can make us do all kinds of strange things …

  But there was more than just relief in Carey’s eyes when they met mine. He gave me a wordless hug and then made me sit down before putting a mug of coffee laced with rum, and a cheese sandwich cut into small triangles in front of me. He added two aspirin and a glass of water.

  ‘There, if you get those down you, you’ll feel a lot better. I’ve eaten my sandwich.’

  I hadn’t thought I was hungry, but once the rum stopped the shivering I found I was and wolfed down the food.

  ‘What have you done with the packet?’ I asked, when I’d finished it.

  ‘It’s on my desk in the studio. I think it’s a rolled document of some kind, but it can wait till you’re feeling better, and until we’ve sorted out what to do about Ella. If it was Ella. Like you, I can’t really imagine who else would have done it.’

  ‘And I definitely didn’t fall in by accident, bang my head and close the panel up while unconscious.’

  ‘I think we can rule that scenario out.’

  ‘I suppose we could report it to the police and they might find her fingerprints on the bedhead, but that wouldn’t prove anything anyway, would it? It would be my word against hers.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, and that the first thing to do was to let Clem know what had happened,’ Carey said. ‘I rang him at the Lodge while you were upstairs and he said there was no sign of Ella, even though she’s always got his lunch ready by now. Her car was still there, though.’

  ‘Did you tell him exactly what happened?’

  ‘Yes, and at first he tried to insist that she wouldn’t have done anything like that, and you’d just banged your head and imagined the rest.’

  ‘Yeah, right!’

  ‘I told him that was impossible and he’d better find her, so we could sort this mess out once and for all, and get her the help she needed. It was that, or call the police in.’

  ‘It had to be her – we know it and Clem must know it, too.’

  ‘I’m sure he does, he just doesn’t want to admit it. But he begged me not to call the police and said he was going to search the grounds and any unlocked outbuildings. Vicky’d just arrived, so she’d help.’

  A nasty thought struck me. ‘You don’t think she’s done anything stupid, do you? Perhaps we should go and help look.’

  ‘Clem’s ringing back when he’s searched, and you need to sit quietly and recover for a bit. You might even have concussion. Maybe I should have taken you straight to hospital?’ he added, looking at me anxiously. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  ‘The one with the Greek seal ring on it, you imbecile,’ I said. ‘Of course I’m not concussed! In fact, I feel fine now, apart from a slight headache.’

  And also an unusual disinclination to be on my own …

  I began to write out Lady Anne’s confession that very night and quickly became accustomed to her erratic spelling and odd – to my modern eyes – turns of phrase. The beginning only described her first marriage and how she came to marry again – which was as far as I got before overwhelmed by sleep. These sudden descents into the arms of Morpheus seem to be yet another annoying effect of pregnancy …

  Next day, there had evidently been yet another breach between my husband and Mr Browne. Ralph flung himself about the house all morning, restless and ill-tempered: he is such a different man from the one I married!

  Later he spent several hours closeted with his man of business, which did not sweeten his mood. Perhaps if the breach with Mr Browne were to be permanent, then he might listen to good advice? There is the child to think of now, after all. Yet I do not know what is to come of us if, as I now suspect, Ralph has run up so many debts that Mossby may have to be sold.

  Having started in a straightforward way, Lady Anne’s tale took a strange and disturbing turn that evening! I could hardly believe my eyes …

  Though shocked and upset, I would have read on despite my tiredness and physical discomfort, but sleep soon set my head nodding, whether I would or no.

  Mr Browne returned from wherever he had spent the night – as I came downstairs this morning I heard him talking to Ralph and again attempting to persuade him to build a house in the Lake District. Ralph, to my relief, was adamant that he could not afford to do so – and at this juncture they caught sight of me and turned and moved away with one accord, as if my advanced pregnancy might be some vile and contagious affliction.

  40

  Broken

  I wandered into the studio with my second cup of coffee to look at my find and Carey followed. ‘It’s not the Jewel – it’s too light to be anything but papers.’

  ‘I came to that conclusion when I found it. It’s been sewn into a sort of heavy linen material,’ I added, turning it over in my hands. ‘It’s odd that two different shades of thread have been used to sew it up. See, this side is a slightly darker colour.’

  ‘She probably ran out of the first one – assuming it was Lady Anne who hid it there.’

  ‘Who else, since it was her clues that revealed where it was?’

  ‘I wonder what was so private that she felt the need to hide it at all – an important letter, perhaps?’ he suggested, and I could see he was dying to find out, just like I was. But we had the Ella situation to resolve first. Just then, Clem rang back.

  ‘He hasn’t found her,’ Carey reported. ‘There was no sign of her in the woods or by the lake, and he and Vicky have checked the stable block. Now they want to go over the old wing again, even though I told them I’d searched it.’

  ‘Well, I suppose she might have left once she’d shoved me in the hole, but then slipped back in again?’

  ‘Very true. I’ll go and let them in, but you’d better stay here, Angel.’

  ‘Not on your life! I’m coming with you!’ I said firmly.

  Clem and Vicky were standing in the doorway of the old wing, but were hardly recognizable as their former selves. Clem’s usually ruddy face was pale and drawn, while Vicky looked totally distraught. I’d never suspected her of being capable of any deep human emotion, so I’d obviously badly misjudged her.

  ‘Mum must be in there. There’s nowhere else she could be,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t have left Mossby unless she was in the car.’

  ‘I think she might have come back here – perhaps when she realized what she’d done, so she could let you out, Angel,’ Clem said, which was a tacit admission of her guilt. ‘She’s not responsible for her actions.’

  ‘We’d already figured that one out,’ Carey said, unlocking the door, then standing back to let us in.

  ‘Have you hurt your ankle, Vicky?’ I asked. ‘You’re limping.’

  ‘I broke the heel of my shoe off – got it stuck down a grating in the stable yard,’ she said, stopping and removing both shoes.

  Without the stilettos, she was suddenly not much taller than I was, though still leggier.

  Carey clicked on all the lights in the Great Hall. ‘We’d better search in pairs,’ he’d begun, when I suddenly shushed him.

  ‘Listen!’ I hissed. ‘Can you hear that?’

  Into the silence fell a sort of faint, faraway babbling that rose and fell, rose and fell … but never ceased.

  With a sudden exclamation, Carey strode over and opened the priest-hole in the opposite wall – and there, in the furthest corner, sat the hunched-up figure of Ella, with her face hidden on her knees. She was rocking and muttering very, very fast, the words running together so that it was hard to make sense of them – if there was any sense to be found.

  ‘It wasn’t there it wasn’t there all these years mine my jewel mine mine all these years my jewel mine …’

  ‘Oh God!’ Carey said blankly.

  It was some considerable time later.

  A doctor had been out and given Ella some kind of injection and then rung around to f
ind an emergency psychiatric bed. Then she’d been gently removed in an ambulance and Clem and Vicky were about to go down to the Lodge to get a few things for her and then follow on.

  ‘Poor Mum – this isn’t the first time this has happened,’ Vicky said, ‘though she’s never been this bad. Usually we know when she’s about to have another episode, because she talks faster and faster … and then Dad rings me and I come up if I’m not working.’

  ‘You should have let us know she’d had previous problems when Carey told you he was getting worried about her mental state, Clem,’ I said. ‘We knew something was wrong.’

  ‘But she seemed all right, not like she’s been in the past when she’s been ill. I was a bit worried about her increasing fixation with the old wing; she was never quite so obsessed until your uncle died, Carey.’

  ‘Yes, it was when your uncle told her about the will and that he was leaving Mossby to you that it started,’ Vicky said accusingly, as if it was all Carey’s fault. ‘She hadn’t even realized you existed before that and she was so distraught she got in her car and drove straight down to my flat in London. I don’t know how she got there safely. I was gobsmacked when I realized it was you who’d inherited, Carey. I mean, anybody might be called Revell so I’d never connected you with Mossby.’

  ‘I had no idea about the connection until after my uncle died, either,’ he said, then added, grimly, ‘but I’ve finally remembered where I’ve seen you before – and it wasn’t at Gino’s Café, though it was in Dulwich. You were looking out of the side window of the car that hit me: a big silver four-wheel drive. Ella’s?’

  She sighed. ‘Yes … but we hoped you wouldn’t remember.’

  ‘But, Carey, we know the car that knocked you off your bike was turning sharp left in front of you,’ I began, puzzling it out. ‘So if you could see her looking at you through the side window, Vicky must have been—’

  ‘In the passenger seat,’ Vicky finished. ‘Yes, I was. Mum was driving.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Clem cried, covering his face with his hands.

  ‘But she didn’t mean to hit him, Dad,’ Vicky said quickly. ‘I’d just told her to take the next left turn when I spotted him and said, ‘That’s Carey Revell there, on that bike, Mum!’ That made her swerve, then she realized she’d almost missed the turn and turned sharply.’

  ‘And, having sent me flying into a parked car, kept going,’ Carey finished for her.

  ‘We thought she’d only just clipped your bike. We didn’t think it was serious,’ Vicky said. ‘Honestly, when we found out how bad it was later, we were both really upset.’

  ‘Well, that’s very consoling,’ Carey said drily. Maybe he was wondering, like I was, if it really had been an accident.

  ‘I knew nothing about all this,’ Clem said, dropping his hands and showing us a harrowed and anguished face. He seemed to have aged ten years almost in an instant.

  ‘So … we might buy the idea that that one was an accident and Ella didn’t swerve into Carey on a sudden homicidal impulse,’ I said, summing things up. ‘But she certainly tried to dispose of me and I’m wondering if she could have been responsible for the stone ball that nearly killed Carey?’

  ‘No, that was me,’ Clem admitted shamefacedly, and Carey and I stared at him in astonishment.

  ‘I’d noticed it was loose the day before, so I’d taken an old beer crate down to stand on, so I could have a look. Then you turned up to see the film crew off and I was just standing there …’

  ‘Listening?’ I suggested, but he continued as if he hadn’t heard.

  ‘I lost my balance and the ball slipped and rolled off … and my heart nearly stopped until I heard you both speak,’ he finished.

  ‘Yeah, ours did much the same,’ Carey agreed blandly. ‘It didn’t occur to you to come and see if we were OK?’

  ‘No. I panicked, picked up the crate and beat it.’

  ‘You must have run like hell, because we spotted you on the terraces a few minutes later,’ I said.

  ‘I should have owned up to it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Your family seem to have it in for me,’ Carey said.

  ‘I haven’t,’ Vicky protested. ‘Neither has Dad, really. He’s told you it was an accident. And Mum isn’t responsible for her actions.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s all right, then. Let’s just call the whole lot acts of God and forget they ever happened, shall we?’ Carey said sarcastically.

  ‘You’re sooo kind,’ Vicky said, taking him seriously and giving him a watery smile. ‘Come on, Dad, we’d better go.’

  ‘Take the buggy down,’ I suggested. ‘We’ll pick it up from the Lodge later.’

  It would have been a long hobble down the drive in broken stilettos.

  I was afraid to read the rest of Lady Anne’s confession that night, and yet I felt impelled to go on and on to the end …

  And what an end! I could hardly believe that the terrible events it described had really happened!

  Despite my weariness, all hope of immediate sleep was dispelled. I longed for a hot drink to warm my chilled heart, but did not wish to ring for a maid at that hour, so decided to go downstairs myself.

  But I was no more than a pace or two along the passage when I heard a cry from my husband’s room and, without pausing to think, opened the door and looked in.

  I don’t think I will ever forget the sight that met my eyes: the firelight cast its glow over the entwined limbs of the two men, naked on the bed.

  I must have made some small sound, for Ralph looked round and saw me … I fled back to my chamber where I must have fainted, for I awoke in my own bed, with Honoria and the maid flapping about in a great fuss.

  ‘Send the maid away, Honoria,’ I said. ‘I must talk to you.’

  I could not believe that I had been both so innocent and so blind – but my revelation came as no surprise to Honoria. She said she had hoped marriage would change his ways … until the return of Mr Browne.

  ‘I suppose he married me because he wanted an heir,’ I said bitterly, and she asked me what I would do.

  ‘Keep to my room tomorrow, perhaps, until I have my ideas in more order,’ I said. ‘Later – I must see Ralph.’

  I slept little for the rest of that night. Now my eyes were opened, I understood Mr Browne’s jealousy and Ralph’s despair when his friend seemed set on moving away from Mossby. They had loved each other – perhaps still did, despite the ever more frequent arguments and reconciliations.

  How much I had learned and understood since yesterday! Yet, compared to the awful events that had befallen Lady Anne, my discovery paled in comparison, though of course mine affected me more nearly.

  I had no appetite to eat breakfast but, quite worn out, meekly accepted the cup of hot milk Honoria brought me, and then fell into a deep sleep, while outside the warm early September sun shone and the birds sang, as if there were no cares in the world.

  41

  The Skeleton Key

  When we went back into the warm kitchen, it felt like a million traumatic years had passed in one day.

  Fang, who had been curled asleep in his basket, got out and slowly stretched.

  ‘Fang’s a search-and-rescue dog: he deserves an extra special dinner tonight,’ Carey said, bending down to give him a pat.

  ‘We all do, but even though I feel totally limp and I’ve still got my headache, I want to know what’s in that packet I found first!’

  He grinned. ‘Me, too. Look, let’s order a takeaway and then open it. And then later, some more headache pills and an early night.’

  He didn’t specify in which room I’d be spending my early night, and I was starting to wonder if I’d imagined that passionate kiss after he’d rescued me!

  While he rang to put in the food order, I fetched my nail scissors and then we snipped apart the threads holding the binding and carefully began to unroll the brittle paper within.

  ‘It’s quite long and written on both sides,’ he said. ‘But then, good-quali
ty paper was a luxury at that time.’

  ‘If Lady Anne wrote this, then she must have been well educated, because the writing is quite elegant.’

  ‘Yes, I think it’s what they call a fine italic hand,’ he agreed, as we flattened it out and weighed down the corners. ‘And it is hers; it says so at the top.’

  He read it out in his lovely, honey-over-gravel voice:

  Being the true confession of Lady Anne Revell, in the year of our Lord, 1655.

  He paused, and then carried on very slowly, stopping from time to time while we figured out the obscure bits, for the spelling was odd and inconsistent, and she had a strange way of expressing herself.

  I hope to bring ease to my mind by writing this account of the death of my husband, Phillip Revell, in 1644, for the awful circumstances leading to this event lie heavily on my soul.

  But then it will be best to hide it in a place known only to myself, though I have caused a window to be made that will reveal all, should any have the wits to discover it long hereafter.

  I looked at Carey, puzzled. ‘Her husband was a Cavalier and killed in battle, wasn’t he?’

  ‘So I’ve been told. I wonder what on earth these mysterious circumstances could be.’

  ‘Well, go on reading it aloud and we might find out,’ I urged, though when he did, it appeared that the lady was now skimming through her earlier years:

  I must go back a little way, to tell how I came to marry Phillip Revell, a childless widower who owned the small but ancient estate of Mossby, in west Lancashire.

  I was of noble birth but, being an impetuous and romantic girl, I made an imprudent runaway match at fifteen, instead of the advantageous one planned for me. My family cast me off and my husband’s likewise, so that our means were very straitened. My husband’s fondness for me quickly waned after the birth of our only child, Lydia. He was carried off by a grievous ague in her tenth year, leaving me lacking any means of sustenance, so that I was forced to beg my uncle, who had succeeded to my father’s title and property, for help. He grudgingly took us under his roof and Lydia shared the schoolroom with his daughters, while I became little more than a servant, constantly at my aunt’s beck and call, expected to show gratitude for every morsel of bread that passed my lips.