I found his waistcoat, stained with port, where he’d flung it down. I took the key to the laboratory from the pocket he’d left it in and slipped out of the room, opening and closing the door with exaggerated care. Then I hastened down to the basement, using the back stairs. I was relieved to meet none of the servants on the way. I did not want to see anyone. Nor did I want anyone to see me. How much they knew or had guessed I did not care to contemplate. But I had to see my laboratory. I had to be sure it was as bad as I remembered.
It was, if anything, worse. There wasn’t an unbroken chemical bottle to be found. The cameras were smashed beyond repair. The pedestals and printing frames were so much matchwood. My work lay in ruins. I gathered up a few scattered heliogenic pictures, put them back in their portfolio and wondered how best to keep them safe. In the end, I decided to put them at the back of a cupboard beneath the bench. The laboratory was probably the last place Jos would look, if look he did, now that he had done his best to lay it waste. Then I went back out, fastened the lock, placed the key beneath the door and flicked it into the room. I heard it slide some distance across the floor and contented myself with the thought that Jos would have to use a battering ram next time he wanted to enter. As for the key, he would search me in vain for it. I would suggest he had simply mislaid it, a possibility he would be poorly placed to deny.
I met Briggs on my way out of the house and bade him as calm a good morning as I could summon. Then I struck out across the park, trying to draw some comfort from the sweet summer air. But there was no comfort to be had that day, only the bleak satisfaction that is to be derived from not adding to a pile of sorrows.
Legion Cottage lay in a dale beyond the beech hanger, a plain but homely little house where I had often, of late, dreamed of leading a happier and simpler existence than the one fate had allotted me. I hesitated before knocking at the door and did not, in the event, need to screw up the courage to do so, because Mr Byfield opened it of his own accord. He looked haggard and hollow-eyed and I prayed my face did not reveal my thoughts as clearly as his did.
‘I saw you approaching,’ he said. ‘Will you come in?’
‘Thank you,’ I said, stepping into the hall. ‘I’m sorry … to call so early.’
‘Do not be. I am relieved to see you. It is a weight lifted from my mind. You are … well?’
‘I am.’
‘I own I was fearful what Jos might do when I left.’
‘He did nothing. He only said that he would act if you were not gone by noon today.’
‘How can I go? Do you not understand, Marian? I love you.’
‘If you do, then you must go. If you stay, Jos will kill you.’
Mr Byfield almost smiled at that. ‘He may try.’
‘I know him, Lawrence. All too well. He would find a way. And it would not necessarily be gentlemanly. He puts on honour and takes it off like a glove, according to the weather.’
‘I’m not afraid of him, whatever the weather.’
‘Then I must do your fearing for you. Do as he told you. Leave this place.’
He took my hand and held it to his chest. ‘Do you want me to leave?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. Most certainly.’
‘Come with me, Marian. We could go abroad, beyond scandal’s reach as well as Jos’s.’ He bent towards me, intending, I think, to kiss me. But I pulled away. ‘I will not abandon you to such a man, wife though you are to him, and friend though he is – or was – to me.’
‘You must.’
‘It cannot be endured.’
‘Yet it cannot be cured. I am his wife.’
‘You should not be. He does not deserve someone as fine as you.’
‘But life does not always treat us as we deserve. You must go and I must stay. That is the way of it.’
‘Is there no hope for us, Marian?’
‘There is always hope.’
‘May I write to you?’
‘Under no circumstances. It is the very thing Jos will be on the watch for.’
‘Then you must write to me. They will hold post for me at my club in London – Boodle’s, in St James’s Street. Should your existence here become unbearable, you can call upon me to do as much to aid you as you require. As much, indeed, as you will allow. Say you will do so if he drives you too hard and I will go. Not gladly, it is true. Very far from that. But I will go.’
‘Very well. You have my word. And my thanks. To know there is someone I can turn to at direst need …’
‘The offer is not lightly made.’
‘Nor would it be lightly taken up, I assure you.’
‘I could wish that it would be. But it is not in your character to yield easily. You should know, however, that it is not in mine either.’
I looked at him for several silent seconds, and he looked at me. Our understanding was sealed in that interval, beyond the reach of words.
‘I must go, Mr Byfield.’
‘And so, it seems, must I, Mrs Esguard.’
‘Goodbye, sir.’
He reached out and laid the backs of his fingers gently against my cheek in as much of a farewell caress as he thought I was likely to permit. ‘Until we meet again,’ he murmured. Then his hand fell away and I opened the door and walked out into the fragrant, heedless morning.
There was no need to hurry back to Gaunt’s Chase. Jos would sleep a while yet. It would probably be a good deal later than noon when he stormed into Legion Cottage – and found it empty. I made my melancholy way up to the summit of Charlton Down and gazed out at the unconsoling beauties of the Nadder valley, where the sunlight picked out the course of the river like some shimmering serpent coiled amidst the rolling woodland and the church steeples and the golden swathes of ripening wheat. I sat down and closed my eyes, and let the breeze stirring my hair be my only reminder of where I was and whither I was bound to return. I lay back on the turf, listening to a skylark chirring somewhere above me. On it went, singing for the simple joy of its precious life. On and blithely on.
Then it stopped, as suddenly and completely as if a hand had closed round its throat. The wind stopped, too. Its susurrant passage through the grass ceased in the same instant. There was a moment of utter silence. Then I opened my eyes.
And I could see the sky before me through the windscreen of the car. I was shut away from birdsong and breeze. It was morning. I’d slept there through the night, as the stiffness of my limbs and the low whisper of music from the radio confirmed. It had been on so long the battery must have run down. I sat up, shivering in the chill. Then I realized I was no longer afraid. I’d been through the worst of it. This was the other side.
I tried to start the car, but the engine couldn’t raise more than a pitiful moan. I began looking for my mobile phone, then remembered I’d left it at home. Conrad would be beside himself with worry. The police might be looking for me by now. Everyone was going to be very angry when I explained that I’d driven to Dorset on a whim and spent the night in the car for no halfway credible reason. Draining the battery wasn’t going to sound very clever either. In fact, my behaviour was going to seem at best irrational, at worst …
But I couldn’t just stay there, worrying about the recriminations that were waiting for me. I got out, flagged down the first car that came along and begged a lift into Shaftesbury. I booked into a hotel there and phoned Conrad, cobbling together a story that jet lag had caught up with me after I’d driven into the countryside to blow away the cobwebs. He was too glad to hear from me to subject my account to much analysis. The police hadn’t wanted to know, apparently. They’d annoyed him by suggesting I might have left him. He was going to be angry with me later. I could sense it. But for the moment he was just grateful I was all right. Pressure of work meant he couldn’t come and fetch me, but he promised to contact a local garage and phone me back. By the time he did, I’d had a bath and some breakfast and was feeling more like my normal self. But it was only an act. Part of me was sure of that and still is. Marian and I are
woven together. Look at me closely and all you see is a single thread. Step back and you see the pattern she and I can only glimpse. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it means. But it’s there.
The garage picked the car up for me and delivered it to the hotel, complete with new battery, later that morning. I drove straight back to London, keeping my eyes on the road and my mind fixed on Conrad and our life in the here and now. It worked. Marian stayed out of sight. She followed me, of course, but at a safe distance. It was up to me whether I closed the gap between us. The when and the how were still in my control. But I couldn’t escape her. And nor, I suppose, could she escape me.
I didn’t have to wait at home long before Conrad arrived. True to form, he’d stopped being relieved and started getting resentful. What the hell did I think I was playing at? Did I have any idea what kind of a night I’d put him through? Et cetera, et cetera. I had to do a lot of grovelling. I didn’t mind. In fact, it was good for me. It meant I didn’t have to think about what had really happened. The effort I had to put into selling Conrad my cover story almost convinced me it was true. We went out to one of his favourite restaurants for a smoothing of ruffled feathers. We could have been back in Hawaii, so remote and unlikely did my experiences in Dorset seem.
But it was only the fleeting effect of wine and good food and the company of a husband who firmly believed I was nobody but Eris Moberly. In the morning, when Conrad went to work and I was alone again, the memories returned. And with them the recollection of Quisden-Neve’s stark ultimatum. Give up the only tangible evidence I had of Marian’s achievements or have all the forces tugging at my life implode. What was I supposed to do?
I went down to the bank and took the box out of the safe deposit. I sat in Green Park, just staring at it, trying to think of some way out of the dilemma. It can’t all be a delusion, can it, Daphne? That’s the point. Not when creeps like Quisden-Neve try to blackmail me into handing over a box of old negatives. I can’t invent a fantasy that just happens to be true. I can’t imagine Marian Esguard if she really existed. I can only … meet her. I can only … find herself inside me.
That’s when I decided what to do. Let go of her. The negatives were what had started it all. Without them I might be released. If I gave them up, maybe she’d give me up. Maybe Quisden-Neve was doing me a favour. Locking them in a bank vault wasn’t enough. They had to be out of my reach. And Quisden-Neve would make sure they were.
I drank most of a bottle of wine with a frugal lunch at the Park Lane Hotel, then walked down to Richoux for our appointment. He didn’t look in the least surprised to see me, damn him. He looked, in fact, like a man utterly confident in his own tactics. As he had a right to be, I suppose.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, picking his way through the box. ‘These really are quite extraordinary. There’s barely any degradation. Thank you, Mrs Moberly. I’m most grateful.’
‘So am I,’ I murmured in reply. And that did surprise him.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’re welcome to them. And everything that goes with them.’
‘What might that be?’
‘You have no idea, do you? Well, that’s probably just as well. Have them with my compliments. I reckon I’m better off without them.’
He looked puzzled. But his pleasure at a scam well worked soon blotted out anything else. He was like a schoolboy who’d stolen a stamp collection. Suddenly he wanted to be alone, to ogle his haul. So I left him to it.
‘I have your word I’ll hear no more of this?’ was my parting shot.
‘You do, Mrs Moberly. You have, indeed, my cast-iron copper-bottomed guarantee.’
Quisden-Neve’s guarantee wasn’t worth much. But it’s held so far. Nothing’s happened since. It’s only a week or so, of course. There’s no way to tell if it’s permanent. Sometimes I don’t want it to be. At other times I dread the very thought of another fugue. It’s as if, any second, a chasm could open beneath my feet and I’d fall and fall and never stop falling. I keep expecting it to happen, but it doesn’t. Am I free of her, Daphne? Or just fooling myself? And why did she ever get a hold on me in the first place? If you can’t tell me and make me believe it, I can’t be sure she won’t reclaim me. That’s the worst of it. If you can’t convince me – absolutely and completely – I’ll go on waiting. For the first crack to appear in the ground. For the past to swallow me. For the person I am to become the person I was.
SEVEN
I’D LISTENED TO the tape three times by dawn. I’d listened long and hard enough to feel I was almost living Eris’s experiences with her, both as Eris and as Marian. I was sure now it was all true. Daphne could theorize about fugal delusion as often and expertly as she liked. It wouldn’t make any difference to me. This had to be the real thing. Possession, reincarnation, or some other strange overlap between two women’s lives. Marian Esguard had lived. And part of her lived still in Eris Moberly. That was why Eris was in danger and why she’d gone missing. That was why she needed my help so desperately. Nobody else, not even her psychotherapist, seemed able to understand that. But I did. What’s more, I had a way to help her at long last. I had the lies and evasions of Montagu Quisden-Neve to ram down his Pomerol-rinsed throat.
Daphne would have to wait for the tape. She’d foreseen the possibility clearly enough. I reckoned she’d only made me promise to return it as a means of covering her back. She wanted me to confront Quisden-Neve – and Niall Esguard. And she wanted to be able to deny it. So I decided to do her the favour she’d lacked either the nerve or the honesty to ask me. By nine o’clock, the time I was supposed to be reporting to her practice in Harley Street, tape in hand, I was in Bath, sitting in my car a few doors up from Bibliomaufry, waiting for the proprietor to put in an appearance. Nine thirty was opening time, according to the sign in the window, but I didn’t take Quisden-Neve for the punctual type. He could easily be late. Still, when he did arrive, I’d be waiting. And I’d be angry. The longer I waited, in fact, the angrier I was going to be. Part of me enjoyed the feeling as it grew inside me. There was some grim relish to be had in knowing I’d been deceived, because deception assumed a motive. And a motive, whatever it was, meant Eris wasn’t mad. She needed my help, not my doubt and disappointment. She needed me to trust my instincts as well as my memories. And I was glad to do just that. I was actually happy to do it, happier than I’d been for a single moment since I’d waved to her across the Ringstrasse in Vienna – and seen her face for the last time.
A taxi overtook me and slowed to a halt outside Bibliomaufry. Sudden concentration snatched me back from my reverie. I leaned forward and peered at the taxi’s rear window, but I couldn’t see a passenger. Then the driver tooted his horn. I glanced across the road to see if he was picking up somebody from the other side, but nobody was waiting and nobody appeared. Then, to my horror, the door of Bibliomaufry opened and Quisden-Neve bustled out, carrying a raincoat and a Gladstone bag. I swore and made to get out of the car, but a horn blared as a lorry sped past, and I recoiled, swearing again when I saw Quisden-Neve was already clambering into the cab. It was too late to do anything but follow. The old devil had been too clever for me.
The taxi headed south down Walcot Street to Pulteney Bridge and on past the Abbey. It looked as if the railway station was our destination, but if Quisden-Neve knew I was following him, which I suspected he did, he had to be aware his ploy wasn’t going to work. He just didn’t have a big enough lead to shake me off.
The station it was. I hung back as the taxi pulled up outside. Quisden-Neve climbed out, paid the man off and rushed into the booking office, glancing at his watch as he went. I moved in behind the taxi and reversed into a parking bay, gaining a clear view through the station doorway as I did so. For a tubby man, Quisden-Neve moved fast. Already he was halfway up the stairs to the platform. I jumped out and followed.
There was a train standing in the station. Doors were slamming and whistles shrilling as I reached the top of the s
tairs. And there was Quisden-Neve’s tweed-covered backside plunging into a carriage ahead of me. I raced across the platform, wrenched open the nearest door and flung myself in. The next second we were moving.
The train was crowded. Half the passengers were still taking their seats and stowing their luggage. It took several minutes to get as far as the carriage I reckoned Quisden-Neve had entered, and there was no sign of him. Maybe he’d headed further down the train. I struggled on through the ruck.
Then I saw the Gladstone bag and the raincoat, dumped in a seat as some kind of claim. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to the woman sitting between them and the window. ‘These look like they belong to a friend of mine. We seem to have missed each other. Perhaps you saw him get on at Bath. Middle-aged. Grey hair. Lots of tweed.’
‘Yes. He was here. But only for a second. He went that way.’ She pointed towards the front of the train. ‘To the buffet, I expect.’
‘Right. Thanks. By the way, I know this’ll sound stupid, but where are we going?’
‘London,’ she replied, looking as if it did indeed sound stupid.
‘Of course. And the next stop?’
‘Chippenham. In about five minutes.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
I pressed on, the going getting easier as people settled in their seats. But Quisden-Neve remained elusive. I reached the buffet and he wasn’t there. I checked the first-class carriages beyond, drew another blank and turned back. There were the loos to be checked as well, of course, but I couldn’t hang around outside every engaged one. Besides, he might be planning to slip off at Chippenham. We’d be there any minute. I heard the announcement as the thought entered my mind. ‘This train will shortly be arriving at Chippenham.’ We began to slow. The house-backs of the town were already visible through the window. ‘Chippenham will be the next station stop.’ I glanced into the first unengaged loo I came to. It was empty. The loo in the vestibule of the adjoining carriage was also unengaged. I crossed to it and pushed at the door, but it only opened halfway. There was some kind of obstruction behind it. I pushed harder and leaned round to see …
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