Finding Secrets

by Westwood, Lauren

  ‘I know,’ I said, finally coming to. ‘I pulled her out. She didn’t make it. But her daughter did.’

  ‘Her daughter?’ His eyes widened.

  ‘I took her someplace safe,’ I said.

  For a moment, he looked less stricken. But then he seemed to remember something else. ‘And what about the clock?’

  ‘The clock? What clock?’

  ‘I… I repaired it for her. She had me… Oh God. I suppose that was destroyed too. Or stolen. The house – the wreckage – had been looted.’ He shook his head violently.

  ‘Looted? Are you sure?’ But as soon as he’d said it, an image of Flea popped into my head. I tried to shake it away – how could he be capable of something like that? A day ago, I would have thought it was crazy. But now… images from my boyhood flashed before my eyes. Flea was always jealous of Spider. But even so…

  How would he have done it? Could he have doubled back after he dropped off the dead… pawed through the wreckage like a rat in the garbage? No. It’s not possible.

  I turned away from Spider and then, speaking of the devil, Flea walked into the room.

  ‘Spider, mate!’ Flea boomed. ‘God, dreadful business – just dreadful.’ Flea went up to Spider and gave him a great squeeze.

  Spider flinched, drawing back. ‘Were you there too, Flea?’ Spider asked.

  ‘’Fraid so. Lost everything, did you? Mighty have fallen and all that.’

  ‘You bastard,’ I said under my breath.

  Flea met my eyes for a long second ‘Aren’t you the pot calling the kettle black.’ He turned on his heel and walked out.

  ‘We have to do something.’ I banged my fist on the table making the coffee cups skitter. ‘I’m not going to stand for this.’

  Spider looked up, startled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ I stood. ‘For now, just trust me.’ I gestured for him and Robbo to follow. ‘We have to stop him.’

  ‘Hold your horses,’ Robbo said softly. ‘You need to think this through. Not tonight – it’s almost dawn.’

  ‘When then?’ I bristled.

  He shrugged in that infuriating way of his. ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Check the roster,’ I barked. I turned and punched the wall.

  - Chapter 34 -

  The day I’ve been preparing for for months finally arrives – the grand opening of the costume exhibition. It’s been two days since the ‘uninvited guest’ left the photograph in my flat, and luckily there’s been no further ‘mischief’. Which is a good thing, since I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind of preparations.

  The PR company I’ve hired has arranged for journalists from all over the country to come to Mallow Court at various times to take photographs and interview the three curators from the V&A and the Costume Museum in Bath who are also scheduled to come up for the day. I’ve also got a lorryload of champagne and a French canapé chef for the occasion. Best of all (or, perhaps most worryingly), Karen is driving up from Essex to offer me moral support (and also, no doubt, to prop up the bar with any long-suffering male visitors accompanying their partners to the exhibition).

  The long gallery looks smashing – a cross between Madame Tussaud’s and a fancy-dress shop. Each mannequin has been carefully costumed and posed in a tableaux. There’s a group of medieval ladies listening to a lutist, a coterie of Elizabethan dancers, a group of Regency men and women playing cards, a gathering of Edwardian ladies, several 1930s women trying on hats, and my personal favourite: a group of lithesome mannequins dressed up in Mrs Fairchild’s Swinging Sixties clothing for a night out in Soho.

  Each piece has been carefully researched and catalogued, but I’ve gone one step further and written a dossier for each of the ‘characters’ and printed them out on laminated card for visitors to read as they go around the exhibition. I’ve also written out a short ‘I-spy’ book for children, and photocopied some pages from a fashion colouring book that I’ve placed on a table along with colouring pens, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, and a big box of scraps of different fabrics for them to design their own fashion masterpieces.

  I’m proud of the exhibition, and I’m hoping that it will double visitor numbers for the three months that it’s on. As well as the PR company, I’ve hired in extra staff to handle the expected numbers in the café, gift shop, and the exhibition itself. I’m relieved when they all turn up at nine o’clock sharp to help get things ready. Edith and the normal staff are on hand also. The house is closed to visitors for the morning, and the first of the journalists is due at noon. At half eleven, I open a bottle of champagne for the staff and we all toast the success of the exhibition.

  At ten minutes to noon, I hover at the ticket desk in the great hall waiting for the first of the visitors to arrive. By 12:10, no one has arrived, and a flicker of alarm kindles in my mind. But then again, journalists may well be fashionably late, though I had expected the women from the V&A to be on time.

  At 12:20, Edith comes in. When she sees me alone, pacing back and forth on the wide polished stones of the floor, her smile vanishes. ‘Where is everyone?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know. Just running late, I hope.’

  ‘Right.’ She looks unconvinced.

  ‘No one called to cancel, did they? I mean, everyone knows we were planning on starting at noon?’

  ‘No one phoned the shop,’ Edith says. ‘Do you want me to go to your office and check?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I say. ‘The PR company handled all the invites. I’ve got a list of everyone – they sent it to me the day before yesterday. And I can’t think what’s keeping the women from the V&A…’

  Edith remains behind in the great hall. I go down the corridor to the estate office. Inside, the message light on the phone is blinking. I listen to the first message – from a London journalist. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve had to delay the opening,’ she says. ‘Please keep me posted if the exhibition is still on.’

  ‘What?’ I say aloud, flabbergasted. My stomach clenches with dread. Picking up the phone, I ring the PR company. They came highly recommended by the V&A and the Historic Houses Association, and have already sent me a hefty invoice for their services to back it up.

  A well-spoken receptionist answers the phone.

  ‘This is Alex Hart here from Mallow Court,’ I say. ‘I need to speak to my account rep urgently.’

  ‘Alex Hart?’ The girl sounds confused. ‘But… sorry, this is awkward. You called yesterday didn’t you? Except you were… umm… a man.’

  ‘I didn’t call yesterday!’ I say loudly. ‘And I’m certainly not a man!’

  ‘One moment please.’ In a split second I’m on hold with the normally calming strains of a Beethoven piano sonata drifting down the phone line. Just as I’m about to spontaneously combust with frustration, my mobile phone rings. It’s Karen. I answer it, juggling phones with both hands.

  ‘Alex, what the hell is up?’ she yells into the phone, obviously stopped somewhere along a road. ‘I just got to your gate. It’s chained shut and there’s a sign on it that says “House and Exhibition closed due to diseased livestock”.’

  I hold my mobile away from my ears. On the landline, the voice of my contact from the PR agency comes on but I barely take in the panic and protestations about new receptionists and a male ‘Alex’ calling to cancel my event. Along with the fury and panic germinating in my chest, there’s also a tiny seed of admiration. The ‘uninvited guest’ has struck again, and this time he’s cut me to the quick.

  *

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Karen says, swigging down her second flute of champagne. ‘That PR agency you hired must be pretty darned efficient. Cancelling everyone at short notice like that.’

  I toss the empty bottle hard into the bin. ‘It’s criminal,’ I say. ‘Identity theft.’

  ‘Well, I assume you’ve got the full PR machine working on rescheduling – and at no cost to you, right?’

  ‘The agency said they’d call everyone, but
things have been in the works for months. People can’t adjust their diaries just like that.’

  Karen shrugs. ‘Maybe not. But at least the champers will keep.’

  I pop the cork on a second bottle, remembering Churchill’s words: ‘In defeat, need it…’

  ‘The thing is,’ I lament, ‘how did he know which agency I was using?’

  ‘He must have hacked your computer and then taken a punt that his bluff would work at the PR agency.’

  ‘But WHY?’

  Over the first bottle of champagne, I’d filled Karen in on my falling-out with Tim and his nutty gran, her accusations against Frank Bolton, and the possible royal origins of the jewelled bird. Her response was predictable: ‘God, Alex. Since when did your life start to get interesting?’

  I’ve refrained from telling her about Christopher Heath-Churchley, however, and the feelings I’d developed for him. I don’t want to relive the joy I’d felt in his presence and then explain how I haven’t heard from him, won’t be hearing from him, and that my family mystery has killed off something powerful and elemental.

  ‘It all seems like a lot of mischief,’ Karen says. ‘At least the “uninvited guest” hasn’t done any real harm.’

  ‘No real harm!’ I pour myself another glass and hug the bottle to my chest. ‘He locked me in the loo and I practically got arrested. That’s false imprisonment. Then he stole a photograph and left it on my pillow. That’s theft, and breaking and entering. Then he cancelled my grand opening. And then there’s the diary entries that are upsetting my grandmother.’

  ‘So you think this Tim chap is responsible?’

  ‘He admitted that his grandmother sent the diary entries. She and Mrs Fairchild apparently have some past animosity between them. But she can’t be the intruder – you’d understand if you’d met her. So it’s got to be him.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Karen says. ‘So maybe you need to send him a message right back.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Get the police out. Let him know that you’re taking things seriously.’

  ‘No,’ I say flatly. ‘No police.’

  ‘Why not, Alex? If you’re that worried about it. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Because…’ I turn the glass around in my hands, wanting to snap the stem in frustration. ‘As you’ve pointed out, it’s all just mischief, really. I don’t want the police here, and I don’t want the bad press it would lead to.’

  ‘So you’re going to sit back and do nothing?’

  ‘No. I mean – I don’t know!’ The familiar sense of panic rises to the surface. ‘I don’t want to give the intruder any ammunition until I know the truth about Frank Bolton. Once I prove his innocence, then it won’t matter what anyone says. Tim – or whoever – won’t have anything hanging over us. But if I go to the police, it will be in the papers. That might force his hand, and who know what he’ll do?’

  ‘Fine, I get it – sort of.’ Karen holds out her glass for a refill. ‘I’m just not sure I see how solving your decades-old mystery will help.’

  I rub my temples, trying to massage away the headache I feel coming on. ‘I’m sure I must be missing something. Something important.’

  ‘I think you need to deal with what’s in front of you. Phone up this Tim chap and resort to some good old-fashioned threats if he doesn’t behave.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I shake my head, trying to picture Tim Edwards boldly driving up to the gate, chaining it shut, and putting a sign on it about sick livestock. Or calling a PR agency and pretending to be me. ‘But I just don’t know how he could be responsible. He’s a barrister for Christ’s sake. You’d think he’d be too old – or just too damn busy – for schoolboy pranks.’

  Karen gives me a sideways glance. I’ve unwittingly steered her back onto her own familiar territory.

  ‘In my experience, they’re never too old or too busy for mischief.’ She winks. ‘God Alex, you’re making me wish I’d met your delightful Tim Edwards first. I’m a sucker for chocolate brown eyes and a devious black heart.’

  ‘You’re welcome to him,’ I say. I clink my glass to hers and drain the rest of my champagne.

  - Chapter 35 -

  All I can do is put on a brave face and move on. Tipsy from the champagne, I go about rescheduling the event. I personally call a long list of people that I’d invited before the PR agency got involved, and apologise for the ‘unfortunate mistake’. I also reopen the house to tourists, and have a trickling of visitors who haven’t heard about the special event or the ‘livestock disease’ and are perfectly happy to traipse through the long gallery and admire the exhibition. I tell my grandmother that there was a ‘mix-up at the PR agency’ without elaborating on the cause. She gives me a reassuring hug, tells me ‘don’t worry, dear Alex – these things happen’ – and leaves for an ‘early dinner’ with a ‘friend’.

  By the end of the day, I feel exhausted from damage control and the adrenalin rush of indignation petering out. Karen tries to persuade me to get away – go for dinner and a catch-up. But by the time I’m done with my phone calls, she’s fast asleep and snoring on the long leather sofa in my office. She wakes up a while later, has another glass of champagne from a bottle on the floor next to the sofa, mumbles, rolls over, and goes back to sleep. I tuck a blanket around her and a pillow under her head.

  I wait up until I’m sure that my grandmother has returned home safely, and then I let myself out of the main house. I don’t bother to set the alarm – it doesn’t seem to be making the slightest bit of difference to the intruder’s activities. Returning to my flat, I try to sleep, but I’m too restless and on edge. After a long, hot bath, I end up watching television far into the night.

  The next morning, I still feel very low. Karen comes over to my flat and I make us both breakfast. Then she leaves – back to Essex where she’s running a ‘Forever Love and Marriage’ course that afternoon. Given her ‘involvement’ with the Churchley-Thursley wedding, the irony is not lost on me. ‘Call me if there’s any more mischief,’ she says through the window of her Smart car.

  ‘I will,’ I say. She peels away, engulfing me in a cloud of dust.

  As the pieces of the cancelled exhibition are well on their way to being picked up, I’m kept busy throughout the day giving sound bites and interviews to journalists about the scope and importance of the exhibition, escorting groups through the long gallery, and making sure that the champagne is free-flowing. It’s all very anti-climactic compared to the grand event I’d thought we were having, but in a way, the low-key nature is a relief. As I go through the motions of my job, I ruminate over the still-unanswered questions. Could Tim really be the ‘uninvited guest’? And if not, who is? As the day comes to an end, I feel light-headed – as though I’ve been holding my breath. Waiting for something to go wrong. Relieved when it doesn’t, but knowing that tomorrow is another day.

  *

  Over the next few days, word of mouth spreads, several journalists come by to write up their articles, and the house and the costume exhibition begin to draw greater numbers. The only incident of any note is a loose railing on one of the disabled ramps that causes an elderly woman’s knee to buckle, and I have to get a bandage out of the first aid kit. Fortunately, the woman is satisfied with a free tea and scone for recompense. Behind the scenes, my mind jumps to the panicked conclusion that the loose railing must be the work of the ‘uninvited guest’ again, though there’s no evidence of it. Nonetheless, I call in a handyman out to check every railing, stair, carpet runner, floor plank and stone to make sure they’ve not been tampered with. He finds nothing amiss. But still, the worries buzz in my head like angry bees.

  On the fourth day after the cancelled grand opening, I’m just sitting down with a glass of wine after a long, tiring day, when my mobile phone rings. I groan with irritation – there’s no one I want to speak to. But when I pick up the phone and see on the screen that it’s Chris calling, I experience a surge of emotion that brings me near tears. I’
ve missed him. And whatever fledgling ideas I might have been harbouring about ‘us’ – well, I miss those too.

  ‘Alex,’ he says when I answer. Immediately, his voice is practically drowned out by a chiming of clocks that brings a sad smile to my face.

  ‘Hi Chris,’ I say. I’ve missed you. I bite my tongue to stop the words from leaking out. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’ve been better.’ He sounds distant and strange. Though I’d no reason to hope that things could be sorted between us, my heart feels heavy with disappointment.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Listen, Alex. I’ve found something you should see. Can you come by the shop? I think it would be better than trying to explain over the phone.’

  ‘I umm…’ I picture his shop – how quaint and clever it is. Seeing it my mind’s eye gives me a visceral sensation of warmth – of safety. A bubble of calm where time is suspended; the clocks acting as guardians against the outside world. A bubble that, as of our last meeting, has well and truly burst.

  ‘I know you’re busy with the costume exhibition and all,’ he says. ‘But it might be important.’

  ‘I’ll come down to London tomorrow,’ I say, suddenly deciding that there’s nothing more important than whatever Chris has to show me. I’m a moth and he’s a bright, shiny hot flame. ‘Shall we say 11 o’clock?’

  ‘Fine.’ The line crackles and goes dead.

  - XI -

  14th November 1940 – 11:55 p.m.

  The moon cast an eerie, rose-coloured glow as we pulled out of the dispatch the following evening. The bombs had been falling hard and fast, and I felt guilty for shirking my duty, and angry at Flea for making me do this.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Spider asked, clearly uncomfortable with my plan.

  ‘Wherever he goes.’ I pointed in front of us. I’d already told Spider – briefly – what I suspected. He didn’t believe me, of course. But he would – when the time was right.