A Place of Secrets

by Rachel Hore

  CHAPTER 35

  She woke on Friday morning feeling dismal, all the joy of the previous day evaporating like the morning dew. Today the carrier was coming to take away the books and the instruments. Today she must say good-bye to everyone she loved here and return to London.

  Robert was in businesslike mode when she arrived downstairs at eight o’clock. Only his irritating tuneless whistle betrayed his nervousness. It wasn’t every day he sold off the family heirlooms. Alexia had taken Max and Georgie off to a children’s holiday club in the next village. Chantal came down for breakfast at eight thirty, but went upstairs again with Miffy as soon as she’d eaten.

  “She’s upset,” Robert said. “Understandable. I expect she’ll keep to her room till the men have gone. I advised her to, anyway. What time d’you think the van will get here?” he asked.

  “They thought about ten, but it depends what kind of run they have from London. Don’t worry, they’ll do all the packing themselves—they’re expert at it. All we have to do is show them where everything is. Oh, and do you want them to use the front entrance or the back?”

  “The front, I think. If we open both the doors they’ll have plenty of room to maneuver. You’re sure they won’t be careless and damage anything?”

  “I’m sure,” she said firmly.

  The operation, as she might have predicted, went seamlessly, but it was so dreadfully sad to see the orrery and the globe muffled up in packing material, the books being wrapped up and put in boxes.

  After the van had gone, she took a last look around the library and could have wept to see the ghostly shapes of the books left in the dust, the scuffs on the marble floor where the orrery had stood. “I feel like a murderess,” she whispered to Miffy, who had wandered downstairs now the commotion was over. Chantal followed a little later, looking miserable and avoiding going near the library at all. Robert, however, looked more cheerful now that the deed was done. When Alexia returned with the twins at lunchtime, the atmosphere was almost normal.

  After lunch it was time for Jude herself to leave for London. Robert took her case down and fitted it into the trunk. She slipped her laptop and briefcase alongside, and turned to say good-bye to the Wickham family lined up by the steps.

  “I can’t thank you enough for having me,” she said, kissing Chantal and Alexia, hugging the twins in turn and shaking Robert’s hand. “I’ll be in touch again very shortly, of course. We always like to consult clients on every aspect of the sale, so don’t worry about that.”

  “And it would be marvelous if you came to stay again soon,” Alexia said. “You’re a very easy guest. And thank you so much for that beautiful picture.”

  “That’s all right,” Jude said. “I’d love to come again. Oh, I’ll miss you all.”

  As she drove away she could see them all in her mirror, waving, before the vision grew misty with unshed tears.

  When she reached the bottom of the drive she did what she suspected she would do all along. Instead of turning left toward the main road to London, she turned right. She’d just see if Euan was in. She didn’t feel they’d said good-bye properly last night.

  There was no car in the road, nor in the drive. She stopped the car anyway, walked up the path and rang the front doorbell of the cottage, waited, but no one came. As a last hope, she tramped around the back and into the field. The caravan was all shut up, as it had been when she had stopped the other day, after Summer had been found. Perhaps, now that his house was nearly finished, Euan hadn’t slept there at all. She couldn’t blame him, not after the trauma of the last week, knowing Summer had been the last to sleep there.

  She trudged reluctantly back to the car, feeling disproportionately disappointed. He hadn’t been warned she was coming; why had she expected him to be there, waiting in case she came? Perhaps he was still staying with his sister, she remembered.

  She drove on rather than turning back, to pretend to the world that she’d meant to come this way all along. When she stopped at a T-junction she leaned against the wheel, dry-eyed but feeling a bit empty. She really had wanted to see Euan. It’s all right, he said he’d call you, she told herself. She pulled out her map and plotted another route to the London road.

  CHAPTER 36

  “When you’ve got a minute, Jude, could we get together and talk about your piece? I went through it as soon as I saw it yesterday. It’s very good.” Jude had hardly made it through Beecham’s reception on Monday when she encountered Bridget on her way to some meeting.

  “You are amazing, Bridget. I didn’t mean for you to look at it on a weekend.”

  “I have to be amazing. Not much time left,” she said, patting her baby bump. “Eleven all right? I’ll come to you.” Her mobile started to ring and she fumbled to answer it. “The photographs of the Hall are fabulous, by the way.”

  Walking into Books and Manuscripts, Jude had barely time to greet Suri and Inigo before Klaus swept by. “Morning, all of you. Jude, how are things? Meeting in my office in ten minutes?”

  “Okay,” she said, feeling dizzy at all the activity, out of kilter with the fast pace of office life.

  “I’ll bring you a coffee, if you like.” Suri stood up. She was wearing the lovely silver bangle Jude had posted to her, Jude noticed with pleasure.

  “Oh, you are wonderful.” She gave her some coins for the machine, and sank into her seat. For a moment the very thought of switching on her computer felt beyond her. Yet she knew from previous experience that by the end of the day she’d be swallowed up in the busy routine once more.

  It had been horrible coming back to London on Friday, the car crawling through the London rush-hour traffic. Her little house didn’t feel like a haven any more. It smelled musty and some mice had obviously been having a party; there were droppings all over the kitchen.

  Most important was a sense of absence. She’d never acknowledged it before, but now she did. Mark wasn’t there anymore. He was gone from her life, like a ghost in the house that she’d finally banished. And yet, strangely, she didn’t feel lonely. She felt she was herself.

  The post was mostly bills—oh, and a postcard from Caspar. It featured a medieval village perched impossibly above a gorge. The message was printed in small, neat capitals, as though he were so used to computers he’d forgotten how to write properly.

  Really wish you were here. Didn’t make it till Thursday in the end. Back on the Saturday. If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be. Ciao, C.

  She thought about this as she lay in the bath. Caspar seemed a long time ago. She felt not the slightest impulse to change her mind about him. Instead she thought about Euan.

  He rang her during the evening, just as she was working on her article, and she was so glad to hear his voice. After chatting for a bit she said, “You’ll think I’m daft, but I came by on my way home.”

  “Did you?” he cried. “What time was that?”

  When she told him, he said, “I’ll tell you where I was. Up by the folly. I found out who our phantom gunslinger is. Remember the shots you ran from on that first day I met you?”

  “How could I forget? Don’t tell me, it’s Farrell. The landowner.”

  “Wrong. I don’t think you’ll guess. It’s that odd-job man they employ at Starbrough Hall to look after the pheasants. George Fenton. I came across him out near the folly, carrying a rabbit he’d shot.”

  “Oh. He was the one who blamed Barney and Liza for the thefts, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. I’ve had a word with Robert. It sounds as though it’s a case of gamekeeper-turned-poacher. Robert says Fenton was briefly employed by Farrell, but a couple of months ago Farrell let him go because of some dispute about money. And so he’s resentful. I think he’s just been wandering around shooting at things for the hell of it and committing petty vandalism. Robert thinks Fenton might even have fabricated the theft of the pheasants and taken them himself. Anyway, Robert’s reported the whole matter to the police.”

  “Well, that’s one
thing sorted out. It wasn’t fun feeling I was a target.”

  “Absolutely not. I just wish the Farrells’ plans were as easily dealt with.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Jude, I’m really sorry I didn’t see you again before you went. It was … well, last week was pretty confusing, wasn’t it?”

  “To say the least.”

  “I thought we both needed a break. But perhaps you’d like to come down again sometime soon. Shall we fix that? Once we’ve both got ourselves a bit straighter?”

  “That would be lovely, Euan.”

  She daydreamed about this on Monday as she waited for her computer to boot up.

  “Here you are,” Suri said, making her jump, and she passed her a large cappuccino in a cardboard cup from the café next door. “You looked like you needed the proper stuff.”

  “Oh, Suri,” Jude said, coming to life, “you are a darling.”

  “How was your holiday?” Inigo asked stiffly from the next desk.

  “Restoring in all senses,” Jude told him, “if not exactly a holiday. And interesting. Fascinating, in fact. I’ll tell you about Starbrough Hall, if you like. It’s been quite an historical detective story.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that,” he said, looking gloomy. She felt a rush of pity for him.

  “Lunch today?” she asked, before she could think twice. He nodded. Damn. Now she’d have to put up with him moaning about Klaus for an hour. She really must learn not to pity people.

  “Right,” Klaus said, showing Jude in before shutting his office door and fitting his gangly body behind the desk. “The Starbrough sale. Scheduled for the first Tuesday in November, I see. Tell me all.”

  Jude met his stern gaze. This was not a gentle chat, she decided. “Well,” she started, “we’ve got a story. I showed you a synopsis for my article, but now there’s more and I finished a draft on Saturday.” She told him all about Anthony Wickham, his lost adopted daughter, Esther, about the discovery they had made. She told the story as Esther had written it, not mentioning Summer or her dreams, or any of their family’s strange experiences—she didn’t think it fair to them all.

  “The seventh planet, eh? But Uranus did get found soon after, didn’t it? William Herschel spotted it with one of his extraordinary telescopes.”

  “Yes, he did, and I’m not trying to denigrate his achievement, but that’s not the point. The point is surely that quite often one person in a scientific discovery or breakthrough usually gets the glory. But in many cases they are building on the work of other, less well-known people, or you’ll find that there are a number of different people working in the same area, but one is lucky or gets the right hunch or makes the right links, then knows the right people to corroborate it. Like the discovery of penicillin. Alexander Fleming got most of the glory for that, but two colleagues shared the groundwork, and others knew about it before them. That’s one thing I want to emphasize. Then there’s the fact that Esther was a woman, working against the odds in what was seen then as a man’s field of activity, as a man’s assistant. And in the end, without him, sadly she was defeated. But that doesn’t lessen her heroic role. And lastly, it’s this wonderful, romantic story of a father and his adopted daughter, who devoted their lives to stargazing from a tower in a forest.”

  “She vanished in the end, you say.”

  Jude bit her lip. “Yes. I wish we knew where she went. Or indeed where she came from originally.”

  “I see. Quite a little mystery. So what now? We’ve announced the date of the sale, of course.”

  “Bridget’s already been through my article. And the books and the globes should be here somewhere.”

  “They’re booked in and safely stored next door, yes.”

  “I’ll continue cataloging, then. And I’ve got someone to come and inspect the globes. So we go from there, really.”

  “Excellent,” Klaus said.

  When she returned to her desk she found an e-mail from Cecelia. It offered some useful comments on her article.

  Normal life, it seemed, was resuming.

  * * *

  The rest of the morning she spent dealing with correspondence that had arrived in her absence, catching up on the gossip, and having a long session with Bridget, a ruthless editor, who took her through the article like a dose of salts, pointing out awkward sentences, underlining ambiguities. Bridget left her with a list of queried dates, name spellings and references to check, with a deadline for the end of the week.

  Bridget’s final point was, “Your article ends abruptly, you know, leaving the poor girl in the tower like that. Have you looked up local newspaper articles for around the date of Wickham’s death? Surely there’d be something else you could discover about the whole matter.” It was a point that had been secretly bothering Jude, but she didn’t know what to do about it. She could hardly use her dream as historical evidence. She sighed, called up the article on her screen to start tinkering with the earlier queries, stared at it tiredly and closed the file again. She thought for a bit. Perhaps research would mean another visit to Norfolk. A lovely warm feeling spread through her.

  * * *

  She and Inigo went to a pizzeria that was a favorite with the Beecham’s staff, and there, indeed, Inigo did pour out a story of woe. Klaus had marked Inigo’s card. Inigo didn’t feel there was a future for him in the department. In addition his girlfriend had recently ended their relationship and really he wondered whether he should leave and find a job in academia.

  “Oh, Inigo, don’t be silly. You’re good,” Jude said. “This is a blip. You’ll look back in a year or so and realize that.” Now she was seen to be doing rather well, she felt generous toward him. His job was his life really, whereas she’d come to see over the last few weeks that other things were important to her—her family, friends and maybe even settling down again with someone. And he was skilled at his job; he’d brought in lots of work for the auction house and his careful, thorough work and his charming—if sometimes oleaginous—way with clients usually paid off. All right, she and Suri did privately laugh at him, and his dress sense was a century or so behind the times. But some people liked that old-fashioned dandy image from someone handling precious family heirlooms. Smarmy modern suits could look a little sharkish.

  “Anyway,” he said, “tell me about this Starbrough collection.” She explained all about Anthony and Esther and then, seeing he was genuinely interested in the story, and liking him a bit more now he’d confided in her, she decided to trust him, and she told him a little about Gran and Tamsin and Summer.

  “It’s as though I was meant to get this assignment,” she told him, and immediately felt a little guilty because she remembered it was Inigo that Robert Wickham had originally asked to speak to when he rang. No, she wouldn’t mention that. “It’s given me the opportunity to sort out all manner of things. I’ll show you the necklace, if you like, when we get back to the office. It’s about to go off and be photographed.”

  She’d left the box containing the necklace in the department safe. When they returned to the office she brought it out and, almost as a joke, draped it around her neck. She was wearing a low, round-necked top, and the necklace lay warm and light across her collarbones.

  “What do you think?” she asked, turning to show Inigo.

  “Oh, it’s really pretty,” said Suri. “It goes with your skin tone.”

  Jude was pleased. Summer’s skin was like hers, so it would suit her, too.

  Inigo’s expression was puzzled.

  “Is there something wrong?” Jude asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m thinking. It looks vaguely familiar, that’s all, but I can’t think why. Can I see it?” He held out his hand and she let it coil down into his narrow palm. He lifted it up to the light, so it sparkled and shone, then returned it to her, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t remember.”

  She returned it to the safe and forgot about the matter.

  CHAPTER 37

  The next coupl
e of days passed busily. The specialist in antique astronomical instruments visited from Oxford and promised a written report by the end of the week. Jude cataloged another batch of books from Starbrough Hall and tried to work on her article. She checked a number of references and sorted out the various queries, but was left with the nagging feeling that she needed to try harder to discover what had happened to Esther. A search for Norfolk newspaper archives on the Internet initially suggested she’d need to visit Norwich again, but then she tracked down the most likely title, the Norwich Mercury, at a newspaper archive in north London. Their online catalog indicated they had copies from the mid-1700s and so she arranged a visit.

  On the Thursday afternoon, she took a Northern line train to Edgware, finding the archive to be housed in a high red-brick building that loomed over the line of huddled suburban houses opposite. Upstairs, she was shown the shelf she needed—one of hundreds of rows of shelves bearing great fat leather-bound files of yellowed print. She found the one that contained the Norwich Mercury for 1778 and 1779 and took it to a nearby desk.

  Each paper was only a few pages long, so looking through it wasn’t an onerous job. Starting on the day of Wickham’s death, she carefully traced the columns of print announcing aristocratic social arrangements, the birthday balls and hunts, a man hanged for the murder of his neighbor and the proceedings of the local courts, until she came to a mention of Starbrough Hall. It was the report of an inquest at the village of Starbrough.

  An inquest was held yesterday evening in the village by the Coroner for the Hundred of Holt, on the body of Mr Titus Trotwood, who was found that morning dead on top of Starbrough Folly on the estate lands of Starbrough Hall, lately owned by Anthony Wickham Esq. until his death this past week. Mr Trotwood, Mr Wickham’s Land Agent, it appeared, had gone missing the night before, his widow, Mrs Jane Trotwood, believing him to have gone to the folly to check a strange light seen there the previous night. Mrs Adolphus Pilkington, the late Mr Wickham’s sister, and currently residing at the Hall, confirmed that she had despatched him thus, and mentioned that a young woman named Esther Wickham, said by some to be Mr Wickham’s adopted daughter, had disappeared, and was believed to be much disturbed in mind by her grief. Because of the recent heavy snowfall the attending physician, Dr Jonathan Brundall, had great trouble in determining the cause of death, but it is thought to be of a head injury, and it is possible that Mr Trotwood slipped and was hence the author of his own death. Esther Wickham’s whereabouts remain a mystery, as does how Mr Trotwood became trapped on the roof of the tower, the trapdoor being closed, though not locked, against his escape. Mr Trotwood was noted for carrying out his duties as Land Agent faithfully and thoroughly. An open verdict was recorded.