Leo gazed blindly into the distance, refusing the silky fingers of depression which threatened to numb her with their seductive force.
18
The bar at the Lynton Arms had all the attributes of a gentleman’s club scaled down to lilliputian proportions. There were a few richly worn armchairs, their leather eroded into a comfort by a century of capacious bottoms. There were two card tables, one of them currently in use by a bridge party. Green-shaded lamps cast a quiet glow, put to shame by the leaping flames of the log fire. Framed ducks and deer nestled on burgundy-papered walls, oblivious to the threat of the antique rifle above them.
A crisp-shirted young man with perfect aquiline features presided, filling glasses with whisky or brandy at the briefest of signals.
Leo nursed a drink and watched Martha. Her eyes were red-rimmed, heavy, kept open by sheer will-power, as if to close them even for a second meant to be pursued by nightmare images. Leo leaned over and squeezed her hand, watched the older woman focus with difficulty and force a smile which evaporated as quickly as it had come.
‘If only I hadn’t said anything to her, she’d still be here.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Leo was stern. ‘We don’t know anything. But we will. I promise you, we will.’
‘It won’t bring her back.’
‘No. It won’t do that.’ Leo emptied her glass and put it down on the table with a clatter.
Pippa’s appearance provided a welcome distraction. She had been waiting to speak to the woman, but the opportunity hadn’t yet presented itself. She gestured her towards them. The trim Bea was right behind her, cat-like in pearly angora.
‘Let us get you both a drink.’
‘It’s on the house, dear.’ Pippa beckoned to the young waiter while Bea flashed her an admonishing look.
‘I wanted to ask you…’ Leo began. ‘Have you heard anything about The Morning Star Foundation. It runs a place that calls itself a sanctuary. It’s the clinic Iris went to.’
‘Morning Star…. Pretty.’ Pippa reflected. ‘But I don’t think I’ve heard the name before.’
‘I know the place, you mean.’ The waiter interrupted as he placed drinks before them. His accent, Leo now noticed, was distinctly French. ‘To the West of here. It’s for addicts. Rich addicts. Maybe famous. For recovering quietly. Very, how do you say, hush, hush.’ He grinned.
‘Was your friend…?’ Pippa began.
‘Definitely not.’ Martha suddenly roused herself and answered for her. ‘Most definitely not.’ She threw Leo a pleading look. ‘I know. I work with them. Kids.’
‘No one’s suggesting that, Martha.’ Leo calmed her and turned back to the waiter. ‘Is it only for addicts? And what kind?’
The youth shrugged. ‘I’m not certain. I met another Frenchman last summer. He worked in the kitchen there for a few weeks. He said they were fous. Crazy people. He did not stay long.’
‘Just as well you came back to us, eh Robert?’ Pippa beamed at him. ‘Robert is from St. Malo.’
‘Mr Seale wants a drink, Robert,’ Bea was crisp. She turned to Martha. ‘Your niece was a fine woman, Miss Morgan. We wished she had stayed with us longer.’
Tears filled Martha’s eyes.
Pippa placed a mottled hand on Martha’s arm. In a crooning voice, she began to sing Isabel’s praises.
Leo stole away from the sympathy which diluted rage. As it was, the burden that had been pressing down on her shoulders all day had taken on an unbearable heaviness. Beneath it, she was being crushed into paralysis. A numbing of anger. An acceptance. An easy nullity. No, she mustn’t let herself succumb to that. Otherwise Isabel’s ghost would rumble underground and never be put to rest. Like her father’s. She wasn’t a child any longer. She needed to act. She needed to explore the path which had led Isabel to death, even if at the end she was forced to come to terms with the possibility that her friend had abandoned her without a second thought.
She lay down and the Morning Star site came back to her in all its slightly ominous tranquililty. She saw the tall row of impenetrable cypresses, the white-clad men processing through the grounds in hermetic self-absorption, the painfully thin woman gazing through the window of the subsidiary house, the bulk of the hill at the back of the property.
She only realized that she had been asleep when a dream made her start in terror. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. The pillow was wet with them. She let the sobs wrack through her. She had been underground again in that oozing labyrinthine city. She had lost something and had to find it amidst those deserted buildings and paths and pipes. The ooze had turned into rain and then into a deluge. The ground beneath her feet swirled and heaved. A rushing current carried her, propelling her through streets and as the water level grew higher and higher, a body floated towards her. She clutched at it. Isabel. She had found her. Found her, too late.
Loneliness washed over her like a flood. She was alone. A small child alone in the night watching shadows play over the walls, a storm of trees metamorphosing into terrible shapes. There was no one to call for.
Leo forced herself to sit up and switch on the light. She took a few deep, ragged breaths. Some baleful sandman had thrown grit and ash in her mouth. She reached for the bottle of mineral water on the bedside table. Her head was pounding.
Somewhere she must have some pills. She stumbled into the bathroom and brushed against the sink. Its cold clamminess brought with it an image of Isabel on that slab. Isabel and before that, Jill Reid. Her mind seemed determined to partner them.
She popped two tablets into her mouth. Something niggled at her again, like termites gnawing just at the edge of her vision. She swallowed.
Drugs, the waiter had said. A recovery program at the Sanctuary. There had been drugs in Jill Reid, too. The pathologist had remarked on that. What would the post-mortem on Isabel reveal? And Norfolk, he had talked of the floating borders in the biotech sector, drugs and food. Then there was the company brochure she had found amongst Isabel’s clothes… Bioworld. And her medicine cabinet, ransacked by the burglar.
Her mind whirled. Why had Isabel’s case been returned by Qantas if her body was here in the Devon sea?
She turned off the light and quickly switched it back on again. No. She didn’t want the darkness. She fumbled in her bag and brought out the leaflet with the enigmatic title. Evolution. She read it through several times. It described an idyllic setting in the countryside which offered retreats, meditation, counselling, yoga, massage, a variety of therapies, which would bring one to a higher plane of being. The language reverberated with New Age terminology. There was no mention of a drug rehabilitation centre.
The last page gave practical details. A plan began to take shape in Leo’s mind.
The door within the elaborate gate leading to the Morning Star Sanctuary opened smoothly to Leo’s ring. She took a deep breath and straightening her shoulders, prepared to enter the Sanctuary.
The raked gravel crunched beneath her feet. A crow descended on the lawn and gazed at her with its bleak eye. The air was unnaturally still as if the ranked cypresses refused the common wind. But for a solitary figure, meditating beneath a tree, there was no one visible on the front grounds today. Her eyes strayed towards the distant annexe in search of the spectral woman at the window. But the far buildings were in shadow, their interiors an impenetrable facade.
Leo walked slowly, conjuring Isabel to her side, willing her to reveal her state of mind as she moved along the same path.
Last night she had talked to Norfolk, at last back from Amsterdam and in the London loft. She had conveyed the terrible news, heard the catch in his breath, that single ‘no’ of disbelief. She had told him that Faraday assumed suicide, but that she couldn’t quite believe that - not of Isabel.
‘Yet, she liked grand exits,’ Norfolk had mumbled.
‘She liked life more,’ Leo had insisted.
She had sketched in what Martha had told her, then explained that Isabel had stayed in a place ru
n by The Morning Star Foundation until a week ago Sunday.
Norfolk had said that he would drive down in the morning, but she had urged him instead to follow Jill Reid’s trail from Plantagen and the biotech line, as well as check in with the local Greens once more. Isabel’s trajectory after she had left the Sanctuary was unaccounted for.
Norfolk was more than prepared to do that and to do some digging on The Morning Star Foundation. The name rang a faint bell.
Leo repeated that he needed to communicate with Faraday - or he might suddenly find himself hauled into a police station. Leo would ring him as soon as she had any news. She told him too that he might check out Qantas and the returned suitcase with its Bioworld brochure and keep an eye on Martha, who was staying at the Lynton Arms.
After she had spoken to Norfolk, she had left a message for Daniel Lukas, telling him that she needed his referral since she was going to check into The Morning Star Foundation’s sanctuary. They would undoubtedly ring him rather than write, since she had insisted on early access.
A white-clad man appeared at the door before Leo could find the bell. He was young, straight-backed, with light brown hair and a dimple in his smooth chin. His eyes were very blue and slightly averted. ‘Welcome, Leonora.’ He bowed fractionally and smiled. ‘I am William. I will look after you.’
Leo detected a hint of German in his hard W’s.
‘Call me, Leo,’ she said, a little thrown at the fact that she had already been identified.
‘Leo.’ He took her case politely. ‘Come. This way.’
There was a kind of formal informality to him, as if he had learned casualness in a precise school.
She followed him into the wainscoted hall and glanced towards the far corner where the counter stood. No icy Heather to contend with, only a pretty young woman who smiled and nodded her through. Leo walked with more alacrity.
They didn’t head for the door through which the woman in the wheelchair had gone. They went up the staircase instead and along a dusky corridor. But for their presence, the place was so quiet it could be uninhabited. It passed through Leo’s mind that there had been no need for the fuss which had attended her insistence that they must make room for her this week. The woman she had spoken to on the telephone wasn’t Heather. This woman had a throaty, educated English voice and she had made her hold on for a good ten minutes before coming back to her to say that, yes, they could just squeeze her in, given her particular needs.
Leo had sensed that it was neither her needs, nor the pressure of her dates that had done the trick. It was the name Dr. Daniel Lukas which had seen her through. Between the lines of the Evolution publicity material, she had read a desire for legitimation from some kind of establishment. With the Dr in front of his name and the reputation Aron Field had made her aware of, let alone the gathered crowd at Paola Webster’s launch party, Daniel could certainly serve as ‘establishment’ for any organisation which listed an assortment of counselling and therapeutic functions as part of its brief.
Maybe, too, entry had to be made difficult, if it was to prove worthwhile.
They had just turned a second corner when William opened a door on their left.
‘This will be your room,’ he said in his soft voice. ‘You will find instructions on the table. We wear whites here. Those are on the bed. If you wish us to store your usual clothes, that is possible, too.’ He bowed his slight bow again and was gone.
Leo stood in a spare, white room that might have been a monk’s cell. The floor was pale beach, the bed a palette covered in a white rug-like blanket. Two towels lay on it and two white suits, all neatly folded. There was a sink in the corner and a bare wooden table by the window, together with a hard-backed chair. A door gave onto a cupboard with three built-in-shelves, and a rail with five hangers. The walls were bare.
She could suddenly hear her mother’s voice. ‘You’d think for the price, they could throw in a mirror and a shower.’
There was a scent in the air she couldn’t place. It attacked the nostrils with a cloying mixture of sweetness and fern. Leo looked out the window. It opened onto an unexpected world of twisted gorse and bracken. Beyond, a steep incline loomed, rocky and bare, higher than any prison wall. The wild beauty of the view both astonished and dismayed her. She must be at the back of the house. She would see little of its activity from this vantage point.
On the table lay two sheets of printed paper. Both had the word Sanctuary at the top, in a bold serif face followed by the tag line: ‘Clear your mind. Cleanse your body. Centre your spirit.’
The one on the left contained a list of house rules. As she read, Leo had the odd feeling she had landed herself back in boarding school. She should be pleased. But she sensed that this was a rigorous boarding school where laughter would be a disciplinary offence, like the ones Isabel had once described to her. There were no chattering girls’ excited voices here. A flurry of prohibitions was in force. Sanctuary did not permit the use of mobile phones or computers. There was a ban on alcohol, smoking and all non-prescribed drugs. Prescribed drugs were to be noted at the first interview.
Guests were asked to wear the provided whites indoors and out, weather-permitting.
Doors had no locks. Any valuables could be stored.
This was a refuge. Guests were asked to obey the rules of silence at the appointed hours: conversation was to be kept to a minimum during meals.
Though guests were encouraged to take solitary, meditational walks and partake of the Sanctuary’s exceptional natural beauty, certain areas were restricted. This was detailed on the accompanying map.
There followed a schedule which would be personally adapted for a stay of one, two or more weeks.
It included yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, group therapy of various kinds, individual counselling, shiatsu and Thai massage as well as lectures. Each guest would be called for a meeting to adapt the schedule to their particular needs on the first full day of their stay. Everyone was asked to attend the orientation lecture on the first evening and as many of the subsequent lectures as possible.
Leo pulled up the window, annoyed that it bumped to a stop two inches up. But the air rushed through, fresh and with a tang of the sea. She breathed deeply and returned to the map.
Her own room was marked with a red dot. She was indeed in a rectangular block of a building constructed around a courtyard. The courtyard showed a canopied shape, which the code at the side designated as a lecture hall and meeting room. The rooms facing the courtyard seemed all to be work spaces of one kind or another. There was a refectory to the left of the entrance hall and a store room in the cellar.
This, together with the entire right hand side of the building was clearly marked ‘out of bounds’. So were the two annexes and the area around them. From the general plan of the grounds, she realized these were far more ample than she had originally surmised.
What went on in the areas marked ‘out of bounds?’ She guessed that these must house the addiction centre. She would have to make her way in there, somehow. Given what Martha had told her, it was more than likely that it was there that she would find the one-time Morgenstern.
She unpacked her bag, put her clothes in the small cupboard and washed quickly. The woman with the educated voice had specified only one necessity on the telephone - soft-soled shoes. Leo had dutifully packed a pair of trainers. She put these on now, together with the rough white cotton tee-shirt that had been provided as a kind of vest to wear under what she still thought of as a Karate uniform. Maybe different levels of staff wore different colours of belt. Leo joked to herself to allay her rising apprehension. She didn’t know quite where it came from. Maybe it was simply the strong sense, she had, of Isabel at her side.
Leo turned up trousers and sleeves, both of which were too long, and left the room to embark on an initial exploration. She had done no more than walk a few metres along the corridor when a soft voice called to her.
‘Leo.’
Leo jumped. William had app
eared from nowhere as quiet as a cat on padded feet. Had he been designated as her minder? Would he always and ever be with her? She stilled herself.
‘Yes, William,’ she replied softly.
‘If you have anything to store, I can do it for you now.’
‘Oh. I hadn’t thought. Maybe later. I’d like to go for a stroll now.’
William looked worried. ‘There isn’t really time before dinner.’
‘A quick one. Come with me, William. Work up an appetite. And you can show me round.’ Leo gave him a wide smile.
As they reached the staircase, they met a woman wearing a dramatically broad-brimmed hat and the sweeping sunglasses of by-gone glamour. She nodded vaguely in their direction and hurried down the corridor. Leo noted that she wasn’t preceded or followed by a figure in white.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked William chattily.
‘Candice,’ he murmured, with visible reluctance.
‘A frequent guest?’
He nodded and opened the front door a little brusquely.
There were more people on the grounds now, some carrying small cases. The Mercedes was drawn up to the side. Leo reflected that in her anticipation, she had arrived early for the Friday evening turn-around.
William led her briskly away from the main drive and along one of the side paths.
‘How long have you been here, William?’ Leo queried.
‘Oh, eight months. Maybe more.’
‘And did you plan, when you came, to stay that long?’
He stumbled, then righted himself quickly. ‘I … When I came I was a little lost. I had no plans. I was over there.’ He waved obscurely behind them. It took Leo a moment to realize he was pointing towards the out-of bounds area. The addiction centre.
‘I see.’
‘I was seeking.’
‘What were you seeking?’
They had reached a row of tall shrubs and William led her to a break in them. The waters of a small rectangular reservoir gleamed in the setting sun. Williams eyes glowed, too.
Sanctuary Page 33
