“How old is she? Nineteen? I doubt she could be his daughter. Isn’t he impotent? This girl is a fraud. Why have you been taken in by her? Because she’s quite pretty, not beautiful, but pretty in a cloying sort of way?”
Fergal had hoped that the professor would not be his usual, deliberately outrageous self and for a few moments he worried for Skye until he realised that she was well able to stand up for herself.
“Since he has recognised me as his daughter there can be no doubt. Also, so you have some accurate information, I was twenty-one in January.”
Carl still did not look towards her and she was reminded of her father, and the reading of the will. “So she was born when—”
“I was born in 1993, when my father was still a member of the cabinet,” Skye interrupted.
“I don’t recall hearing any rumours,” Carl said, as if that proved she was lying.
“I don’t think I ever made the papers.”
“If that is the case someone must have worked really hard to keep you a secret.”
“Also,” Skye continued defiantly, “when my mother died and it all went to court, I was referred to as ‘Baby S’. My father had been sacked by then and the papers weren’t much interested.”
The professor was still not looking at her as he replied. “Then she must have been a clever woman, or a very devious one, to have tied him down.”
“I don’t know why you have to be so rude.” Skye had had enough. “Fergal phoned you because he wanted you to see something he thought you’d be interested in. I honestly don’t give a shit what you think about me or my father.” Skye made no effort to keep the dislike she had taken to Carl from her voice.
“I’ll say what I like where that dreadful man is concerned.” He still did not turn towards Skye. “Anyway, my boy, as I asked you some time ago, what are you doing in this God-forsaken part of the world? I always imagined the Isle of Wight to be, well, I don’t know what I imagined it to be because I can’t ever remember imagining anything about the Isle of Wight. It’s such an out-of-the-way nothingness of a place. Unless, of course—”
Fergal interrupted. “This house belongs to Sir Arthur and he has employed me to make a report on its condition and contents.”
“And have you done that? One always owes a duty to the man who pays the bills. He who pays the piper, etcetera etcetera. Though I am not going to ask why you are being paid to report on the condition of the house and its contents. Surely that is the job of a surveyor, or one of those awful people who advertise house clearances in the windows of local newsagents.”
“For whatever reason I’m very glad I’m here. And so will you be if you will just stop playing the arrogant academic and listen for a moment.” Fergal’s voice was calm. He was used to Carl’s ways.
Carl turned towards Skye. “Point taken. I suppose I must apologise. I am, and always have been, completely unable to make polite conversation.”
“Or be polite,” Fergal added.
“I do occasionally try.”
“Well try now.”
Carl looked at Skye and gave her a brief smile which she considered very insincere. “I will do my level best. Now, Fergal, say again why you are here.”
“I am here to write a report on the house and its contents. Skye has been very helpful considering Sir Arthur is about to throw her out of the only home she’s ever known.” Fergal wanted Carl to understand that he should not treat Skye so badly. “She’s spent the morning showing me round and I’ve taken a lot of pictures and with her help I’m making enough notes to satisfy Sir Arthur and Lady Barbara. But I must admit I’m more interested in other things.”
“Other things?” Carl looked Skye up and down meaningfully.
“Ignore him Skye, he’s just trying to provoke. We’ve found…” Fergal noticed Skye purse her lips in disapproval and corrected himself, “…Skye found something that is far beyond my pay grade to interpret. I thought it would be of interest to you and she has been kind enough to allow me to invite you here.”
Carl shrugged off the charming persona as easily as he had used it. “You didn’t ‘invite’ me, Fergal, you were very insistent that I should hotfoot it to this backwater, if being stuck in traffic in our country’s ghastly motorway system and then taking an hour or more to cross a small stretch of water can be considered ‘hotfooting’. Just tell me what it is that you want me to see.”
“Follow me, Carl,” Fergal said loudly, and then under his breath, so Skye could not hear as she followed them out of the kitchen, “She’s OK, Carl, back off a bit. She doesn’t know what you’re like.”
Carl was about to make a smart reply as they entered the library when he saw the titles of some of the books and was silenced. Waving his hand in a gesture which Fergal understood to mean he should stay quiet, Carl began to look more closely along the shelves. Then his attention focussed on the chest sitting on a red velvet cloth on the large, ornate table that occupied the middle part of the large room. “You managed to open it?”
Fergal nodded his head in acknowledgement of the unspoken compliment and lifted the unsecured lid.
Carl said nothing as he carefully lifted the portrait out of the chest and inspected it.
It was not a large painting. It portrayed a man standing in a pose that was very familiar to anyone with an interest in Napoleon Bonaparte. The left leg was slightly in front of the right, the right arm tucked into the white waistcoat. The blue jacket, the epaulettes and the red sash would all be familiar to any serious student of that era.
“It is known that Jacques-Louis David painted several copies of the same picture, at least three are known to exist. All show the General in the same pose though the details of the uniforms vary. I cannot recall ever seeing this version.” The professor spoke as if giving a lecture. “It is said it was the portrait the Emperor liked most of all the many hundreds that were made of him, perhaps because it flattered his face and figure somewhat.” He carefully placed the portrait on the table before his tone changed to one of dry sarcasm. “Where was this box found? Presumably it has not been in this room for the past two hundred years?”
Skye explained briefly about the builders and the storm.
“And it has not been opened before?”
“Not until Fergal opened it this morning. I’ve had other things on my mind the past four and a half years.”
“You had no curiosity at all?”
“It wasn’t that,” Skye said fiercely.
Fergal felt he had to come to Skye’s defence again. “Skye hasn’t had any opportunity, she’s spent the past four years or more caring for her invalid aunt, and anyway I doubt she could have opened it. I don’t think I could have done without your training.”
“Still…” Carl seemed unconvinced that caring for someone should overcome intellectual curiosity.
“I’m sure that what made my Aunt Audrey ill in the first place was finding the bag. She didn’t want anything to do with it and it wasn’t my job to upset her.” Skye responded but wished she hadn’t. She did not have to justify herself, or Audrey, to this man.
Carl shrugged, it was not his way to accept that he was ever in the wrong. “As far as you can tell that wall had been untouched since sometime in the nineteenth century?”
Skye nodded. “We did open the bag. Audrey and I worked out the writing on the side. We decided it was Roman numerals for 1784. It was one of the last things we did together. Look.” She showed them the letters on the side of the bag.
Carl was quick to deny that that date could have any significance, but both Fergal and Skye noted the care with which he handled the flags and the cockade, and the reverence with which he treated the uniform jacket.
“You do realise this jacket is the same one that is in the portrait.”
“How could I? Until this morning I’d never seen the portrait.” Skye wished the professor would be fairer to her. Perhaps, for some reason she could not begin to imagine, he was trying to trick her.
He
removed the second picture and held it at arm’s length. A woman sat on what looked like a red velvet upholstered throne, her right arm draped over an ermine-lined cloak, and near her left hand was a crown. “Empress Joséphine,” Carl whispered before placing the picture next to the one of her husband.
The silence lasted a few seconds before Skye picked up the yellowed piece of paper that had been lying alongside the portraits and read the words that were faded but still legible. “Je suis mort, vive Claude Olivierre. I am dead, long live Claude Olivierre,” she translated.
“I think we were quite able to work that one out for ourselves,” Carl said scathingly before shaking his hand impatiently in Skye’s direction. His assumption of authority was absolute and she handed the paper to him.
“There is a date le douze juin de l’an mille huit cent, vingt-et-un which I think we will all agree without the assistance of Miss Lacey’s schoolgirl French is the twelfth day of June in the year 1821.”
“June 1821 was only a few weeks after Napoleon died, wasn’t it?” Fergal suggested.
“It would have taken that time for the news to reach the Isle of Wight.” Carl spoke as if to himself.
“I’m beginning to think the unthinkable,” Fergal said, the hairs bristling on his arms as he spoke.
“There were rumours at the time,” Carl conceded, speaking slowly and quietly, weighing every word. “They were never substantiated and quickly suppressed.”
“Rumours?” Fergal prompted.
“There were rumours that the British Secret Service—”
“Was there one then?” Skye interrupted and was rewarded with a frown from Fergal and a glare from the professor.
“There were rumours that the British Secret Service,” Carl repeated with over-emphasised patience, “resisted the calls by Parliament to imprison or execute the captured Bonaparte. They understood that he would be more useful alive and talking. They wanted to give him lifelong parole on the condition that he assisted them. These intelligence men, unlike the lumpish and self-centred politicians of the day, understood that their prisoner would have had unparalleled knowledge of the spy-systems on the continent and further afield. Remember, even though the Battle of Waterloo ended war with France, Great Britain was still at war with the Americans. And you must not forget that we had made many powerful enemies in Europe. You must think of the Russian, the Austrian and the Ottoman Empires amongst others, all volatile and likely to pick a fight with anyone and everyone, especially with Great Britain. It has been the accepted history that Parliament overruled the documented advice of their secret services and that Napoleon was exiled to St Helena.”
“History is a set of lies agreed upon?” Fergal quoted Carl’s favourite phrase as a question.
Carl nodded before continuing. “There were weeks of horse-trading while the erstwhile Emperor was held on board the Bellerophon in Plymouth harbour. For most of the month of July 1815, while he was held as a tourist attraction in Plymouth harbour, the corridors of Whitehall were awash with devious double-dealing. It has been the accepted history that he transferred to the Northumberland and sailed to St Helena, there to die either of arsenic poisoning or stomach cancer, six years later. But, perhaps, after all, the Secret Service was cleverer than history has allowed it to be. Perhaps…” Carl’s voice tailed off, before he continued positively, “No, Fergal, what you are thinking is definitely not inconceivable.”
He turned back to the chest, ignoring Skye. “Fergal, film me as I remove these. Your phone does that doesn’t it? Good, with sound? Good.”
Skye watched in silence as Carl took the items, one by one, out of the trunk, and listened as he described each one, his voice betraying no emotion, before placing them on the table.
There were inscribed boxes that, when opened, displayed medals lying on velvet beds. There were notebooks whose pages were covered with tight, untidy writing and with small maps and sketches. There were a number of portraits of women and children in delicate frames.
For nearly an hour Carl gave the details of the medals, summarised the subjects of the portraits and briefly described the contents of the notebooks. Finally he told Fergal to stop recording. “Lucky that,” Fergal said, successfully suppressing any evidence of the excitement he was feeling. “The charge is getting a bit low.”
Carl turned to Skye. “My dear girl, Skye, I most sincerely apologise for my earlier rudeness. It was unforgiveable of me. I can give no excuse other than I am an old man who was concerned that he has driven to the edge of the civilised world for no reason. Now I see I would have driven to the ends of the universe. This chest, and the bag, undoubtedly belonged to Emperor Napoleon.” There was a period of silence before Carl continued, with less theatrical pomposity, “I cannot tell you how much this means to me. It is a veritable treasure trove. But what we have to do is work out what to do with what we now can allow ourselves to suspect. I’ve done a great deal of talking and I could do with a drink.”
“Tea? Beer? Wine?” Skye offered, in no way taken in by Carl’s change in attitude.
The clock in the hall struck the half hour, breaking the silence that followed. Carl waited until the last chime before answering.
“You have a hotel, Fergal? Shall we go there? Will they be able to put me up? If not I’ll share with you. And I’ll need some supplies from the town, I came unprepared for an overnight stay.”
“Am I allowed to come too?” Skye asked when she realised they had all but forgotten about her.
*
“Now,” Carl said as they sat around a table in the bar of The George Hotel, “tell me how the daughter of Sir Arthur Lacey has such an attractive name.”
Carl, Fergal thought, could turn on the charm when he needed to.
“I’ve always thought it was either because it was the most unlikely name for the daughter of my ultra-conservative father or because I was conceived there. I hope my mother chose it to spite him.
“Can’t you ask her?” Carl probed.
“She died in a car accident when I was a year old.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, things all worked out for the best in the end.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Sir Arthur didn’t want to have anything to do with me but then neither did my mother’s parents. So after a battle where only lawyers were ever going to win Audrey agreed to have me and I’ve lived here ever since.”
“Audrey?”
“Sir Arthur’s elder sister, Skye’s aunt.” Fergal answered for Skye.
“It is interesting she really is your aunt, not just an older woman given that honorific. She must have been quite elderly when she took you on?”
“She was sixty-three.”
“It would have been a big decision for her.”
“I think it was. I hope it was one she never regretted.”
“And your Aunt Audrey has always lived in that interesting house?”
“Since she was evacuated there during the war. She was able to stay there until she died even though it belonged, I mean belongs, to Sir Arthur.”
“And he lets you live there?”
“Only until the end of the month.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“He’s kicking her out so he can do the house up and sell it,” Fergal added, wondering whether Carl recognised the importance of what he was saying.
“And what are you doing working for him, Fergal? I wouldn’t have thought he was your kind of politician.”
“Funnily enough he hired me to research his family history, though that’s not why I came over here.”
“You said you were over here to do some kind of inventory?”
“Yes. Now he’s taking back the house he wanted to know what contents are worth keeping—”
“What contents are worth keeping?” Carl asked coldly. “Has he no idea of the value of that library?”
“He’s only interested in removing anything of value from the house. I have to tell him wha
t cannot end up in a skip before he guts the house and renovates it to sell.”
“I like the man even less, if that were possible. But why have you to do this?”
“Skye suggested it was because I’m available and he would rather not go to the expense of paying someone who is properly qualified.”
“She’s undoubtedly correct in that assumption. I’m surprised, though, that he has any interest at all in his family history.”
“He hasn’t, well, not in an accurate history anyway. It’s just something he thinks would be useful to back up his claims of being the archetypical Englishman. I had been planning on telling him to stuff it but now, well, now nothing will prise me away from the project until I’ve got to the bottom of it.”
“So you’re nothing to do with his political shenanigans then?”
“No, definitely not. He says I am unsound.”
“He’s undoubtedly right on that, if nothing else.”
“I’ve only been doing the family stuff for a few days but already I think he’s a fraud. As far as I can see most of the population of Scotland is more English than he is.”
“How far have you got?”
“I’ve concentrated on the straightforward stuff, getting names and dates and places of births and deaths, you know, just building up the family tree through the baronetcy line.”
“Well let’s hear it. I want names please, and dates, and any other little snippets.” Carl’s demand was not to be denied, and while Skye had a hint of what it would have been like to be in one of Carl’s tutorials Fergal was transported back ten years as he did as he was instructed.
Referring to his tablet Fergal gave the outline of his researches. “Sir Arthur is the seventh baronet—”
“Only the seventh? We’re onto the eighth Duke of Wellington already, even the Marlboroughs are on the twelfth. You’ve got to be on at least the eighteenth like the Norfolks to be taken seriously, the seventh can mean only a nineteenth century title at best.”
“As I was saying. He was born in London in 1935. His father, Sir William, was born on the Isle of Wight in 1888. He inherited the baronetcy in 1919 and died in London in 1961.”
A Set of Lies Page 8
