Black Rock Manor

by Shaun Baines

  Over the horizon came pinpricks of light. They appeared and disappeared as they negotiated the rolling landscape.

  “It’s the contractors,” Callum said.

  “I guess they want their car back.”

  “Time to go,” Callum said, grabbing his jacket. He swung it over his head, wafting Holly with air.

  “Wait,” she said.

  “We have to leave,” Callum said. “Now.”

  Holly sniffed loudly. “Can you smell that?”

  Frowning, Callum pushed his nose into his jacket. “Someone’s been wearing this. It stinks,” he said, removing it quickly. “What is it?”

  “Perfume,” Holly said, climbing into the Defender.

  Not just any perfume, either. It was distinctive and memorable, belonging to someone who was hard to forget, no matter how hard Holly had tried.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Black Rock Manor was bathed in an eerie glow as if candlelight had been diffused through a fog. Its touch spread over a tow truck parked in the driveway. A chain swung lazily from its rusting crane. The driver’s side door was open, but the driver was gone.

  An ambulance bounced along the rutted track, its blue siren turning the landscape into snapshots of silver. It headed away from the manor, joining the road and leaving Holly and Callum behind.

  “Busy night,” Callum said.

  “Park out of the way,” Holly said, directing him toward an overgrown bush.

  They sat and watched the house, listening to the calls of invisible owls in the trees.

  “Are we going to knock then?” Callum asked.

  “We can’t just turn up like the Avon lady,” Holly said. “How can we tell what’s going on in there?”

  Callum stretched his legs. “By knocking.”

  He had a point, she supposed.

  So why was she hesitating?

  “I think the Masterlys are in there,” Holly said.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “You know what they’re like. Mrs Masterly in particular.” Holly toyed with her fringe, hoping to make it presentable. “She winds me up. I can’t seem to think straight around her.”

  Callum opened the jeep door and got out, peering back inside the Defender. “Just because they’re rich doesn’t make them better than you.”

  Holly groaned, but managed a nod. She slumped from the Defender and walked to the manor, seizing a breath with every step.

  “You do the honours,” Callum said.

  Holly braced herself before banging her fist on the door. They heard movement and she straightened her clothing.

  “Mrs Masterly won’t answer. Too posh,” Holly said. “Probably get one of her lackeys to do it.”

  The door opened, scraping along the tiled floor.

  Mr MacFarlene stood on the other side. “We thought you’d come.”

  He turned into the manor, leaving Holly and Callum staring at each other.

  The Reception room was as empty and musty as Holly remembered. The Masterlys might have owned Black Rock Manor, but they were never going to make it a home. Soon it would be reduced to rubble and its history would be forgotten.

  To their right was a door framed in light. As they approached, they heard hushed whispers and the stamping of feet.

  Holly checked Callum was close and entered with a forced smile.

  The room was lit by electric lamps, their white wires trailing to multi-plug extensions. Dust sheets were curled into a single ball by the corner, but there were no chairs, no furniture of any sort. A large fireplace dominated the room. It hadn’t seen a fire in years. Replacing the flames was a vase of wilting orange flowers.

  Nancy and Mr MacFarlene stood on one side of the fireplace. Mrs Masterly stood on the other, her tiny, expensive handbag in the crook of her arm.

  “I would offer you a drink,” Mrs Masterly said, twisting a wedding ring around her finger, “but this has been a little rushed. Not quite what I had in mind.”

  How did Nancy get here?

  What about Mr MacFarlene?

  Where was Mr Masterly?

  “Where is that idiot Arnold?” Callum asked before Holly could.

  Mrs Masterly pointed to the ceiling. “Upstairs. Resting. The paramedics insisted. We have twenty bedrooms, but only one bed and for some reason, it smells of goat, but he doesn’t seem to mind.”

  “Is he okay?” Holly asked.

  “Twisted knee and a shock to the system,” Mrs Masterly said. “Nothing serious. He fully intends to be ready for tomorrow.”

  “What’s happening tomorrow?” Callum asked.

  Holly shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand what everyone is doing here.”

  She heard the clack of high heels on the tiled floor and looked up. Mrs Masterly towered over her. The cloying perfume she wore moved over Holly like a winter chill and yet Mrs Masterly’s face was warm, sympathetic even. She undid the clasp of her handbag, retrieving a phone so big, it must have been the only thing in there.

  “What’s that?” Holly asked.

  Mrs Masterly waggled it in front of her. “Satellite phone. It was the only way we could keep in contact.”

  Looking over Mrs Masterly’s shoulder, Holly saw Nancy rummaging through her clothing. She produced a phone identical to Mrs Masterly’s.

  “You’ve been working together?” Holly asked.

  “I told you over and over again that my husband always gets what he wants,” Mrs Masterly said. “You never asked me what I wanted. No one ever does.”

  Nancy stepped away from the fireplace. “When I found out about Arcadia’s plans, I wrote them letters telling them they were making a mistake. One of them got through to Mrs Masterly. She’s a conservationist. Like us, dear.”

  “But that can’t be true,” Holly said. “You’ve been working hand in glove with your husband.”

  Mrs Masterly lowered her head. “I tried to persuade my husband to forget his theme park. To leave the estate alone as a site of natural beauty.” She moved to the window and stared into the dark grounds. “He didn’t listen and I didn’t think he would. I pretended to be a part of his plans until I could come up with another way to protect the area.”

  “It was Arnold’s idea,” Nancy said. “When he couldn’t find an endangered species, we decided to plant them ourselves. Mrs Masterly used her contacts and money to buy the bulbs.”

  Holly pointed at Mrs Masterly. “Which you denied when I confronted you at the Herald.”

  “Of course, I did,” Mrs Masterly said, turning from the window. “I couldn’t risk my husband finding out I was undermining him. I had a role to play.”

  “Did that include humiliating Holly?” Callum asked.

  Mrs Masterly nodded. “When I heard you haranguing my husband after he descended from his ridiculous microlight, I knew you’d be trouble. Always asking questions. Of others and yourself. I thought you too high-minded to be part of this so I had to keep you off the scent. If a word of this made it into the Herald, we’d be done for.”

  Callum snorted. “You’ve done nothing but undermine us.”

  “Really?” Mrs Masterly asked, her eyes like laser beams. “When I saw Holly hiding in that bush, moments after she broke into the manor, did I tell my husband you were there?”

  The blood drained from Callum’s face.

  “Forget about eviction, my husband would have called the police.” Mrs Masterly turned to Holly, waving her handbag at her. “And I spotted her again skulking in the hedgerow while Mr MacFarlene was being detained. If I didn’t believe in the pair of you and how you might help us, I could have ended your campaign before it had started.”

  “You wrote the note, didn’t you?” Holly asked. “'Follow the Star?’”

  “I went to the Herald’s office to leave it on your desk,” Mrs Masterly said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you so I pretended I’d found it on the door. I’m not who you think I am.”

  “You used me,” Holly said
.

  “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist something so cryptic and while I couldn’t have you working with us, there was no reason you couldn’t work on your own.”

  The blood in Holly’s veins fizzed. Callum seemed to sense it, stepping aside, protecting himself from an eruption.

  “It was you who sent the email to Mr Winnow,” Holly said. “Did you know his marriage is in tatters because of it?”

  “Well, between you, me and Mr Winnow,” Mrs Masterly said, “I’d say none of us is a great advert for marriage, are we?”

  Holly rolled her shoulders, relishing the cracks of her neck as the tension popped in tiny explosions.

  “You expect us to believe you did all this for the good of the village?” she asked in a voice that was more like a growl. “Why now? After all the other villages you’ve destroyed?”

  “She has helped us, dear,” Nancy said. “She rescued Arnold from his fall in the dell. I called her on the fancy phone and she arranged for Mr MacFarlene to haul Arnold to safety.”

  “The same man,” Holly said, turning to the farmer, “who broke into my home and was questioned by the police for assault.”

  Mr MacFarlene twitched and clasped his hands. “I thought I was helping,” he said. “Going through your house. I thought you might have more bulbs, but I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

  “How did you get to the dell so quickly?”

  “I was there when Mrs Masterly got the call,” Mr MacFarlene said. “She was dropping me off at home.”

  Mrs Masterly smoothed down the lining of her dress. “I’m sure Mr MacFarlene will be the first to admit he can be quite vocal after a drink or five. My husband believed his objections to the development might cause a problem.”

  “You were there when he was arrested,” Holly said. “You decided to remove him from the picture.”

  Mr MacFarlene stepped forward. “That was her husband. He pretended to be a witness to a crime I didn’t commit. He thought it would scare me into silence, but no one can keep me quiet.”

  “Or sober,” Callum muttered.

  “When I realised what my husband was doing,” Mrs Masterly said, “I tried to stop him, but I was too late. I went to the station instead. Called in a few favours, you might say.”

  “I already had the tow truck,” Mr MacFarlene said. “Needed it to pull my tractor out of Myrtle’s Water. Lord knows what it was doing in there, I might add, but after Nancy called us, we used it to winch Arnold to safety.”

  “Why now?” Holly asked. “Why save this village? What was so special about us?”

  “None of this has been perfect,” Mrs Masterly said. “Arcadia Leisure is a monster with every kind of resource at its disposal. I love my husband, but I couldn’t stand idly by while another village was swallowed by his ambition. We crossed a line in Eureka. If I was going to save Little Belton, I knew we’d have to fight dirty.”

  The cold of the manor sank into Holly’s bones. It was time to leave because this was guerrilla warfare. Livelihoods had been sacrificed. Compromises made. Looking at the sorrowful face of Mr MacFarlene, she saw how his grief had been used as a weapon.

  Holly wasn’t sure about the rights and wrongs of it. Did the ends justify the means? All war makers had to ask themselves that and for Holly’s part, she wasn’t sure.

  But she knew she could leave the fight. Holly could return to an empty home and to an uncertain job at a newspaper owned by a man who had paid as much as any other.

  “I hope the estate is worth the price you paid,” Holly said.

  She took Callum’s arm and they made to leave, but their passage was blocked by Arnold.

  “It’s not over yet,” he said propped up on crutches, “and now I’m incapacitated, we can’t save Little Belton without you.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The night had been a restless one. Holly and Callum had found a bedroom in the manor and had locked the door when they had decided to stay. They pulled two armchairs together, facing a cold fireplace where their imagination might keep them warm. Wrapped in dust sheets, they closed their eyes and pretended to sleep.

  Thoughts of Holly’s husband kept her awake. He was obstinate and had lost his way, but she loved him. Or had done once. Holly had left Derek before he could leave her, isolating him in a home they no longer shared together. It was a long walk to Little Belton, especially when dragging his marriage behind him in a suitcase. She assumed he would wait for Holly to return in order to leave as soon as she arrived, but maybe his desperation would spur him on.

  Her thoughts turned to the Masterlys and the battle between them as man and wife. Mrs Masterly claimed to love her husband while waging a secret war against him. Was Holly guilty of the same thing? She hoped not and tried not to think about it.

  Leaving Callum purring like a cat in his armchair, Holly went outside to watch the sunrise. The house was quiet as she crept down the staircase. The other occupants were asleep or similarly curled up with their thoughts.

  The grounds outside were blanketed in a morning dew. Unseen birds twittered in the trees, preparing for the day ahead. Holly shivered with the cold, pulling her coat closer. There was so much life on the estate, so much left to discover and she wondered how long it would remain.

  Holly smelled coffee and followed her nose around a corner. A picnic blanket was spread on the ground and a large open umbrella lay on its side. Nancy’s goat stood over a gas fire, the blue flames heating a pan of dark liquid. It regarded her quietly while chewing on a clump of dock leaves.

  “Would you like a cup, dear?” Nancy said.

  “You’re up early.”

  “Don’t sleep much these days.” Nancy poured coffee into a cup and handed it to Holly.

  The coffee was hot and Holly took a seat. Despite the blanket, the ground was cold. Holly tried to get comfortable, tucking her coat underneath her while she sat cross-legged under the umbrella.

  “Does Old Jack know you’ve taken back your goat?” she asked.

  “No one is awake at this hour, dear,” Nancy said. “Old Jack was sound asleep.”

  “What’s your goat called?” Holly asked.

  “He doesn’t have a name,” Nancy said. “He’s an excuse to get outside.”

  The goat, as if understanding he was the subject of conversation, trotted toward Holly, pressing his face close to hers. His breath smelled of wet hay. Lowering his head into the folds of the blanket, he picked up a hidden tennis ball and dropped it into Holly’s lap.

  Holly threw the ball and the goat chased after it, retrieving it from the long grass. She half-expected the goat to return it, groaning inwardly at the game she had unwittingly started. Instead, the goat stared into the distance, rolling the ball around its mouth, slowly reducing it to mush.

  “Old Jack has been teaching him new tricks,” Nancy said as the goat swallowed the last of the ball.

  “You’re going to have to see him at some point,” Holly said. “Old Jack is pining for you. More than your goat ever did.”

  Nancy poured out coffee dregs from her cup and refilled it.

  “Did he hurt you in some way?” Holly asked, her own coffee cooling in her hands.

  Gazing at the blue flames of the fire, Nancy chewed the inside of her cheek, like her goat had chewed the tennis ball.

  “What was the first article you wrote for the Herald?” she asked.

  It seemed like years ago, but the memory was burned into her brain.

  “It was a feature about oddly shaped vegetables,” Holly said.

  “And the last?”

  “Something about the cattle mart.”

  “You haven’t written anything else?” Nancy asked.

  “I wrote something about Arcadia Leisure, but it was never used.”

  Nancy switched off the gas fire, listening to the tings of the cannister cooling. It sounded like distant gunfire.

  “Old Jack and I are different,” she said. “That’s all. He’s not interested in the bigger world. Litt
le Belton is enough for him, but he’s blind to its problems. When the mine closed, when people began to leave, he was writing articles about church fetes and potholes.”

  Holly rubbed some warmth back into her legs. “It doesn’t make him a bad person.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Nancy said, “but I wanted to get out and explore. I was trapped by my sister, I couldn’t risk being trapped by a man.”

  “What happened at the manor?” Holly asked. “What changed?”

  The sun rose higher in the sky, lancing through the trees to bathe Nancy’s face in a golden hue. “Everything changed. I fell in love.”

  The wheels in Holly’s mind started spinning. A young woman. Looking for adventure. Through no fault of her own, she was brought into the orbit of a wealthy landowner. A noted philanderer. Seduced by his power, she fell hopelessly in love.

  Nancy was a beautiful woman. Her age couldn’t mask that. When she was younger, Holly could only imagine the effect she had on men.

  “You fell in love with Charles Wentworth,” Holly said.

  Nancy slapped the ground, laughing. “Dear me, no. He was an awful man. No, it was my sister who fell in love with Mr Wentworth.”

  Holly’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

  “Regina was always the romantic one,” Nancy continued with a grin, “and while she was under Mr Wentworth’s roof, she couldn’t resist him. As Regina got better, it was clear the old rascal was only after one thing and the spell was broken. So was Regina’s heart. She became a hermit, never leaving the fireside, fearing the cold might land her back into Mr Wentworth’s clutches.”

  “You gave up your dreams to keep her company,” Holly said.

  “She was never the same so I did what I could, using the odd walk around the estate to keep me sane. It was all I had so when Arcadia Leisure threatened to take that away, I knew I couldn’t stay any longer.”

  Nancy smiled and stared at the thin skin puckering around her knuckles. Her blue veins snaked through liver spots and wrinkles. The smile turned sour and Nancy closed her hand into a fist.

  “This is my last big adventure,” she said.