by Kirsty Ferry
When they finally reached the tree, they stared at the hulk of useless firewood and he wondered which branch they had used to hang Ben from.
‘I’m thinking,’ said Elodie, who was now looking a little pale, ‘that I should go and stand near where they found the body. If I do that and you give me the pistol, I should be pretty well-situated to see what happened there.’
Alex focussed on one of the bigger, sturdier branches that lay at ninety degrees to the fallen trunk. ‘I suspect Ben didn’t even touch the tree. If he was hanged, then he would just – dangle?’
Elodie laughed nervously. ‘You see it too, do you? That branch there?’ She pointed at exactly the same one Alex had noticed. ‘That would be a good one.’
‘Look, maybe this isn’t such a good idea?’ Alex said suddenly. ‘Let’s just forget it. I don’t want you—’
‘Want me what?’ Elodie looked up at him. ‘Seeing Ben like that?’
‘Yes. Because I wouldn’t want to see you like that.’
She sidled up to him and wrapped her arms around him. ‘But we need to finish it, Alex. It’s the last piece of the puzzle!’
For a moment his heart skipped a beat, overwhelmed to be in her arms like that; but before he could stop her, she grabbed the pistol from his belt, scrambled breathlessly over the fallen giant and slid down the other side, stopping right next to the old grave.
‘Elodie!’ Alex began to scramble after her ‘No!’
She was back at the tree, the moon hanging in the sky like a silver penny – but Ben was not there. There were footprints and scuff marks where they had dragged something across the ground, then a whole set of hoof prints leading away through the forest, but it was too dark to see where they went and she had no heart to follow them. The end of what looked like a noose remained in the tree, swinging emptily from the strongest branch, and she felt sick.
She pulled the pistol out of her bodice, trying to choke back the great heaving, helpless sobs, and aimed it at her heart. She closed her eyes and raised her face to the oak tree—
‘I knew you’d come here!’ The voice startled her. Her finger slipped off the trigger as she spun around. ‘I’m glad he’s dead. Glad, do you hear? It is no more than he deserves for killing my boy!’
‘Mama!’
‘What are you going to do? Finish yourself off? Go on then. Go and join your murderous lover.’
The woman could barely walk in a straight line. She came close to Georgiana, taunting her. ‘Do it. Make my life easier.’
Georgiana wanted to vomit. ‘Leave me alone!’ she sobbed. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying!’
The older woman grabbed at the chain around Georgiana’s neck and ripped it off, brandishing it before her. ‘Is this going with you? Is it a gift from him, bought with blood money from murdering my boy?’
Something inside her snapped and Georgiana shrieked, making a lunge for the locket as the Countess hurled it with all her might as far away as she could.
‘You’re insane, Mama! Stop it!’
But the Countess was beyond reason. She lurched forward and grabbed the pistol, trying to turn it to face her daughter. ‘Will death be more honourable to you than living with the shame of your lover? Everybody knows about you – everybody. Will you kill yourself with your brother’s pistol? The pistol his murderer stole and gifted you? Yes! I recognise it – does that surprise you? He was so proud of it. He told me all about it. I loved him, I did. I loved my darling Jasper, my only son!’
She wrestled the gun out of Georgiana’s hand and pistol-whipped her daughter, hard, across the face.
Twice.
Just as Alex reached her, Elodie made a frightening, gasping sound like her airwaves had just cut off, clutched at her chest and crumpled to the ground. The pistol tumbled out of her hand and landed next to her.
‘Elodie!’ Alex dropped to his knees and gathered her up in his arms, calling her name. She didn’t seem to be breathing at all and her lips were already starting to go blue. He tried to make her sit up, remembering how he’d researched it last year after the squash court incident, hoping he’d never have to use it: ‘Asthma attacks usually don’t just go away by themselves’, that information had said. He had been horrified, reading about ‘acute severe asthma’ and a ‘silent chest’ and had never wanted to witness Elodie in that situation again. She wouldn’t sit though, she just kept flopping around and he finally laid her on the ground. He would have sold his soul to the devil for an inhaler at that moment, but all he could do was start mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The few minutes he spent beside her felt like a lifetime. He repeated the breathing and the praying, interspersed with begging her to come back to him. He went for his mobile, but too late he remembered that it was still on the kitchen table from when they’d all been sitting together and he’d been popping painkillers. It seemed like a year ago.
‘Dammit! Look, I can’t lose you Elodie! Come on, come back to me. Please.’
There was no response. And, eventually, he gave up. She lay there in that white dress which was, by now, filthy from the leaf mould and dirt the tree and the forensics people had spread everywhere. He traced the smears of blood from last night with his fingertips: then he put his head on her chest, too shocked even to let the tears come.
His own words came back to haunt him: What a way to end a love story.
And then he felt it. A little rise against his cheek. A tight little gasp. Then another little gasp. Then her chest rose again.
‘Elodie?’ He sat up and pulled her into a sitting position to help her. He pushed the hair away from her face and patted her cheeks, willing her to open her eyes. ‘Elodie!’
‘Alex?’ her voice was raw, faint. But it was her voice. Her eyes fluttered open and she blinked, focusing on him. ‘Alex? What’s … wrong?’ She raised her hand and touched his cheek and he grabbed her fingers and pressed them to his mouth.
‘I thought you were gone. I thought I’d lost you. You just went down. I couldn’t stop you, I couldn’t help you. I—’ He shook his head, pulling himself back together before he lost it completely. He didn’t want to let go of her. He didn’t want to stop touching her.
‘She … never saw … Ben. Up there.’ She stopped, seeming to find it difficult to talk in proper sentences, the words as jagged as her breathing. ‘The pistol. And …’ She put her head in her hands. ‘Her mother. Hit her. She went down.’ She looked up. ‘I didn’t see …’
‘Shhh …’ Alex drew her closer as he looked around him. Drover’s roads intersected the clearing where the tree had been. It was only a tiny leap of the imagination to envisage a handsome highwayman holding up a coach and stealing the heart of a young girl in the process. A handsome highwayman struggling as they hauled him up, up, up into the branches …
‘You’ve seen enough. I’m getting you back home.’ Alex made the decision. ‘Finding out their secrets isn’t as important as keeping you safe.’ He loved her. Had loved her with every part of his being, his entire life. Seeing her lying there on the ground, not breathing, had made him regret for the thousandth time the wasted years. Nothing could ever or would ever change the way he felt – not even death. He understood how Ben must have felt about Georgiana and what had driven them to burn their precious memories into the earth and into the air and into the very walls of Hartsford Hall.
What he hadn’t understood was why they needed to share those memories now.
He stared again at the crossroads and the fallen tree and the mound of flattened, fresh earth beside them, and held Elodie a little tighter and a little closer.
He thought that he might be starting to comprehend.
Alex had insisted in carrying her back to her cottage and she felt too weak to argue, although she had downright refused to go to hospital again. ‘I’ll just spend my life going back and forth if I give in today – so no,’ she’d stated in a manner that she hoped brooked no argument. ‘I’m walking, talking and making sense, yes? Anyway, who�
�s to say it’s not something to do with what happened to Georgiana, and nothing really to do with my asthma? How could you explain that one to a doctor?’ He’d been unable to go against that one.
So it was slow progress as she bounced gently in his arms until they got to the little path that led there.
‘Will you come in with me? I want to grab my spare inhaler. I think I can remember where I put it.’
‘Of course,’ replied Alex and put her on her feet again.
She looked down at the filthy mess her dress had become and shook her head. ‘I think I’ll get changed as well. This is probably fit for use only as a duster now.’
‘It’s not that bad.’ Alex smiled. ‘You look beautiful.’
She smiled back. ‘It’s scruffy. I’m scruffy. And we both know it. I’ll find some jeans.’
‘The cottage might still be smoky. Will you be all right?’
Elodie took a deep breath. Then another. ‘I feel much better now. I’m sure a few minutes won’t hurt me. The windows have been open all night anyway.’
‘The way you reacted to Cassie’s clothes doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence. And you were all but dead up there after your scramble over that bloody tree.’
‘I’m glad you were there.’ She shuddered. The facts hadn’t escaped her attention for one moment and she knew she was lucky to be alive. ‘Can we just see how it goes? Will you wait for me?’
’Of course.’ His hand went up to the bruises on his face, as if remembering the passing clout from the shovel. ‘I might just see if there’s anything that suggests Cassie was in there, if that’s okay?’
‘Feel free. I’d like to know myself, but I don’t think she remembers any of it. Cassie would never hurt either of us on purpose. Lucy is mixed up in it somehow.’ Especially with that box having her blackmail letters in! But of course she didn’t mention that to Alex.
Her cottage looked a little sorry for itself. The windows were open, which gave the impression of it seeming as if it was about to flap its many wings and take off. Elodie opened the door and braced herself for the smell of smoke and sage, and the disagreeableness of her chest complaining; but she was pleasantly surprised to find that there was only a faint whiff of sage and she found she could breathe almost normally.
She did head straight upstairs to find another inhaler though, just in case.
‘It looks fine up here,’ she shouted down. ‘Not too bad at all. I think we aired it out rather well. I’ll not be too long.’
‘No problem.’ A door opened and closed, and she assumed he had gone into the lounge.
Once upstairs, she peeled the dirty dress off and discarded it onto the floor. It needed washing badly, but it was probably one of those silly hand-wash only things and she couldn’t bear to think about that right at the moment.
She rummaged in her wardrobe and came up with a clean pair of pale denim jeans and a black top and hurried into the bathroom.
‘I’m just going to have a quick shower!’
‘Take your time!’
It reminded her of the day of the storm, when she’d been in his bath; when all of this had started to play out. She shivered. Elodie still didn’t feel as if she had closure and wanted to finish the story, but it didn’t seem as if it would be as easy as she had thought. There were certainly a lot of barriers being thrown up in front of them.
Staring at herself in the mirror, seeing the huge dark shadows under her eyes, she realised she looked and felt appalling; wrung out and desperately tired didn’t even come close. It was a far cry from London, when she had hated stepping out of the house without make-up on and without her hair being styled exactly right; but she couldn’t give up now. No matter what the past had to show her, she needed to see it. She had always said that the shadows couldn’t hurt her – but maybe she had to change that opinion. Being brutally honest, the incident by the oak had terrified her.
After what seemed like the world’s quickest shower, Elodie pulled on the clean clothes, then dragged a brush through her still-damp hair. She spritzed some perfume around in the vain hope that it would make her feel a bit more human.
Alex was moving around downstairs, and she wished that things were different; she wished that he would be there on a more permanent basis. Wished that he would spend some nights over in her cottage and fill her tiny bedroom and share her single sofa in the lounge. But that didn’t seem very likely at all. They had talked about the hellish Prom Night and that was maybe all that they’d ever be able to do – accept it, apologise to one another and move on.
She grimaced and took one last look at herself, then headed back downstairs with a determined smile on her face. But when she opened the door and saw him in the lounge, his face was set and there was something dangling from his fingertips.
The storm clouds were back in his eyes; but thankfully they softened and cleared as they fixed on Elodie.
‘It looks as if Cassie’s been here.’ He lifted up his hand and Cassie’s beautiful Art Deco bracelet swung into her vision. ‘Whether she knew what she was doing or not.’
‘Your Grannie’s bracelet.’ Elodie moved across to him and took it, examining the clasp. ‘It’s broken! There’s a link come off.’ She looked around and saw the sofa where Georgiana’s treasures and the key to the pewter box had nestled so closely together.
The sofa had a throw on it – one of those scratchy, woollen ones with numerous loose threads that catch on clothing and tie you up in knots without meaning to. Elodie walked over to it and kneeled down, patting her hand across the fabric: and then she found it.
‘The link for the clasp. Look Alex. It must have caught on the throw and been tugged off.’ She stared up at him. ‘It was Cassie. She came here, she got the key and she opened the box …’ She hesitated. ‘And I bet she’s none the wiser. Poor Cassie! Come on – we have to go and talk to her.’
Cassie was sitting on the terrace when they got back, reading a magazine.
She looked up when she heard them approach and waved. ‘Hey guys!’ she shouted. ‘I wondered where you had gone.’
‘We were up at the oak tree,’ Elodie replied. ‘Just having a look at what they’d done.’ Alex knew that she wouldn’t want them to go into detail about what had happened up there, and he respected that.
‘Is it a mess?’ asked Cassie, her face crumpling. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No, the police did a good job tidying it up. I think the tree just needs to be chopped up and it’ll all be good to go.’
‘Oh – yes, there was a message for you on the machine,’ said Cassie, nodding at Alex ‘Something about the fact that they could come tomorrow and make a start on it? They apologised for the delay blah blah blah.’ She waved her hand around, and Alex followed its motion in the air.
‘Did you lose your bracelet?’ He nodded at her wrist. ‘We found one a lot like it in Elodie’s cottage.’
‘Oh! Yes, it’ll be mine, I bet. Thank you. I really thought it had gone forever.’
‘Cassie.’ Alex frowned. He wasn’t quite sure how to tell her without sounding downright accusatory. ‘Did you lose it in the cottage last night, at all? Because I think you were there before you went walkabout with the shovel.’
Cassie flushed at the shovel memory. ‘No, I wasn’t. I didn’t go to the cottage. You weren’t in when I came home, but I intended to go over and find you. I didn’t make it, though. I popped upstairs to put my bag in my bedroom and I fell asleep. Then the next thing I knew was that you were coming in and saying there’d been a fire at Elodie’s—’ As fast as it had coloured before, her face paled and she clapped her hands over her mouth. ‘Oh, God! Did I go there? Did I set that fire? Is it like the digging? I honestly didn’t know – I swear.’ Then she looked up at them both, horrified. ‘What happens if I do it again? What happens if I really hurt someone next time? And it’s not just Alex?’ Tears sprang into her eyes.
Alex didn’t know what to say to that one. ‘Just Alex’? But he let it go for now.<
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‘I’ll get it sorted,’ promised Elodie, her own eyes full of sympathy. ‘I’ve an idea who it might be, but I don’t quite know how to reach her yet. Let me have a little bit of time to try?’
Cassie was nodding, her face deathly white now. ‘But who is it? Is it Georgiana?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Elodie admitted. ‘It’s more like a child. Little kids don’t always know that what they’re doing is dangerous. They can be quite single-minded. Reckless. But I doubt they’re doing it malevolently.’
Alex noticed her fingers tighten on the inhaler she’d hidden in her palm, but he didn’t comment on it.
‘Okay,’ he said instead. ‘I’m pretty sure I’m desperate for a shower, so I’m going to head in for one. Are you two staying out here a little longer?’ He thought they might need a little space.
‘Yes.’ That was Elodie. He was right then. ‘I might have a chat with Cassie. She has a right to know who I suspect.’ She sighed. ‘I might be wrong, but I somehow doubt it.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alex disappeared into the Hall and Elodie watched him go with a little pang of sadness. Poor Alex. She’d be willing to bet that this was certainly not the way he’d wanted to spend his time today.
Cassie’s voice broke into Elodie’s thoughts. ‘Did you say you thought it was a child who had made me do – that?’
‘Yes. And I think I know exactly which child. Georgiana’s little sister, Lucy.’
‘Lucy?’ Cassie looked astonished.
‘Yes. She’s been hanging around here ever since the storm and she’s rather desperate to tell us everything she knows. You can’t really blame her – she was just a little girl and you know how they demand attention. Her energy was in the church and all over the attics, and we know she left the Bible in the tomb to help her sister.’
‘How? How do you know that?’