The Shifting Fog

by Kate Morton

  Robbie grabbed for the gun; Hannah pulled her arm away, fell backwards, scrambled further onto the escarpment.

  ‘Do it!’ said Robbie. ‘Or I will.’

  Hannah reached the highest point. Robbie and Emmeline were converging on her. There was nowhere further to run. She looked between them.

  And time stood still.

  Two points of a triangle, untethered by a third, had pulled further and further apart. The elastic, stretched taut, had reached its limit.

  I held my breath, but the elastic did not break.

  In that instant, it retracted.

  Two points came crashing back together, a collision of loyalty and blood and ruin.

  Hannah pointed the gun and she pulled the trigger.

  The aftermath. For, oh, there is always an aftermath. People forget that. Blood, lots of it. Over their dresses, across their faces, in their hair.

  The gun dropped. Hit the stones with a crack and lay immobile.

  Hannah stood wavering on the escarpment.

  Robbie’s body lay on the ground below. Where his head had been, a mess of bone and brain and blood.

  I was frozen, my heart beating in my ears, skin hot and cold at the same time. Suddenly, a surge of vomit.

  Emmeline stood frozen, eyes tightly closed. She wasn’t crying, not any more. She was making a horrible noise, one I’ve never forgotten. She was crawing as she inhaled. The air catching in her throat on every breath.

  Moments passed, I don’t know how many, and a way off, behind me, I heard voices. Laughter.

  ‘It’s just down here a little further,’ came the voice on the breeze. ‘You wait until you see, Lord Gifford. The stairs aren’t finished—damn French and their shipping hold-ups—but the rest, I think you’ll agree, is pretty impressive.’

  I wiped my mouth, ran from my hiding spot onto the lake edge.

  ‘Teddy’s coming,’ I said to no one in particular. I was in shock of course. We were all in shock. ‘Teddy’s coming.’

  ‘You’re too late,’ Hannah said, swiping frantically at her face, her neck, her hair. ‘You’re too late.’

  ‘Teddy’s coming, ma’am.’ I shivered.

  Emmeline’s eyes snapped open. A flash of silver blue shadow in the moonlight. She shuddered, righted herself, indicated Hannah’s suitcase. ‘Take it to the house,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Go the long way.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Run.’

  I nodded, took the bag and ran toward the woods. I couldn’t think clearly. I stopped when I was hidden and turned back. My teeth were chattering.

  Teddy and Lord Gifford had reached path’s end and stepped out onto the lake bank.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Teddy, stopping abruptly. ‘What on earth—?’

  ‘Teddy darling,’ said Emmeline. ‘Thank God.’ She turned jerkily to face Teddy and her voice levelled. ‘Mr Hunter has shot himself.’

  The Letter

  Tonight I die and my life begins.

  I tell you, and only you. You have been with me a long time on this adventure, and I want you to know that in the days that follow, when they are combing the lake for a body they will never find, I am safe.

  We go to France first, from there I cannot say. Hopefully, I will see Nefertiti’s head mask!

  I have given you a second note addressed to Emmeline. It is a suicide note for a suicide that will never take place. She must find it tomorrow. Not before. Look after her, Grace. She will be all right. She has so many friends.

  There is one final favour I must ask of you. It is of the utmost importance. Whatever happens, keep Emmeline from the lake tonight. Robbie and I leave from there. I cannot risk her finding out. She won’t understand. Not yet.

  I will contact her later. When it is safe.

  And now to the last. Perhaps you’ve already discovered the locket I gave you is not empty? Concealed inside is a key, a secret key to a safe box in Drummonds on Charing Cross. The box is in your name, Grace, and everything inside it is for you. I know how you feel about gifts, but please, take it and don’t look back. Am I too presumptuous in saying it is your ticket to a new life?

  Goodbye, Grace. I wish you a long life full with adventure and love. Wish me the same . . .

  I know how well you are with secrets.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank the following:

  First and foremost, my best friend, Kim Wilkins, without whose encouragement I would never have started, let alone finished.

  Davin for his endurance, empathy and unwavering faith.

  Oliver for expanding the emotional boundaries of my life and for curing me of writer’s block.

  My family: Warren, Jenny, Julia and, in particular, my mother Diane, whose courage, grace and beauty inspire me.

  Herbert and Rita Davies, dear friends, for telling the best stories. Be brilliant!

  My fabulous literary agent, Selwa Anthony, whose commitment, care and skill are peerless.

  Selena Hanet-Hutchins for her efforts on my behalf.

  The sf-sassies for writerly support.

  Everybody at Allen & Unwin, especially Annette Barlow, Catherine Milne, Christa Munns, Christen Cornell, Julia Lee and Angela Namoi.

  Julia Stiles for being everything I hoped an editor would be.

  Dalerie and Lainie for their assistance with Oliver (was ever a little boy so loved?), and for giving me the precious gift of time.

  The lovely people at Mary Ryan’s for adoring books and making great coffee.

  For matters of fact: thank you to Mirko Ruckels for answering questions about music and opera, Drew Whitehead for telling me the story of Miriam and Aaron, Elaine Rutherford for providing information of a medical nature, and Diane Morton for her extensive and timely advice on antiques and customs, and for being an arbiter of good taste.

  Finally, I would like to mention Beryl Popp and Dulcie Connelly. Two grandmothers, dearly loved and missed. I hope Grace inherited a little from each of you.

  AUTHOR’ S NOTE

  While the characters of The Shifting Fog are fictitious, the milieu in which they move is not. The socio-historical location of the novel is one that has always fascinated me: nineteenth century had just given way to twentieth, and the world as we now know it was beginning to take shape. Queen Victoria died, and with her, old certainties were consigned to the grave: the aristocratic system began to crumble, humanity suffered battle on a scale undreamt of, and women were freed somewhat from rigid pre-existing expectations of social function.

  When a writer seeks to evoke a historical period of which they have no personal experience, it is necessary, of course, to carry out research. It is impossible for me to list here every source consulted; however, I would like to mention a few without which the book would have been the poorer. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Cressida Connolly’s The Rare and the Beautiful, Anne de Courcy’s 1939: The Last Season and The Viceroy’s Daughters, Victoria Glendinning’s Vita, Mary S Lovell’s The Mitford Girls, Laura Thompson’s Life in a Cold Climate, and Channel 4’s The Edwardian Country House television series, provided colourful illustrations of country-house life in the early part of the twentieth century.

  More broadly, Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth, Noel Carthew’s Voices from the Trenches: Letters to Home, Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, Margaret Macmillan’s Paris 1919, Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Stephen Inwood’s A History of London, Daniel Pool’s What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, the Reader’s Digest Yesterday’s Britain, WH Rivers’s ‘The Repression of War Experience’, Bruce Bliven’s ‘Flapper Jane’, FML Thompson’s ‘Moving Frontiers and the Fortunes of the Aristocratic Townhouse’, and Michael Duffy’s website firstworldwar.com were all very useful.

  Along with such secondary sources, Beverley Nichols’s Sweet and Twenties, Frances Donaldson’s Child of the Twenties, Daphne du Maurier’s Myself When Young, Punch magazine, and The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh edited
by Charlotte Mosley, provided rich and textured firsthand accounts of literary lives in the 1920s. I would also like to mention Esther Wesley’s account of ‘Life Below Stairs at Gayhurst House’ which appears on the Stoke Goldington Association website. For information on Edwardian etiquette I turned, as have countless young ladies before me, to The Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette by Professor Thomas E Hill and to Manners and Rules of Good Society or Solecisms to be Avoided published by ‘A Member of the Aristocracy’ in 1924.

  I am also indebted to the precious historical information contained and preserved in novels and plays written during the period. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the following authors: Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, Daphne du Maurier, F Scott Fitzgerald, Michael Arlen, Noel Coward, and HV Morton. I would also like to mention a few contemporary storytellers whose works fed my fascination for the socio-historical period: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, and, of course, the UK television production Upstairs Downstairs.

  I have long been interested, as a reader and a researcher, in novels, like The Shifting Fog, that utilise tropes of the literary gothic: the haunting of the present by the past; the insistence of family secrets; return of the repressed; the centrality of inheritance (material, psychological and physical); haunted houses (particularly haunting of a metaphorical nature); suspicion concerning new technology and changing methods; the entrapment of women (whether physical or social), and associated claustrophobia; character doubling; the unreliability of memory and the partial nature of history; mysteries and the unseen; confessional narrative; and embedded texts. I have included here some examples in case there are readers who share such interests and would like to read further: Thomas H Cook’s The Chatham School Affair, AS Byatt’s Possession, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Morag Joss’s Half Broken Things and Barbara Vine’s A Dark-Adapted Eye.

  Finally, having taken the liberty of acknowledging so many references and interests, I claim all bent truths and errors of fact as my own.

  If you enjoyed The Shifting Fog, you’ll love Kate

  Morton’s thrilling mystery The Forgotten Garden.

  A lost child . . .

  On the eve of the First World War, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her—but the Authoress has disappeared without a trace.

  A terrible secret . . .

  On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell O’Connor learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she embarks upon a search for the truth that leads her to the windswept Cornish coast and the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor, once owned by the aristocratic Mountrachet family.

  A mysterious inheritance . . .

  On Nell’s death, her granddaughter, Cassandra, comes into an unexpected inheritance. Cliff Cottage and its forgotten garden are notorious amongst the Cornish locals for the secrets they hold—secrets about the doomed Mountrachet family and their ward Eliza Makepeace, a writer of dark Victorian fairytales. It is here that Cassandra will finally uncover the truth about the family, and solve the century-old mystery of a little girl lost.

  A captivating and atmospheric story of secrets, family and memory from the international bestselling author Kate Morton.

  ISBN 978 1 74237 969 2

  The

  FORGOTTEN

  GARDEN

  1

  LONDON, ENGLAND, 1913

  It was dark where she was crouched but the little girl did as she’d been told. The lady had said to wait, it wasn’t safe yet, they had to be as quiet as larder mice. It was a game, the little girl knew. Like hide and seek, or rounders, or piggy-in-the-middle.

  From behind the wooden barrels the little girl listened. Made a picture in her mind the way Papa had taught her. Men, near and far, sailors she supposed, shouted to one another. Rough, loud voices, full of the sea and its salt. Words she didn’t recognise but trusted all the same. In the distance: bloated ships’ horns, tin whistles, splashing oars; and far above, grey gulls cawing, wings flattened to absorb the ripening sunlight.

  The lady would be back, she’d said so, but the little girl hoped it would be soon. She’d been waiting a long time, so long that the sun had drifted across the sky and was now warming her knees through her new dress. She listened for the lady’s skirts, swishing against the timber deck. Her heels clipping, hurrying, always hurrying, in a way the girl’s own mamma never did. The little girl wondered, in the vague, unconcerned manner of much-loved children, where Mamma was. When she would be coming. And she wondered about the lady. She knew who she was, she’d heard Grandmamma talking about her. The lady was called the Authoress and she lived in the little cottage on the far side of the estate, beyond the maze. The little girl wasn’t supposed to know. She had been forbidden from playing near the bramble maze. Mamma and Grandmamma had told her it was dangerous to go near the cliff. But sometimes, when no one was looking, the little girl liked to do forbidden things.

  Dust motes, hundreds of them, danced in the sliver of sunlight that had appeared between two barrels. The little girl smiled and the lady, the cliff, the maze, Mamma, left her thoughts. She held out a finger, tried to catch a speck upon it. Laughed at the way they came so close before skirting away.

  The noises beyond her hiding spot were changing now. The little girl could hear the hubbub of movement, voices laced with excitement. She leaned into the veil of light and pressed her face against the cool timber of the barrels. With one eye she looked upon the decks.

  Legs and shoes and petticoat hems. The tails of coloured paper streamers flicking this way and that. Wily gulls hunting the decks for crumbs.

  A lurch, and the huge boat groaned, long and low from deep within its belly. Vibrations passed through the deck boards and into the little girl’s fingertips. A moment of suspense and she found herself holding her breath, palms flat beside her, then the boat heaved and pushed itself away from the dock. The horn bellowed and there was a wave of cheering, cries of ‘Bon Voyage’. They were on their way. To America, a place called New York where Papa had been born. She’d heard them whispering about it for some time, Mamma telling Papa they should go as soon as possible, that they could afford to wait no longer.

  The little girl laughed again; the boat was gliding through the water like a giant whale, like Moby Dick in the story her father often read to her. Mamma didn’t like it when he read such stories. She said they were too frightening and would put ideas in her head that couldn’t be got out. Papa always gave Mamma a kiss on the forehead when she said such things, told her she was right and that he’d be more careful in future. But he still told the little girl stories of the great whale. And others—the ones that were the little girl’s favourite, from the fairytale book, about eyeless crones, and orphaned maidens, and long journeys across the sea. He just made sure that Mamma didn’t know, that it remained their secret.

  The little girl understood they had to have secrets from Mamma. Mamma wasn’t well, had been sickly since before the little girl was born. Grandmamma was always bidding her be good, minding her that if Mamma were to get upset something terrible might happen and it would be all her fault. The little girl loved her mother and didn’t want to make her sad, didn’t want something terrible to happen, so she kept things secret. Like the fairy stories, and playing near the maze, and the times Papa had taken her to visit the Authoress in the cottage on the far side of the estate.

  ‘A-ha!’ A voice by her ear. ‘Found you!’ The barrel was heaved aside and the little girl squinted up into the sun. Blinked until the owner of the voice moved to block the light. It was a big boy, eight or nine, she guessed. ‘You’re not Sally,’ he said.

  The little girl shook her head.

  ‘Who are you?’

  She wasn’t meant to tell anybody her name. It was a game they were playing, she and the lady.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  His nos
e wrinkled, freckles drew together. ‘What for?’

  She shrugged. She wasn’t supposed to speak of the lady, Papa was always minding her so.

  ‘Where’s Sally then?’ The boy was grown impatient. He gazed left and right. ‘She ran this way, I’m sure of it.’

  A whoop of laughter from further down the deck and the scramble of fleeing footsteps. The boy’s face lit up. ‘Quick!’ he said as he started to run. ‘She’s getting away.’

  The little girl leaned her head around the barrel and watched him weaving in and out of the crowd in keen pursuit of a flurry of white petticoats.

  The little girl’s toes itched to join them.

  But the lady had said to wait.

  The boy was getting further away. Ducking around a portly man with a waxed moustache, causing him to furrow his brows so that his features scurried towards the centre of his face like a family of startled crabs.

  The little girl laughed.

  Maybe it was all part of the same game. The lady reminded her more of a child than of the other grown-ups she knew. Perhaps she was playing too.

  The little girl slid from behind the barrel and stood slowly. Her left foot had gone to sleep and now had pins and needles. She waited a moment for feeling to come back, watching as the boy turned the corner and disappeared.

  Then, without another thought, she set off after him. Feet pounding, heart singing in her chest.

  2

  BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA, 1930

  In the end they held Nell’s birthday party in the school of arts building. Hamish had suggested the new dance hall, up on Given Terrace, but Nell, echoing her mother, had said it was silly to go to unnecessary expense, especially with times as tough as they were. Hamish conceded, but contented himself by insisting she send away to Sydney for the special lace he knew she wanted for her dress. Lil had put the idea in his head before she passed away. She’d leaned over and taken his hand, then shown him the newspaper advertisement with its Pitt Street address and told him how fine the lace was, how much it would mean to Nellie, that it might seem extravagant but it could be reworked into the wedding gown when the time came. Then she’d smiled at him, and she was sixteen years old again and he was smitten.