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To my dear friend Peter Nyhan
WHY
Please tell me, Lord, the answer to the question why
You put us on this Earth, to live a little day, and then to die.
We are born into this world – the fruit of Love and Pain
And live in suffering till ’tis time to leave again.
Alone we come. Alone we walk through Life. Alone we go.
And yet the purpose of it all we do not know.
ANON
Kitty
1980
I knew what to expect from death. I have always known. So when it came it did not frighten me or surprise me. It came as a friend, with its arms outstretched and its familiar face radiant with light and love, just as I knew it would. I had completed my life; it was time to return home.
I was a weary traveller at eighty, my heart ragged from the love and loss that had filled it and shredded it in equal measure. My body frail and my strength seeping away with each new dawn that brought me closer to my release. I admit that a part of me longed for it, this respite, like a runner approaching the finishing line longs for the race to end. A part of me yearned for repose.
When I was a little girl Grandma Adeline had told me that being born on the ninth day of the ninth month in the year 1900 meant that I was a child of Mars and my life would be full of turbulence. Well, so it was. War, betrayal, pain and sorrow accompanied me on my journey like shadowy hounds in constant pursuit. But I never allowed those trials to define me or hold me prisoner. I never lost sight of my greater spiritual purpose, of who I really was and from where I came. I had been dealt a challenging set of cards, and yet within them was an abundance of hearts; I never lost sight of those, either.
Indeed, I have loved. I have truly loved. Yet when death came to carry me into an even greater love, I did not go. My attachment to my home was too strong, my love of the towers and turrets and stone walls of Castle Deverill too fierce; my rage at its loss all-consuming. How could I enter the Gates of Heaven with a soul weighed down with bitterness and resentment? I could not.
So I chose to stay.
I rejected the light, the promise of reunion with those I love and the rest in beauty and peace that I know is what lies ahead for those who deserve it; and I deserve it. I truly do. Yet, I am not ready. I might have completed my life, but I have not fulfilled it. God has extended His hand; it is with His gift of free will that I reject it.
Like my grandmother before me, I was born with the psychic ability to see the finer vibrations of spirit. Now that I am dead, I reside here as one of those spirits, in this shady limbo between the two worlds. I cannot go back to the material plane and I have rejected Heaven. But it is my choice and I don’t regret it. Not for a moment. I have work to do and it must be done. You’d be surprised at the things spirits can do when they really put their minds to it.
You see, it is really very simple: I will not rest until Castle Deverill is returned to a Deverill. There, that is it, my work, my purpose, the reason I have chosen to remain. My grandmother did not mention how stubborn are the children of Mars!
My half-brother, JP Deverill, sold our family home. The home that, with the exception of fourteen unfortunate years when it was owned by the Countess di Marcantonio, had belonged to us since 1662, when King Charles II awarded my ancestor Barton Deverill with a title and lands in Ireland’s Co. Cork as a reward for his loyalty. For over three hundred years that castle had belonged to my family. Three hundred years! As a symbol of dominance by the Protestant Anglo-Irish class the ‘Big House’ withstood centuries of menace by the Irish baying for independence; it survived rebellion, intrigue and fire, only to rise out of the flames like a phoenix along with my beleaguered family. It survived all that, and then one cold February day in 1976 JP signed it away. One sweep of his pen and it was gone.
Castle Deverill has been converted into a hotel and I am in it and will not remove myself from it. No, I will not. I will cause havoc, inspire fear, do all manner of terrible things in order to bend them to my will, these people who think they can profit from my family’s history, from my family’s pain. We Deverills have not suffered so that unscrupulous people can make money by turning our beloved home into a circus.
I am a child of Mars and I am ready to fight for what I love.
Castellum Deverilli est suum regnum is the family motto Barton Deverill carved in stone above the castle’s great door: A Deverill’s castle is his kingdom.
At least once it was.
I will not rest until it is a Deverill’s kingdom again.
Chapter 1
Ballinakelly, Co. Cork, 1985
As Margot Hart drove into the small town of Ballinakelly she slowed her little blue Beetle to a crawling pace. Thick fog had drifted inland from the sea, rendering it almost impossible to make out where she was going. The tarmac shimmered in the headlights, the windscreen wipers swept away the soft rain. A farmer with his sheepdog stopped outside O’Donovan’s Public House to watch her pass, shaking his head at her imprudence, for wouldn’t it be wiser to wait it out in the pub until the fog lifted? But Margot ignored him and motored on. After all, she had driven all the way from London, via a ferry across the Irish Sea, and wasn’t about to let a bit of fog deter her. However, the fog seemed to condense the closer she got, as if the castle was deliberately hiding itself, as if it didn’t want to be found. But it would have taken more than fog to put off Margot Hart. The sight of the old estate wall materializing out of the gloom injected her spirits with excitement and spurred her on. She was near. Very near. She took a deep breath then coasted along the boundary, until, to her delight, she reached the entrance, advertised by a bold green sign with elaborate gold lettering: Castle Deverill. Hotel & Fine Dining.
The black iron gates were just as she had seen them in old photographs. Splendidly grand with a pair of stone lions posing high up on pedestals either side of them, their teeth bared in readiness to defend this once stately home from intruders. But they were benign now, those lions, their ferocity no longer called upon, for the War of Independence and the civil war that followed had finally come to an end some sixty years before and peace had settled upon the Deverill estate. History was Margot’s passion, especially the history of old castles. And history was why she was here, of course. As she drove through the gates and up the drive that swept in a gentle curve through thick rhododendron bushes, she smiled to herself and said out loud and with satisfaction, ‘Here I am, Margot Hart, Writer in Residence.’
The first sight of the castle was arresting. After all, it was built to convey power, wealth and status. It was built to be magnificent. And magnificent it certainly was. Margot stopped the car a little ahead of the forecourt and gazed in wonder at the glistening grey walls and tall, crenelated towers and parapets, and was immediately struck by its sense of permanence, as if it had always been here and always would be. The sea mists would come and go, the sharp winter winds and gentle rain and the seasons, one after the other, but this castle would remain for ever, defiantly unchanged.
She took a deep, gratified breath for here she was at last, in the heart of the Deverill family history. In the place where it had all happened. She envisaged Barton Deverill, the first Lord Deverill of Ballinakelly, proudly mounted on his steed, with a plume in his hat and a sword at his hip, leading the hunt into the forests and f
ields that now belonged to him, courtesy of the King. She imagined the balls. Ladies in silk dresses stepping out of elegant carriages, gloved hands reaching for the liveried footmen in attendance, satin slippers gingerly feeling for the step. In her mind’s eye she could see candlelight glowing in the darkness and hear music and laughter resounding from the ballroom with the clinking of glass as the Deverills and their friends toasted their good health and their even greater fortune. Life was good for the Anglo-Irish in those days. She lifted her eyes to the upstairs windows and wondered at the secret trysts that had taken place behind them, at the intrigue and skulduggery played out in the shadows. She would uncover it all. Every drama. What a fascinating book she was going to write.
Margot had signed up to spend nine months at Castle Deverill, which, to a twenty-eight-year-old girl shy of commitment, had initially seemed rather daunting. After all, she was always on the move, continually packing a suitcase, setting off for a new horizon, in a hurry to leave the old one behind. Yet, she had figured that it would take at least nine months to finish researching the subject and to write the book itself. The time would fly by, and it would be a pleasure because this was what she enjoyed doing most, burying herself in research and the written word. Initially, it had seemed like a coincidence that she had met the hotel’s owner at a London cocktail party, but now she wasn’t so sure: it felt more like Fate.
Margot had been fascinated by the Deverills since she was a child because of her grandfather’s stories. Grandpa Hart had been wistful about his past, having grown up in Co. Cork and been a close friend of Harry Deverill. In 1919, when he was twenty-four, his family had sold their house and settled in England to escape the Troubles. He had never gone back. He had died recently, at the age of ninety, having lived many different chapters in a long and varied life, yet it had seemed that that chapter of his youth in Co. Cork had been the most vivid and the most special, when the summers had seemed endless and the days idle and full of frivolity. His stories had become a little repetitive in the end. But there had been something compelling about the charisma, drama and sheer jauntiness of this extraordinary family that had never bored her. This book needed to be written and she was going to be the one to write it. She was just surprised – and pleased – that the Deverills’ story hadn’t been written before.
She motored onto the forecourt and parked in front of the big doors. As she turned off the ignition an eager old man in a black-and-green uniform hurried out with a golfing umbrella emblazoned with the hotel logo of initials and shamrock. He held it above her head and she stepped out of the car and onto the wet gravel.
‘Céad míle fáilte to Castle Deverill,’ he said in an accent as soft as Irish rain. ‘’Tis a day fit for the bed or the fire. You wouldn’t turn a fox out of a henhouse. You must be perished. How in God’s name did you find us in the fog?’
‘It only got bad as I drove into Ballinakelly,’ Margot replied, walking briskly towards the hotel entrance.
‘Sea mist, I’m afraid, the devil’s trick,’ the man informed her with a shake of the head, then added brightly, ‘As sure as there is an eye in a needle, the sun will come out tomorrow and burn it away as there was a ring around the moon last night.’
Margot stepped into the hall and gasped in delight at the splendour of it. To think that this sumptuous palace was once a family home. She swept her eyes over the hall in wonder, taking in the size and grandeur, and wondering what it would be like to live in a castle like this and have it all to oneself. A fire crackled cheerfully in a baronial fireplace, and above it a giant portrait of Barton Deverill, seated masterfully on a rearing stallion and dressed in bright yellow and gold with a scarlet plume in his hat, reminded her of the lost glory of this ill-fated family. How the local Irish must have resented the wealth and privilege of their Deverill masters. Even today, sixty years after the War of Independence, the impression of luxury was noticeably at odds with the harsh Irish landscape. The light was golden, the air lily-scented, the glint of chrome and glass opulent. It was like being welcomed into a parallel world of unbridled extravagance and comfort, while outside the grey fog swirled about the wind-battered cliffs and shivering hills, and the cold penetrated the bones of humble cottages.
The hotel was full of activity. A young couple reclined on purple velvet armchairs, drinking coffee out of pretty turquoise cups and studying a map. Three men in plus fours and guernseys loitered by the hearth, smoking cigars and guffawing loudly after what appeared, by the look of their florid faces, to have been a good day out on the hills, while the light clatter of bone china turned Margot’s attention to guests enjoying tea in the dining room next door. She stood on the polished marble and took in the beauty of the staircase. It was quite the centrepiece, ascending gracefully to a wide landing before dividing into two elegantly curved arms that continued on up to the first floor. Crimson carpets, gilt-framed paintings, crisp white walls and glittering glass chandeliers gave the place the lavish feel of old-time glamour. She thought of Hubert Deverill then, who she could picture standing there on the landing, one hand in his jacket pocket, the other holding a whiskey glass as he surveyed the guests entering his home for the 1910 Summer Ball, and she smiled with pleasure, because here in this luxurious palace was where she was going to reside for the next nine months. Suddenly nine months didn’t feel long enough.
As she crossed the marble chequerboard floor towards the reception desk she overheard an elderly lady complaining to the hotel manager, a tall, patient-looking man in a navy suit and green tie with a sympathetic smile especially designed for moments such as these. The lady, in a tweed skirt and jacket and sensible brown lace-up shoes over thick brown socks, was anxiously wringing her hands, clearly upset about something. Margot, with the curiosity of a journalist in perpetual search for a good story, cocked an ear.
‘I assure you the hotel is not haunted,’ the man was saying, inclining his head and holding her fretful gaze with his cool blue one. ‘It’s an old castle and creaks a lot, especially in the wind, but you won’t encounter any ghosts, I promise.’ His Irish accent was especially reassuring, Margot thought.
‘But I saw someone with my own eyes,’ the lady explained, lowering her voice, fearful perhaps that the ghost might hear and take umbrage. ‘A woman, elderly like me, in an old-fashioned maid’s uniform, cleaning the room. I saw her clearly. As clearly as if she were a real person.’
The manager frowned. ‘Cleaning the room, you say? If the castle were full of ghostly housekeepers, Mrs Walbridge, I wouldn’t need to spend any money hiring living ones.’ He laughed in amusement, displaying a set of large white teeth.
Mrs Walbridge did not appreciate his humour. She lifted her chin and stiffened her jaw, looking a good sight more formidable, and added, this time more confidently, ‘I know you think I’m making it up, or was dreaming or hallucinating, but I assure you, Mr Dukelow, I was lucid. Quite lucid. I might be old but I have all my faculties, you know. Your hotel is haunted and I’m not staying another night. I would like a refund for the two nights for which I will no longer be requiring a bed. I will book in somewhere else tonight and return to England forthwith!’
Margot’s eavesdropping was cut short by an efficient young woman with a black bob and blue eye shadow who was enquiring from behind the reception desk whether she could be of service. ‘Oh, hello,’ said Margot, reluctantly tearing herself away from the enfolding drama. ‘I’m Margot Hart, the Writer in Residence.’
The woman’s face lit up. ‘Miss Hart, welcome to your new home. I’m Róisín.’ She pronounced it Ro-sheen. Her crimson lips expanded into a pretty smile, revealing a wide gap in her two front teeth. ‘I’ll let the manager know you’re here right away. Isn’t it exciting? We’ve never had a Writer in Residence before.’ She came out from behind the desk and went to interrupt the conversation between Mrs Walbridge and Mr Dukelow. A discreet word in his ear and Mr Dukelow was striding over to meet Margot, leaving the receptionist to lead a dissatisfied Mrs Walbridge to the din
ing room on the other side of the hall. Presumably she was hoping she’d persuade her to stay over a cup of tea and a scone.
‘Miss Hart,’ said Mr Dukelow, extending his hand. ‘Welcome to Castle Deverill.’ He shook her hand with gusto, relieved to be free of the irate Mrs Walbridge.
Margot grinned. ‘I hope there are no housekeeping ghosts in my room!’ she said, a twinkle in her eye.
Mr Dukelow laughed, already won over by her charm and good looks. ‘I’m afraid we do get the odd strange complaint, but that’s the first we’ve had about a ghost.’
‘Perhaps a cunning way to get one’s money back?’ she suggested, guessing that Mr Dukelow had a good sense of humour and wouldn’t object to her running with the joke.
‘I’m afraid she believes she really did see a ghost. But fear not, Miss Hart, there will be no ghosts, housekeeping or otherwise, in your quarters. We have one of the finest suites of rooms for you. Mrs de Lisle was very specific. She wants you to be comfortable and to experience the best the hotel has to offer.’
Margot recalled Angela de Lisle at the cocktail party: short red hair, power suit, expensive gold earrings and pearl necklace, lashings of Rive Gauche perfume, an immaculate manicure and a facelift that looked as if it had been performed by an overzealous American surgeon. She was the sort of woman who clicked her fingers and expected mountains to move. Margot suspected that the mountains did move, unquestioningly and without hesitation.
‘Let me show you to your room.’ Mr Dukelow gestured for her to follow and made his way towards the stairs. ‘I gather you’ve driven all the way from London. That’s quite a drive, and on your own too.’
Margot smiled patiently; she was used to men patronizing her. Long blonde hair seemed to scream ‘helpless’. But Margot was far from helpless. She’d driven from Buenos Aires to Patagonia without so much as a blink; the road and ferry trip from London to Ballinakelly had hardly posed a challenge. ‘I figured I’d need my car, Mr Dukelow,’ she replied coolly.
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