by Clare Curzon
After some three or four minutes she got out and went back into the hospital. At Reception she reported her difficulty and gave the Land Rover’s registration. An announcement over the public address system was followed by a further wait of some five minutes before a claimant arrived breathlessly from the direction of the wards and rushed out to remove the obstruction. At last Kate was free to go on her way.
She was quicker today finding the right route, and when she drove up to the gates she had still not improved on her former plan. But this time the gates stood open. She continued through and followed the driveway as far as the bend. Nosing round it she saw, some hundred yards away, an oblong, three-storeyed façade of warm red brick, late seventeenth century, with a white-columned porch.
There was scant cover in between, but over to the right was a break in a trimmed yew hedge and a view of gardens beyond. Unsure of how to approach, she opted for caution, reversed until the car could not be seen from the house, got out and slipped through the archway in the hedge. Its wrought iron gate also stood open, inviting her in.
Past this archway the garden was partitioned by hedges eight-feet high into spacious squares, all of different sizes, each with a theme and dedicated to a floral species. Kate walked past upturned soil, moist and peaty, with regular drills ready to be planted. It smelled good, black and productive.
Beyond a wall of espaliers with tiny, young fruit there extended a short walk of pergolas draped with trusses of purple wisteria. To either side, glimpsed through arched openings were other roofless rooms, one ablaze with multi-coloured gilly-flowers. Their rich scent was almost overpowering. The other was laid to grass dotted with fallen blossom. Straight, dark trunks were canopied with remnants of white ornamental cherry on branches that extended from tree to tree, giving only a glimpse through of blue sky here and there. A tethered white goat lifted its head from cropping and gazed at her. The effect was weirdly fairy-tale.
Through a gap in the next hedge came the clitch-clitch of someone hoeing. She went through to a formal square of bedding, with some stiff, spiky plants opening into exotic, foreign-looking flowers in brilliant jewel colours.
A man was working there, bare to the waist, his back towards her. His naked flesh shone moistly, brown with established suntan. She noticed a dark, round mole under his right shoulder blade. He straightened and turned.
No gardener. She knew him from press photographs. This was Charles Stone, the Ogre himself. Her daughter’s married lover.
13
Kate stared, her eyes too intent on taking him in to be capable of speaking. But she didn’t need to think of an approach. He asked immediately, ‘Have you news of Jessica?’
So he knew who she was; must know Jess was missing. Anger flooded through her. She detested the smooth, handsome face, the slightly foreign features seen for the first time in the flesh. How dare he be here at home, gardening for God’s sake, when Jess could be in danger? Because that’s what it meant, if even he didn’t know where she was.
‘She’s not with you, then?’ Her voice came out a croak. He put out a hand as if to steady her, then remembered the soil on it and his arm fell back to his side. He shook his head slowly. ‘Shall we go into the house?’
‘No.’ That would have been a concession. She wasn’t granting any.
Her mind was running ahead, trying to make sense of him, of the way she’d been given access this time and the way she’d found him. She had nothing more to say. Then doubt rushed in. Why should she believe what he’d implied? – that he wasn’t hiding her daughter from her. The man knew his way about the world, a manipulator, a hard-headed businessman, a deceiver.
She knew her mistake. She should have taken up his offer, gone inside the house. She wanted to search it, room by room – dozens of them here – and shout her daughter’s name until Jess came running into her arms.
She closed her eyes to conceal her emotions and get some control of herself. When she opened them she thought his face had softened, showed some pity. The gall of the man!
‘The police are looking for her,’ she threatened.
‘Yes. I saw the English papers. So I came back.’
The garden seemed to lurch sideways and swing back. The man’s face was dissolving into mist. She felt him bearing her up, then lost all feeling. It was only momentary, then with each jarring pace she knew he was carrying her up the stone steps and into the house.
She became aware of lying on a couch and a woman bending over her. She had greying hair pulled back into a chignon. Her dress was a dark red-brown. ‘I’m Mrs Christie,’ she said. ‘Mr Stone’s housekeeper. Lie still a while and rest. Then I’ll make you some tea. I’m afraid the kitchen staff are all still on leave.’
‘I’ll do it,’ a man’s voice said.
Kate pulled herself upright and set her feet on the floor. Mrs Christie took the vacant place beside her. When Stone brought the tray in there were warm scones as well, oozing butter.
‘I’d just been baking,’ the woman said, and Kate, comforted by the mundane domestic detail, nodded weakly. Sure that she couldn’t face food, she found half a scone in her hand and discovered she was ravenous.
‘You haven’t been eating properly,’ Stone said after a while. ‘And probably not getting enough sleep. You must take care of yourself, not go rushing about looking after others. I know how mothers are.’
So he was considerate, thought of a mother’s feelings. That was another side to the man. But she wouldn’t let her antipathy go.
He drew up a chair opposite and sat leaning towards her, hands on splayed knees. ‘We must talk,’ he said sombrely.
Mrs Christie collected the used crockery and took away the tray. She closed the door firmly after her.
Say what? Kate asked herself, and closed her eyes against him. But he was explaining.
‘I had to go to the US on business. Jessica told me about the weekend invitation to her uncle’s at Larchmoor Place and I asked her to accept. So perhaps I am responsible for what happened.’
‘Why should you want her to go?’
‘Because I thought she would be safer there while I was away. I didn’t like her living alone on the canal.’
‘No more did I,’ Kate said heatedly, ‘but Jess is so independent, headstrong really, and I couldn’t oppose her renting the narrowboat. That would only have made her more determined to go her own way. Nor could I ask her to share the cottage with me.’
He waited for the outburst to be over, then pursued, ‘You were there too, at the family gathering. I want you to tell me everything that was said and done, because this may have a bearing on what has happened to your daughter.’
She didn’t see that it could do any good, but perhaps talking would help to sort the past few days in her mind. He didn’t interrupt and she forgot who was listening, simply relived the events as they’d happened. He was just another in the procession of questioners ever since the fire.
‘A terrible experience,’ he said at the end.
It brought her back, and her anger with him returned. ‘You were right to be afraid for her living on the canal,’ she said. ‘Her boat was broken into while she was away. Who else knew she lived there? I thought she was keeping it quiet. She hadn’t even told her brother.’
‘She could be secretive, yes. Discreet.’
‘But she told me about you. About being your mistress.’ He stared at her, unblinking. ‘And you disapprove.’ It was statement, not question.
‘You must be almost twice her age. And you have a wife.’
‘I’m thirty-seven. Not really an old man.’ His tone was sardonic.
‘But married just the same. Marriage is meant to be for life.’
He stood up and walked towards the window. When he turned and looked again at her his face had changed. It was all hard, straight lines. She was seeing the indomitable money man who dealt in millions.
‘You are right. Marriage is for life – a lifetime of loyal partnership and unswerving devo
tion. But it was never that for me. If I’ve been cheated, must I accept there is nothing more? Jessica is all I could ever desire in a woman. She is honest and clever and brave. Integrity like hers is rare. Even more; incredibly, she loves me. It is more than I hoped for or deserve. I would lay my life down for her, and for us to spend the rest of our years together.’
There was no argument against passion like that. Kate’s hands trembled, remembering herself with Michael; the overwhelming love, their stolen weekends, finally his defiance of the family who had forbidden his marrying. So, still students, they had taken it into their own hands, and been cut off. With no income, she’d chosen to become the breadwinner. Those had been desperate, wonderful years until Michael was established. And finally the family had acknowledged her, after the twins were born.
She straightened against the cushions and breathed in deeply. There must be no schism this time. If her daughter was determined to go to this man she must accept it, and be there for Jess if he let her down.
‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘Jess wants the same. She expects a lifetime of being with you.’ It was hard to say it, but she must: ‘I shall not stand in her way.’
‘But you are disappointed.’
It struck her suddenly then, like a physical blow, and she started up, hardly aware he’d spoken. ‘But where is she? What can we do to find out …’ She discovered his hand was gripping her own and now her whole body was shaking. It was shameful to be so feeble.
‘I will look after you,’ he said fervently. ‘As I should have done for her. I blame myself.’
‘It’s not your fault. I wanted her to go for that weekend too.’
‘No. You see, it is perhaps because of me that she was taken.’
‘What do you mean – taken?’
For a moment she was paralyzed with fear, then, ‘Do you mean kidnapped? For ransom?’
‘I should have protected her. Because I am wealthy there is always that danger …’
Kate threw back her head and howled. He tried to restrain her but she pushed him away. Money! That evil thing that had blighted her early years – either too little of it, or now too much.
‘Listen,’ he insisted. ‘That has been in my mind ever since I heard what had happened. It’s why I flew back and have been sitting here, powerless to act, waiting for the phone to ring or some message to come.’
She saw his agony exposed now. She understood why the Land Rover had followed her the day before. Someone in the gate lodge had been warned to look out for contact from the kidnappers. She knew the impotence and frustration that sent him out today to work in the garden. Any activity must be better than waiting for the blow to fall.
‘But we don’t know,’ she insisted. ‘We can’t be sure that’s what happened.’
Was it worse than having no idea where Jess was? She only knew that she wasn’t up to coping with this new thing. With Eddie so ill, there was no one to turn to.
All along she had been trying to persuade herself there could be a safe outcome of Jess’s disappearance. There’d been that terrible moment when she heard of a body found in the ashes. Then such relief that it was someone else. And behind all the anxiety the frail, remaining hope – that Jess had simply taken it into her head to walk out on everyone.
And now she faced this hideous image of the girl threatened with a gun or a knife and bundled out of the house in the hours of darkness to be taken – where? And who had got her? What kind of people were they? As Stone had said, she was brave, but if she defied them, what might they do to her?
‘We must let the police know,’ she said. ‘About you, I mean. That you and Jess …’
‘I’ve been in touch already. They’ve notified the branch that deals with things like that.’
With people like that, she thought, huddled in fright. With terrorists. She was in a different, mad world now. Where had normality gone?
‘It’s for you, Maddie,’ Gus said drily, entering the drawing-room and jerking his head in the approximate direction of the hall telephone.
His wife threw down her rumpled copy of Country Life and pushed herself to her feet. ‘I can’t think why people don’t use my mobile number,’ she grumbled. En route she walked round her stepson’s out-thrust legs as she passed the sofa. ‘Jake, for heaven’s sake don’t lounge about like that. Can’t you find something to do?’
‘Haven’t been searching actually.’ His voice was silkily derisive.
Across the empty fireplace filled with an arrangement of pink lilies and irises Sir Matthew raised his head, silently stared over his half-moon spectacles first at him, then at his father. ‘One of Madeleine’s horsy acquaintances?’
‘Claudia, actually,’ Gus told him. ‘To announce they’d eventually arrived at the coast.’
‘The vulture has landed,’ Jake murmured, smirking.
Sir Matthew’s mouth tightened to check an appreciative twist of the lips. The boy was a drain on one’s patience, but this time he had the mot juste. ‘Vulture’ was appropriate. From a rangy beauty in her twenties his sister-in-law had turned into something between a mummified Edith Sitwell and the famous portrait of the Doge of Venice. Time had been cruel to her, and she’d masochistically encouraged its depredations.
He called up her present image: scrawny neck and shoulders, stick arms, sharp beak, deeply hooded eyes, bloodless. At seventy-six he had endured ten years more wear and tear than she, but he was in better shape.
There was a time she had been Circe, Calypso, Cleopatra; all the sirens rolled into one. He had gloried in her superb, lithe body. It was as much by good fortune as good judgment that he had finally escaped her toils. He doubted he’d have survived a lifetime in her proximity. Old Carlton must be tougher than he appeared.
He settled back comfortably, congratulating himself. Joanne had suited him better, and brought clear advantages. A plain and undemanding wife, she hadn’t been clever. It was a pity the children had turned out little better. She’d been fond of hunting and travel, happy to do so alone. When she died it made little difference to the level tenor of his life.
He re-applied himself to the obituary columns of the Times, until a word Gus had used came back to tease him. His sharp features rose out of the newsprint. ‘You said “eventually”. What did you mean by that?’
‘Eh? Oh, Claudia. They had a bit of a hiccup over the journey. The old Daimler ran out of juice. It takes a lot and you must know how she’s stingy filling it, a sort of weaning process maybe. Normally they carry a spare can of four-star in the boot, and someone must have nicked it. So in the end they had to settle for unleaded. It seems to have brought on a near-terminal degenerative disease. Of the car, that is. I guess Maddie is having to endure a blow by blow account.’
Sir Matthew transferred his judgmental gaze back on to Jake who had uttered an involuntary snicker and was now looking artificially unconcerned. The boy had a thousand ways of living at others’ expense, and it seemed likely that whatever drove that old bus of Carlton’s would more than serve to fuel the boy’s rocket-from-hell machine.
‘Do you know anything about that, Jacob?’ he asked mildly.
‘Of course not, Grandfather.’
If he realized how much that word irritates me he wouldn’t assume on a relationship of any kind, the old man considered. He does himself no good.
He shook the newspaper and tapped creases out before turning a page. ‘I see old Pettigrew has finally hung up his wig,’ he remarked equably. ‘It was a race whether he would collapse in media re or in a home for the mentally deranged. Only sixty-four; he should have been good for another twenty years.’
He darted a glance at the other two and maliciously hoped he’d plunged them into despair over the likelihood of his own longevity.
Maddie came back fussing over domestic shortcomings. Her aunt’s complaints had obviously stirred her to reply in kind. The Barkers had been given a week’s leave, which meant she was without chauffeur and cook. Since Matthew had expected the
m to stay on longer at Larchmoor Place, Mrs B hadn’t left enough ready prepared in the refrigerator to last them all until she was back. The freezer cabinet appeared to be stacked with unrecognizable packages which were beyond Maddie’s sparse catering experience. There was no alternative to traipsing into Windsor for dinner.
This meant she’d have to drive and forgo the wine, since Gus surely wouldn’t, and Jake would insist on riding the Kawasaki. Claudia, enduring this recitation of minor hardships had been insufficiently sympathetic. It had rattled Maddie and sent the blood rushing up her neck to stain her face.
Sir Matthew rose and selected a cigarette from the box on the coffee table. As he straightened he fixed Jake with a grim, judgmental stare. ‘Now that the telephone has come free, you’d better ring back and express your abject apologies to Claudia for her disasters of the journey.’
‘Why? What’s it to do with Jake?’ Maddie shrilled, momentarily defensive.
‘Explain, Jacob.’
‘What the hell! It’s no big deal. I’d run a bit low on gas is all. So I borrowed theirs.’ He knew it was pointless trying to deny a charge when the old freak homed in on a potential petty crime. He shrugged, turning his too-charming, Hugh Grant smile on his stepmother, but she was already too ruffled to be receptive.
‘Right then. Do that. I’m most displeased, Jake.’
Bloody hell, he groaned inside. But she was his meal ticket. If it wasn’t one old harpy it was the other. Now he’d have to cringe to Claudia who was totally charm-proofed. He’d need to hold the phone at arm’s length. Or lay it down while he dropped his pants and mooned.
He sucked in his cheeks, breathed ‘Sorry, Stepmama,’ in Maddie’s direction and tossed his head so that the wayward lock of hair fell further over his eyes.