Dearest Enemy

by Alexandra Sellers

  Dearest Enemy

  Alexandra Sellers

  For my mother, Mildred Joy Quincey Lewis Sellers, with love.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 1

  The village sat at the meeting point of a river and its tributary, clustered beside the bridge that gave it its name, Pontdewi. The main road continued over the bridge on its journey towards the sea ten miles away. Elain took the turning, the only one in the village, onto a narrow side road that led south, following the smaller river.

  She was suddenly in another world—climbing the side of an ancient, mossy river gorge overhung with beech and oak. Below her on the right, the water chattered and sang on its way over the rocks and between the trees. On the left, tiny grass-carpeted, stone-fenced fields—green dotted with the white of sheep, and sprinkled with trees—climbed towards the forest. On that side, they were the invader plantation forests, the unnaturally regular ranks of conifers dark under the misty sky, but on the right, climbing the hill from the river, were ancient oak and ash and beech, the trees native to the country. Soon the conifer plantations disappeared, and the deciduous trees closed in, so that she was driving through a wonderland of green.

  The forest, with its arched branches meeting in a canopy close above the road, and the subdued light filtering through, suddenly seemed timeless to her, as though Arthur and his knights might as easily come riding through the trees as another car down the narrow, precipitous road towards her. Perhaps she would paint that, she thought as she drove—a small red car on the road, oblivious of the ghosts of medieval knights among the trees...Arthur Pendragon’s standard flying above....

  She almost missed the turning, a dirt track closed by a gate that was marked with a small sign, Cas Carreg. Beneath, there was another sign reading The White Lady Hotel, and underneath, Y Ddynes Wen. This track led down to the narrow river and across it over an ancient stone bridge, shrouded in mist. Then she was climbing again, and suddenly the forest fell away on her left and she was on a ridge overlooking a lushly beautiful valley. Below her, white sheep and black cows grazed on green pastures, and stone-fenced fields and farmhouses sprinkled the valley floor. Beyond were shadowy heather-covered hills, their tops shrouded in mist.

  Enchanted, Elain slowed to a crawl, her eyes half on the track, half on the breathtakingly serene vista below and beyond. On the other side of the car, the ancient forest thinned and gave way to thick green grass and moss-covered stones, the road turned away from the ridge, and then, above her on the hillside, she saw the house.

  It was solidly built of grey stone and mortar, with several high square chimneys that looked like turrets. Two wings ran at right angles to each other, one long and low and the other higher and square. It stood over the valley like a sentinel. Behind it, farther up the hillside, she could just see through the sprinkling of trees what looked like a ruin from an earlier period; off to the left there were outbuildings.

  Covered with thick ivy that glistened almost black in the mist, the house looked ancient, imposing and sheltering. There was another gate across the road, that had to be opened and closed again behind her. Before driving on, she stood for a moment in the soft mist, simply accepting the peace of the place. There was no sound except the distant bleating of a sheep, and the wind rustling the branches of the trees. Above the ruins, a black horse and rider galloped across the brow of the hill.

  In a century gone by, the farmers must have come up from the valley floor for protection at the now-ruined fortress whenever attack threatened.... She almost saw them, dragging precious possessions, scrabbling up the hill—women with their skirts tucked up, their muscular legs mud-streaked, a red scarf around a pair of shoulders...crying children, a terrified goat with its mouth open, red tongue hanging out, its belligerent feet digging in against the pressure of the rope around its throat...the fortress huge and dark on the skyline...

  * * *

  “Am I awake?” Sally had demanded plaintively. “Did you say Wales?”

  Her ash blond hair was fanned around her head in a nimbus of tousled, broken rays, and she sat blinking at the morning sunlight that fell across the breakfast table as if it were an alien life-form. When Elain’s laughter carolled out, she winced.

  “Wales,” Elain repeated, stifling her laughter but still grinning irrepressibly.

  “Why?” Sally asked in groggy surprise. Wales might have been the other side of civilization, instead of just a few hours away to the west. “I mean—it’s very beautiful, Elain, but why so suddenly? And—” she added feelingly “—why first thing in the morning? Have you found some long-lost cousins, or something?”

  “No, I’m going for Raymond.” Elain tossed her red hair back and poured the coffee. She couldn’t stop smiling. Unlike her actress roommate, Elain liked mornings. When Sally was between acting jobs—or “resting” as it was called in London—she worked in a nightclub. Elain’s on-and-off temping work was generally nine to five.

  More than once over the eighteen months the two Canadians had been sharing this apartment since their graduation from two prestigious London arts colleges—Sally from the RADA actors’ course and Elain from the Slade School of Art—Sally had offered to get Elain a hostessing job in the club where she worked. “A night job would leave your days free for painting. Anyway, it’s better money,” Sally had always pointed out. “Come down and talk to Harry.”

  What she said was true, and at first Elain had been tempted. It would have been terrific to be able to paint all day instead of working for a living. But then she saw the costume Sally wore, and there wasn’t a chance. She never told her friend the reason, and Sally laughingly told their friends Elain was “prim.” Elain wasn’t prim, and the dress wasn’t vulgar. But it was low-cut, and she knew no nightclub manager would ever hire her to wear it. She saw no reason to submit herself to the humiliation of being told that by Harry.

  So she had slogged away at her temporary office jobs, and squeezed in what painting she could at the weekends, until one day she had stumbled into luck. Her temp firm had sent her on a two-week assignment to a private detective named Raymond Derby. He had found her so quick and intelligent that after the first week he had told her she was wasted on his typing and filing and asked if she would be interested in trying an assignment as an undercover operator.

  He had a client, a clothing manufacturer, who was losing stock to internal thieves. Would Elain be willing to go to work for the client—under cover as a temporary secretary—and try to find out what was going on?

  The pay was more than double what her agency paid her. Elain had jumped at the chance. The thieving employees hadn’t been quite so careful to hide from a temporary secretary what they hid from their bosses, and Elain had collected the evidence fairly quickly.

  That had been the first of many jobs she had done for Raymond. She had never had to work full-time again. On average now, she worked only two weeks a month, and that, combined with the artwork commissions that were, even in the middle of a recession, steadily increasing as her work became known, paid the bills. So Elain had plenty of time for painting. But this latest assignment was the best of all. Elain had been almost jumping up and down with excitement as she dragged her sleepy roommate from bed to tell her the news.

  “You�
�re always so bright in the mornings,” Sally complained mildly, staring at her cup of coffee as though uncertain whether it would save her life or poison her. “I didn’t get to bed till four.”

  Elain laughed and ran a hand through her thick hair, pulling it down over her left cheek in a characteristic gesture. Elain’s hair, a fellow artist who worked in wood had once told her, was the colour of clear-stained mahogany. With the morning sun on her head, there were red-gold highlights spangling the glowing auburn that fell around her shoulders, like diamonds in a gauzy scarf. “I’m sorry. But I had to wake you—I’m leaving in half an hour and I’m not sure how long I’ll be away. And, anyway, I had to tell you —you’ll never believe it!—I’m going under cover as an artist!”

  A slow smile transformed her roommate’s face as she took it in. “Really? What kind of a case is it—coke being smuggled in tubes of titanium white? I wish someone would send me under cover into the West End as an actress!” she added parenthetically.

  “Suspected arson,” Elain said, spreading butter thickly on her toast. “A hotel, right near Snowdonia National Park, Raymond says.” She took a large bite and then wiped a drop of melted butter from her lip and licked her finger. “I’m supposed to try to get a room in the hotel. I’ll pose as an artist wanting to paint the mountains.” She smiled again, and her deep grey eyes went distant. “And the green hillsides covered with fat, woolly sheep. And the oak forests, and the sky. And the old Celtic fortresses, and the standing stones. And the—”

  “Hello, hello!” Sally carolled, waving a hand in front of her friend’s eyes. “If the hotel was burnt down, Elain, how will you get a room there? And if it wasn’t burnt down, how can there be arson?”

  “Fair question. I asked it myself.” Elain munched for a moment, and swallowed. “Raymond says one wing of the hotel was pretty badly burnt. The rest is perfectly intact. People are still living in the wing that wasn’t damaged.” She shivered suddenly, and Sally’s eyes grew concerned.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  Elain shrugged and shook her head. “Nothing. Just someone walking over my grave.” But she had lost her appetite, and she set down her toast and reached for her coffee.

  “Did someone die in the fire? Is that it?” Sally knew that Elain had lost both her parents in a fire long ago. She also knew there was more to it than that—not from anything Elain had ever said—but Sally wasn’t the friend to push for confidences.

  Had someone died in the fire? Or been hurt? She hadn’t asked Raymond about it. How on earth could she have forgotten such a basic question? “I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask.” She looked at Sally, unaware of the look that had entered her eyes.

  Sally bit her lip. “Who do they suspect of the arson? Welsh nationalists?”

  Everybody knew that certain Welsh nationalists used arson as a form of protest, but it was usually the empty “summer homes” of the absentee English that were the targets of such attacks.

  Elain shook her head. “No, it’s insurance fraud, Raymond says. They suspect the owner himself, a guy named—” she paused and reached for the notebook she had written Raymond’s instructions in “—named Mathonwy Powys. Is that a weird name, or what? I don’t even know how to pronounce it.”

  “Emphasis on the second last syllable,” said Sally absently. She had toured Wales in Private Lives. It had been an unhappy company and the rain had never stopped.

  “Anyway, that’s why I’ve got to be right inside the hotel.”

  Sally frowned. “It sounds a bit dangerous to me, Elain. Do you think—?”

  “It’s no more dangerous than a couple of other jobs I’ve done.” Elain shrugged. But it wasn’t really true. She had never before been asked to live in with an investigation, and presumably the suspected arsonist, if he was one, had a lot to lose. And he was the owner.

  “And how are you going to get a room? Won’t you look kind of suspicious right from the start, going to a burnt-out hotel and asking to stay?”

  “Raymond says that area of Wales is really booked up in high season and maybe I can pretend I’ve tried everywhere else.”

  “Be careful how you use that one. In small places, all the hotels always know who’s got room and who doesn’t.” With months of theatrical touring under her belt, Sally knew everything about temporary accommodation in the British Isles. She put on a high-pitched, middle-aged voice with a cockney accent. “Ohh, I am surprised to ‘ear you sigh Mrs. Beadle is booked up, dear. She was sighing only yestidie that she ‘ad empty rooms this week.”

  She was a very good mimic. Elain laughed, and felt her worries lift. It was foolish to let bad memories colour the present. Of course she would be safe. “All right. I’ll think of something else.”

  “Pretend you had a reservation and it got lost in the fire,” Sally suggested. She stood up in her rumpled pyjamas, stretched and bent to kiss the top of Elain’s head. “Be careful, and remember I’ll miss you. Don’t be too long finding the evidence.”

  “I never thought of that!” declared Elain, much struck. “If I manage things right, I could be painting in Wales for months! Oh, yes, I can see it!”

  Sally laughed and wandered off in the direction of the bathroom. Elain quickly tidied away the breakfast things in the large sunny kitchen, humming as she did so. It was a lovely flat, and she would miss it as well as Sally over the next little while.

  If you craned your neck you could just see the river from one corner of the sitting-room window. Sally, the actress, had been thrilled with the idea of living in fashionable Chelsea, and Elain, the artist, loved being near London’s picturesque river. With her easel and paintbox under her arm, she could walk to the Chelsea Embankment in ten minutes, and from there half an hour’s stroll along the Thames would bring her to Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the House of Parliament.

  Now, Elain was thinking as she quickly rinsed cups and plates to the sound of Sally’s voice singing “I made my mind up back in Chelsea,” under the shower, she would have the mountains and valleys of Snowdonia National Park to paint. Her breath quickened in excitement. She did love London, but there was no doubt the air pollution and traffic and graffiti and filth on the pavements got to you after awhile. She needed some country air, and Raymond had said that the nearest village would be a mile away. In Canada, that would have meant nothing, but in this tiny, overcrowded island kingdom, a mile from the nearest village was the back of beyond.

  And there was another reason she was drawn to Wales. More than a century ago, her great-grandfather had been born there. That was almost all she knew about him, but she had always meant to find out more. Now, perhaps, she could. It made another good reason to take the job, in spite of...

  Anyway, fears ought to be faced, or so everybody said. Even those you’d lived with for twenty years.

  In the act of wiping her hands, Elain frowned and shook her head. She suddenly had the curious feeling that there was another reason for her going, one she knew nothing about.

  * * *

  The rider had changed direction and the horse was cantering down the hill towards her. Elain watched dreamily for a moment, and then realized that whoever it was was not simply riding down the hill, but was making directly for her.

  Her mouth opened slightly and a curious sense of danger and foreboding came over her as the horse drew nearer. Unconsciously she tensed, as if for battle, and she felt goose bumps lift the skin of her arms and back. Suddenly she was afraid of what would happen if she let the rider reach her.

  Elain turned abruptly and climbed back into the car, setting it in motion almost before she had the door closed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the rider turn his mount away and spur it to a gallop again.

  The track led around the house, and now she could see that one half of the long wing had no glass in the windows, and the stone was scorched black in places. The ivy, too, was brown, giving the place a curiously autumnal air, as though the death of the building were a part of the cycle of the
seasons.

  Elain parked her car in the curving drive and got out once more. The mist, wet on her lips and her face, was turning into a light rain, but still she stood and gazed at the house. The grey stone was darkened with rain and the clouds had thickened and completely blotted out the sunlight, but there were lights shining golden behind the arched mullioned windows on the ground floor, and the strongest impression was one of welcome. It looked like home.

  * * *

  “How long ago did you send in your cheque?”

  “Months ago. March or April, I think,” said Elain. This was the part of her job that she hated: starting out with lies.

  The woman, short, thickset and middle-aged, attractive in a slightly florid way, flipped through her cards again. “The thing is, if we’d got your cheque, we’d have sent you a confirmation. And if you were booked, we’d have sent you a letter to cancel. We’ve had a fire, you see.” She had a lovely lilting accent, which Elain found charming.

  “Yes, I saw traces of it. I’m awfully sorry. But it was contained, wasn’t it? Don’t you have any guests at all staying? Is it possible for me to—”

  “I’m afraid we’re all too much at sixes and sevens at the moment. We do have a few guests, but they’re all our regulars—people who have been here before and know us, or people who live here more or less permanently.”

  “But you do have room?”

  “Well, there are—”

  “Please let me stay.” She was dimly aware that her urgency wasn’t entirely on Raymond’s client’s behalf. Somehow she had already fallen in love with this beautiful place. “I promise not to be demanding if things go wrong. I want to paint Cadair Idris.” The mountain called Cadair Idris was nearby, Elain knew, and if everything hadn’t been shrouded in mist, she would probably have seen it as she drove. “I’ve been driving all day. It will take me ages to find a room anywhere else. And it’s getting late....” That, of course, had been deliberate. It would be harder to turn someone away at seven-thirty in the evening than at three or four in the afternoon. And the rain that was coming down now was an unlooked-for bonus.