by P. R. Black
‘You had Jed’s tea?’ Sir Oliver grimaced. ‘Good Lord, that’d take the enamel off your teeth. I was going to get him to brew a vat of it for me – it’d clean those front steps a treat. Probably make copper pennies all shiny again. Well, I’ll get you something else, then?’
‘Just a glass of water.’
‘Still? Sparkling? Or soda water, with a little something extra in it?’
She smiled. ‘Just still is good for me, thanks, and out of the tap.’
‘Your wish, my command. Follow me, we’ll go to the cocktail room. The cocktail room’s cool.’
12
Some idiot – it might have been Neb – made that stupid comment about how, if Cinderella’s shoes fit perfectly for the ball, then why did she leave one behind? It’s cretinous when memes become common currency. Bad enough seeing them online. This actually seemed to stump him. Probably he just wanted to start a conversation with the group. He struggles a bit without these starters for ten. So, he got quite upset when I laughed. I told him straight out – nothing happened in that story that Cinderella didn’t want to happen.
From the diary of Stephanie Healey
‘I should thank you, really,’ Sir Oliver said. ‘It gets me out of the game for a little bit, probably just as well. I have this recurring fantasy I’m a working man, which I can’t seem to shake. The site foreman will be delighted to see the back of me.’
They were sat in an almost comically ornate bar-room, filled with more classical sculptures in recessed alcoves. Marble was all around them – black, white, or a threaded composite of both colours. It was ostentatiously expensive, but Georgia wasn’t sure she liked it. She didn’t want to say it was vulgar, but it had the feel of a nightclub she would have felt uncomfortable in.
‘You’ve got a lot of work going on outside. I think Susan said something about a wedding?’
‘Oh – private party. Just a gathering we have every year, round about this time. I’ve expanded it a bit this year, though. To give you a bit of a scoop – I’m using it as a testing ground for holding weddings and other events here. We’ve had a few people married on the grounds – I was one of them, a good forty years ago now – but I’m having the place opened out a bit. We shouldn’t really keep the place to ourselves, is the way I look at it. Funny, if you’d asked me the same question when I was twenty-five, I’d have told you to get on your bike. I’ve mellowed, as I’ve got older.’
Georgia had difficulty in finding the time to break into Sir Oliver’s flow of speech. He was quite mesmerising with it, although she imagined that he’d become tedious after a few drinks. ‘It’s quite a place. I was saying that I’d never realised it was up here.’
‘Oh, I know – that’s what I mean. My old man, he turned away BBC crews and all sorts. I think there was talk of one of those TV adaptations being filmed here at one point – Brideshead, or something Jane Austen-y. Charles Dickens, you know the drill. I wish he’d said yes! They used a house just like this one for one of the Batman movies. You know, the house he hangs out in when he’s not in the Batcave. Anyway, before I say too much…’ He cocked his head at her and raised an eyebrow.
Georgia wondered if she’d missed something; if she should have paid closer attention. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Uh… what can I do for you?’
‘Well, I just wanted to pass on my thanks. I understand there was another awareness campaign raised in the past six months. It appeared in all the national papers, advertising too – which wouldn’t have been cheap. Whenever I tried to find out who had funded that, I was told not to worry about it. So it doesn’t take too much deduction to work out who was behind all that. Given that I don’t know too many people with Bruce Wayne levels of wealth.’
Here Sir Oliver grew sober, even serious. ‘Ah no, don’t mention that. It was the least I could do. And I’ll do it again, next year. And the year after that. Until we get an answer for you.’
‘You’re very kind. These things can make a difference.’
‘I hope so. You know, when I heard the news that Stephanie had gone missing… I don’t want to say anything that upsets you, or make any claim to being close to what you’re going through… but I took it personally. You know that way? It happened on the university my family built up. The one I’m in charge of. On my patch. That sort of thing doesn’t happen on my patch, you understand? I can’t have it.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘A disappearance. A mystery. Now I’m not saying there was foul play; there’s no evidence of that. I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but there is a chance someone abducted her, and that idea…’ His voice seemed to boil, as he struggled to sum up his outrage. ‘Well. I just can’t have that, as I say. Students are students, young people are young people. People get beaten up, and there have been one or two murders. But this is something else. This is in the realms of the sinister. It’s a feeling I have. But I’ll say this – we’ll find out what happened to Stephanie. This is my guarantee.’
‘You’re a good man,’ Georgia said simply. There it was, that choking feeling again. She swallowed it.
‘Take it easy, lass,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine the strain… I can’t imagine the sense of shock and loss. I’ve got kids of my own, and it’s still beyond what you’ve experienced. But you need some down time occasionally. How’s work going?’
‘Ah, it’s fine, all good. Very busy.’
He nodded. ‘You’re down on holiday, I take it?’
‘Just a few days.’
‘You know, it hadn’t escaped me that the anniversary is coming up. There’s a concert being held tomorrow night, did you know that?’
‘I did – the Megiddos are playing. I must confess I’d never heard their records, but they seem to be a big thing these days.’
Sir Oliver snorted into his tea. ‘Yeah – believe it or not, I hadn’t heard of them either, until I had the CD in my hand. But I am old hat beyond old hat. There’s things out there now, the internet, streaming, whatever… I’ve no idea what’s going on. You don’t hear the charts any more. You get locked out of it. It’s technological as well as cultural, I find. At first you don’t understand the appeal of certain things, then you’re totally shut out of it. That’s the thing about getting old, isn’t it? The years roll by and you stay stuck. My wife’s barely gotten over Elvis dying.’
‘To be fair, it was a blow for everyone.’
He giggled again, and gestured around the room. ‘It’s a shame this isn’t a proper pub, you know? I was thinking about putting in a fire, making this room a bit cosier… A cocktail lounge is all very well, but it’s not homely, you know? Cool, warm, polar opposites. I’d love to get a proper pub going in here. Maybe once we expand it, that’s just what I’ll do.’
‘It’s stylish, all the same. I could see it as a nightclub.’
‘Yeah – it’s the kind of place I could see myself getting thrown out of, as a twenty-one-year-old. Or not being allowed in, in the first place. Probably be the first landlord to get barred from his own boozer, if I opened it out. So…’ He made that gesture again, quizzical, ironic, and Georgia bit down on her rising irritation.
‘So…?’
‘That was all you came here for? Just to say thank you?’
‘Well. That, and to ask if there had been any updates whatsoever.’
‘I’m sure you’d have heard before I did. Nothing I can report, alas.’
‘I had a chat with Jed, earlier on. He spoke about the night Stephanie went missing.’
‘Remember it well. A Friday in March. They say that about March, don’t they? Arrives like a lion, leaves like a lamb? Well it was a bloody tyrannosaurus that night, never mind a lion. Uprooted a line of trees on the west side – took down some guttering. You see that creek running along the side of the house, about two hundred yards away? Well it was more of a tributary at the time, and it was close to bursting its banks. Part of the fencing had already been washed out. Jed helped co-ordinate a dig. Hi
m and some of the lads working on the farm dredged it out. Had a digger on site, and Jed dredged the banks. Dangerous – I didn’t want him to take the responsibility. I could see the whole lot ending up being swept away, digger, Jed, the lot, like a kid’s toy. He wouldn’t let me take the controls. Wisely, because I had no idea how to use them.’
‘He cleared the site?’
‘Jed, and some of the guys I had working on the house that day.’
‘Do you know much about them?’
‘Who – the boys on the house? Not a lot, just hired hands. One or two boys from Australia, as I recall. You know who does know a lot about them, though? The police. They questioned all of us, they checked the security footage, you name it. And they searched through every single nook, cranny, drawer, attic, crawlspace, basement, barn, shed, trapdoor and even secret Scooby Doo passages that exist in this house, just after Stephanie disappeared.’ He smiled again, not unkindly. ‘I’m gathering that’s why you’re here, really? To ask a few questions?’
Georgia decided to let her mask slip, and gave a tired smile. ‘I’m not exactly Columbo, am I?’
He laughed, delighted. ‘Georgia, I’m only surprised that it’s taken you so long to come up here. I’d want to know everything about this case, if it was me. I wouldn’t blame you for that, at all. Feel free – ask me anything. I’ll put your mind at rest, if I can.’
‘OK. This dredging work… is it possible that it might have caused something further downstream? Like a landslide?’
‘No – it was close to flooding up here, but the land does slope down and it emptied out into the river eventually. There was a bit of localised flooding, but nothing spectacular. The ghyll was full that night, and treacherous – but for my money, too treacherous. If Stephanie had decided to go up there, for whatever reason, then it would have been too dodgy underfoot to go on. Even if she was really determined, I don’t think Stephanie would have gotten there, coming up the hill from the A-road. Different if she had been coming from the top of the hill, up here, and making her way down the path. But we know that this definitely didn’t happen. Just a theory of mine – a way of saying that she didn’t end up in the ghyll, like the police reckon.’
Georgia almost gave a start. She said: ‘You’ve been making your own inquiries.’
‘Of course. After the police had been through everything – and they did go through everything, sniffer dogs, you name it – I went through everything, too. Inside and out. Front and back, and both sides. It’s a big old remote estate, that’s for sure. There are plenty of hiding places. But I can tell you, and the police can tell you, that whatever happened to Stephanie, it didn’t happen to her on this estate, or my house. And the staff were all here, when she disappeared. I know exactly who was here that night, and what they were doing. Jed and those boys were out all night, and the serving staff helped out at home. I know, because I was there with them.’
‘This is something I’m told all the time, everyone I speak to. Whenever I think there’s a place to look, or a piece of information someone missed… a door closes. I’m on the wrong track. I’ve had to get used to the idea that I might never know. You read about these people in the papers, or you see them on TV. The people who never find out what happened to their loved ones. And I’ve got to accept that this could be me, now.’
‘And your husband,’ Sir Oliver said gently.
‘Yes, of course,’ she snapped.
He sat back a moment, and took a swig from his mug of coffee. ‘You know, you can take a look around, if you like.’
‘God… I don’t have that much time off!’
‘I’m serious.’ His tone was hard to read, though. Georgia remembered this was his house. She remembered that he appeared every year on lists she went out of her way not to read in the Sunday Times. Georgia remembered her manners.
‘It won’t be necessary. I… I’ll tell you the truth. I’m desperate.’ Her face crumpled. She let it happen. It was rare for her not to fight it.
‘Oh, lass.’ He was out of his seat, and around the black and silver-threaded marble table. He took her by the shoulder, and she leaned into his chest, her face in her hands. ‘Oh, lass. This world. What has this world done to you? This world,’ he repeated.
After a few moments she fished in her bag for a tissue. The white and grey faces of the gods and heroes seemed insolent, rather than indifferent. She suddenly didn’t want to be here, in this gigantic doll’s house, with this well-meaning jack-in-the-box. ‘I’m sorry. Coming back here was a bigger struggle than I’d expected. I have my own memories of Ferngate, and I thought they’d be foremost in my mind. But in every corner, I see somewhere Stephanie might have been. A place she might have had fun, or been happy. Or even somewhere she wasn’t happy. A room she might have studied in. Somewhere she might have worried about her exams. She never sat her end-of-term exams, you know.’
‘I know, lass.’ Finally, he let her go, and moved back to his seat. She didn’t feel condescended to. She wondered where he had gotten the accent from. There was talk of him having worked on building projects since he left university, sometimes working on the site in actual construction instead of in the planning – an engineering graduate, something of an oddity in the Chessington family, who had a long male lineage of art students, failed poets, and finally ‘patrons of the arts’.
‘Look, I’m going to tell you something,’ Sir Oliver said. ‘I trust the police. I know DI Hurlford – he’s in charge of the investigation, and he’s thorough as you like. I knew his dad – good man, local boy. He’s left no stone unturned. And yet…’ He gestured with empty hands. ‘No results. There’s one stone that hasn’t been left unturned. So, I’ve decided to put a private detective on the case.’
Georgia said nothing. Sir Oliver hesitated; he’d expected her to say, or do something else.
‘Well, it’s just an idea. Someone on a full-time payroll, exploring one or two theories. Maybe asking a few questions. Doing what you’re doing here, in fact.’
Georgia drank the last of her water, then said: ‘I’ve already hired a private detective, Sir Oliver. It cleared out a fair chunk of my savings. He was very expensive. He was also very thorough. You know what he concluded?’
He shook his head.
‘That Stephanie most likely killed herself by jumping in St Anthony’s Ghyll. That the water was so strong that it propelled her right through the system, all the way into the river, and possibly even out to sea.’
‘Well.’ He seemed stumped. ‘That’s the common theory.’
‘And I suspect that like me, you don’t quite believe it.’
‘No. And not just me. Jed – he knows the ghyll like no one else. He could write a book about the land over there. What he says in these woods, goes, and I take Jed’s word over everyone’s. He doesn’t believe she ended up in the ghyll, either. If she did, it wasn’t by her own design. They say she walked through the woods a fair bit, took hiking trips on her own… but at that time, in the dark, with that storm? I’m not buying it.’
‘No,’ Georgia admitted. ‘Me neither.’
‘Think about it,’ he said, finishing his coffee. ‘What I said, about the private detective. A different one could turn up a different conclusion. And it’d be all on me. It’s my mystery, too. This was one of my own, on my patch. I’m not having it.’
She nodded. She was touched.
‘Listen – you can stay for lunch, if you like. It’s going to be the old ancestral classic, made by my own fair hands. Know what it is?’
She shook her head.
‘Le fromage et jambon toastie. With the special ingredient, Henderson’s Relish. What do you say?’
She laughed. She was tempted. Her mouth had watered – and there were few foods that held much attraction for Georgia. ‘I’m afraid I can’t, Sir Oliver. I’d best be heading back into town. I need to get ready for the show – and I’m already running behind schedule, today.’
‘How about a little bit of pickled onion
in there? Not everyone’s favourite filling, I’ll give you that, but it adds that touch of zing.’
‘No, that’s very kind. Another day I’d like to.’
‘Well, I’m taken up with this bloody party over the next couple of days. I can’t make it to the concert tonight, but the hoi polloi are going, such as they are in Ferngate. If you’re still in town next week, I could fit you in then? Proper lunch, my treat. Champagne. And a taxi ride home. Speaking of which – I’ll get someone to drop you off in town. Think Jed’s off doing what… well, whatever Jed does. Man of mystery.’
Georgia cut him off, before he could find another tangent. ‘You’ve been very kind in giving me your time, so far. I should be back home by the weekend, but if I’m in town I’ll give you a call. You have a number…?’
‘Ah – Susan does the phone stuff. And lots of other things to do with websites and Twitter and God knows what. She’ll sort you out – call her, I’ll consider my diary, and then she will tell me precisely what to do, and when to do it. Every household needs a Susan.’
‘And thank you for your other kind offer. If you do decide to hire a private investigator, I’d be grateful if you could share any new information you find.’
‘Yep – you and the police. That’s for sure.’ His eyes grew flinty all of a sudden. The laugh lines around his eyes suddenly dilated, along with his pupils. ‘I’ll sort this out for you, I promise.’
He got off his seat to greet her as she rose – then grimaced.
‘Everything all right?
‘Truth be told, it’s my back. Buggered it a few weeks back.’
‘Let me have a look.’
‘Bit frank, Mrs Healey, isn’t it?’
‘It’s Dr Healey. You forget – I’m a GP. What happened – did you feel it go?’
‘Kind of… But the pain didn’t really come in till later.’ Sir Oliver turned, and she put her hands on the small of his back.
‘How about here?’
‘Ouch! Yep. I was on a ladder, you know, checking out the scaffolding on the tent outside. It was out of nothing – I twisted to look at something and there was that sort of grating feeling. Didn’t realise I’d popped anything that badly until I got out of bed the next morning.’