Brightwood

by Tania Unsworth

  She made her way through the Marble Hall to have another look at the front door. The wood was so thick, she thought it would take a battering ram to get it open.

  Of course, a house the size of Brightwood Hall had more than two entrances. But Daisy didn’t think she needed to worry too much about the others. One was in the ballroom and had been covered up behind furniture for as long as she could remember. Another led out from the library onto a patio with a view of the lake. You could turn the handle on the inside, but you couldn’t push it open because it was blocked on the outside by a pile of bricks and old masonry that had been left over from a long-­ago building project. There was a third door located in the back of the house, in the old utilities room. But it was made of some kind of metal—steel perhaps. The metal had rusted and jammed the lock. Daisy had tried opening it once and it hadn’t given an inch.

  There wasn’t any way that Gritting could get into the house without a huge effort. Daisy went back upstairs.

  “You forgot something!” Little Charles piped up as she walked past.

  He stared at her from his nook, his eyes bright with triumph.

  “What?”

  “You locked everything up so he can’t get in,” Little Charles said. “How are you going to get out?”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re an annoying little boy?” Daisy said.

  “They wouldn’t dare. They’d be flogged.”

  “The olden days sound horrible,” Daisy said.

  “Oh no,” Little Charles corrected her, “they were great.”

  Daisy went back to her bedroom. Little Charles was right; she needed a secret way to get in and out of the house. After a few moments of thought, she went downstairs again to the utilities room and hunted among the old tools and laundry baskets until she found a long length of rope.

  Frank might have an impressive survival bag, but Brightwood Hall was even better. It contained everything a person might ever need.

  She returned to her bedroom and opened the window that faced the western side. Brightwood Hall was constructed a little like a cake, or rather several cakes, with each floor forming a new layer and a series of flat roofs and balconies connecting one part of the house with another. Directly below her window was one such area of rooftop; flat and wide, it led along the side of the building and around to the front. It was edged with a stone parapet decorated with ornamental urns.

  Daisy climbed out her window, and then tied the length of rope to the parapet. It didn’t reach all the way down to the ground, although a stretch of ivy growing on the wall covered the rest of the distance. She gave the rope a tug to make sure it was secure. As a way in and out of the house it would do nicely.

  Daisy walked around the side of the roof to the front of the building. It was sheltered from the breeze up there, and the sun felt warm on her face. She stood at the edge, staring out at the view. She could see so far. The broad expanse of lawn spread before her, divided by the driveway. To the left was the topiary, with True in the center like a green flag. And far beyond, behind the woodland and the wall, she could see the road. She had never noticed how it curved like that, nor that just before it did so, there was a signpost and another road . . .

  She turned to look at Brightwood Hall rising at her back. From this vantage point, the walls seemed almost frighteningly close. Fast moving clouds were traveling across the sky, making the towers and turrets and ornate chimneys appear to shift and tilt towards her. Daisy reached out a hand to steady herself against one of the stone urns on the parapet. She looked down.

  Gritting was standing directly below her. She could see the skin of his head through his thin hair. He must have grown tired of trimming the plants, although the shears still dangled from his hand, their blades almost long enough to reach the ground.

  Daisy shrank back behind the urn, immediately aware of two things. The first was that despite Frank’s warnings and the disturbing puzzle of the watch, she had still been considering showing Gritting around the place. The second was the sudden realization that she absolutely would not do that. Seeing Gritting below, so still, so clearly waiting for her, all her fears had returned.

  Gritting looked up and saw her peering around the side of the urn.

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “Nothing,” Daisy said.

  He swung the shears idly from one hand to the other, his eyes still fixed on her. “Are you ready for the tour?”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Daisy said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to,” she said. She forced herself to look him in the eyes. “I want you to go away.”

  Gritting made a face and spread his arms.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he said in a kindly tone.

  “Why not?”

  Daisy didn’t like the way he smiled, his eyes squinting against the light.

  “Because I have to take care of you,” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  Daisy was glad now that she had already locked up the house. What else had Frank told her to do? Find a good spot for a base camp and get provisions. Daisy thought her bedroom would make a good base camp. She could exit the house through the window and use the rope to get down to the ground. She went to the basement and filled a bag with tins of food, packages of cookies, bottled water, and other necessities, and stashed it under her bed along with a can opener, binoculars, a flashlight, and several extra batteries.

  She sat on the floor for a long time, with her back up against the bed, thinking about what she should do next. While she thought, she practiced her knife throwing. A stain on the baseboard of the opposite wall provided a target, although she had to throw the knife at least twenty times before she finally hit it.

  Frank had suggested she look for relics. Things that might give her more information about James Gritting. The watch was a relic. Perhaps there were more like it among the thousands of Day Boxes.

  The Portrait Gallery was growing shadowy. As Daisy approached the General, she turned her head sharply away. Over the past few days, her fear of him had blossomed into something closer to terror. Perhaps it was because if she looked at the General, she felt sure he would start to talk.

  You’re going to die! Every last one of you! he would say, and then his mouth would curve into a terrible grin.

  Daisy cupped her hand to shield her face from the General’s gaze and hurried past.

  Halfway down the stairs, she heard a clinking noise and paused, her eyes sweeping over the Marble Hall. It was only Tar. He was scuttling precariously along the stretch of chain that ran from the pulley wheel above the chandelier all the way to the far side of the hall. He often took this shortcut, although Daisy had told him a hundred times that it was too dangerous. Tar never listened. Daisy held her breath until she saw him safely reach the end of the chain and disappear from view.

  She continued downstairs and entered the dark maze of the shelving units. It smelled of old paper and dust in there, and something else: the faint lingering scent of her mother’s perfume. Daisy gazed around her at the ranks of Day Boxes, each with its date written in black ink on the side.

  She wondered where she should start. She opened the box closest to her. It was dated a little over a year ago. Inside there was a pink shirt—clean and folded—that Daisy had grown out of, a peacock tail feather, a tiny tin that used to hold peppermints, and a book. Whenever Daisy’s mum finished reading a book, she always placed it in the box for that day. That was why there were so many gaps in the library shelves.

  Daisy pushed the box back and opened another one: a pencil sketch of a bowl of fruit, an essay Daisy had written about a king called Henry, a beaded necklace, a newspaper clipping, a purple ribbon . . .

  Everything held a memory, Daisy’s mum had told her. Now, staring at these items, Daisy didn’t understand how this could be true. The Day Boxes didn’t hold anything except random objects.

  She looked through five or six more. There was nothing inter
esting in any of them.

  You couldn’t put memories into boxes. It was impossible. Memories existed only in your head.

  It was yet another thing that she’d always known, but never really thought about. Not until Gritting had arrived. He had made her question everything. And the more she tried to dismiss what he had said, or wish his words away, the louder they sounded in her head.

  You mean you’ve never been out?

  All this stuff piled up . . .

  Crazy.

  Daisy shook her head and turned away. It might be a better idea to look for relics in a different area of the maze. Perhaps towards the center, where the boxes were older and the dates on them written in a childish hand. She crept deeper through the gloom until the shelves opened into the clearing below the chandelier.

  Her mum had made these Day Boxes when she was a kid. Daisy walked along slowly, examining them. She reached up on tiptoe and pulled one from a shelf above her head. It was dated twenty-­five years ago. Daisy did the math in her head. Her mum would have been just ten years old. Nearly the same age as Daisy was now.

  She opened the lid and reached inside.

  A skipping rope, a pinecone, the label from a jar of jam, an envelope filled with pencil shavings, a paperback copy of Treasure Island with its pages curling up.

  It gave Daisy a strange feeling to think of her mum as a kid. Daisy knew about the past because she studied history. But this felt different from learning about kings and queens, Romans and Egyptians. They were more like stories than anything else. This was real.

  She replaced the items carefully in the box and reached for another.

  A bottle of glittery blue nail polish, an eraser in the shape of a panda, a comb, and an envelope addressed to her mum.

  Daisy recognized the handwriting. It was the same as on the envelope that held the watch: the dots above the i’s and the j’s made too large and written with the pen pressed hard against the paper. Inside the envelope was a piece of paper. Daisy unfolded it.

  Dusk had fallen while she had been searching. It was now too dark in the maze to read without a light. Daisy reached in her pocket for her flashlight, her hand shaking slightly, making the bright halo dance and jerk over the paper.

  There was no doubt about it. This was definitely what Frank would call a relic. Daisy read:

  Dear Caroline,

  You are ten now and may not remember me. I used to visit Brightwood Hall every single summer.

  I’m your cousin James.

  Actually, I’m the only real relative you still have, apart from your grandmother. Which makes what I’m about to tell you even more wrong and unfair.

  The words wrong and unfair had been underlined several times.

  Your grandmother hasn’t let me visit since the accident. First she wouldn’t return my phone calls, and then she told me to my face I wasn’t welcome. She never liked me—that’s the truth.

  But coming to Brightwood was the best part of my whole life. I lived in a crummy little house and I went to a crummy little school, and the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I was related to the great Fitzjohn family and would soon be back.

  I knew Brightwood was where I really belonged.

  My mother tells me I’m an adult now and should just let it go. She doesn’t understand. Brightwood Hall is mine too! You understand, don’t you, Caroline? If you tell your grandmother you want me to visit, she’ll say okay. She does whatever you want, doesn’t she? SO TELL HER!

  I’m relying on you. Remember that.

  James

  DAY FIVE

  NINETEEN

  Daisy slept badly and awoke shivering in the middle of the night, even though she was under several blankets. She got up and opened a tin of peaches from her store under the bed and ate them staring out at the dark lake. Wind agitated the surface of the water and made the trees around it sway. The sky was no longer clear. She could see the huge shadows of clouds rushing to smother the moon. But there was enough light to glimpse the outline of the boathouse and the rowboat tied up in front of it.

  Gritting was there for another night. There must have been plenty of food and other provisions in the bags he had taken from his car. Frank was right—he had come prepared.

  When dawn finally arrived, Daisy went downstairs. Tar scurried past her down the corridor that led to the kitchen.

  “How are you feeling today?” she asked him.

  “Same as I always do,” Tar said. “Hungry.”

  “You mustn’t eat so much,” Daisy scolded. “Look what happened to you the other day! You got sick from eating too much, didn’t you?”

  Tar was silent.

  “Well, didn’t you?”

  “Something, something, something,” Tar said.

  Daisy was about to insist that he give her a proper answer, when she was interrupted by a sudden shrieking of birds. She went to the window to see what had alarmed them. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. The shrieking grew louder: a cacophony of warning cries and whistles, pierced by the harsh screams of peacocks.

  Daisy scrambled back down the corridor and raced across the top of the shelving in the Marble Hall. Once upstairs, she went into her grandfather’s old study and crawled through the furniture until she got to the window, where she could see the entire front of the estate.

  Gritting was on the lawn. He was a hundred yards away, walking towards the house. Two rabbits dangled limply from his belt.

  Daisy cried out and covered her mouth with her hand.

  Her rabbits!

  They were surely dead. Their heads bounced against Gritting’s leg as he walked, and even from this distance, Daisy could see they were covered in blood. He must have set traps in the long grass near their warren.

  Maybe they were the very same rabbits she had fed by hand. She had made them trusting, easy to catch. Gritting may have set the traps, but it was still her fault.

  Daisy turned and crawled frantically back the way she had come. She was almost at the door to her grandfather’s study when she saw Frank’s muddy boots planted firmly among the forest of chair legs. Daisy looked up.

  “Where are you going?” Frank asked.

  “He’s killing the animals!” Daisy cried. “I have to stop him!”

  “How do you think you’re going to do that?”

  Daisy scrambled to her feet. She expected Frank to be right there in front of her. But the girl had vanished. Daisy whirled around. Frank was now standing on top of her grandfather’s desk with one foot on the monkey vase as if it were a football that she was about to send hurtling into the air.

  “I told you he was a rival explorer,” she was saying in her usual bossy tone of voice. “That’s what explorers always do. They arrive in a place and start killing animals. Then they make the heads into trophies and stick them on the walls of their homes to impress their guests.”

  Daisy didn’t think the heads of her poor rabbits would impress anyone, but she had given up trying to argue with Frank.

  “I have to stop him,” she repeated.

  “What you have to do is use your head.”

  “What if he kills more rabbits? Or my lovely peacocks? He called them ‘vermin.’ He said something had to be done about them.”

  Daisy’s voice trembled. She held her breath, struggling against tears. She didn’t want Frank to see her cry again.

  “Look,” Frank said in a kinder tone. “You’ve improved your knife-­throwing skills, I’ll give you that. But you’re still missing more times than you hit. If it came to a fight, you wouldn’t have a chance against that fellow. Better to lie low and make a plan. It’s got to be a good one because it’s time for you to get real. It’s not like—”

  Daisy had stopped listening to her. The sheer nerve of Frank telling her to “get real” pushed everything else out of her mind for a moment or two.

  “How’s the relic hunting by the way?” Frank asked. She had removed her foot from the monkey vase and now sat on the edge of the desk,
her legs dangling.

  Daisy rummaged in her pocket for the letter she had found. “There’s this,” she said, holding it up so Frank could see it over the top of the furniture.

  “That’s a relic all right,” Frank said, squinting at the words. “Hard to read though. Ancient Greek if I’m not mistaken.”

  Daisy bit her lip in irritation. “I can read it just fine!”

  “I’m impressed,” Frank said.

  “I can read it because it’s in English! It’s a letter written to my mum when she was about my age,” Daisy said. “I found something else too.” She reached into her pocket again and pulled out a newspaper clipping, folded several times. “I saw this in a different, much more recent box, just before I found the letter to my mum. I noticed it had handwriting on it, although I didn’t pay it any attention at the time. After I read the letter, I went back and had another look at it.”

  The newspaper clipping was short, with the headline MISSING BUSINESSMAN FOUND IN RAVINE.

  A single paragraph followed. It was about a man who lived in a city called Brisbane. He had died falling off a cliff. He had owned several hotels, but he had been accused of something called fraudulent business practices. According to the writer of the newspaper article, this made some people think that perhaps he had killed himself.

  Daisy had no idea what any of this meant, or even where Brisbane was located. But there were two words neatly penned in the space at the bottom of the clipping, and Daisy recognized the handwriting: Accidents happen!

  “Why would James Gritting have written that on a bit of newspaper?” Daisy asked Frank. “And why would my mum have put it into a Day Box?”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Can I be perfectly honest?”

  Daisy nodded.

  “I have absolutely no idea,” Frank said.

  TWENTY

  Daisy spent the rest of the morning in her bedroom, lying low, as Frank had advised. Every so often, she went over to the window to see if Gritting had taken the rowboat back across the lake to the boathouse. But it remained tied up at the nearby jetty. Which meant he was probably still somewhere on the main grounds.