No Time To Cry

by James Oswald

  I’ve been fiddling with the laptop while Kathryn’s been speaking, closing down images and randomly clicking on some of the other files in the Burntwoods folder. There’s a lot of photographs of the house, and quite a few of the women who lived there in the first three decades of the last century. They all stare at the camera with the same accusing expression, angry at a world that could treat them like objects. How little things change.

  ‘Did she give you a number?’ I ask, half distracted by the latest image, the woman I’ve come to recognise as old Mirriam Downham standing on the stone steps leading up to the front entrance of the house.

  ‘No. She didn’t want me to get in trouble. Maybe didn’t want me to know it so’s I couldn’t tell anyone.’ Kathryn’s gulp is audible down the line, her imagination working overtime even though it’s doubtful Roger DeVilliers and his cronies even know she exists. Far too plebeian for his daughter to be mixing with. Just a local girl from the village. Not even attractive to a paedophile.

  ‘So she said she’d phone you regularly. Once a week, maybe?’ I click another file open, see another photograph of sombre-looking Victorian ladies, scowling at the camera as if it’s trying to steal a piece of their souls.

  ‘Once a week. Yes. She should have called two days ago, but she didn’t. I waited, just in case. But what if something’s happened to her? What if he’s got her?’

  I don’t need to ask who he is, but I’m momentarily distracted by the next picture, showing the old house as a burnt-out ruin, a couple of fire engines parked on the grass.

  ‘What were you supposed to do if she didn’t call, Kathryn?’

  ‘There’s an email I’ve to send out to a bunch of people. Nothing attached to it, just a simple message. “Let it be”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. What should I do?’

  I don’t really remember Kathryn that well. Not since I used to bathe her and put her to bed. Her parents lived in one of the old farm cottages, but didn’t work on the estate. He was some kind of shopkeeper in Kettering, I think, and she cleaned people’s houses. It wasn’t that long ago, so they probably still do. And their only child’s somehow got herself mixed up in something she really shouldn’t. Except that she was Izzy’s friend. And Izzy’s gone missing. Gone more missing than she intended.

  I click another filename while I’m thinking, my eyes quickly scanning the image that comes up on the screen. It’s the scowling women again, this time in grainy colour. It’s not that which catches my eye though, so much as the undamaged house. Colour photography wasn’t unheard of before 1930, but it was rare and expensive. And this looks more like some of my parents’ holiday snaps from the seventies. There’s something else about it that catches my attention too. Mirriam Downham is there, which would suggest the photo was taken before she died in 1930. And yet cutting the blue sky above her head is a contrail from a modern airliner.

  I know where Izzy might have gone. But if she’s not called Kathryn when she said she would, then something’s gone badly wrong. Looks like I’m going to Dundee.

  ‘Send the emails, Kathryn. That’s what Izzy wanted you to do, so that’s what you should do.’

  35

  My instinct is to leave straight after I’ve finished speaking to Kathryn, but for once I let the sensible voice of my training hold me back. It means a night of little sleep after many more hours wading through the recovered files on Izzy’s hard drive, and a hurried conversation with Emily as she catches me leaving at first light.

  ‘Hope I’ll be back before too late, but could you look after Cat if I’m not?’ I ask her.

  ‘Och, she’s no bother, Miss Constance. I’d be more than happy to. The bairns love her too.’

  It’s only as I’m turning onto the single-track road at the end of the long drive that I wonder how it is the ‘bairns’ can have met my adopted cat, but if she’s settled here then that’s one less thing for me to worry about. It’s got to be nicer than London, that’s for sure.

  Burntwoods doesn’t show up on my phone’s satnav, so I get it to take me to the nearest village instead. I should probably have looked at an old-fashioned paper map first, to get the lie of the land; there’s plenty of them in the library at Newmore. As it is, I’m surprised to be taken through the middle of Scotland’s third city. I don’t know this part of the world at all, had always assumed Dundee was a backwater, trading on its past history. The reality is somewhat different. There’s a lot of new development going on down by the waterfront, dominated by a vast black construction of angular concrete that looks a bit like a half-constructed boat and which a large billboard informs me is going to be a Scottish outpost of the Victoria and Albert Museum. I shouldn’t be surprised at the appearance of such culture, but I am.

  Past what I assume is the city centre and out towards the east, things start to revert to more of my assumptions. Lines of grey council housing, playing fields turned yellow-brown by the unusually dry summer. Twin wind turbines loom over an industrial complex, motionless in the still air. And then before I’ve really had time to take it all in, I’m out in the countryside again.

  I have no idea what to expect. The articles on Izzy’s deleted hard drive told of a large but ruined country mansion surrounded by landscaped gardens and mature woodland, but all I can see is fields either in the process of being harvested or littered with big round bales of straw. Massive, modern sheds mark the heart of each individual farm, and to my right as I drive, the North Sea glints in the sunlight.

  Arbroath comes and goes, and with it the memory of those strange smoked fish my father would eat for breakfast on our interminable summer holidays. They were always too strong for me, burning my tongue and repeating all day. I much preferred the porridge and the wooden bowls.

  Finally the satnav turns me inland, up a winding road that crests a shallow hill before dropping down into more rugged, wooded country. Before long I’m driving slowly through the tiny village of Friockheim, whose oddly Germanic name I have no idea how to pronounce and of whose existence I was blissfully ignorant until a day ago. The tinny electronic voice tells me that I’ve reached my destination as I slow down in what must be the centre of the village. A square-towered kirk stands sentinel at the crossroads, opposite a garage that doesn’t look like it’s been open for decades. All the houses are dark-red sandstone, imposing if rather sombre, and lifeless. I’d hoped to find a village shop or maybe a pub where I could ask questions, but this place is as lifeless as my parents’ marriage.

  Moving slowly along the high street, I finally see a person standing at the next crossroads, staring at me. By the time I get there, they’ve disappeared, but then I catch sight of them a hundred yards or so down the left-hand turning. Again, they’re not moving, just staring. I drive towards them, not much else I can do right now, but as I reach the point where I was sure they were standing, they’re a hundred or so yards further on.

  ‘OK, Con. Not strange at all.’ I speed up as the figure disappears around a bend in the road and, sure enough, once I reach that point, they’re a hundred or so yards away, standing, staring.

  I follow the mysterious figure for about five minutes, at the end of which I have to admit I’m hopelessly lost. The road here is narrow, with thick forest on either side. I’ve turned down that many lanes I couldn’t even say which way is the sea and which the mountains. Then I take one final turn and come face to face with an impressive pair of gatehouses. They’re built in that same dark-red sandstone, towering four storeys over a wide entrance to a long drive that curves away into the woods. Wrought-iron gates that must weigh several tons each stand open, almost beckoning. Of the person who has somehow led me here, there is no sign.

  I’ve read this book, seen this movie, but even so I turn off the road and drive slowly through those gates, recognising them from one of Izzy’s photographs. Glancing in my mirror, I fully expect to see them swing closed behind me, but they stay resolutely open. Ahead, t
he drive climbs a gentle slope, the trees on either side receding until I pull out into a wide clearing. Shaggy Highland cattle graze in well-kept fields, leading up to a house that is considerably less a ruin than the articles I’ve read might have suggested. It looks very much like the black-and-white photograph from the 1920s, a magnificent Victorian country mansion.

  A couple of fairly new cars parked on the turning circle outside the front door reassure me that I’ve not fallen through some warp in time. The sun’s shining and everything is brightly coloured, which helps as well. When I switch off the engine and climb out of Aunt Felicity’s car, I’m greeted by a quietness that’s almost as total as Newmore’s, but underscored with a distant roar from some unseen major road. Then I hear a scrunch of booted feet on gravel and turn to see a tall woman approaching. From afar, she looks like the figure I saw at the roadside, leading me into this place. Closer up, I see that she’s tall, thin, and with long flowing grey hair. She stares at me in a manner that isn’t exactly hostile, but isn’t exactly friendly either. She’s dressed like a gardener, complete with muddy cotton gloves, but even so I recognise her from the photographs. Mirriam Downham. Strange enough that the house isn’t the ruin I’d been expecting, but stranger yet to find it still inhabited by the woman who’s supposed to have died here almost a hundred years ago.

  ‘Constance Fairchild. You’re late.’ Her voice is high and thin, but not unfriendly. I can only stare at her, mouth slightly open in astonishment. I try to say something, but nothing comes out. She stops a good ten feet away, looks me up and down as if measuring my worth by the clothes I wear, shakes her head at something. ‘Well, you’re here now. You’d better come in.’

  ‘The fire was never quite as severe as the newspapers made it out to be.’

  I’m following the woman who may or may not be Mirriam Downham down a long, wide corridor through the middle of Burntwoods. The high ceiling makes it feel more like a hall, but we’ve already crossed a much grander entrance. I’m used to large houses; I grew up in one, after all. The whole of Harston Magna Hall would fit into just one wing of this mansion.

  ‘And I suppose you just happen to look a lot like the original Mirriam Downham. A great niece, perhaps. Or great many times over, I should say.’

  She stops, facing me with a gentle smile. With her long straight hair, narrow face and weather-beaten skin she reminds me of a nursery rhyme illustration of a witch more than anything, except that her nose isn’t hooked, and doesn’t sport a mole with tufts of wiry black hair sprouting from it. Maybe the black clothes don’t help dispel the image, or maybe she doesn’t want to.

  ‘People always say I look like her.’ She cocks her head to one side as if laughing silently at some unsaid joke. ‘It probably doesn’t help that I share her name either. But come. There is much to talk about, and we were expecting you some days ago.’

  She turns away before I can say anything to that, setting off again at a swift pace. I catch up with her as she opens a door and ushers me through into a large drawing room. Full-height windows on the opposite wall open up onto a pleasant lawned garden, and beyond that neat parkland. Highland cattle seek shade under ancient oak and beech trees, the dark green of the forest smudging the distant horizon between land and sky. It’s all very idyllic, perhaps too much so.

  ‘Tea?’ My host indicates that I sit, and I see a tray already laid out with teapot, cups and a rather fine-looking cake. I hope it’s not been here for days awaiting my arrival too.

  ‘What do you mean you were expecting me earlier?’ I ask as I sit down. ‘I didn’t know I was coming here until yesterday evening.’

  Mirriam pours tea, offers milk, slices cake, everything a polite host should do except answer my question.

  ‘It’s no matter. You’re here now, and I must assume you’re looking for Isobel.’

  ‘Is she here? Can I see her?’

  ‘Why are you so interested in the girl?’

  Mirriam’s defensiveness puts my back up. ‘I’m not here to take her back to her father, if that’s what you’re thinking. Nothing could be further from the truth.’

  ‘Her father?’ Mirriam tilts her head to one side, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. Her impossibly long hair falls from a centre parting on the top of her head in long thin strands that reach to the floor now she is seated.

  ‘You do know who her father is, right? Roger DeVilliers? The billionaire hedge fund manager? Notoriously lacking in moral scruples?’

  The smile widens, then turns hard and cruel. ‘Roger DeVilliers? Of course. He has indeed spent many years abusing Isobel, and sharing her amongst his friends. Since she was too young to know it was wrong, and then with the usual threats should she tell anyone about their not-so-secret.’ She leans forward in her chair, bony hands clasped together as she stares deep into my eyes. ‘But she only wears his name. He is not Isobel’s father.’

  For a moment I think she’s going to make some odd statement about the patriarchy and how no man can claim dominion over woman. There’s something about Mirriam Downham, if that truly is her name, that reminds me of the more uncompromising feminists I knew at university. The ones who would have rid the world of all men if they could. I’m not entirely sure what put that thought in my mind, other than her physical appearance and the few scant and conflicting details I gleaned about the house before coming here. Then it occurs to me that she’s actually being quite literal.

  ‘He’s not?’ I picture Izzy’s face, both the baby and small child I knew and the few photographs I’ve seen since I began looking for her. It never occurred to me before, but she doesn’t much take after her mother or sister, and neither does she have Roger’s features. Certainly she’s missed the DeVilliers nose. And now that I think about it, Margo and Charlotte are both blondes. Izzy’s hair was always dark red. Darker even than my own.

  Like my father’s in those holiday snaps from the 1970s, before I was born. Before it all started falling out.

  So many little clues slip into place. My face must be a picture as my brain rushes to process it all, but my hostess witch says nothing. Even her smirk is gone; no crowing here. I don’t know how long I stare at her, unseeing. It might be seconds, might be long minutes. But eventually it all boils down to one simple question.

  ‘Does she know?’

  ‘Yes, she knows. Isobel has known her true parentage for a very long time. And so has Roger DeVilliers. He is a monster, but he would never sully his own daughter. I suspect in his own mind that makes him quite noble.’

  I’m still reeling from this revelation, but it doesn’t change the fact of why I came here. ‘Can I see her?’ I ask. ‘Will she see me?’

  Mirriam puts down her cup and breathes out a heavy sigh that makes me believe she might well be over 150 years old, despite what she told me earlier. ‘I’m sure Isobel would be delighted to see you. But I’m afraid she can’t. That’s why it’s such a shame you didn’t pick up the trail we left you earlier. She’s gone missing, you see.’

  36

  ‘Gone missing? When?’

  The tea tasted excellent, and I’m sure the cake would have been just as good. I’m not interested in either any more. Perhaps sensing my impatience, Mirriam puts down her own cup and stands.

  ‘Best if you talk to someone who knew her better than I did.’

  I follow her back out into the vast corridor and further into the enormous building. There’s a calmness about the place that reminds me of Newmore. Like my aunt’s lochside lodge, it feels safe here, and yet I can’t quite shake a feeling of unease.

  ‘You’ll have worked out by now that we don’t exactly advertise our existence to the world. That’s kind of the point of this place.’ Mirriam pushes open a door that’s twice as tall as she is, and ushers me through into a library. It’s darker in here, slatted shutters closed across the windows in an attempt to preserve the endless rows of books. Lit bulbs hang
on old cord flexes from a high vaulted ceiling. For the first time since my arrival, I see more people. More women, I should say. Maybe twenty of them, all shapes and sizes, ages and colours, they sit around a large refectory table in the middle of the room. Books and notepads open, they look like they’re in the middle of a lesson of some kind, although I can’t see any teacher. They all turn to stare at me.

  ‘Jennifer?’ Mirriam says, and one of the younger women puts down her pen, stands up and comes to meet us. The others go back to their studies once they know they’re not needed.

  ‘Jennifer, this is Constance. She’s looking for Isobel.’

  A flash of anger passes across Jennifer’s eyes as she stares directly at me. She’s maybe twenty or twenty-one, but wears an expression that suggests a much longer lifetime of struggle.

  ‘Not here, is she? She left, din’t she?’

  ‘We both of us know that, Jen. Perhaps you could show Constance to Isobel’s room. The two of you were close, so you might have some insights as to where she has gone.’

  Jennifer opens her mouth to argue, then closes it again. She shrugs, nods her head for me to follow, and sets off towards a door at the far end of the library. I pause for a moment, looking to Mirriam, but she just motions for me to follow the young woman.

  ‘We’ve nothing to hide here, Miss Fairchild, but neither do we court publicity. As long as you respect that then our doors will always be open to you.’ She turns and walks away, leaving me to hurry and catch up with Jennifer. I have a horrible feeling of being dismissed by the head teacher.