‘So tell me please, Gran, how did you know Izzy was going to die?’
‘It’s written in the stars, my dear. All the Donat women are doomed!’
Nola was appalled. ‘All of them?’
Sadly, Dorothea nodded. ‘All of them; and nothing you, I, or anyone else can do will prevent it: it is their destiny!’
* * *
Constance Bosporus had been behaving in a peculiar manner for about a year. Her entire personality had changed at her cousin Justine’s funeral thirteen months earlier, as her husband, Michael, pointed out to his brothers, Darius and Adrian, whenever he saw them, but they put it down to the trauma of her cousin’s brutal murder.
Constance and Justine had once been very close, especially following the sudden death of Constance’s twin, Leo. The three had shared a uniquely close bond that Michael had shared with neither of his own brothers, and he felt it was safe to say he had been more than a little jealous of their bond.
Constance and Leo’s parents, Justin and Simone Constantine, died in a car crash when the twins were four, and their father’s solitary sister brought them up. Though their Aunt Julia had shown them no love at all, her daughter Justine had, and all their lives they would always turn to each other in their times of need, and when Leo had died at the age of twenty-one, the two cousins grew closer still. Justine’s marriage to Dino Clayton, whom Constance despised for some inexplicable reason, caused their relationship irrevocably to alter. Not even their divorce due to Dino’s schizophrenia and the subsequent report of his suicide eighteen months ago could bridge the gulf between the pair, and now it was too late: Justine had been killed in June last year, and Constance was bereft.
After Justine’s death, Constance behaved like a completely different person, though not even she had any knowledge of the reason for her radical change in behaviour: that was a secret locked away deep in the dark recesses of her mind.
When Dorothea Clayton had telephoned her, warning her that something had finally started, she at first had no idea what Justine’s mother-in-law was talking about, but ten minutes later she was standing outside the Donat Gallery in a narrow side street off Regent Street, with no knowledge of how she got there, nor what she was doing there.
She was more than a little surprised to find the gallery closed; it was most unusual for a Monday morning. Pressing her face against the glass, which fogged up beneath her nose, she peered into the gallery, but could see nobody; her goddaughter, Nola, should be there, even if none of the Donat women were.
‘Where is everyone?’ she whispered irritably to herself. There was a telephone box a little way down the street, and when she reached it and dug out some loose change, Constance telephoned her son’s number; he, if anyone, would know why there was a singular rush of inactivity at his girlfriend’s business premises.
‘Hello?’
Constance was slightly perturbed when a female voice answered the telephone. She knew it could not be Isadora, because she was in Paris. ‘I’m so sorry, I must have dialled the wrong number,’ she muttered.
Obviously, that was not the case, as the woman on the other end of the line clearly recognised her voice. ‘Is that you, Mrs Bosporus?’
‘Yes,’ Constance replied warily.
‘It’s Eudora.’
Constance could have kicked herself for failing to recognise the voice of Eudora Donat. ‘I’m sorry, Eudora, I didn’t recognise your voice. Is Nathan there?’
‘He is, but I’m afraid he can’t come to the phone.’
Something in Eudora’s tone of voice sent a shiver of warning through Constance’s body. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Yes. We had some terrible news today. Izzy’s dead!’
Constance felt her knees buckle beneath her and barely prevented herself from collapsing in the telephone box. She returned to reality when the pips went, and fumbled for some more change. ‘What happened?’
‘We don’t really know, but it’s looking like murder.’
‘Dear God! Who would want to kill Isadora? You poor darlings… you must all be devastated!’
‘Yes. Mrs Bosporus, I think it might be a good idea for you to come round – Nathan is in a bad way, and I’m not very good at comforting people at the best of times. I think he needs a mother’s touch.’
‘Of course, dear, I’ll come right away!’ Constance replaced the receiver, her mind in turmoil.
Isadora – dead!
See, said a voice within the recesses of her mind, you were warned that it has started!
It had indeed started, and nothing could halt the inevitable. Thoughts not her own were awakened in Constance’s mind, and she now knew what was going to happen next, although she could not possibly tell Eudora – or anyone else for that matter.
Dorothea was the only other person who knew what was going on; Dorothea was the only person she could talk to about this matter, but as she knew very well, Dorothea Clayton had her own problems to deal with.
Chapter Three
Isadora was dead, and nothing anyone could do would change that; she was dead and nobody was going to breathe life back into her desecrated body. The only thing to do was to get on with life as normally as possible. It would not be easy, but there was no point in grieving forever. As Gaia told Eudora over the phone from Paris, they could not allow themselves to run the gallery into the ground, and with so much at stake, they had much to lose. They could not afford to lose the gallery. They owed it to Isadora’s memory to keep their business alive.
While Gaia remained in Paris, settling whatever business Isadora had left unfinished, in London, Eudora opened the Donat Gallery for business as usual on the Wednesday. Nola was quiet for most of the morning, and after the usually placid girl almost lost her temper with a dithering prospective art-buyer, who subsequently walked out without buying anything, Eudora took her to one side.
‘Listen, Nola,’ she said in what she hoped was a gentle, comforting voice of compassionate understanding, ‘we are all upset about Izzy, but even though you’re upset, you simply cannot go around telling people they’ve made a bad choice and have no taste, even if it’s true. If a customer likes a painting, you encourage them to purchase it. You do not tell them it’s a worthless piece of trash, even if it is. You tell them they have excellent taste and make them believe they are getting a bargain for their thousand pounds!’
Nola’s bottom lip quivered tremulously, and for an awful moment, Eudora thought the trainee was going to erupt into fresh tears. ‘I’m so sorry, Dora,’ she snuffled, wiping her eyes, trying desperately not to surrender to the tears that threatened to spill, ‘I can’t concentrate. I just cannot think straight. I keep thinking of poor Izzy!’
Eudora managed a conciliatory smile of affection as she put a comforting arm around the girl’s shoulders. She could not be angry with Nola. She too was having great difficulty in keeping her mind from wandering, but she had to keep busy, otherwise she felt she would really crack up, because every time her thoughts strayed to the subject of her sister – which was almost every moment of the day – she felt tears prick the corners of her own eyes.
‘You’re no use to me here in this frame of mind, Nola,’ she said gently, squeezing the girl’s shoulder reassuringly. ‘Why don’t you take the rest of the week off? You need time away from here to grieve for Izzy.’
Nola wiped her eyes as the tears slowly started to fall. ‘Are you sure? Her death must have affected you more than it did me! You’re her sister; I’m just an employee.’
Eudora smiled weakly and touched Nola’s cheek tenderly. ‘I know, but I’m older and wiser. I know you are an orphan yourself, but you are still young. The older you get, the more used to death you get. That’s not to say it’s any easier to deal with; you just grow tough enough to hide the feelings in everyday life and deal with them in private. Although it has affected you now, you are only a friend. At the end of the day, you will walk away from it, go on to another job and forget. Being Isadora’s sister, I have t
o learn to cope with her loss permanently.
‘Oh, Dora, you’re so wrong,’ Nola sighed.
‘Perhaps,’ replied Eudora, ‘but I really think it would be best if you took the rest of the week off, and then when you come back on Monday you might be in a calmer frame of mind.’
‘Are you sure?’
Eudora nodded. ‘Yes, I’m quite sure.’
‘Thanks. I’ll get my things.’
When Nola returned from the back room, Eudora was showing two old ladies a couple of oils of the Victorian London skyline at sunset. She waved goodbye but did not interrupt her employer’s sales pitch, silently thinking that the two old dears clearly had much more money than sense even to remotely consider buying the hideously dull painting.
‘It’s really quite lovely,’ said one of the old ladies in a broad Texan accent, ‘but is it really worth eight hundred pounds?’
‘It does seem rather expensive,’ said the other, obviously intent on haggling the price down.
Eudora did not hear the American ladies. She looked out through the window to see Nola conversing with a tall, sandy haired man. He glanced into the gallery, but hurried off when he saw Eudora looking at him. Nola disappeared in the opposite direction, and from her stride, Eudora could tell she was furious about something. Eudora moved to the window and stared after the man. She was in time to see him climb into the back of a black limousine, which sped off as he closed the door.
Eudora frowned. She could not be certain, but there was something strangely familiar about the man: face to face with Nola, they had appeared so alike it was uncanny. ‘If I didn’t know better,’ she whispered, ‘I’d swear that was her father!’ However, that was impossible: Nola had told them she was an orphan. Why would she lie? ‘He’s probably her uncle!’
Eudora shrugged, and then suddenly remembered the two American ladies. She turned to apologise to them, in time to watch them walk out of the gallery, angered by her rudeness.
She sighed, and wandered back over to her desk at the rear of the gallery. She sat wearily, rubbed her neck, and encountered the gold chain that had become such a part of her over the years that she frequently forgot she was wearing it. She pulled it from where it always hid beneath her blouse, holding the large stone attached to it up to the light.
A shaft of sun caught the amethyst, and Eudora caught her breath as the stone glittered with life. She had never been particularly fond of amethyst as a gemstone, but somehow this pendant was different. It always seemed to have a life of its own; it always sparkled brilliantly, even on an overcast day.
Without a doubt, it was in some way special – but what made it different from any other amethyst?
Ever since receiving the pendant on her eighteenth birthday, accompanied by a typed letter that begged her to guard it with her very life, she had wondered about its significance. No matter how hard she had tried to discover where the item of jewellery had come from, and find out who had sent it to her, she had unearthed no facts whatsoever. Seventeen years on she was still none the wiser; it was as much of a mystery as it had ever been.
Sometimes, when she looked deep into its blue-purple depths, she fancied she could see the face of a man; at other times, she saw flames, but she knew it was all a trick of the light.
And now, as she once again succumbed to its beauty and mystery, gazing deeply into the amethyst, she thought of something Gaia had said on Monday, after she had ‘witnessed’ Isadora’s murder.
You were there, and you had an amethyst pendant.
She had followed the letter’s request implicitly, not revealing the pendant’s existence to anyone. Nobody knew about it: not Isadora; not Gaia – nobody, save perhaps the person who had anonymously sent it to her. There would come a day, so the letter had claimed, when someone might come in search of the pendant. If he mentioned a matching ring and amulet, she was to deny all knowledge of the pendant, and if by any chance she came into possession of the ring and the amulet, she must use their secrets to protect not only herself, but also those around her. The letter concluded that, although her life would change dramatically should she possess all three items of jewellery, she must not be afraid – not ever!
Whatever she might have said to Gaia at the time, Eudora had been more than prepared to dismiss her words as nonsense, for she had never been able to comprehend nor fully accept the peculiar psychic bond Gaia and Isadora had claimed to possess. Deep down, Eudora had always felt the pair had made it all up – until Gaia had mentioned the pendant.
Now she was not so sure.
Because of the pendant, she now possessed self-doubt, and less doubts about her sister and cousin, though she had more questions than answers. More than ever now she wanted to know where the pendant had come from, and who had sent it – and why.
She did not know it, but she was very soon to discover the answers to those questions, and also many others that had yet to form in her mind.
Then she would wish she had not wondered.
* * *
Soon after Nola departed, the door to the gallery opened and a youthful, freckle-faced, carrot-topped deliveryman struggled to manhandle a large package on its trolley into the building. ‘Morning, Miss Eudora,’ he muttered with a smile.
Eudora recognised him instantly. The Donat Gallery was one of the regular delivery points on his daily route. ‘Hello Derek,’ she called as she ran the length of the gallery to hold the door open for him.
At twenty-seven, Derek was only five feet three and skinny as a rake, and so seemed a decade younger. He had always been self conscious about his appearance, but since working for the courier company on this particular route and meeting Eudora, Isadora and Gaia, he had come out of his shell and matured considerably. He was no longer shy, and Eudora had done a marvellous job convincing him he was neither ugly nor a dwarf. With added self-confidence, he had quickly plucked up the courage to ask out a girl he knew, and they were now happily married with their first baby on the way. He had also developed a wicked sense of humour and loved practical jokes – but never played them on his favourite trio of clients.
‘Thanks, Miss Eudora,’ Derek said breathlessly as he wheeled the large package down to the back of the gallery – he knew his delivery routine by now.
Eudora let go of the door and followed him, marvelling at the expert way Derek manoeuvred the package that was taller than he was. It was clearly not as heavy as it looked, though probably heavier than Eudora alone could manage. She reckoned it was about seven feet tall, by five feet wide, and a foot deep, and it was clearly a painting.
‘Are you on your own today?’ Derek asked as he finished manhandling the package.
Sadly, Eudora nodded. Nothing happened in the gallery without Derek noticing. He had an inquiring eye and an inquisitive mind – which some people might have classed as nosiness, but not Eudora. Derek always knew when a painting had sold, and he always spotted new acquisitions upon entering the gallery: he could tell that in the eleven days since his last delivery business had been slack.
‘Because of Miss Isadora’s death?’ he asked softly.
‘How do you know about that?’ gasped Eudora.
‘Our French office informed us of the terrible tragedy. We’re all really very sorry, Miss Eudora, we all thought very highly of your sister.’
‘Word certainly gets around fast,’ whispered Eudora, grateful for Derek’s sincere words of sympathy.
‘I am sorry, Miss Eudora. I didn’t mean to upset you!’ gasped Derek, mortified at his lack of tact.
‘It’s okay.’ She smiled benignly at him. ‘I know how much the others liked her.’
It was true. Only Derek liked Eudora the best out of the three Donat women: all the other deliverymen preferred Isadora, and everyone who knew her would sorely miss her.
‘Gaia’s gone over to Paris to sort out her business dealings,’ Eudora explained, ‘and Nola’s too distraught to work today. I had to send her home, and I have given her the rest of the week off. Anyway,
it’s not like business is exactly booming.’
Derek remained silent for a moment. None of his colleagues liked Nola, and neither did he, though he could not exactly say why. There was just something sinister about the trainee, which Isadora and Gaia had also sensed. Derek longed to tell Eudora that she would be well shot of the bloodsucking leech, but he did not want to risk the Donat Gallery taking its custom elsewhere. Eudora would countenance no bad words about Nola, whom she loved as if she was her daughter.
Derek knew better than to say anything, so he kept his silence, but he was glad the girl would not be at the gallery for the next few days. Maybe in her grief Eudora might finally realise what a parasite Nola really was.
Leaning against the desk, Derek pointed at the package, propped against the wall. ‘This is one of Miss Isadora’s business deals from Paris!’ As ever, he was eager to see what painting had been purchased. He loved all the items in the Donat Gallery and could not understand why so much of the stock failed to sell.
Eudora nodded. Because of Gaia’s vision, she had expected the delivery of a painting, and though this was obviously it, suddenly she did not actually want to see it. Something in her head told her this was the cause of Isadora’s death – which, in a sense, it was. Suddenly she saw not two men killing her sister, as Gaia had described, but rather saw the painting sprouting hands, throttling Isadora, destroying her life.
She shivered uneasily, unsure that she actually wanted the painting in the gallery, but she knew she was being foolish. Paintings could not spring into life and kill, though greed could, and so could jealousy.
‘Are you going to unwrap the painting?’
Eudora shook her head slightly and moved around to the other side of the desk. ‘You open it, Derek,’ she said as she poured herself another brandy – her second that morning. I’m drinking too much, she thought to herself. She knew she should not, but at that particular moment in time, she did not care. She needed the brandy to help overcome the grief, to keep it in check, and that in itself was wrong. Grief should be let out, not bottled up inside and allowed to fester within. Eudora knew that, but did not know why her mind kept screaming it at her. In grief, one always reacted in the opposite way to how others might expect, which sometimes was a good thing, while at other times was the worst mistake.
Portrait of Shade Page 3