A Final Reckoning

by Susan Moody

  ‘A sort of astrolabe, isn’t it?’

  ‘That kind of thing. Sundials, astrolabes and armillary spheres: I’ve been fascinated by them since I was at university. The drama group I belonged to put on an outdoor version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the grounds of Castle Finnbreck. There were two or three there and I was completely hooked.’

  ‘What part did you play?’

  ‘I was Lysander.’

  ‘Which university were you at?’

  ‘Edinburgh.’

  I could feel light-bulbs blinking on. If I had come here for a special reason, why shouldn’t others have done the same? ‘What did you study?’

  ‘Engineering, as it happens. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Nosy-parkering, I guess.’ Once again I was struck by a frisson of déjà vu. Was it possible that this was the very man my sister had mentioned in one of her letters home, the man my sister had fallen for at university, the man who might even have become my brother-in-law?

  I met this really nice guy, she had written. Malcolm Macdonald, he’s called. That’s Mahhhlcolm, by the way, with a long ‘a’, not a short one. He’s studying engineering. We were in a play together and it was fatal attraction at first sight, not that I’m about to boil any bunnies. You should just see him in his kilt: to die for! Could this be luuuurve? We’ve been out quite a bit now … getting closer every day – and (blush, blush) night. DON’T TELL DAD.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m Chantal Frazer. I’m afraid I didn’t catch your last name.’

  ‘Malcolm Macdonald.’ His kind blue eyes were sharply alert as he stared at me. ‘Chantal, eh?’

  ‘That’s right.’ It had to be him. I couldn’t resist another question. ‘So the orreries, astrolabes, whatever, are the main reason you came on this weekend?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes, mostly, I suppose.’ He fiddled with the leather tie at his throat, his eyes sad behind his glasses. ‘To be honest, I …’ He shook his head. ‘It’s all a long time ago now.’

  ‘And have you had time yet to go and see the armillaries?’ I asked. His accent reminded me of my dead husband.

  ‘I went down this afternoon. There’s a Serpent, and a beautiful Globe, though that one’s purely decorative. I could take you down tomorrow and show you them, if you’d like.’

  ‘I very much would like,’ I said. It would give me a good opportunity to talk to him, to ask him to fill in the blanks of my sister’s life at Edinburgh, to confide in him. No one knew how much I wanted to confide in somebody. Anybody. I had always been constrained from talking to my father, not confessing to the pain I carried – and the anger – for fear of reopening for him the wounds of Sabine’s death.

  ‘So where do you work, Chantal? What do you do?’

  I gave him a potted version of Chantal Frazer’s life and times.

  ‘I often have to come down to London. Maybe one of these days …’ There were unspoken invitations in his eyes.

  ‘Mmm …’ I said. Very non-committal. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I felt a need to keep my own connection with the house to myself, at least for the moment. I wondered how many of the other diners also had some kind of link to those distant murders. And even if they had none, surely at least some of them must have been aware of what had happened here. Perhaps independently they had decided they didn’t want their short holiday break tainted by the remembered blood of slaughtered innocents.

  The noise of laughter, of cutlery against plates, the ring of crystal, the bouquet of well-cooked food which filled the air suddenly made me uncomfortable. I found myself fighting the urge to leap to my feet and scream, ‘Do none of you realize that my beautiful sister was knifed to death in this very house, that she died within feet of where you’re sitting drinking wine and laughing?’

  I didn’t give way to it, of course. One never does. One never would. And would I feel any better if I did so? Of course not. Besides, these oblivious people had a perfect right to be here, enjoying themselves.

  Across the table from me, Brian Stonor was engaged in what looked like an extremely one-sided conversation with a woman wearing a pale green dress with a low-cut cowl neck, a great mistake at her age, in my opinion, since the throat it highlighted was more turkey than swan. He sat semi-sideways on his chair, nodding every now and then as his companion talked, while he gazed thoughtfully at Gavin Vaughn, who was sitting on another table, chatting to one of the blonde wives. He met my eye and winked.

  By the time we were all drinking coffee, music could be heard, coming from the small salon where we had pre-prandially Mingled. When I stood up to leave the dining room, I found Gavin Metcalfe-Vaughn at my side. ‘How about a saraband?’ he said. ‘Or a stately minuet?’

  ‘I can’t do either of those.’

  ‘But there’s some kind of troupe on hand to show us. Didn’t you read the literature in your room?’

  ‘After the trauma of being a damsel in distress, I’m afraid I didn’t.’

  We reached the salon, and there indeed were a dozen or so people dressed in elaborate costume, bowing and curtsying to each other, while six periwigged young men in silver-buttoned breeches played flutes, flageolets and a small drum. It was a delightful end to the evening, and I was perfectly content to watch when the dancers peeled away from each other and took hold of guests, bringing them into the circle. Gavin was commandeered by a tiny grey-haired woman in a silk dress, and started hopping around the floor, bowing elaborately whenever she cued him. I saw Farmer Barnard mopping and mowing with a laughing fancy-dressed girl, and even kilted Malcolm was moving about in a stately fashion, flourishing a lace handkerchief someone must have given him. After a while, I slipped away, stopping to thank David Charteris and compliment him on the food. I waved a hand at Gavin, who stopped dead when he saw me leaving, causing something of a pileup among the dancers; I managed to suppress my laughter until I was out into the hall.

  Halfway along the passage to my room, light was spilling from a partly open door. While I’m not given to prying, everything about this house resonated for me; I wanted to know it as well as Sabine must have done. Peering through the crack, I saw uncarpeted wooden stairs leading up to what must be attics. On impulse, and because nobody else was around, I ran quickly to the top, ignoring the ‘PRIVATE’ sign on the door. One of the treads creaked as loudly as a fired gun, and I winced. If anyone had heard …

  I found myself in a large wood-lined room, only just high enough for me to stand upright, which looked as though it extended most of the length of the house. Windows were set at intervals along one side: I had seen many similar attics in the various houses I’d been sent to in order to assess and catalogue things that the owners wished to sell. It was one of the more exciting aspects of my job: the archaeological search involved in sifting through accumulations of possessions and finding the nugget of pure gold in the shape of some priceless painting or precious piece of Chinese porcelain which the family had not even been aware they owned. All along the length of one side, underneath the windows, were small brass handles, implying that at some point the whole length had been converted into additional under-the-eaves storage.

  Surveying the long space, my mouth watered. The place was a treasure house, crammed with trunks and suitcases, boxes and cartons. Antique furniture, some of it covered in dust-sheets, had been pushed higgledy-piggledy together. I could see box after box of heavy cut-glass crystal glasses, epergnes, silver teapots, Limoges plates. An entire Spode dinner-service in dark blue and rose with gilded edges was set out on a pietra dura table. A painted vitrine held small silver objects: snuffboxes, bon-bon dishes, cigar-cases, carved birds and match-holders. There were several stuffed birds under glass. A rocking horse with flared red nostrils stood at the far end, next to an elaborate doll’s house and an original boxed Hornby train-set.

  Here and there were clothes-rails holding gowns and frocks; striped hatboxes lay piled on top of one another. For a brief moment, I contemplated sneaking one of the dresses down to my
room: that chartreuse velvet looked as though it were exactly my size. As did a fabulous chiffon frock in shades of blue and lilac. But then I shuddered. I might be putting on the clothes which had once belonged to my sister’s murderer …

  I opened a box and lifted out a beautiful Ascot-style hat. Crushed velvet roses, peacock feathers: I put it on and posed in front of the mirror. Clothes maketh the man, they say. How much more do they make the woman? Looking at my reflection, I saw not my dull workaday self, but a marvellous creature made for drifting over hallowed turf, delicate manicured fingers clutching some little bag of silk containing a lipstick and a twenty-pound note. What more could such a being need?

  Did David Charteris have any idea of the value of all this stuff – or even of what was up here? Probably not, which would explain why Maggie Fields had been hired to produce a complete inventory. Fleetingly, I wondered how long it was going to take her: just the attic alone looked like a month’s work. Rather surprisingly, there were no dust balls, no spiderwebs, no errant beetles or mummified flies: everything was clean, dusted, obviously still cared for.

  I replaced the hat and, lifting the lid of an old-fashioned steamer trunk, found it was stuffed with photograph albums. Was Sabine in there somewhere, caught between the padded red covers like a pressed flower? Were the dead boys?

  About to lift out the top album, I heard footsteps climbing the uncarpeted wooden stairs and then the pistol-shot crack of the rogue tread. Quickly, I tiptoed across the floor and hid behind a rack of evening clothes covered in a dust sheet. Velvet, silk, taffeta, chiffon, all of them still smelling faintly of some distant perfume – Molyneux No 5, Chypre? I recognized a Dior design, a Thierry Mugler, a Givenchy, and more avant-garde stuff, too: Herrera, Alaïa and even a Yamamoto. Couture as a form of art …

  My view was very restricted, but peeping between the dresses, I could see a figure standing stock-still. A black-clad woman with her back to me. Was it one of the guests? Dr Fields, perhaps, or the wife from Liverpool? Or someone brought in to help for the weekend? A lot of the women had been wearing black that evening … My friend Lorna kept telling me that black was the new pink. Or was it the other way round? Perhaps this woman was one of the regular staff. It was hard to tell. Earlier in the evening, I had noticed a Mrs Danvers figure hovering in the background; she had looked too imposing to be doing mundane housework. I’d taken her to be in charge of the catering staff but perhaps it was her specialized job to look after this stuff, and she came in regularly to check that none of the guests – such as me – were up there, nicking or breaking precious items. And of course it would be especially important to do so with the house full of strangers.

  I scarcely breathed, trying not to imagine the humiliation of being slung out on my ear for invading the private quarters of the house. Or was she herself a thief, casing the joint, either on her own behalf, or for someone else? This was, after all, the first time the house had been open for years. I’d read quite recently that thieves like to familiarize themselves with a place before they raid it: perhaps these were the normal precautions that any sophisticated thief might take.

  After a moment, she turned towards a stack of pictures leaning again the wall, faces inward. She pulled out one and then another, and another, leaning them against the legs of one of the tables, and stepping back to view them. I nearly gasped aloud. Even from my hiding place I could see that one was a Hockney, another a Howard Hodgkin. Sabine had mentioned both of them. And there were several important Scandinavians I recognized, after my time in Copenhagen: Krøyer, Anna Ancher, Hammershøi. There were even more treasures up here than I’d realized. I held my breath. If there was the slightest possibility of my being taken for a would-be thief …

  But finally the woman sighed, replaced the paintings and picked up the Howard Hodgkin by curling her fingers under its stretcher. She looked around, pulled at the door of the vitrine full of silver, which proved to be locked, picked up one of the Spode plates and examined its underside before replacing it, then walked to the top of the stairs and went carefully down, still carrying the painting. My God! Was I correct in imagining that I had just witnessed a blatant art theft? Should I report it to David Charteris? But then I’d have to explain what I myself had been doing up in the attics: naturally, he would think that I too was a would-be thief; I might have a hard time persuading him otherwise.

  I waited for another ten minutes or so, to make sure the coast was clear, then pushed out through the frocks and once again approached the steamer trunk. Some of the albums had dates on them: I found one for the same year that Sabine had been here. But it must have dated from the summer before she arrived. These boys would have been the sons of the house – George and Edward, I remembered. Most of the time they were in shorts and T-shirts, posing in front of a tree, or playing tennis, or leaping into the river I’d seen from my bedroom window. There was a dog in some of the snaps, a brown and white spaniel with floppy ears. Sometimes there were just the two boys, loose-limbed lads with slicks of fair hair falling over their eyes, and crooked smiles. Sometimes there were three, and with a faint catch of the breath I realized that the third boy must be Gavin Vaughn as he’d been twenty-three years before, already taller than his friends, knee-deep in summer grass, hanging upside down from a low-branched tree, seated at a picnic table with his hand poised over a bowl of strawberries, grinning at the camera.

  I stared down at their fresh young faces: Edward and George and Gavin. Carefree and happy, two of them never to know anything beyond the Christmas which lay only a few months ahead. And the third to be haunted ever after – for even from our short acquaintance, it seemed obvious that Gavin Vaughn was troubled, just as I was. The poignancy of those photographs caught at my throat. Like my sister’s, their bright promise had been snuffed out far too soon by the self-obsessed rage of a monster.

  Drifting up from the landing below came the sound of voices as people began retiring for the night. I wondered if anyone else would make a secret visit to the attic, but though I waited a full fifteen minutes, no one showed up, and eventually I too crept back down the wooden stairs, careful to leave the light on and the door at the bottom of the stairs open the same width as when I first saw it.

  All along the passage, my sister’s presence was strong. Sabine must have trodden these same corridors, turned these door handles, looked from these windows to see the thin starlight throw shadows across the pearly lawns. Tomorrow, I told myself, I would make a more determined assault on the house, try to establish my surroundings based on the words she had sent me long ago. I wanted to see everything she’d written about, orientate myself in the past.

  In my room, I made myself a cup of green tea from the selection on the table under the window, admiring the silky little bag it came in, and sat down with another of Sabine’s letters. When we first heard of her death, I had read them over and over again, howling into my pillow so that my parents, mourning the loss of their first daughter, would not hear the anguish of their second. The last two or three of them had reached me much later, when Sabine had already been dead for a month; those I had never even opened. Since then, they had all lain undisturbed in their envelopes.

  I paused over my sister’s almost-forgotten script, recalling her idiosyncratic way of forming the downstrokes of her Ys and her Gs. The envelopes were soft and pliable with age now, as were the letters themselves. I sipped at my tea, unfolded the first one, closed my eyes for a moment in an effort to calm myself, and started to read.

  Darling Sis,

  Here’s Chapter 2 of the great Weston Lodge saga.

  It’s absolutely freezing, and I’m wearing three sweaters with my thickest tights under my jeans, just to keep lukewarm. It’s even colder than Scotland. Because it’s so huge, the house is really difficult to heat, so you have run everywhere, just to keep the blood moving!

  I was recently given the Grand Tour of the place by Harry, as he’s asked me to call him. There’s masses of beautiful antique furniture handed do
wn from generation to generation, much more than they can accommodate, actually, because he told me the attics were full as well. Plus more marble statuary, vaulted ceilings, parquet floors, orangeries and morning rooms and shimmery silk carpets, Venetian mirrors and chandeliers and enamelled snuffboxes than you could shake a stick at. What’s nice about it is that even though it’s so grand, a lot of the fabrics are worn, the curtains are faded and if you look closely you can see the delicate little darns in the silk rugs – ‘shabby chic’, I think they call it. Harry absolutely revels in his beautiful collections: he says he’s always on the lookout for things to add to it.

  (And in case you’re wondering, no, I don’t fancy him. He’s a bit of a dish, but not my type – and much too old for me. So don’t worry, I’m not going to be seduced by the master of the house! Besides, there’s my darling Malcolm waiting for me back in Edinburgh. Oh, I wish you could meet him. I wish you could see the way his kilt swings when he walks, and the dear little sealskin purse thing (a sporran) which sits so suggestively over his balls!)

  As for the paintings here, it’s like living in an art gallery. So many of them, especially portraits, and they’re all over the house, beautiful women in white dresses and blue sashes, holding straw hats with more ribbons, or handsome men clutching guns and wearing buff-coloured waistcoats and red jackets with silver buttons. There’s a George Romney, a Peter Lely, two Gainsboroughs, Raeburn, Lawrence, Stubbs – you name it, they’ve got one. Plus two fabulous John Laverys, one a seascape, and a portrait of a young girl. And if you don’t recognize the names, you jolly well (as they say over here) ought to, seeing as how you want to do Art History at uni.

  But my favourites are his collection of exquisite miniatures, painted on ivory or enamel. A couple of Nicholas Hilliard, which is exciting enough, but do the names Henry Bone or Richard Cosway mean anything to you? (No, they didn’t to me either, but Dad might possibly know of them.) There’s the usual yearning swains – Harry told me they were used as tokens exchanged between lovers (can’t say a moony wimp leaning against a tree or standing by a sundial would have turned me on, but I guess things were different back then) – a couple of girls, some cheeky little lads, a lovesick young man in a ruffled shirt, holding a guitar, and several more. I really like the one on show in the morning room, which is a portrait of Clio’s great-great-grandmother. Harry said they were worth a fortune, which I can well believe.