At the western end of the building she could see that a door had been chocked open with a brick. Someone had unbolted it from the inside and left it ajar deliberately. Stepping through the flowerbeds that abutted the gallery, Adelina stole up to the door and squeezed herself through the gap.
With all the windows clothed in thick drapes, the interior was pitch-black. The feeble light she had seen earlier was not visible from where she stood near the door. Adam had shown Adelina the plans for this building months ago but she had steadfastly refused to visit it in person, which meant she now had no way of getting her bearings easily. The room smelled of that unmistakeable oily odour of drying paint and the more pleasant aroma of fresh varnish. Adelina closed her eyes tightly for a minute and let her eyes adjust to the dark. With her eyes shut tight, her hearing became more acute and she detected the rise and fall of low voices, away to her right.
‘Steady now. Take it slowly,’ a woman urged in a voice that Adelina knew well but could not yet identify. ‘Give me a hand,’ replied another female, also in an uncannily familiar voice. Who on earth were they?
Adelina crept forward a few more feet and collided with a piece of sculpture. Thankfully neither the plinth nor its contents moved or made a sound and Adelina had the presence of mind not to cry out.
Proceeding with small, careful steps, Adelina made her way through the gallery towards the voices which continued their low whispered dialogue. From out of the grainy dark, there blossomed a bubble of light as Adelina approached the edge of what turned out to be an alcove.
In the smoky orange light of a kerosene lamp propped up on an empty plinth stood two women, both wearing cloaks from which the snow had long melted. They had their backs turned to Adelina and were looking up at a large painting on the inner wall of the alcove, hung in a richly carved gold frame. Adelina had never seen this painting before but she knew immediately who the artist was. Wolfgang von Gettner.
Fantastic surmises swarmed in Adelina’s head as her eyes took in other details of the scene: a stepladder propped against the wall next to the von Gettner painting and several tools scattered on the floor beside a tradesman’s leather bag. And over there, leaning against the wainscoting, a second large canvas, unframed and angled, so that its painted surface was hidden from her view. Before Adelina could form any theories, the elder of the two strangers turned and looked Adelina full in the face.
‘Dear God!’ Adelina heard a hoarse voice utter these words in horror. And then realised the voice was her own. Her head was filled with a high-pitched wail of rage and grief. A scream climbed out of Adelina’s throat like a crazed, caged animal seeking release and filled the room.
The older woman’s face drained white. She stepped back, raising her hands as if to ward off a blow. As she backed away she knocked the plinth supporting the kerosene lamp which then toppled to the floor and shattered. The room was momentarily plunged into Stygian blackness, blinding all three women.
But then a bright stream of burning kerosene ran across the carpet and latched onto the hem of the older woman’s cloak, forming an eerie ring of blue light that shone on her panic-stricken face. Adelina heard boots stamping at the flames as the woman shouted at her startled companion: ‘Quick, quick! Save the painting!’
Within seconds, the ring of fire had spread. It lapped at the new paint on the walls and liked what it found there, sucking more fuel into its hot mouth and spewing a fountain of flame up to the ceiling. ‘Save it, save it!’ screeched the older woman, her voice rising sharply now as she began to disappear inside a thickening mantle of smoke and battled to shed her cloak, which was well ablaze.
Adelina was rooted to the spot for what seemed an eternity despite the intense heat that threatened to overwhelm her. She saw the second, younger woman walk into the maelstrom of smoke that enveloped her older companion and heard her desperate cries of, ‘Where are you?’
The gallery was now so brightly illuminated that Adelina could see the artworks all around her as clear as day. Paintings by Longstaff, Bunny, Lister and Ashton, the glossy varnished surface inside each gilt frame reflecting in miniature the dance of the flames. With a deep-throated roar, the fire clambered eagerly up the maroon walls, ripping at the wallpaper frieze of blood-red waratahs with its long talons. Adelina watched in amazement as it seized painting after painting in its bright maw, wolfing down each offering of paint and varnish into its black gullet. It was breathtaking to behold: the racket of splintering wood and the gleeful, lustful abandon of the flames were both compellingly obscene.
Adelina’s hair began to burn from the sparks that whirled through the gallery. Though her will to live was at its lowest ebb, an instinctive engine for survival stirred inside her, fuelled by adrenaline, and dragged her away from the conflagration. The fire had already surged across the floor and walls and crested up to the ceiling, rolling over like a breaking wave to form a tunnel of flame. Adelina could hear pitiful screams from the far side of the gallery as she fled, not towards the exterior door which was blocked by flame as far as she could see, but in the opposite direction, towards the Palace. Smoke clawed at her eyes and lungs making it impossible to see a foot in front of her face or draw a proper breath until, at last, she fell against another door and tumbled, choking and weeping, into the night air.
It was freezing outside. Snow was falling more thickly now and had begun to settle on bushes like a dusting of caster sugar. In the distance she heard urgent male voices and loud alarm bells. She recognised the figure of Joe running across the lawn. When she looked back, she saw the full calamity of the burning building, its ear-splitting groans of torment punctuated by smaller crescendos of destruction as Adam’s artworks toppled and exploded. On her knees in the garden, Adelina swatted at her hair where sparks stung her scalp like angry wasps. She had regained her breath but that was not what preoccupied her.
Seared into her mind was the scene of the two women who had surely perished in the fire. Robbie’s prophecy was now half fulfilled. There was no mistaking the face of the woman who had turned towards her, the woman she had struggled so hard to forgive. But too late.
Freya.
CHAPTER 21
* * *
Adam
Meadow Springs, July 1921
Adam awoke from a nightmare of being trapped in a cave, water lapping at his chest and threatening to rise over his head. Still holding his breath, he heard the phone ringing incessantly downstairs with no staff on duty at the Meadow Springs house to answer it. As he slipped out of bed and pulled on his dressing gown, he noticed from his bedroom window an unusual glow in the sky to the west.
A tremor of misgiving quickened his pulse as he descended the stairs to the study. The hands of the hall clock stood at three twenty-eight. ‘Who could be ringing at this hour?’ he wondered aloud, though the house was empty. For one absurd moment, he thought it might be Freya, phoning from the other side of the world to settle her score with him directly. Or maybe it was Adelina, woken from sleep at the hotel by one of her bad dreams, wanting to hear his voice.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,’ said the man on the other end. It took Adam several seconds to recognise the night manager, Mr Bosely. ‘A fire has broken out in the gallery. The brigade is on its way from Katoomba.’
‘How bad is it?’ asked Fox.
There was a second’s pause. ‘It’s bad, sir. I have ordered the evacuation of the hotel. Just in case.’
‘I’m coming over.’
The Vauxhall was slow to turn over in the cold but Fox eventually got it running. The snowfall was fast becoming a blizzard as the wind picked up and smacked the sides of the car, causing it to skid on the icy road as he drove west.
When he came over the brow of the hill at Meadow Springs and saw the fire, he felt his chest constrict with anguish. The outline of the gallery was dwarfed by a giant, ragged pillar of flame that could be seen for miles around. The hotel itself was shrouded in an eerie yellowish-grey pall that rendered it almost invisib
le. It was obvious the gallery was lost and the battle was now on to save the Palace.
On the crenellated rooftop of the hotel and in the surrounding gardens and outhouses, embers had started spot fires. Adam could see figures crisscrossing the front lawns urgently and running over the hotel’s battlements with stirrup pumps, buckets and blankets, trying to bring these smaller outbreaks under control.
The vision of these twin storms of fire and snow, intermingled and overlaid against a silver-white, moon-washed sky, was nothing short of surreal: a spectacle of sublime beauty and terror. Each gust that whipped the blizzard into a greater frenzy also fanned the vortex of flames. Around the turret of fire, sparks and snowflakes cavorted as partners in a macabre jig. Hissing clouds of steam shot up as the crust of newly laid snow was pelted with cinders and burning debris.
At the eastern end of the hotel, Adam saw the crowd of guests, many wearing jackets and cloaks over their nightclothes, gathered in the clearing in front of the boiler house. They were all craning their necks in one direction. Mr Carson, Mrs Bosely and Dr Liebermeister were among the staff who had been roused from their beds and were now providing succour to the hotel’s guests with blankets, eiderdowns, hot-water bottles and flasks of coffee as they escorted them to neighbouring houses.
As he pulled up in the gravel driveway, Adam checked his watch: ten past four. Still no sign of the Katoomba fire brigade. Where in God’s name were they? He saw Bosely in shirtsleeves near the front steps of the casino, shouting directions over the roar of flames. He marched towards him.
‘Good evening, sir.’
‘Can we save her?’ shouted Fox, pointing at the tongues of flame licking the outer wall of the Megalong Wing, where smoke poured in under the eaves.
‘Only if this wind drops and the fire crew arrives soon.’
As if in answer to their prayers, within minutes sirens came blaring out of the darkness and the crew of the Katoomba fire brigade were rolling out their hoses. The snow and ice had made it hazardous on the road from Katoomba to Meadow Springs, which explained the delay. Now the firemen faced a different problem: adding to the challenge of the stiff westerly fanning the flames, it soon became clear that either the water pressure at the Palace was very poor or the pipes had frozen. The commander ordered his men to run their hoses to hydrants further back and they eventually found one nearly a quarter of a mile from the hotel that produced sufficient water pressure.
Adam joined his staff in bucket lines to put out the spot fires that sprang up everywhere. He turned at one point to see Laura, her face gaunt and smeared with soot, at the far end of a line, passing a heavy pail of water from hand to hand. She looked quite distraught at the sight of the conflagration. Their eyes met briefly and he half smiled to reassure her that his heart was not completely crushed. She managed only a small nod of her head, her eyes vacant and distant.
The battle to save the hotel took over two hours. When all the drama of the fire had subsided, Adam stood a few feet from the hot, smouldering ruins of the gallery, his hands thrust into his pockets, seeing if he could make out anything familiar. Temperatures had soared so high, there were pools of molten glass glistening among the pulverised remains of brick and plaster. Everything was lost, it seemed, reduced to rubble and ash. Adam could not let his mind fix on the reality of this catastrophe yet or it would undo him.
A strange chill crept up the back of Adam’s neck. He suddenly realised that the entire time he had been watching this calamity unfold, his wife – who was staying at the hotel that night – had not come anywhere near him. He knew they had argued but, under the circumstances, this seemed extremely odd behaviour. Where was she?
‘Has anyone seen Mrs Fox?’ he asked Bosely.
‘I haven’t. Let me check with Carson. He supervised the evacuation.’
Adam began to wander back towards the hotel, looking around the thinning crowd of guests, hoping to see Adelina’s familiar face. He was in an uncharacteristically fragile state of mind. This was not so hard to understand, except that his darkening mood went deeper than any grief over his gallery. He had the impression that he was teetering on the brink of a nameless abyss, the urge to let himself fall so strong it made him fear for the stable footing of his entire happiness and sanity. Where was Adelina? He was angry with her. How could she be so selfish as to abandon him tonight of all nights?
The giddy excitement of his infatuation with Laura was all very well. But in the grip of such profound vulnerability, Adam reached out for Adelina. For better or worse, as the priest had said all those years ago, they were bonded by life’s trials and disappointments. Only Adelina could understand the depth of his suffering. Only she knew the intimate history of his sadness. It was the insouciance of youth that attracted Adam to Laura and was the same reason he did not turn to her now. He was a middle-aged, wounded man in need of a haven, a safe place to tie up and shelter in the coming storm.
Bosely and Carson reported to Adam that his wife did not appear to be among the evacuees. They had checked her room, which they discovered had been locked from the outside. The bed appeared to have been slept in and it was clear that her dressing gown and slippers were missing. They were still checking all the other guest rooms of the hotel but so far there was no sign of Mrs Fox.
The police, who had been called to the scene of the fire, quickly turned their attention to the search for the missing woman. Dr Liebermeister confirmed he had finished treating Adelina that afternoon around four o’clock. Mr Carson said that she had rung down to the front desk to ask that a light supper be brought to her room around seven-thirty as she was retiring early. Concern grew into alarm when Joe the security guard told Adam and Sergeant Brownlow that he thought he had seen a female figure near the burning gallery ‘in her dressing gown’.
Adam paced the floor of the general manager’s office, a mug of cold tea clutched in his hand. His hotel had been saved but his wife was now missing. Fear stalked him like a chill shadow. Two firemen had already begun the grim job of combing the ruins of the gallery. Several staff were dispatched to begin knocking on doors around the immediate neighbourhood in case Mrs Fox had sought shelter there.
Brownlow coughed apologetically as he and his deputy officer entered. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you this, Mr Fox, but has there been anything about your wife’s behaviour recently that should give us any cause for concern?’ Adam shrugged. How could be even begin to explain his wife to these gentlemen? What scenario were they considering? he wondered. Suicide, murder, arson, kidnapping?
There was a shout from the direction of the gallery. ‘Over here!’
‘Please wait here, sir,’ said the police sergeant as he and the fire chief rushed towards the smoking ruin, which had been cordoned off by ropes.
Bosely placed a firm hand on Fox’s shoulder to comfort and restrain him. They waited in silence.
Adam’s face was a mask of graven stone as the two men approached him some time later. The remains of a human body had been found among the rubble, charred and crushed beyond recognition, close to the mangled relic of a kerosene lamp and burned scraps of clothing. ‘Impossible to identify at this point but it appears to have been wearing a long cloak. We found this close by. Do you recognise it?’
Adam inspected the rag of red tartan. ‘No, I’ve never seen it before.’
Why would Adelina go into the gallery at night alone? It made no sense at all. Terror and hope wrestled desperately inside Adam, crashing about in his chest as they tried to throw each other over. His hand shook as he handed the cloth back to the police sergeant. ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’
The fire chief explained that the presence of the kerosene lamp was highly suggestive as to the cause of the fire; establishing the identity of the intruder and their intentions would require much more detailed investigation. The two men were about to ask Mr Fox some more questions when there was a knock at the office door.
It was Dr Liebermeister. ‘We have found her.’
Adam seized the
doctor by the shoulders. ‘Is she . . . ?’
Liebermeister lowered his head and took off his glasses. When he looked up again, Adam could not remember ever seeing the man’s eyes this clearly before. They were shining with tears. ‘I’m sorry, Herr Fox.’
A moan came from Adam’s mouth and his body convulsed. ‘Take me to her.’
Out of respect, the policeman and the fire chief followed at a distance as the German doctor led his employer across the terrace and into the darkened lobby of the Hydrotherapy Establishment, where Freya’s plump mermaids still swam up the walls.
‘Can we have a moment?’ Liebermeister asked the two officials.
‘Of course,’ said the policeman.
A single lamp shone in the innermost of the echoing maze of rooms. It was here, accompanied by Dr Liebermeister, that Adam Fox looked upon his wife.
Adelina lay, arms crossed over a pale rectangle of stone, at the bottom of a tub of dark water, one of the continuous baths that had failed to heal her. The rectangle was Robbie’s memorial plaque, its weight pressing down on her chest, stilling the agitation of her heart. The whiteness of her arms, legs, feet, toes was shocking in the blackness of the water, but most startling of all was the delicacy of her face, a porcelain mask ringed with a halo of floating hair. She could have been asleep except that her eyes remained wide open, shining green marbles, seeing straight through her husband across the Great Chasm.
Adam Fox kneeled by the tub and wept for his past.
CHAPTER 22
* * *
Angie
Palace of Tears Page 27