by Annie Dalton
‘I’m so sorry!’ A man came racing up. ‘Right, you little thug, you’re going back on the lead!’ He grabbed the pup by the collar, hastily attaching a smart, red lead. ‘Barney’s still only nine months so he’s a bit full-on. Plus, he’s our first dog. All training tips welcomed!’
Anna shook her head, laughing. ‘I can’t help you there. Bonnie came pre-trained by American marines!’
She was still smiling to herself as she and her dog went on their way. Barney’s owner had assumed that Anna was a seasoned dog owner equipped to pass on useful tips, when it was really the other way around. It was Bonnie who trained me, she thought. She wandered along the familiar trails over the ancient commons, with Bonnie bounding on ahead. As she walked, she was aware of birdsong, the slightly overpowering scents of hawthorn and flowering cow parsley, but she was thinking about Ralph Scott-Neville
She’d met him of course. Once she’d been accepted into Dominic Scott-Neville’s circle, it was inevitable she’d run into his father. He’d been at Dominic’s eighteenth, obviously, and she’d encountered him at mealtimes when she and her friend Natalie joined the Dominic’s family’s annual skiing holiday. Anna tried to remember if her father had expressed dismay at her heading off to St Moritz with the Scott-Nevilles, but could only recall a last minute row with her mother.
Anna had never felt comfortable with Ralph. He had, what her grandmother would have described as, an unfortunate face, unfortunate for the century he’d been born into, that is. In the court of Henry VIII, dressed in doublet, hose and snowy ruff, Ralph Scott-Neville’s beady-eyed, sharp-nosed, narrow-chinned features would have blended right in with all the other back-stabbers and conspirators.
Anna had also met Dominic’s grandfather, Bertie, after Dom sweet-talked her and Natalie into showing their faces at the old man’s 90th birthday celebration.
‘Won’t your parents mind us gate-crashing?’ Anna had asked.
‘Oh, they’ll mind,’ he’d said, as if she was an idiot. ‘But if you’re there, they won’t feel they can kick up a fuss. Besides, my grandfather loves pretty girls,’ he’d added with a leer.
She and Natalie had been disgusted because Bertie’s third wife was at least thirty years younger than the shrivelled vulpine old man. Anna seemed to remember she was originally from Venezuela. All the Scott-Neville women claimed some exotic provenance and, so far as she’d seen, spent their days grooming themselves like so many indolent cats. Dom’s mother had been an Argentinian heiress and now Dominic himself had married an American model and socialite.
As she walked beside frothy, cow parsley, Anna was disturbed to find that she could perfectly recall Ralph Scott-Neville’s unnervingly inexpressive face. Yet, behind those blandly empty features, she’d been aware of a cold cunning. Anna shivered. She wished she could travel back through time and plead with her father to take care. Let Hempels go to hell, anything rather than become financially ‘entwined’ with that cold, cruel man.
A little way off, a group of dog-walkers had stopped to chat, their dogs impatiently milling around them. Anna hastily veered off down a different trail.
The growing need to reopen her investigations into her family’s murders was like a gravitational pull. But if she gave into it this time, there was no guarantee she’d be any more successful than before – and now she had so much more to lose.
Don’t go getting yourself into trouble.
Jake had known something was eating at her.
‘There’s a look you get,’ he’d told her once, when they’d been lying and talking in the dark. ‘When I see it, I know you’ve gone some place I can’t follow.’ He’d said it completely without judgment, simply stating a fact.
‘What do you do then?’ she’d asked, feeling her heart beating in her throat.
‘I wait,’ he said, very quietly. ‘I wait till you come back.’
This conversation had pierced Anna to the quick. How she must hurt him when she withdrew into that unreachable place. She was terrified that she might be sucked back into the black hole of her old obsessions. She didn’t want to be that crazy Anna ever again.
Just one month. If she hadn’t turned anything up in that time she’d stop. She’d be able to control it now. She caught herself mentally bargaining with – she wasn’t sure who – her old therapist? Like an alcoholic insisting she could control her drinking, she thought. One month, she thought again. Then I’ll give it up I swear.
She went home with Bonnie, made herself a strong cup of coffee and drank it while she checked her emails.
She wished she could have told Jake about her conversation with her grandfather but, even if he hadn’t just been leaving to catch a plane, she knew she’d have found it too painful. Jake had never known her dad. He only knew the confused little bits and pieces she’d told him; more confused than ever now that she knew Julian wasn’t her biological father. If she’d passed on her grandfather’s bombshell to Jake, he might think less of Julian and she couldn’t bear that. She couldn’t bear the thought that her dad might have been somehow tainted by his involvement with Ralph Scott-Neville,
Julian and Julia Hopkins. Near-identical names for two very different people. Her father had been a detached, prickly, a stoical workaholic. Her mother was given to short-lived enthusiasms, debilitating headaches and emotional outbursts. And adultery, apparently. Despite the jokey comments provoked by the similarity in their names, her oddly-matched parents stalwartly remained Julian and Julia. Never Jools, Jude or Julie.
She didn’t dare to let herself miss them. After how she’d behaved when they were alive, she didn’t feel she had the right. For sixteen years, there had been an aching space where her mother and father should have been.
But I’ve got Tim, she thought. I can talk to Tim.
She reached for her mobile and pulled up her brother’s number, then just sat staring at her phone, her fingers hovering over the icons. Until recently, Tim had worked as an investigative journalist. Now he planned on being a stay-at-home dad for a while, freelancing for one of the broadsheets, while Anjali built her company. Would it be selfish to tell Tim what she’d discovered about Julian? Given that Anjali’s first murder mystery weekend had ended with a real corpse, weren’t he and Anjali under enough pressure?
Tim’s a grownup, she reminded herself. If he’s too busy or too stressed, he can tell you!
She swiped her finger over the call icon. Tim picked up almost at once. To Anna’s relief he sounded like his cheerful, pre-baby self. He interrupted her garbled apology.
‘I know this sounds brutal, Anna, but it’s true what all those vile PR moguls say. There truly is no such thing as bad publicity.’
‘You mean this poor woman’s death is going to be good for business?’ Anna asked. ‘Not that I don’t want Anjali’s business to be successful but …’
‘I knew what you meant,’ he said quickly. ‘But the fact is people are going to remember her company now. And it’s not like High Table will be using Mortmead Hall for future events. It’s just been sold.’
‘Yes, I heard,’ Anna said.
‘Someone bought it as a gift for his bored little wife, who’ll probably turn it into another chichi boutique hotel, just what Oxford needs. So, what’s up?’ he asked in a different tone. ‘You sound frazzled.’
‘I just found out my dad might have been in bed with the devil,’ she blurted out. ‘God, sorry! I sound like such a drama queen!’
There was a pause, then Tim said calmly, ‘Just a bit. Plus, I might need some clarification on the devil thing.’
Typical laid-back Tim, she thought gratefully.
‘I went to see my grandfather last night,’ she explained, ‘and he told me that around the time Will was born, dad’s auction house almost went bust and Ralph Scott-Neville stepped in to save the day. He – my grandfather – thinks that’s why Dad felt he couldn’t object to me running around with Dominic and his—’
‘Anna, slow down,’ Tim interrupted. ‘I know you, remem
ber! Now you’re wondering if this had anything to do with your family’s murders.’
‘Well, yes. Does that sound paranoid?’
She heard him sighing down the phone. ‘No, because I’ve been guilty of making the same leap. To be honest, Anna, this is kind of old news.’
‘You knew! You knew my dad got mixed up with Scott-Neville?’ Anna was beginning to realize just how big a part her family’s murders had played in Tim’s decision to become an investigative journalist. Like Anna, he’d made his own investigations into the tragedy.
‘I’d heard a rumour,’ Tim said. ‘And I had the same reaction as you. Then, every time I tried to investigate, I found myself mysteriously stone-walled.’
‘By the Scott-Nevilles?’
‘By the Scott-Nevilles and their cronies. But, as you know, Ralph’s and Dominic’s alibis for that night were water-tight.’
‘I know,’ she said irritably. ‘Some big family party at Woodstock.’
‘With hundreds of witnesses,’ Tim said. Anna heard him take a breath. ‘I do think it’s quite interesting that, despite Dominic’s water-tight alibi and umpteen witnesses, the Scott-Nevilles obviously felt their son needed serious reining in and packed him off to learn about his uncle’s wine business in Argentina, rather than going to Oxbridge as originally planned.’
‘Reining him in, but also keeping him well out of the public eye? So will you help me do some digging around?’ she asked Tim.
‘I’ll do some low-key digging,’ he agreed. ‘See if there’s any chatter about the other Scott-Nevilles.’ Anna heard his baby daughter let out a thin wail of protest. ‘I can’t give this too much time for reasons you can probably hear,’ he said humorously.
‘Tim, I’m just grateful that I can talk to you,’ she said. ‘Anything else is icing on the cake, believe me.’
She hung up and found she was suddenly buzzing with nervous energy. When Anna was still in therapy, her therapist used to talk a lot about ‘closure’. Anna had tried and failed to imagine how that miraculous and, so far, elusive condition might feel. How was closure even possible, she’d thought, when she still couldn’t walk down the street where her old house used to stand or walk past her brothers’ school without feeling that her heart was breaking.
Or revisit my father’s auction house. She instantly felt her stomach clench as if her body had already reached a decision. I wouldn’t have to go inside. I could walk up the street and take a look, then go straight back home. It would be one small but significant step towards banishing her old shadows. Who might she be without them? For the first time, Anna thought she knew. Free, she thought. I’d be free.
Next morning, Anna caught the bus to the station. But when she arrived on the platform, the train to Paddington was running late. A laconic Oxfordshire voice gave “Beasts on the line”, as the probable cause. As a child, Anna had hopefully pictured dragons or griffins and had been deeply disappointed when her parents explained that it was most likely sheep.
She bought herself a cup of coffee, found an empty bench and waited for the beast problem to be resolved. Last night, unable to sleep, Anna had checked the Hempels’ website. After her father’s death, the auction house had been bought by a Swiss business man, but had kept the old name. Though smaller than Sotheby’s or Christie’s, Hempels had an international reputation for a certain kind of fine art, gaining the respect – and envy – of the bigger auction houses and agencies.
Anna had been touched to see a tribute to her father on the website. In Julian’s bio, he was lauded for his unparalleled expertise, his ethics and his insistence on ensuring the provenance of art objects. Though the man himself had gone, his scrupulously high standards remained as the benchmark of good practice.
Having read this, Anna had felt very slightly reassured. Her father’s involvement with Ralph Scott-Neville still troubled her. But she felt – she hoped – that the man they’d described was the same upright, honourable man that she’d known for sixteen years.
She was just wondering whether she should have driven to London after all, when her train arrived, half an hour late. As she took her seat, she had a rare childhood memory of one of the few times she’d gone into work with her dad. Julia had been pregnant then with Dan. She was coming up to town later the same day and they were taking Anna to see The Nutcracker.
All the seats on the train were either occupied or had been reserved so Anna had had to sit on her dad’s lap. She remembered being thrilled to be going into work with her daddy like a grown-up girl. A Tsarina’s crown was being auctioned and the prospect of seeing a real, Russian princess’s crown had been almost too exciting to bear.
In present time, Anna felt the train slowing to a crawl. It shuddered to a standstill with a great squeal of brakes, leaving Anna with a view over some allotments, where a woman was busy weeding. Inside the carriage, people rustled papers and played with their phones. No explanation was given. No conductor appeared. Everyone just waited in a very British silence. The woman emptied her barrowful of weeds onto her compost heap, locked her barrow and tools inside her shed, and walked away. This left Anna with nothing to look at.
After almost twenty minutes, the train gave a sudden lurch and they were off again, though at a much-reduced speed. Anna eventually arrived at Paddington an hour later than she’d planned.
When she described these minor delays and everything that followed to Tansy later, Tansy said with conviction, ‘It was meant to be. Anna, if you’d arrived any earlier, you never would have known!’
Passing a sushi stand on the station, Anna havered, then finally decided against it and hurried down to the stale air of the Underground. To her relief, there were no delays on the Circle Line and she soon emerged into the sunlight and traffic in South Kensington. It was more than sixteen years since she’d been to her dad’s auction house, but her feet unerringly took her to the right street.
And suddenly there it was on the corner, with its elegant iron railings, the white painted portico and its three supporting columns. When she saw the familiar name above the heavy double doors, Anna felt an inner jolt, as if she’d gone back in time. For a moment, she almost believed that she’d find her father inside at his desk, humming tunelessly, his glasses perched on the end of his nose.
Not giving herself time to think, Anna hurried up the short flight of steps and was surprised when the doors swung open at her touch. Things were more relaxed in her father’s time, obviously, but surely everyone was security conscious now? She’d expected at least an intercom, so she could announce herself and be buzzed in. Feeling uncomfortably like an intruder, she walked cautiously into the foyer, expecting that faintly musty scent of old furniture, but found herself breathing smells of fresh paint and beeswax. The walls had been repainted a soft, Georgian yellow. The scuffed, wooden floors had been stripped and polished to a honey-coloured glow. The effect was sunny and golden. It would have been welcoming, if there had been anyone there to greet her.
There was a receptionist’s desk, with phones and a computer, but the computer was still covered and the receptionist nowhere to be seen. Anna looked around for someone to tell her where she should go. She thought she could hear voices coming from downstairs. Her father’s office had been on the lower-ground floor, next door to the valuation room.
She made her way downstairs and saw two porters blocking her view of her father’s old office. With their backs to Anna they stood, immobile as waxworks, on either side of the partially-open door. Like gun dogs, she thought, every nerve-ending focused on the loudly audible quarrel that was taking place inside.
‘It never belonged to you! You people had no right!’ A man on the verge of hysteria cried out, then a second voice, calm but authoritative.
‘Please try to calm down, Sir, or I’ll have no choice but to have you removed. I can only repeat what my colleagues have already told you many times. The painting you describe does not exist. Believe me, if it existed Hempels would know about it.’
�
��That’s a lie and you know it! My father saw it in his grandparents’ dining room every Friday night, when they all celebrated shabbas together.’
‘Mr Fischer, much as I dislike sounding like a broken record, I can only reiterate that the painting you describe has never been mentioned in any catalogue of any auction house. Now I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.’ The calm sounding man must have been gradually edging his furious visitor closer to the door, because Anna finally caught a glimpse of someone, who reminded her of a dishevelled male version of Isadora. He had a shock of long, white, wiry hair with one startling streak of jet black. His crumpled, old clothes seemed thrown on; a scarecrow, who had assembled himself in a high wind. In contrast, the tall, beautifully-dressed man, who was calmly but inexorably shepherding him from the office, looked like a Hollywood matinee idol from the nineteen-forties. The older man almost stumbled out into the hall, his eyes filled with tears. He was probably only in his sixties, Anna thought, but he looked grey with strain.
The porters immediately unfroze, silently moving one to each side of him.
‘Come on, sir,’ one said. ‘You’ve had your five minutes. Excuse us, miss,’ he added politely to Anna.
The porters escorted the distraught man up the flight of stairs that led to the street. They didn’t jostle or manhandle him. Again, Anna had the image of well-trained gun dogs.
‘The Mafia has better ethics than you people! You should be ashamed!’ She heard the man shouting down the stairs.
‘Now, now, Mr Fischer,’ one of the porters said wearily. ‘Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.’
Then Anna heard Fischer scream, ‘Julian Hopkins knew we were telling the truth! He told me he believed me! You haven’t heard the last of this. I’m never giving up!’
Anna heard the soft thud of the doors closing. Then her head filled with white noise.