The Oxford Inheritance

by Ann A. McDonald

  Something in her twisted with a lonely ache. She found herself nodding. “Okay,” she told Charlie, self-conscious. “Thank you. I’ll come.”

  Charlie’s family lived on the outskirts of the city, in a residential cul-de-sac full of redbrick houses and overgrown front yards. Several of the houses were strewn with gaudy Christmas lights, but none were as elaborate as the plastic Santa and snowmen propped on the roof of Charlie’s house, flashing a rainbow of lights even in the bright of midday. “Now, you might want to brace yourself,” he warned her, slamming the car door of his beat-up blue Honda. “They were just breaking into the Baileys when I left, so it’s probably bedlam by now.”

  Cassie followed him up the walk, curious. Even from here she could hear noise from inside the house, and when he unlocked the front door, it burst out in a chorus of chaos.

  “Mum! Kirsty took my new skirt from Topshop and you know she’ll stretch it out!” A teenage girl was thundering down the stairs, closely followed by another girl around sixteen dressed in a tight vest and red miniskirt.

  “Will not, you’re the one who needs to stop eating all my Ferrero Rocher!” They pushed past Charlie and Cassie without slowing for breath, racing to the back of the house.

  Charlie gave Cassie a grin. “Welcome to the madness.”

  Another girl backed out of the living room, juggling a baby on her hip. “Liam! Liam, put that plug down! What have I told you, sockets aren’t toys!” She turned, seeing them in the hallway. “Charlie, there you are. Can you keep your nephew from electrocuting the cat? If he blows the fuse, we’ll never get dinner cooked.”

  “Cassie, my sister Rhiannon,” Charlie introduced.

  Rhiannon gave Cassie a brief look. “Can you take her?” she asked, thrusting the baby at her.

  “I, what?” Cassie didn’t have time to argue; the infant was already in her arms.

  “Just for a sec, I’ve got to go give her dad a bollocking. Charlie, the plug!” she ordered, before marching outside.

  “Duty calls,” Charlie grinned, heading into the living room.

  Cassie caught her breath, alone for a moment in the hallway with a baby in her arms. When Charlie had said his family was a handful, she hadn’t realized what he meant. For a second, she thought about making her excuses and a quick exit, but then Charlie poked his head back around the door with a friendly grin. “Well, don’t just stand there.”

  “Sure. Sorry.” Cassie followed him into the living room, crammed with old faded sofas, a big-screen TV, and a huge, gaudily decorated tree. Charlie was on his knees, tickling a toddler who shrieked in delight. He looked up. “Sorry about Rhiannon. These are her brats.”

  “Oh.” Cassie blinked, wondering how old she was. Not more than eighteen, at most.

  Charlie caught her look and chuckled. “Yeah, that about sums it up. You should have seen Mum’s face when she came home from school and told us she was pregnant with this one.” He attacked the toddler again. “Should’ve known he’d turn out to be a terror. That one’s Daisy,” he added, nodding to the baby Cassie was holding awkwardly. “And those two whining girls you saw tearing through here before are my youngest sisters, Kirsty and Laura.”

  “Wow.” Cassie swallowed. “Big family.”

  “Yup.” Charlie swung Liam over his head to sit on his shoulders. “And Uncle Fred and Aunt Trudy are here too. Don’t worry,” he added. “They’re too busy not speaking to each other to pay any attention to you.”

  Charlie was right. As the various members of the Day clan wandered in and out of the room, Cassie found she could sit unnoticed in the corner, bouncing the placid baby on her lap as the noise continued around her, Charlie and his sisters bickering over half a dozen different things. She found it hard to keep up, but Cassie didn’t mind: it was relaxing to simply watch the madness whirl around her, the loud, affectionate hustle of family life. Nobody asked her about her own family or plans, they just set her to work peeling potatoes in the overpacked kitchen, while Charlie’s mother kept a watchful eye on five different pans of food and his sisters flipped through gossip magazines and texted their friends.

  “So how long have you known our Charlie?” his mother, Maureen, asked when Charlie had been sent up on the roof to adjust the TV aerial. She was a loud, blousy women in her fifties with a feathery cut of dyed blond hair and the kind of sharp gaze that left nothing unnoticed.

  “A couple of months,” Cassie replied. “But I don’t know him all that well.”

  “So you’re not his girlfriend?” one of the sisters, Laura, Cassie thought, piped up.

  “No, it’s not her,” the other teenage girl answered for Cassie. “He dumped her the other week, remember? She was getting too clingy.”

  “They always get too clingy. He’s such a man-whore.” Laura rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t talk like that about your brother,” Maureen scolded. “He’s just looking for the right girl, that’s all.” She turned back to Cassie with a worrying gleam in her eye. “And you’re a student at one of the colleges, are you? Clever girl.”

  “Just for the year,” Cassie explained quickly, lest Maureen get the impression that Cassie was that right girl Charlie needed. “Then I go back to America.”

  “Hmm.” Maureen paused. “Well, shame.” She turned back to stirring the gravy. “It’s hard for him to meet a nice girl; all he does is work.”

  “And get drunk down at the pub,” Kirsty muttered.

  “I don’t suppose you have any friends . . . ?” Maureen was asking when Charlie came back in.

  “What did I miss?” He looked around.

  “I was hearing all about your love life,” Cassie told him, with a teasing grin.

  Charlie groaned. “Mum! What have you been telling her?”

  “Nothing bad,” Maureen protested. “Just I can’t understand why a boy like you can’t find a nice girl. You’re a real catch, you know.”

  “I’m too young to settle down.” Charlie pretended to act annoyed, but Cassie could tell he didn’t mind. “I’ve got another ten years of bachelor kicks in me, at least.” He winked at Cassie.

  Maureen beamed at him, clearly adoring. “That’s just what your dad said before he met me. You mark my words, when you meet the right girl, you won’t know what hit you.”

  Cassie watched them. She could see they’d had this exchange a hundred times and would probably have it another hundred more. She felt a tightness in her chest, a familiar ache. The love between Charlie and his family was so casual, they probably didn’t even realize how lucky they were: the way they dipped into each other’s conversations, entering and exiting rooms mid-thought; even the way they all moved through the house was a ballet, an unconscious but constant motion.

  “You all right?” Maureen asked, looking over.

  “It’s just . . . the onions.” Cassie pointed to the freshly chopped pile with relief. “I’m going to get some air.” She put down her peeler and headed for the back door. There was a small patio outside the kitchen, and a thin strip of lawn, browned and overgrown in the winter. A children’s play slide was set up at the end, and Cassie went to perch on the step, gulping in deep breaths of chilled winter air.

  It was the holidays, she told herself, fighting back tears. This time of year brought up memories for everyone, and now all the things Cassie had worked so hard to push down were bubbling to the surface again, brought on by the memories of cinnamon and nutmeg in the steamy kitchen air. It would pass, it always did.

  “Hey.”

  She looked up, quickly wiping her eyes. Charlie was coming down the garden toward her. “Don’t tell me they drove you away already. I was thinking you’d make it through lunch, at least.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Cassie forced a smile as he reached her. “I’m fine. I just needed—”

  “Some air,” he finished for her. Charlie studied her carefully, then shrugged off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death out here.”

  “Thanks.” Ca
ssie swallowed, feeling self-conscious.

  “Sure you’re okay?” he asked again.

  She nodded. “It’s just the holidays.”

  “You miss your folks?” Charlie lowered himself onto the step beside her and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Don’t tell her indoors,” he added. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” Cassie replied.

  Charlie lit a cigarette and inhaled a long breath. “What about yours?” he asked, turning to look at her with a searching stare.

  “What?” Cassie blinked.

  “Your secrets.” Charlie took another drag. “What’s all this research really about?”

  Cassie paused, her old lie to Elliot sticking in her throat. It shouldn’t have been hard to explain, again, about the family friend, and her natural curiosity. But for some reason the lie wouldn’t come. Maybe it was because of the loud chatter and music drifting from the house, the home Charlie had invited her into without a second thought, as if revealing his life to her was the most natural thing in the world.

  Cassie reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her slim wallet. She slowly unfolded the picture of her mother and Rose she kept there and passed it to Charlie.

  “The dead girl,” he said, recognizing her.

  “And that’s my mother.” Cassie pointed to Margaret’s face. “After Rose died, she dropped out. Changed her name, moved to America. She’s dead now; she killed herself too, ten years ago. But she never once told me she’d even studied at Oxford. That’s how I know there’s something rotten going on here,” she added, meeting Charlie’s steady blue eyes. “She ran. She ran from something, and I need to know what it was.”

  Charlie held her gaze, thoughtful. Then he slowly folded the picture and caught sight of the writing on the back. “‘Black is the badge of hell, the hue of dungeons, and the school of night,’” he read.

  “Someone put that in my mail,” Cassie explained. “It’s a reference to a secret society at Raleigh. At least, I think it is. Rose wrote a paper on the society,” she added. “And Evie checked it out just a week before she died.”

  “Curious and curiouser.” Charlie took another long drag on his cigarette, then ground the stub out under his heel and stood up. “We’ll figure it out,” he said quietly, holding out his hand to help her up. “We’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”

  He sounded so certain, Cassie couldn’t help but believe him. Then his face crinkled into a familiar grin. “But right now, there’s a roast turkey and five kinds of vegetables waiting on that table. Murder and mayhem can wait. First, we eat.”

  Christmas lunch was a boozy, drawn-out affair with traditional crackers and paper crowns. Cassie let herself get swept along in the flow of conversation and laughter, savoring the brief glimpse of happily dysfunctional family life. After the dishes were finally cleared, Charlie’s sisters disappeared to go hang out with their friends, and the remainder of them retired to the living room to watch TV.

  “Okay to stay for a bit?” Charlie asked, looking over from where he was sprawled beside Cassie on the couch. “I ate so much I can’t move an inch right now. I’ll drive you back after the movie.”

  “Sure,” Cassie agreed, glad of an excuse to stay longer, wrapped in the warmth of a woolly throw and his family’s friendship.

  “Hold on starting the movie,” Maureen called from the kitchen. “I’m just making a pot of tea.”

  Charlie began channel-hopping, until his uncle spoke up. “Pause there. Let me take a look at the news.” Charlie turned the volume up. It was a story about the upcoming election, shots of the contending politicians out greeting constituents and posing with Santa Claus. Cassie watched carefully when Richard Mandeville came on-screen, a handsome man in his late forties with salt-and-pepper hair and an engaging smile.

  “What do you think of him?” she asked Charlie, nodding at the TV.

  He shrugged. “They’re all the same. They like to talk tough on law and order, but you can bet whoever gets elected, they’ll be slashing our budgets before the year is out.”

  “I know his family,” she said, still watching the news conference on-screen. Mandeville was speaking at some event, looking confident and sincere in front of the crowd. “His daughter’s at Raleigh.”

  “Of course she is.” Charlie gave a laugh. “All that lot went to Oxford. The kids you’re there with now will be running the country in twenty years’ time.”

  Cassie was about to reply when she caught something on-screen that made her heart stop. It was footage from a previous occasion, Mandeville shaking hands with someone, but the people weren’t what caught her attention. It was where they were standing that made her breath catch. “Charlie,” she whispered, pulling the photo back out of her wallet. “Look.” She showed him the picture of her mother and Rose, sitting at a table in front of a wall of portraits.

  On-screen, Richard Mandeville was shown chatting with some business leader or politician. In front of the same wall of portraits, the very same dining room.

  Gravestone Manor. The Mandeville family estate.

  Charlie looked back at Cassie, his eyes searching her face. “No,” he said, before she had a chance to even say a word. “You can’t.”

  “I have to get in there,” she declared.

  “You can’t just go waltzing in,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “He’s about to get elected prime minister; there’ll be security for miles. And even if you found a way in, they’ll throw you out on your ass the minute you start digging around.”

  “No, they won’t.” Cassie realized her chance. “I have an invitation.”

  23

  HUGO INSISTED ON SENDING A CAR FOR HER. GRAVESTONE WAS in the middle of the countryside, he told her; local trains and buses weren’t running through the New Year. So Cassie sat nervously in the back of the sleek black BMW, watching the driver in his peaked cap as Oxford melted away in the rearview mirror and the motorways snaked through the clouded green landscape toward her destination.

  The phone in her hands buzzed with a text.

  All OK?

  Fine. Not there yet.

  Call me the minute anything happens.

  Charlie had balked at the idea of Cassie disappearing into the depths of Sussex without any way to call for help. He’d arranged a meeting before she left and pressed his sister’s outdated cell phone into her hand that morning as Cassie prepared to depart.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned her. “Just get the lay of the land. For all you know, there’s nothing linking the Mandevilles to any of this stuff. It could just have been a coincidence about the photo.”

  “Nothing about any of this is a coincidence,” Cassie replied grimly, but she took the phone all the same. Charlie was still looking at her with concerned eyes, so she sighed. “I’m not going to go charging in there making wild accusations,” she reassured him. “I just want to see what that place is all about. Besides, it’s a party. Hundreds of people will be there. Nobody will notice if I take a look around.”

  As the car wound its way through the Sussex countryside, Cassie wondered what it was she was looking for. She’d had nothing but suspicions and instinct driving her on until now, small threads that, once she tugged them, only unraveled another row of neat assumptions. But now that Charlie was involved, everything felt more real, the doubts and whispers that had only circled in her mind now taking shape in the hushed conversations they exchanged in the background of the noisy pubs on the outskirts of the city.

  He believed her. Something was going on. And the body count had been rising for years now, decades, a long trail of heartbreak and tragedy.

  Would Gravestone be the key, Cassie wondered now, as the car wound its way through the Sussex countryside, or was this just another fool’s errand? But as the green patchwork woodland grew denser outside the car windows, taking her farther from the comfort of busy motorways and clustered towns, Cassie’s heartbeat sped in her chest
in a skitter of nervous anticipation and she felt a growing sense of dread. What secrets was Gravestone hiding? And if some dark conspiracy was lurking there, did that mean Hugo was a part of it, too?

  After two hours in the car, Cassie’s nerves were stretched to their breaking point. Finally, they turned onto a winding country road that took them through a copse of woodland. Then the trees cleared, and Cassie took a sharp breath as Gravestone came into view for the first time.

  It was stunning. Gravestone was a sprawling Elizabethan manor on the hillside below them, built in burnished red brick and slate tiles. The driveway circled around a formal fountain, and as they approached, Cassie could see the neat lines of formal gardens fanning out from the mansion, giving way to lawns and a lake glittering beyond the gardens in a brief burst of sunlight.

  The car drew up outside the front steps, wheels crunching on the gravel. It was late in the afternoon, and already two dozen cars were parked outside—a gleaming row of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces—as well as a couple of white vans from which uniformed staff were unloading boxes of flowers and party supplies. Cassie climbed out before the driver had time to come around to open the door for her and gazed up at the three stories of twisting ivy and iron-paned windows.

  “I can take your case, ma’am.” The driver took from her the battered weekend bag that she had hastily packed.

  “Thank you,” she started to say, but he’d already disappeared into the house.

  Cassie took a deep breath and slowly climbed the front steps. The doors were open, so she entered, her eyes adjusting to the gloom in the wood-paneled and imposing grand foyer, with a wide staircase spiraling upward and a mezzanine level above. There was a faded grandeur to everything: the heavy velvet drapes blocking light at the windows, the damask and brocade upholstery on the furniture, antique tables and coatracks at every turn.

  She wandered deeper into the house. One grand room gave way to the next, all decorated with the same heavy wooden furniture and antique fabrics. It was like a museum, perfectly restored, and Cassie could almost imagine the original inhabitants strolling through the same rooms, five hundred years ago.