He tried to twist away and I let go. It wasn’t a battle of strength – just of wills.
I looked him in the eye. ‘I said… put that away.’
The change in my manner made him hesitate.
‘You’re right – I did take the girl’s trinket. You’re right about a lot of things – but not about me. You think I’m here to arrest you – grass on you?’
For the first time he took a step backwards. He tucked the knife into his belt. ‘Why are you here, Badger?’
‘You think I’m stupid, don’t you?’ I hissed. ‘You offer me some goddamn bracelet when you’re dripping with jewels like the Queen of Sheba?’
‘Oh.’ Understanding dawned in his eyes now that we were speaking the same language. ‘So – you do want a slice of the pie.’ He chuckled. ‘But you want a bigger slice, is that it?’
‘Bigger – yes. You could say that.’ I patted the lapel of his fur coat. ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘But I’m allergic to fur. You can keep the coat.’
‘What? You think I’m going to give you this lot?’ His hand went to the jewels around his neck. ‘Why would I do that?’
I smiled slowly, thinking how satisfying it would be to walk into a police station and dump a pile of looted jewels down on the counter. Maybe I’d get a reward for turning in a thief. And reuniting the owner with their property. But first I needed to walk away from here… ‘Because I’ve got something you don’t have.’ I pointed to the top of the alley. ‘Evidence.’
He turned and looked – at the cold, unfeeling eye of the camera filming him.
‘You bastard,’ he hissed, reaching for the knife again. But there was fear in his eyes now. I’d won.
‘Give me the lot,’ I said. ‘And I’ll have Robbo there destroy his film. You’ll walk away.’
‘How do I know you’ll do that?’
‘You don’t.’ I shrugged. ‘As they say, “there’s no honour among thieves”.’
Slowly, he uncoiled the beads from around his neck. He bared his teeth at me. ‘You’ll regret this, Badger.’
I smiled grimly. ‘I already do.’
I untucked the knife from his belt. He handed me the jewels, including the diamond bracelet he’d offered me earlier.
‘Here – you keep this.’ I tossed him a plain gold ring. ‘Think of it as a little gift for all your hard work.’
- Chapter 39 -
Even though I’m not one jot clearer to solving anything, I feel much happier having cleared the air between me and Mrs Fairchild. But there’s a dagger hanging over my head ready to drop at any moment and sever my new-found connection with my grandmother, her family – criminals or no – and Mallow Court. A dagger in the form of a sheaf of papers, shoved into a Manila folder. The diary entries.
That evening, there’s a small corporate drinks party taking place in the library. While the party is going on, I lock myself in my office and sit down at my desk with a glass of red wine from the open bar. I take a pen and notebook out of the drawer – making it feel like ‘research’ somehow makes it easier to stay detached.
But when I start reading through the entries one by one, I can’t stay detached for long. With each page, I become more and more overwrought – horrified even by the possibility that I’m related by blood to someone who could have acted with such unfeeling cruelty. And not just related, but reaping the benefit of his criminal activities. I’m managing a house that was bought by ill-gotten gains; living in a flat on the grounds. My grandmother owns the house. Someday, I might even inherit it. My stomach roils at the very idea. The more I read, the more I completely understand why my grandmother called in the estate agent. The foundations of the life I’ve built for myself have begun to shudder and crack.
I glean that Hal Dawkins, ‘Badger’, teamed up with the photographer, Robert Copthorne to follow Frank, ‘Flea’ and gather evidence. Most likely Flea looted the Stanley house because he was jealous of Jeremy, ‘Spider’, and his superior class and prospects. They followed him to another bombed-out house where he looted jewellery and furs. Though it isn’t spelled out, I infer that Flea may have hacked off a wrist from a dead woman’s body to remove a diamond bracelet. Like a rat crawling from a sewer, nothing was sacred or off limits.
Eventually, I throw down the stack of papers. I feel unclean and can’t read anymore. I go to the window and look out at the view – twilight settling in over the idyllic gardens, a sliver of moon rising just above the coppice of silver birch trees. All of it seems tainted now.
I find myself wishing that Chris was here, while at the same time grateful that he’s not. Anyone who read through the diary would be bound to come to the same damning conclusion. Despite his weak attempts to justify his actions to his friend Badger, Frank Bolton was a scumbag through and through.
Just as I’m about to go and check on the guests, the office phone rings. I answer it and am subjected to the cut-glass tones of the estate agent – Alistair Bowen-Knowles.
‘I was hoping to speak to Catherine,’ he says. ‘Would that be possible?’
‘She’s out,’ I lie.
‘Well, in that case, Ms Hart, please can you let her know that I have someone interested in viewing the property.’
‘What? Already?’ The words shoot out of my mouth. ‘We haven’t even decided to put it on the market.’
‘Of course. If you just let her know, I would appreciate it.’
I can sense he’s humouring me. ‘Goodbye.’ I slam down the phone and put my head in my hands. Just five minutes ago, I was adamant that my grandmother was right to sell the house. So why am I being so obstructive? I push the wine away. Think… I need to think. There’s something niggling in my mind – something that I’m missing. I’m sure of it. What is it that I’ve missed?
I put my head down on the desk, resting it on my arm. The sound of my wristwatch is like a time bomb ticking in my ear.
*
The next day is dull and rainy, reflecting my mood. While a few individuals come to take the self-guided tour of the house and the costume exhibition, I’m not expecting any coaches. I dust some of the porcelain, tighten the screws on a loose door handle, and replace one of the strips of high-visibility tape on the disabled access to the gift shop. I chat for a bit with Edith and help her tidy-up the back storeroom. I go about it on autopilot – still thinking about everything I have – and haven’t – discovered. There has to be something – some clue that I haven’t found yet. But where to look?
The answer is obvious: I need to snoop.
I continue with odd jobs while I wait – for my grandmother to go off to her WI meeting in the village. If I’m going to snoop through her bedroom and her things, obviously, I can’t have her around.
She’s later than usual leaving. Normally, she takes the footpath and walks to the village, carrying a hessian bag full of biscuits or jam. But today she seems to have made other arrangements. I stand at the window, periodically checking my watch. At last, a muddy Land Rover comes into the drive – her friend Doris. My grandmother runs out to the vehicle wearing a raincoat and carrying her hessian bag. The Land Rover sits there for what seems like an age, but is probably less than a minute. Finally, it leaves, its tyres squeaking over the wet gravel. I slip silently past a couple who are looking closely at the old fireplace in the Stewart Bedroom, the woman reading out the laminated leaflet. The man is running his hand over the carved wood. I give him a look and he jerks back his hand.
My grandmother’s bedroom is at the end of the hall, through a door marked Private. I’ve been inside lots of times – to bring her a cup of tea, or the newspaper, or just to have a chat. But today, I’m trespassing.
I use my master key to unlock the door and go inside. The room is an odd mixture of feminine and masculine: cushions and curtains in candy floss pink, wallpaper with alternating stripes of white and china blue roses, but also heavy dark wood furnishings and a huge carved canopy bed hung with thick draperies in nautical blue and gold. In front of the window is a dr
essing table, with a silver-backed hair brush and vanity set arranged over a glass top. Everything is very neat and tidy and, except for a few paperback novels and a box of paracetamol on the nightstand, looks like the bedrooms that are on show to the public. I check the dressing table, the nightstand, and the closet, looking for any papers or letters that might be of interest. There’s nothing. No old boxes of photographs or documents that belonged to her dead father. Inside the lining of her jewellery box, I find a single photograph – of me dressed for my prom. A prickling sensation goes down my spine. Mum or Dad must have sent her the photo. How did she feel when she received it? Grateful for them to think of her – or angry that she wasn’t part of my life? With a shudder, I put it back and leave the room.
Admittedly, I wasn’t really expecting to find anything pertinent to the search. To my grandmother, the past is a delicate and painful subject. She wouldn’t keep anything out in the open where it might be found by staff or cleaners, or… me. So where does she keep her memories?
Unfortunately, by process of elimination, I have a fair idea. I climb the back stairs – the servants’ staircase that was added in the 1700s when the original Tudor house was expanded. The banister is polished wood, but unlike the main staircase, it lacks the deep, lifelike carving. In a way, I prefer its simplicity. I follow it up to the third floor, where it narrows, bends sharply, and ends at a landing. Off the landing are a number of eaved attic rooms that were once servant bedrooms and are now earmarked for wedding guests when extra accommodation is needed. Another room is used for furniture storage – extra chairs and lamps, broken bits of furniture that someday I’ll get around to having repaired. The bit I need to tackle today is much less pleasant – another warren of attic rooms reached via a hatch high above the top of the staircase.
I position the wobbly wooden ladder underneath the hatch. Steeling myself, I climb up and squeeze through. The space is cramped and stiflingly hot, with dangerous low beams jutting at every angle. I switch on my torch and crawl to the very middle where the roof peaks. I straighten up, shuddering as my hair finds a shower of dust and cobwebs. I shine the torch around. There’s a colony of greenfly above one of the windows, and mice droppings that I’ve already crawled through. Boxes are shoved under the eaves, most labelled in black marker: books, toys, clothes, taxes. The writing is neat, and I recognise it as my grandmother’s. Everything here is still too modern.
At the back of the attic is another door. As distasteful as it is poking around up here, I have to keep going. I make my way over, swearing loudly when I whack my head on a beam hidden behind another beam. This door leads to a long space that stretches a good ten metres away from me, maybe even further. I duck down to crawl through the low door. I shine my torch into the room… and gasp.
The room has been ransacked! Everywhere, domestic detritus has been heaved to the side: pieces of an iron bed frame, an ancient-looking hoover, some large picture frames. Every box has been opened and tipped out: old books, trophies, horse riding gear. And papers – endless papers. With a shaking hand, I pick up a few of them. Children’s drawings and old mimeographed homework, a few old bills. Someone – probably Catherine’s stepmum Mabel – kept just about everything. I know for a fact that Mrs Fairchild rarely comes up to the attic, and certainly would never have left such a mess. So that means that someone else – an intruder – went through it all looking for something. My skin crawls with the knowledge that the ‘uninvited guest’ has clearly been making himself busy at Mallow Court without anyone’s knowledge – like a rat that crawls out from between the floorboards at night, gnawing at the fibres of the past. But what was he looking for?
And more importantly, did he find it?
I riffle through more of the papers, but quickly decide that there’s no point. Even if I knew what I was looking for, I’m too late. I’ll send one of the cleaners up here with some bin bags to clean up the mess. There’s nothing else I can do.
Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I sit back on my heels. The silence is thick and cloying. The only sound is a slow drip coming from a cold water tank underneath the eaves. I crawl towards the drip and shine my torch over the black plastic covering on the tank. The last thing I need is a leak ruining the plaster ceiling in the room below.
I move the plastic aside. There’s no visible leak, but shoved between the tank and the wall I see another archive box with a battered top, and signs of water damage on the sides. Cobwebs brush my face as I squeeze into the small space. The cardboard practically disintegrates as I pull the box out, and the dust and mildew sends me into a coughing fit. I’m sure of one thing, though: it’s a box that the intruder didn’t find.
I open the battered lid and shine my torch inside. There’s something on top – at first glance it looks like a scuba mask. But as I lift it out, I realise that it’s a gas mask. In the dim light, the dusty grey mask looks like the head of a monster designed to frighten small children. How awful it would be to have to carry one everywhere, never knowing when it might save your life. I set it aside with a shudder.
Underneath the mask are sheaves of old papers and newspaper clippings. The damp cardboard is ready to split, so I unload some of the things, wishing I’d brought a bag. At the bottom of the box, I encounter something smooth and metallic – a large flat cylinder about the size of a dinner plate. I move the other things aside and pull out the cylinder. It’s an old film canister for a reel-to-reel projector. Underneath are several more – I count five film canisters in all. It may well be nothing, but my pulse accelerates. What could be on these films kept in a long-forgotten box? Family home movies of a summer picnic, a day at the beach, a cricket match, or excited children on Christmas morning? Or something else? Could this be what the intruder was looking for?
I pile as many of the papers and photos as I can carry on top of the film canisters. If the intruder was after any of the things I’ve found, then I have to keep them safe. By the time I’m finally back to the hatch, I’ve hit my head twice more on the low beams, and am seeing stars. But I’ve got an armful of treasures – or junk – to show for my troubles. I take everything down the ladder, and out of the house. My stomach flutters with nerves as I return to my flat and pile everything on the bed. Though I’m desperate for a shower to wash off the years of cobwebs and dust that are clinging to my hair and my skin, I can’t wait to find out exactly what I’ve discovered. I begin sorting through the pile of papers. There are lots of old photos – men in military uniforms drinking at the pub; women in floral cotton dresses posing for the camera with smiling painted lips. A few of the photos are signed R. Copthorne with a date scribbled in pencil. Then there are the newspaper clippings: mostly headline articles mentioning various Allied victories and advances, and the occasional obituary with a name circled in red pencil. I’m about to give up when a tiny article catches my eye. I read through it, the breath catching in my chest.
LOST ROMANOV JEWELS HIDDEN IN LONDON?
On Thursday night, a Russian national was washed ashore in Northern Scotland after his boat was torpedoed. Suffering from acute hypothermia, he was found by a local resident who notified the authorities. According to the resident, while in a delirious state, the man spoke of being on a mission to London to find a Russian princess who was the illegitimate daughter of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovic, brother to Tsar Nicholas II. According to the unnamed man, the young woman escaped Russia during the 1918 Revolution with a fortune in family jewels. The man is currently in police custody, after admitting that he is a spy working for Soviet secret police.
In the margin of the clipping, a note is penned: Marina?
I flip anxiously through the rest of the clippings, but there’s nothing – no follow-up article, and no more marginalia.
Marina? Could this Russian princess referred to in the article really be the Marina that Mr Pepperharrow knew? My great-grandmother? Surely not.
Yet, I remember what he told me about her – how she always seemed frightened; how she lived her li
fe constantly looking over her shoulder. Though, as he’d said, that would have been the case for many Russians who escaped the Revolution to come to the west. But certainly for someone who was hiding a fortune in jewels.
A fortune in jewels?
I touch the jewelled locket that I’ve now taken to wearing around my neck, tucked inside my top, along with the tiny gold key that I’ve put on the chain. The metal warms up in my hand like it contains its own life force.
No.
I fire up my laptop and do a web search for ‘Marina, Russian Princess’. A few sites come up – the kind that I don’t open for fear they’ll give my computer a virus. I then do a search on Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. This time, real information is more plentiful.
In a nutshell, Michael Alexandrovich was fourth in line to the Russian throne at birth, but at the time of the Revolution was third in line following his brother, Tsar Nicholas II and the Tsar’s son, Alexei. Michael Alexandrovich apparently caused a scandal by marrying his mistress, Natalia, with whom he had his ‘only child’, George. Before that, he also had an affair with Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s daughter, who later married into the Spanish royal house. I swiftly jot down the main facts, specifically noting that he’s not officially credited with fathering any other children. Certainly not a daughter named ‘Marina’.
I learn that prior to the 1918 Revolution, Michael Alexandrovich left Russia for a time, living, among other places, at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire! Excitement bubbles in my chest. I know Knebworth House – we used to take school trips there sometimes; and later, I saw a few outdoor concerts there. I read on: Michael Alexandrovich returned to Russia with his family to fight in the Russian forces in World War One. But when the political situation in Russia became untenable in 1916, Nicholas II signed a document abdicating the throne in favour of his brother. Michael Alexandrovich refused to accept the honour until a provisional government had ratified his appointment – which never happened. Michael Alexandrovich was eventually arrested by the Bolsheviks and murdered in 1918. His family, however, managed to escape to the west.
Finding Secrets Page 27