by Lulu Taylor
‘The police didn’t say anything about that!’
‘They’ll say nothing until there’s evidence.’
‘They asked me about moving the horses, and why I was up there at the house. They seemed to think I might have set the fire.’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘I suppose they have to explore every possibility. Have they talked to you?’
Phil nodded. ‘Yep. I told them that you usually got me to move the horses if you thought they might be disturbed, that was nothing out of the ordinary. I said I saw you leaving that night, and that the boss told me to put his car in the garage because he wasn’t going anywhere. Then I went home.’
Buttercup went still, her coffee cup halfway to her mouth, and stared. Somewhere, she realised, she’d been hoping that Charles had gone – she’d imagined him driving off into some other mysterious life and a new existence. But if he’d left his car, surely now a pile of molten metal – that beloved red car of his – then how could he be anywhere but in the remains of the house? It was hard to envisage him setting off on foot, and surely someone would have seen him leaving the village.
‘That’s it then.’ Her voice came out thick and tearful. ‘He’s gone.’
‘I’m sorry, BC, I really am. I guess you can live the rest of your life now, though, right? You’re okay, you got out. You don’t have to worry about him treating you like he did Ingrid. You’ll get his money and whatnot.’
‘Phil!’ she said, appalled. ‘It’s too soon to talk like that!’
Phil nodded, a little shame-faced. ‘Sorry if I spoke out of turn. I didn’t mean to offend. I’m just realistic, that’s all. No one wished the boss dead, but he’s gone – well, it’s not all bad. That’s all I’m saying.’
The conversation with Phil left a bitter taste in Buttercup’s mouth. She could guess that, from the outside, it all looked convenient for her. Her marriage had been on the rocks, a bitter divorce ahead. Now she had no husband and no need for a fight.
No wonder the police want to make very sure about me.
But there’s no evidence, she told herself firmly as she walked back to Fitzroy House with Tippi. Because I didn’t do it.
She replayed the events of the night before last in her head, going over everything as carefully as she could. She remembered being pulled over the marble floor of the hall, carefully placed by the door and then abandoned.
Ingrid said Charles wanted to save me by putting me by the front door. But what if he was actually setting me up, making it more likely that I’d look like the fire starter. Perhaps he wanted me to asphyxiate right there, looking like I’d been caught by the flames before I could escape.
No, she told herself. She didn’t want to believe that. Charles had wanted to save her. Maybe he wanted her to come to the house so that he could have one last try at reconciling and when he got no reply, decided on his frightful course. He’d not expected her. She’d turned up, fallen over and he’d found her unconscious. His last act had been to get her out of the building before he’d dived back inside to burn with all that was precious to him.
Except he didn’t get me out.
He must have known I’d be saved, perhaps he’d seen that help was coming, she countered herself.
That’s what I want to believe. It’s what I will believe.
The following day, the police told Buttercup she was free to go for the time being. The business of sifting through the remains of the house would take a long time.
Signs of Christmas were everywhere, trees glowing through windows, lights sparkling on hedges and over gables. The pub was festooned in decorations, with festive pop playing, but Buttercup hardly noticed it when she went in to say goodbye to Cathy and Wilf.
‘We’re all so sorry,’ Cathy said, as they sat in the flat upstairs, Cathy nursing Bethany and Buttercup curled up on the sofa nearby. ‘We’ve had lots of journalists and press people round. They’re all tremendously interested in the whole thing, but we’re not talking.’
‘Thanks. It’s pretty awful. I know people are gossiping like crazy, but if they could see Charlotte and James and what a state they’re in . . . It’s so rough on them.’
‘Poor things.’ Cathy looked down at Bethany’s head and stroked the sprinkling of downy hair.
‘So, now that the police don’t want another statement, I’ll leave them in peace. I have to let them know where I am, but they don’t seem to think I was involved. I’ll go to London and get some of my things from there. I need to talk to Elaine about how the business is doing without Charles and visit the lawyers too about what we can do without a body, or . . . well, you get the idea.’
‘Complicated. Horrible. I’m so sorry.’ Cathy put out her hand and squeezed Buttercup’s, her face full of sympathy. ‘Come and talk any time you like.’
There was no sign of Christmas at Ingrid’s house, where there was a pile of cards not put up, no tree or decorations. They didn’t have the heart to celebrate with Charles still unaccounted for.
Buttercup thanked Ingrid for everything she’d done for her, and said she was going to be on her way.
‘I’m going to London for a while. Would you mind keeping Tippi for me?’
‘Not at all. I love her.’
She hugged Ingrid. ‘Thank you so much. I will be back.’
‘You won’t have a choice,’ Ingrid said wryly. ‘Like it or not, you’ll have to come back. If Charles is dead, we’re going to have an almighty mess to work out if we don’t find his body. I have no idea what we do in that situation. I don’t even know what it means for this house.’
‘Let’s think about it after Christmas,’ Buttercup said. ‘We all need a rest.’ She smiled at Ingrid. ‘Thanks for taking me in, and being so understanding.’
‘Don’t be silly. It was the least I could do. Thanks for returning my things to me.’
They gazed at each other, smiling. They’d only known one another a couple of days and yet it felt as though they’d been bound together for years, invisibly in each other’s lives, and now they’d shared this intense and emotional experience. Their futures were intertwined as well, as they both faced a life without Charles, the one who had held all the power, pulled the strings and manipulated them both.
‘We’ll be all right,’ Buttercup said quietly. ‘It’ll be tough, but we can do it. I’ll make sure things are worked out fairly, if that’s what has to be done. Don’t worry about that.’
‘I trust you. And thanks – I need to deal with the kids right now, I’m glad to be spared some worry as well.’
‘Get in touch any time.’
‘You too.’
‘Thanks, Buttercup.’
‘Thanks, Ingrid. With all my heart.’
Before she left, Buttercup walked up the drive to the house. It was a blackened ruin without a roof, its empty walls standing around mountains of charred and smoky mess. The insurance assessors would be coming soon to start sifting through it, and the police had already been looking for evidence, though it was hard to imagine what might be found in the piles of filthy ash and rubbish and half-burned timbers. Plastic crime scene tape showed where they had cordoned off areas already searched, and around the whole building were signs warning people to keep away.
It was hard to believe that this wreck had been her beautiful home. The garage and stables were reduced to a charred wreck but most of the outbuildings survived, and the Crofts’ cottage was unharmed. Everything else had gone, except the beautiful bushes at the front of the house, though their strands of fairy lights had melted in the heat.
‘Goodbye, Charcombe Park.’ She couldn’t imagine how it would ever be rebuilt. Surely it was beyond saving. And who would want to? She said more softly, ‘Goodbye, Charles.’
She was sure he was here. In her heart, she was certain that he had laid the fire, and let himself perish in it too. But he had saved her first, and Tippi. For some reason, the mix of events that had come to pass had proved too toxic for him, and in his wild desire to escape it all, he had taken the house and everyth
ing in it with him.
And he as good as expunged Captain Redmain too. The chair, the sword, everything – gone forever.
‘Goodbye, Charles,’ she said once more. ‘I hope you’ve found your peace.’
Then she turned and walked away.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The police knocked at Xenia’s door in the cold and miserable days between Christmas and New Year. She had spent a quiet festive season, mostly alone, though Agnieska had come to drive her back to Galston to have a traditional Polish meal at her house with her and her two sons, and her mother.
‘Where is your husband?’ Xenia had asked.
‘He’s gone,’ Agnieska replied. ‘Back to Poland.’ She shrugged. ‘He was angry man and now we are divorced.’
‘I see. Well, that sounds as though it was for the best then. Here, help me hand out the gifts I’ve brought you all.’
It was the highlight of Xenia’s Christmas. It had been lovely to be in the heart of a family again, and she was more certain than ever that she wanted Agnieska to move closer to her. She began to look around for likely cottages and houses that might suit the family.
Agnieska was not there when she opened the door to the police officers, the same man and woman as before, though she had to squint to make them out. Flashes and whirls of light rushed around her vision, obscuring them. ‘Yes? What is it this time?’
She had already grown more than tired of the visits to go through her statement once again, or to ask her about the history of the house – who had lived there and when and for how long. They wanted to know what she had witnessed of the behaviour of the others who lived nearby, and when she had spotted fire and smoke up at the house. She tried to tell them about her bad sight but they didn’t seem to pay much attention.
‘Can we please come in, Princess Arkadyoff?’ the policeman asked politely.
‘More questions?’ Xenia sighed. ‘I’ve told you everything I know at least twice.’
‘Well, it’s not quite like that this time. If you let us in, we can explain.’
They sat in the warm sitting room and the policewoman said, ‘What we have to tell you, Princess, is that we’ve found a body.’
Xenia gasped, her hands flew to her face. ‘Mr Redmain! That poor man. Where did you find it?’
The policewoman shook her head. ‘No, it isn’t Mr Redmain we found. The body is much older than that. Let me explain. We’ve been searching the grounds for any clues about the fire at the house. In the woods at the side of the property, where the undergrowth is extremely thick, past the wall, where there’s a stretch of old fence, we found a car. It’s been in there for a long time, many years, in fact. It looks as though the car came off the road at speed heading away from the house, broke through the fence and sped into the undergrowth where it crashed into a tree, out of sight of the road or the house. It’s in a state – the roof is gone, the wheels are rotted, and it was almost completely obscured by brambles and weeds.’
She had felt the colour drain from her face as the policewoman spoke. ‘It’s been there a long time?’
‘We estimate more than fifty years, from the make of the car.’ The police officers glanced at each other. ‘That’s why we’ve come to you. The body we’ve found was in that car.’
Xenia was trembling. She couldn’t speak.
The policeman cleared his throat. ‘We removed the body yesterday for examination by forensic pathologists. That will tell us a great deal more about what happened to this person. But we wondered if you might know anything about who this is – you were living at the house around the time this car crashed, weren’t you?’
Xenia nodded, hardly trusting herself to say anything even if she could. The thoughts were racing around her mind. But the one that spoke the loudest in her mind was saying: So he never left us after all. The officers waited while she found her voice.
‘I believe it was . . . is . . . my father,’ she said clearly, fighting to stay calm and controlled. ‘Prince Paul Arkadyoff.’
The policewoman wrote down the name carefully. ‘Your father went missing?’
Xenia nodded. ‘He left us to go to America many years ago and we never heard from him again. It was winter, the road was icy, he was full of excitement to be on his way. He was always impervious to risk.’
‘He must have skidded clean off the road and into the undergrowth,’ supplied the policeman solemnly. ‘And no one noticed the break in the fence.’ He shook his head. ‘Terrible.’
Xenia had closed her eyes and was remembering. ‘I assumed he had taken the boat to America and then vanished. But it seems that he never caught the boat at all, or even left the village. And he’s been here all this time.’ Her voice caught. ‘All this time, he was with us! He never left us. The house never let him leave. Another of its acts of vengeance. It caught him and kept him hidden away until it was finally destroyed.’
The police officers exchanged bemused glances, then the woman said gently, ‘We wondered if you might recognise this.’
She held out a box, rotting and almost black but still recognisable as having once been velvet.
Xenia stared at it, able to see it quite clearly, though for a moment she wondered if she was hallucinating it. But she knew she wasn’t, and she knew what it was. So it is him. For sure. She said, ‘I’ll tell you what should be inside. A beautiful jewel. An exquisite sapphire rimmed with diamonds and beneath it a large tear-drop pearl.’
‘That’s absolutely correct,’ the policewoman said, surprised. ‘Then you know whose it is?’
‘Oh yes.’ Xenia took the box and opened it carefully. The jewel lay within, the white satin filthy and speckled with mould. It glowed in the lamplight, as beautiful as ever. ‘I know. It was once the property of an empress. Then it belonged to my grandmother, who gave it to me. So, yes, I know whose it is. It’s mine.’
The jewel had come back to her.
I never thought I’d see it again.
It glowed in its rotting box, unchanged from the day she had last seen it.
Almost the only thing in my life that hasn’t altered.
Xenia sat in her sitting room, Petrova beside her, the television playing unheeded, gazing at the jewel and remembering. She had imagined it sold by Papa for ready money to finance his life in America; money she’d assumed would have been spent on hotel and restaurant bills, in casinos and on fur coats for unscrupulous mistresses, with never a thought for Xenia and her mother and their terrible struggles at home alone.
If he hadn’t taken it, I would probably have sold it years ago. Now I have it still.
And yet . . . wouldn’t it have made her life easier if she had been able to afford better food and better care for Mama? Wouldn’t they have been more comfortable with the money this jewel would have brought them?
What’s done cannot be undone.
What made her feel peace at last was the knowledge that Papa had not left them after all. She didn’t want to speculate on what might have happened to him; if he had died quickly in the accident, or if he had lingered on, alone and injured in the car, waiting for help that never came. Whatever happened, it was a long time ago and nothing could be done about it.
All those years of waiting, and waiting, and hoping . . . All the anger, resentment and despair . . . and it had been pointless. He was there all the time. He could never come back to us because he’d never gone away.
It was a strange kind of peace that she had, but it was still peace, and she was grateful for it.
Xenia was still staring at her imperial brooch, holding it close to her face to see it, when there was a knock at the door. She got up and felt her way to the front door. Opening it, she said, ‘Yes?’ to the blurry dark shape on the step.
‘Princess,’ said a soft voice, ‘can you see me?’
‘Is that you, Mrs Redmain?’
‘That’s right.’
‘My eyes are bad. My sight is going, you know.’
‘I know. I just came to say that I’ve
heard about your father – that he was found on the estate. I’m so sorry.’
Xenia could hear the sympathy in her voice, and could imagine the tenderness in her face. ‘You shouldn’t be apologising to me, Mrs Redmain.’
‘Please, call me Ingrid. And why not?’
‘Because of what I did to you. I told your husband about your liaison with the jouster.’ Xenia heard her voice quavering and wished she didn’t sound quite so much like an old woman. ‘I’ve regretted it ever since.’
There was a silence and then a surprisingly jolly laugh. ‘Did you? I had no idea.’
‘He never said . . . ?’
‘Oh no, not a word. When did you tell him?’
‘The week of the joust, that last summer that you held the festival.’
‘My goodness! But I didn’t tell Charles about Joachim until a month or so after that.’ Another pause while she thought and then she said, ‘So he knew all along. That would explain why he was suddenly so charming towards me in the weeks before I told him I was going. Almost a different man. I had second thoughts about leaving and if Joachim hadn’t used all his powers of persuasion, I would have stayed with him. So if anything, you gave Charles and me a second chance. When it ended, it was my choice. He didn’t throw me out.’
‘I see.’ Xenia frowned. ‘Things have worked out quite oddly lately. As if nothing has been the way I thought it was.’
‘It must have been a horrible shock, to find out your father had been on the property all the time.’
‘Yes. It was. But also – a relief. To know at last what happened to him.’
‘Yes. I understand that. I hope we will find out what happened to Charles as well.’
‘Thank you for coming by, Mrs Redmain. I hope we can be friends.’
‘I hope so too.’
‘How is the other Mrs Redmain? Have you heard from her?’
‘She’s all right, I think. Staying in London for the time being. I’m sure she’ll be back. Don’t forget you can call on me whenever you need any help. Goodbye, Princess.’
‘Goodbye, Mrs Redmain.’
When Xenia went up to bed that evening, she realised that it had been some time since she had been plagued with the visions of fire that had afflicted her since the night of conflagration at Charcombe. As her sight got worse, the mirages of flickering flames and shimmering lights were disappearing. They seemed to occupy the halfway house between good sight and blindness, an odd stage where the mind wasn’t exactly sure what it could see and what it had imagined.