“Try that way,” said Rose, pointing towards a narrow street lined with old houses that leaned towards each other at an alarming angle.
“If we come here again we’re taking the train,” said Andrea through gritted teeth.
David, Rose’s great-uncle, had invited them to lunch at his house in the centre of York, but what should have been a relaxing Saturday outing after Rose’s first week at school was turning into a highly stressful event. Rose just hoped that David would be able to restore Andrea’s equilibrium, otherwise the journey home promised to be no better.
Rose couldn’t believe how quickly the first week at her new school had gone. She liked all her teachers and was doing well in lessons. She had also got to know her new friends better: Sophie had spent the summer in Spain improving her Spanish and was hoping to study Spanish with business studies at university; Clare was really smart and was going to apply to Oxford or Cambridge to do medicine; Evie wanted to become a journalist, and James was a sweet geek who had spent his summer developing a phone app and would probably go on to do computer science.
The only fly in the ointment was Scarlett who continued to stalk Dan with her dark eyes, although he resolutely ignored her. Rose did her best to avoid Scarlett and her two friends, Maddy and Lisa, only coming into close proximity with them during the one compulsory games lesson of the week. To Rose’s relief they weren’t expected to play netball or hockey, two sports she had detested at her old school, but sixth formers were permitted to use the school’s well-equipped gym. After running a mile on one of the treadmills Rose had gone back to the changing room to fetch her water bottle which she had left in her bag. She had found Scarlett, Maddy and Lisa loitering by the lockers, deep in conversation. They had fallen silent as she approached which had made Rose think they had been talking about her. Rose had done her best to ignore them, collecting her water bottle and heading back to the gym. But as she turned the corner she was sure she heard Scarlett mutter the word, “Bitch.”
Andrea swore under her breath at another one-way sign that prevented them from doing a right turn. Rose gazed out of the window and tried not to say anything to further rattle her mother. She hoped they wouldn’t have this trouble finding their way out of York. She didn’t want to be late for her date with Dan. She was looking forward to having him to herself for the evening, away from everyone at school. They were going to see the new Bond movie at the tiny Hollywood Plaza. Of course, Rose hadn’t mentioned to her mother that she was going out. If there was one thing guaranteed to make Andrea jittery at the wheel, it was the news that Rose was meeting that boy again.
“Watch out!”
Andrea slammed on the brakes. A crowd of camera-clicking tourists had just stepped out in front of them.
“Idiots!” muttered Andrea. They turned a corner and the vast structure of York Minster loomed above them. Rose craned her neck to gaze up at the enormous Gothic towers. It was certainly impressive. The bells started to toll the hour. “Damn,” muttered Andrea, glancing at her watch. She hated to be late for anything, even an informal lunch. They turned a few more corners and finally they were pulling up in front of a quaint little row of red-brick houses with box-sash windows, neat front gardens and geraniums in pots. Andrea turned the engine off and let out a long sigh.
Rose jumped out of the car, relieved they had finally arrived. She was looking forward to seeing David again. He was her grandmother’s younger brother and she had first met him at her grandmother’s funeral in the summer. She had taken an instant liking to him. He was a kind, intelligent man who seemed much younger than his years. As Andrea was locking the car, the front door opened and a tall, white-haired man wearing a striped cooking apron over a purple shirt and cream chinos came out to greet them. He kissed Rose on both cheeks.
“So pleased you managed to get here,” he said. “Did you have a good journey?”
“We got lost a few times,” said Rose quietly so that Andrea couldn’t hear.
“Yes, York is rather maze-like,” admitted David to Rose, then in a louder voice, “Do come inside.”
Rose and her mother followed David down a wooden-floored hallway to an open-plan room at the back of the house. The outside of the house had been so old and quaint, Rose was surprised to find herself in a spacious, white-painted extension with a modern, stainless steel kitchen, floor-to-ceiling bookcases and colourful abstract paintings on the walls. Autumn sun streamed in from a large sky-light in the ceiling. At the far end were French windows leading to a courtyard garden edged with exotic-looking shrubs in stone tubs. It was the sort of house Rose would like to live in.
“Just a little something to say thank you,” said Andrea, handing over a bottle of wine they had picked up from the supermarket on their way over.
“Ah, a Merlot,” said David, reading the label. “An excellent choice. Thank you. Do make yourselves comfortable.” He indicated a bright red sofa scattered with cushions. There was a wonderful smell emanating from an enormous dish on the gas hob. Rose inhaled the pungent aroma of garlic and herbs and her stomach rumbled with anticipation. If Andrea was going to ask for a small portion as she usually did these days then Rose was going to tuck in and enjoy herself. She’d had no idea David was such a good cook.
He served them both a refreshing glass of sparkling mineral water with ice and lemon. Whilst David adjusted the seasoning in the food, tossing in herbs and spices with practised ease, Andrea got the horrors of York’s road layout out of her system. David made sympathetic noises, acknowledging that he hadn’t owned a car for years, preferring to walk or take the bus or train.
David tested the food with a teaspoon and, smiling, said, “Perfect! Please come and sit down at the table.” Rose didn’t need telling twice and took her place at a circular glass table by the French windows, laid with modern cutlery, red napkins and a single red rose in the centre.
“That smells fantastic,” she said as David carried over the paella with chicken and prawns.
“Just a small portion for me please,” said Andrea, patting her stomach.
“You can manage a bit more, can’t you?” said David as he came to Rose’s plate.
“Absolutely,” said Rose as David piled her plate high with steaming yellow rice dotted with generous chunks of meat and seafood.
“Bon appetit,” said David, sitting down to his own plate.
“Bon appetit,” said Rose, picking up her cutlery. She was so glad they’d come. This was better than any restaurant she’d ever been to.
For a moment no one spoke as they tucked into their food. Rose savoured the spicy flavours and the way the chicken melted in her mouth. She’d have to ask him for the recipe.
“It’s delicious,” she said. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“As a young man during the sixties I travelled around the Mediterranean - the south of France, Spain, Italy, Greece - picking up work in restaurants. That’s where I got my training. Then in the seventies and eighties I ran a small restaurant in Scarborough with a partner.”
“That sounds amazing,” said Rose who didn’t know what she wanted to do when she left school and quite liked the idea of taking a year out to go travelling, although she could imagine Andrea’s reaction to that. If she ever proposed the idea, maybe David would support her the way her grandmother had often taken Rose’s side in arguments with her mother.
As if David had read her thoughts he said, “You must be missing Janice. Is everything sorted out with the will?”
“There are just a few more things to finalise,” said Andrea. “I’ve got a meeting booked with the solicitors at half-term.”
“And how are you settling into my sister’s old house?” asked David with a chuckle. “She kept it nice, but I bet it needs modernising.”
“You can say that again,” said Andrea, rolling her eyes. She started to expound at great length on all the work they were having done. “We’ve had to have the whole house rewired, you know. The electrics were a death trap. The place could ha
ve gone up in flames any time.”
Rose tuned out from her mother’s woes about restoring old houses and complaints about builders and helped herself to a second serving of paella. It was the best she’d ever tasted.
“I hope you’ve got room for dessert,” said David as he cleared the plates away twenty minutes later.
“I think so,” said Rose.
“Well, maybe just a teeny-weeny one,” said Andrea.
When David brought out home-made crème caramel in individual earthenware pots Rose thought she must have died and gone to Heaven.
“I won’t need to eat for a week now,” said Andrea after she’d eaten the last mouthful.
“That was the best meal I’ve ever had,” said Rose, dabbing her mouth with her napkin.
They moved back to the sofa and David served South American coffee and handmade luxury chocolates from one of York’s local chocolatiers. “Now,” he said, holding up a finger, “I have some things to show you.” He left the room and came back a few minutes later with an old suitcase and a dark brown box.
“This is a little present for you,” he said to Rose, handing her the box. It was quite heavy, about twelve inches by six inches and a couple of inches deep. It had a hinged lid that fastened with a brass clasp. Rose ran her fingers over the lid. The surface was smooth to the touch and the material had a marbled effect that Rose thought couldn’t be wood.
“It’s a Bakelite jewellery box from the 1920s,” explained David. “It belonged to my mother, Lilian, your great-grandmother, and she left it to my sister Janice, your grandmother. Janice lent it to me years ago because York Amateur Dramatic Society were doing an Agatha Christie play and they wanted some authentic jewellery. Beads and bangles, you know the sort of thing. I’m afraid I failed to return it which was rather remiss of me, but I don’t think Janice ever wore any of it. It’s the nearest we have to a family heirloom, so you should have it now.”
“Wow, thank you,” said Rose. She was quite taken aback. She hadn’t expected anything like this.
“You’re very welcome,” said David. Rose started to open the lid but David said, “Oh, do that later when you’re back home. For now I want to show you this.”
He picked up the old suitcase, laid it down on the floor and proceeded to undo the leather straps fastening the lid. “After Janice died,” he said, “I decided that I ought to do some clearing out of my own and I found this suitcase of Mother’s in the attic.”
Rose leaned forward to get a better look. David lifted the lid. Inside, stacked in piles, were circular metal containers. “What are those?” asked Rose.
“These,” said David, picking up one of the metal containers, “are homemade films from the twenties and thirties.”
“What are they of?”
“Well, that’s a good question. I don’t have the right equipment to play them. Few people would these days. If we’re going to watch any of these films, we’ll to have to get them digitised. But they’re so old, there’s no guarantee how they’ll come out. I wanted to see what you thought.”
“Please let’s try,” said Rose. “It might be interesting.”
“All right,” said David. “Since you’re keen, I’ll see what I can do. There’s a company I found online who digitise old films. I’ll send these off and let you know when they’re ready.”
By the time Rose and her mother were driving back to Scarborough, most of the tourists and shoppers had disappeared and they made good progress. Rose sent Dan a text: c u @ cinema. He texted back: OK 7pm. Andrea pulled up in the parking space behind the little house in Tollergate at ten past six. There was just time for Rose to take a look inside the jewellery box before she had to leave. She took the box up to her room and sat down on the bed.
Opening up the lid, she discovered a jumbled assortment of costume jewellery, none of it terribly valuable, but fun nonetheless. She pulled out a long string of fake pearls and hung them around her neck, looping them twice so that one loop fitted snugly and the other hung low, almost to her waist. She looked at herself in the mirror. Very charming, she thought, swinging the long end of the necklace in the air. Now all she needed was a drop-waisted skirt and a feather boa. She laughed. Vintage wasn’t really her thing. She took the pearls off and laid them on the bed. There were more strings of beads in the box, jet black ones and some rather nice green ones, also some chunky bangles and a pair of dangle earrings. She tried on one of the bangles. It had an African design on it and Rose thought it went quite well with jeans and a T-shirt. She kept it on.
The interior of the jewellery box was lined with dark red velvet, worn in places where fingers had reached in time and again. It struck Rose that the inside of the box wasn’t as deep as the box appeared to be from the outside. The inside depth was only about one and a half inches, whereas the outside of the box was at least two inches deep. She pressed the velvet base of the interior and it tilted to the side. The whole top section of the box was removable. She lifted it out, expecting to find another layer of jewellery, like a second layer of chocolates, but what she found instead was a pile of old newspaper clippings. Intrigued, she pulled them out and pushed the jewellery box aside. The cuttings were old, the paper dried and yellowed, but the ink was still legible. She carefully unfolded the top cutting and smoothed it flat. The headline jumped out at her. Murder at the Grand Hotel. The article was from the front page of the Scarborough News. The date at the top of the page was 2nd January 1924. Beside a photograph of a good-looking man with slicked-back black hair and a trim little moustache were the words:
Early yesterday morning, New Year’s Day, a chambermaid at the Grand Hotel, Miss Daisy Adler, made a frightful discovery. The renowned Hollywood movie director, Mr Theodore Franklin, lay brutally murdered in his room. Mr Franklin, who was visiting the town and had business at the Futurist cinema on Foreshore Road, had been the victim of a frenzied attack following a New Year’s Eve ball, hosted by Mr Franklin, at the hotel. The manager of the Grand, Mr Gordon Jones, said that Mr Franklin had been a well-liked guest at the hotel and his death was a terrible shock to all members of staff. The police are investigating.
Goodness, thought Rose. A suave American murdered at the Grand Hotel. It sounded like an Agatha Christie mystery, the sort of thing Miss Marple would investigate over a cup of Earl Grey tea and a plate of cream scones. Whatever next? Lilian must have been a young woman at the time, but why would she have kept all these cuttings? Rose supposed it was possible that Lilian had met Theodore Franklin. Hadn’t David said that she worked at the Futurist cinema? Rose unfolded the other scraps of newspaper. The killing had been the lead story in the local paper for a week or more. There were detailed accounts of Mr Franklin, his movie credits and his other business interests, some of which sounded decidedly shady. There were also details about the manner of his killing. Apparently he’d been hit over the head with an ornamental bedside lamp. Copious amounts of blood had soaked into the carpet. So Scarborough wasn’t all donkey rides and ice cream. Well, she’d found that out for herself over the summer.
She re-folded the cuttings and replaced them in the bottom of the jewellery box. She would ask David about them when she next saw him. She reassembled the box and put the trinkets back inside. She checked her watch. It was already twenty to seven. She’d spent more time examining the contents of the box than she’d intended. She pulled on her jacket, grabbed her purse and mobile phone and went downstairs. Her mother was in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher.
“You’re not going out are you?” said Andrea, sounding indignant. “I thought we might start a box set this evening. Sherlock Holmes?”
“Sorry,” said Rose. “I’m going to the cinema. The new Bond film’s come out.” She hoped her mother wasn’t going to start raising objections.
“You might have mentioned it earlier,” said Andrea.
“Sorry.” Rose felt a wave of resentment. Sure, it couldn’t be easy for her mother, settling into life in a new town, even if it was the one she’d g
rown up in. All her school friends had moved away and the only people she knew were her work colleagues who didn’t sound like a bundle of laughs. But Rose hated the idea that she should be her mother’s social life. If her mum wanted to meet people she should get out more, join a choir or a reading group or something. Wasn’t that what middle-aged people did? Rose turned to go.
“So who are you going with?” asked Andrea. Rose could tell her mother was trying to keep the question casual but there was an edge to her voice.
“Just a friend,” said Rose. Sometimes it was easier to lie. She really didn’t have time for this, she was going to be late.
“Are you meeting that boy?”
Rose sighed. “Mum, he’s called Dan and he’s all right really. You should get to know him.”
Andrea sniffed. “Just be careful. Don’t let him lead you into any trouble.”
“For goodness sake, Mum, we’re going to see a film. The only guns are going to be the ones on the screen.” One look at her mother’s face told her she’d said the wrong thing.
“I don’t know how you can take it all so lightly,” said Andrea, her voice rising. “You could have been killed in the summer at the hands of those men. They were violent criminals.”
Rose went over to her mother and put her arms round her. “But I wasn’t and I’m all right.” She hadn’t told her mother about the bad dreams, knowing how Andrea would fret. She hugged her mother tight. “But I really do have to go now.”
“Don’t be late back.”
“I won’t,” said Rose, opening the door. She ran down the street, Lilian’s bangle bouncing on her wrist. She was going to be late meeting Dan.
~~~
Dan shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked at his watch for the hundredth time. If Rose didn’t hurry up the cinema would sell out of tickets, it didn’t have that many seats. The Hollywood Plaza on North Marine Road wasn’t a multiplex by any stretch of the imagination, more a glorified warehouse. Two of the letters were missing from the sign over the front so that it read HOLLY OD PLAZA. Compared to what she’d been used to in London, Rose would probably think it derisory and Dan was starting to regret his decision to bring her here. But he really wanted to see the new Bond film and this was the best Scarborough had to offer ever since the Futurist had been turned into a theatre for live acts and had then shut for good when tourism slumped. He’d been standing outside the cinema for twenty minutes already, watching the crowds build up. Touted as the most exciting Bond film ever, people had turned up in droves to see it. Well, there wasn’t much else to do in Scarborough in the autumn and winter months.
Scarborough Ball (Scarborough Fair Book 2) Page 4