by Sarah Rayne
The years and deprivations of Pitesti Gaol had stripped the flesh from Elisabeth Valk’s bones, but she had been beautiful twenty years ago, and she was beautiful now, even thin and gaunt, her hair cropped short, her clothes unremarkable. She clung to the arms of the two men, as if she was afraid they might suddenly vanish, and she kept looking from one to the other. There was such deep love and gratitude in her eyes that Zoia felt something slam at the base of her throat. To feel like that, to have endured all that, and to come out and find your heart’s desire still there.
None of the three saw her, but she watched them until they were out of sight. Then she turned round and went on to her work in the library as usual.
The present
‘Matthew saw both his parents as heroes,’ said Petra, into the quiet room. ‘He saw them as idealists and even romantic. Two people who had wanted to save the world they lived in, and who had been hurt in the process.’
‘But she survived,’ said Theo.
‘Yes. She was frail and afraid of the world. They took her to Switzerland and she had five years with them before she died.’
‘And Andrei?’ asked Lesley.
‘He died shortly afterwards.’
‘Did you meet Elisabeth?’ said Theo.
‘Just once. It was a curious experience. I knew so much about her: what she had done, how brave and defiant she had been. What I saw was what was left after the brutality of a Romanian gaol. And yet,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘there was the impression of a light still flickering somewhere. Like seeing a flame through a misted-over window.’
Theo could not think of anything to say, and it was Lesley who reached out for Petra’s hand, and Guff who said, ‘My dear, I’m so sorry.’
‘Things heal,’ she said. ‘But I don’t forget him.’ She blinked, then said, ‘Is that the doorbell?’
It was the doorbell. It was Michael Innes.
‘You suggested I came back this evening,’ he said, looking hesitantly at Petra’s car. ‘But it looks as if you’ve got people here, and I don’t want to intrude—’ He broke off, hearing sounds of crockery from the kitchen where Lesley was helping Guff find something for supper.
‘Please come in,’ said Theo. ‘Stay to supper if you can.’ Not giving Michael time to refuse, he took him into the sitting room. Michael stopped dead in the doorway, and his eyes widened.
Then Petra said in a slightly shaky voice, ‘Hello, Mikhail. This is unfair, isn’t it? I knew you were coming – but you didn’t know I was here. Ghosts of the past gathering.’
‘Petra,’ he said. ‘I had no idea you were here. Oh God, it’s good to see you again.’ He went forward and as his arms went round her. Theo, who had thought his mother was taking this meeting in her stride, saw she was crying. The two of them stood together, locked in a tight embrace. Theo had the sensation that he was glimpsing a tiny fragment of the past: a fragment these two had known and were remembering.
‘Sorry for the melodrama,’ said Petra when she finally stepped back, still holding Michael’s arm. ‘Oh, Mikhail, it’s been so long. I should call you Michael, shouldn’t I? Can you stay to eat with us?’
‘Well, if it wouldn’t be—’
‘It wouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘Please stay. I still haven’t heard the half of what’s been going on here and I don’t suppose you have, either.’
‘And my great-uncle makes a mean omelette,’ said Theo. ‘I’ll tell him to beat up another couple of eggs.’ He went out, wanting to give his mother and Michael some time on their own.
Later, over the omelettes, he said to Michael, ‘I understand now why you didn’t seem surprised that I knew so much about Mara and Zoia and all the other things. At the time it puzzled me quite a lot, though.’
‘I assumed Petra had told you, or that you remembered hearing some of it all those years ago,’ said Michael, ‘when Andrei and Matthew were here.’ He looked back at Petra. ‘Andrei and Matthew poured it all out to you, didn’t they? About Jilava and the Securitate. The Black House. I remember Matthew telling me how patient and understanding you were.’
‘She always is,’ said Lesley and Michael glanced at her gratefully.
‘But for a time it became part of my life as well as yours and theirs,’ said Petra. ‘Remember I was there when the rebels turned on Ceauşescu.’
‘And I was safely here in England,’ he said, with a trace of anger in his voice. ‘I should have been there when they overthrew that evil creature.’
‘You had done a lot towards it,’ said Petra.
‘And perhaps,’ put in Guff, ‘it was safer not to be there.’
‘I would have gone back,’ he said, ‘but I was still at Queens – it wasn’t easy to vanish for a month or so. And there was Mara to consider.’
It was not until they were clearing the table, carrying plates to the kitchen, that Theo, keeping his voice low, said to his mother, ‘I haven’t asked you this yet, but you did meet Mara, I suppose?’
‘I met her once, while Andrei was here. Only very briefly, though. Why?’
The others were in the kitchen – Theo could hear Lesley saying she would make coffee, and Guff asking if anyone knew where the extra cups were kept.
‘I can’t help wondering exactly what Mara might be capable of,’ he said at last, and Petra looked at him thoughtfully.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I do know, though, that I always believed Michael would do absolutely anything to protect her.’
‘From the past, d’you mean?’
‘From her own particular part of the past,’ said Petra.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Mara knew that Mikhail had always tried to protect her and that he had very particularly tried to protect her from her own past. He had brought her to England, out of reach of Zoia and the Securitate, out of reach of the men in Jilava Gaol who had finally made her see – and admit – she was a murderess. After she entered St Luke’s, she had tried to atone for the murder of Annaleise, but she had never been sure she had done enough. Even so, after a while she had felt safe in the convent until Theo Kendal came to Fenn House.
At first Mara had not seen Theo as a threat to her safety. She had assumed he had come to Fenn to arrange for its sale, but Sister Catherine, visiting him that day, had reported he was here for some time. This was deeply disturbing to Mara, because whatever else Theo Kendal might do in Melbray, he was bound to ask questions about Charmery’s murder – questions the police had not asked, but questions that might lead to Mikhail and from Mikhail to Mara herself.
So she had watched Theo as much as she could, going stealthily down the lanes at night and stealing through the gardens of Fenn House. One night, when he was in bed, she had let herself into the house with the key she had taken four months earlier, and had switched on the laptop and read what was typed there. No one knew the quiet Sister Miriam understood computers. She had watched Sister Catherine use the convent’s machine several times. There had been some library records to be transferred and she had sat next to Catherine while it was done. It did not appear difficult. Catherine had explained quite a lot of it as she went, and had later left some of her notes lying around from the computer course. Mara made her own notes from them which she studied in the privacy of her room. It was probably knowledge she would never need, but all knowledge was good, and she was even able to test it on the computer when Reverend Mother was away. No one had known about that. She had struggled a bit at first, but then realized that once you understood the basic principles, it was not so very difficult to open and type a simple document.
The laptop at Fenn House was not difficult, either, but when Mara read Theo’s current work, she was appalled. He knew so much! He knew about Matthew and about Zoia and Annaleise and Elisabeth – and about Mara herself. How could he know those things? The facts were not all absolutely accurate and clearly he had made some things up, but the whole thing was so near the truth that Mara was engulfed in panic and terror. Theo Kendal was a professional writer
– what he wrote was published. But if this were to be published… Letting herself quietly out of the house and going back to St Luke’s, she knew it must never be published. A way must be found to prevent it.
Gradually, a plan formed – a plan that was initially intended merely to scare him away. His vulnerable point would be his dead cousin, Charmery. Could he be persuaded that the memories of Charmery were too vivid, too painful? Could he even be brought to believe that Charmery haunted Fenn House? Men did not, in general, believe in ghosts, but it was worth trying. Mara tried it. Once when Theo was absorbed in working at the computer, once when she had lured him outside by shining a torch in the boathouse. She used two different ghost scenarios: the ticking clock, so stealthily set working while he was preparing his supper, and the dried rose left by the portrait while he investigated the light in the boathouse – the light Mara herself had created.
But either Theo did not believe in ghosts or was not easily scared, because he had remained in Melbray. Mara had suddenly seen that scaring him away was not the answer: he would write the book no matter where he was. Then the only thing to stop him writing was for him to die.
For him to die… A second murder, so soon after Charmery’s could not be risked, but how about suicide? The suicide of a man grieving so deeply for his lost love, he could not face life without her? Mara thought it was plausible. How could it be done?
In the bathroom cabinet at Fenn House had been a pack of a mild sedative: diazepam, in a 5mg strength. Mara had noted it during one of her stealthy explorations, and mentally stored it away as something that might be made use of.
The convent had a small drugs cupboard, mostly painkillers for patients recovering from major bone traumas, but there was also a supply of sedatives to help relax any patient undergoing a minor procedure. Diazepam was one of these. Mara read the dosage instructions carefully, then took four 10mg tablets. She would have preferred to use the liquid form which came in dropper bottles, but a strict check was kept on the drugs cupboard and even one missing bottle would be noticed. But tablets could be replaced by plain paracetamol which were roughly the same size and should stand up to an inspection. She effected the substitution, and back in her own room crushed the four tablets and sealed the powder in an envelope in readiness. Now it was a question of watching and being ready to act swiftly, and of making sure to always have the Fenn House key with her. It might be a long wait, of course.
But it was not. Walking in the convent grounds two days later, ostensibly absorbed in her own thoughts, she saw Theo going past St Luke’s gates and into the lanes beyond. An afternoon walk, probably. Mara took a deep breath, and went quickly down the drive, praying not to meet anyone in the lane, but not really expecting to do so on such a cold afternoon. Out of sight of the convent she put on the thin surgical gloves taken from the dispensary. Even in a convent you were aware of such things as fingerprints.
Once inside Fenn House she had planned to stir the crushed pills into something he would eat or drink that same evening – beer or wine, perhaps – but a chicken casserole had been left on the kitchen table, clearly intended for that evening’s meal. Absolutely ideal. Mara tipped in the contents of the envelope, waited for the powder to absorb into the liquid, then went back out. Returning to Fenn later was a bit more difficult because the convent supper was served at half past six, but she managed to slip out shortly after seven thirty, trusting he would have eaten his evening meal by then.
And so he had. He was slumped in a chair in the big sitting room. When Mara bent over him to lift one eyelid, the pupils were pinpoints. It was all right. With her heart racing, she went into the dining room, and with every nerve ending sensitive to any movement from the other room, she typed onto his computer the false confession to Charmery’s murder: the confession she had so carefully composed and written out the night before.
It took barely ten minutes, and Mara stood up and pocketed the handwritten pages. On the way back to St Luke’s she would tear them into tiny pieces and scatter them across the fields. But first she would take the sharpest kitchen knife she could find, and bring the blade down on each of his wrists, straight onto the veins so near the surface. She was fairly sure that if she stood behind his chair and reached down to his hands, no blood would get onto her. He would hardly know what had happened because he would be unconscious from the diazepam. And although the sedative would be found at a post mortem, it would be explained by the reference to it in the fake suicide letter.
There were several knives in the kitchen, and she chose the one that looked sharpest. Then she went back to the sitting room. But as she stood looking down at the figure in the chair, he moved, and Mara’s heart lurched with panic. Had she misjudged the dose? Was he coming round? She stayed where she was, and to her horror, he half opened his eyes. One hand came up as if in defence or protest, and Mara stepped back at once, praying he had not seen her. She stood in the doorway, watching him, seeing with horror that he was definitely coming round. His eyes were partly open, although even from here they looked unfocused. He turned his head as if trying to see where he was. Could she still go through with it?
She knew she could not. Killing an unconscious man was one thing; killing a man who was in possession of his senses was vastly different and, in any case, even in this drugged state, he would easily overcome her. She went quickly across the hall, replaced the knife, and went out through the main door, closing it with the smallest whisper of sound.
Behind her, she left Theo Kendal’s suicide letter on the computer.
Later, listening to him give the talk to St Luke’s patients about writing books, Mara wondered what he had made of the typed confession. He seemed to have recovered from the diazepam and he appeared perfectly calm and seemed to enjoy his afternoon. But what was he really thinking? When, a few days later, he brought a cousin to see the convent’s paintings, she watched him closely and even managed to talk to the cousin, but if Lesley Kendal knew what had been going on, she did not say.
Over the next twenty-four hours, Mara had the curious feeling that the threads spun all those years ago in Romania – spun by Zoia and Annaleise – were twisting together, ready to close about her. She felt oddly light-headed, as if she had fasted. As the day wore on, the light-headedness vanished. But in its place an old fear began to surface once again – the fear that the years in the convent, the long hours of prayer and study, were not enough to atone for what she had done. God required something more of her if those mortal sins were to be forgiven.
After supper and prayers, she shut herself away in the library – the safe quiet room that was her own domain – and tried to work on the notes she was compiling for a study on the influence of religion on medicine. It was a project she had embarked on with Mikhail in mind. He would find it interesting, he might even make suggestions as to how it could unfold. So much of what she did was with him in mind. But tonight the words would not come and the library felt hostile. The shadows seemed to crawl nearer, exactly as the shadows in the Black House and later in Jilava had. They were watching her, those shadows and waiting to see what she did.
At half past nine – the time when the non-clinic sisters were expected to be in their own rooms – Mara went up to her bedroom. From the window she could see across to Fenn House. She could see lights in several of the windows. Was Lesley Kendal still there? She stayed at the window for a long time, staring into the darkness, hearing the ticking of her little bedside clock, like a tiny beating heart.
When ten o’clock chimed the sound startled her, and then she understood that the chimes were reminding her what she must do. She went out into the passageway, listened intently in case anyone was around, then went swiftly down the side stair to the garden door. If she was careful she might be able to get out into the lane and from there she would go into the gardens of Fenn House. Just as she had done on that afternoon four months earlier when she murdered Charmery Kendal.
It had been a long drowsy day, the kind of day when t
he air was scented with lilac for miles around. Mara had gone to Fenn House to find out exactly how involved Charmery Kendal was with Mikhail.
It was very quiet as she went along the drive which was overgrown and untidy. No one was around, but a car was parked near the house and windows were open, so she went round the side of the house and down the mossy steps to the main gardens. She knew that in summer, if there was no reply to a ring at the doorbell, it was acceptable to walk down to the gardens. The English liked gardens; they liked spending time in them. They were lucky to be able to do that. People in Mara’s village had not had gardens and if they had, they used them to grow vegetables or even keep chickens.
Charmery Kendal was very lucky indeed. Fenn House, this nice old English home, belonged to her, and if Mikhail married her, it would belong to him as well. He deserved a nice house like this, but not if it meant Mara lost him to this pampered creature. She would consume him; she would make him her puppet. Mara could not bear to think of her beautiful sensitive brother ruined and quenched by this vain selfish girl.
She stood on the terrace, seeing the big expanse of lawn where the Kendals used to play their English games of cricket and rounders. Mara and the other sisters used to see them sometimes. There was the rose garden that had been a blaze of colour in the summer, but was now neglected and overgrown, although one or two hopeful splashes of colour still thrust through the tangles.
Charmery was stretched out on the lawn, an opened bottle of wine near her hand, and a book, lying face down by her side. She was wearing a bikini that hardly covered her body. Although Mara had thought she did not mind about Mikhail going to bed with her, seeing her like this brought a lump of angry bile into her throat.
Charmery looked slightly surprised to see Sister Miriam from St Luke’s, but not unduly so. In the past, when the family were here all summer, the nuns had occasionally called, usually if there was some charity event they wanted supporting. She waved Mara to a deckchair, and offered her a glass of iced lemonade, apologizing for her awkwardness in pouring it – there was some tale about a sprained wrist.