The Perfect Guests

by Emma Rous

  “I just hope the fire did enough damage,” she says bitterly. “I hope they have to tear this whole place down.”

  And then she’s gone, led out to an ambulance that spills blue light over the gravel driveway. I’m glad, of course, that she’s been taken into custody. But I can’t help agreeing with her final words. I, too, hope they tear this whole place down.

  Sadie

  Sadie watches her mother.

  Beth has been sitting by the drawing room window ever since the police led Nina out to the ambulance, and she’s barely taken her gaze off the ambulance doors. She says she just wants to know where Nina will be taken—to the hospital, or to a police cell. But Sadie knows she’s struggling to process the fact that the woman she was once so close to tried to kill several people tonight.

  Including Sadie.

  If Mum was emotionally reticent before, what will she be like after this?

  The police have been through the drawing room, collecting samples and asking more questions. The guests aren’t allowed to leave yet, but a few minutes ago, a pair of officers offered to escort them up the damaged staircase to their bedrooms so they could change out of their nightclothes and pack their bags.

  “Do you want to come with me?” Sadie asked Beth.

  Beth shook her head. “Not ’til I know what they’re doing with Nina.”

  Sadie turned back to the officers. “I’ll wait here a bit longer, if that’s okay. I don’t want to leave my mum alone.”

  Outside, the darkness is finally giving way to sunrise. Beyond the band of reeds, the surface of Avermere glints with reflected oranges and pinks and golds. Beth leans closer to the glass and breathes out an “Oh.”

  Sadie goes to join her, and she peers beyond the emergency vehicles to a civilian car, and a man standing next to it.

  “Who’s that?” Sadie says. “Is it Joe?”

  A moment later, he turns, and she sees that the man is Joe. He walks around to the passenger side and helps a second person climb out of the car—an elderly man, white-haired and slow-moving. The old man doesn’t straighten fully once he’s out on the gravel. He leans on a stick as he walks, his tall frame stooped, his gait uncertain.

  Beth is no longer watching the ambulance; she seems transfixed by the spectacle of Joe and the old man approaching the house.

  “Come on,” Sadie says, aware that her bright tone sounds false. “Let’s go and see if Joe’s got any news.”

  She sets off for the hall, half expecting Beth to stay by the window, but after a short delay, Beth follows her. They wait on the top step as the two men approach at the old man’s slow pace. When Joe looks across and spots them, his whole face lights up.

  “Wow, Mum,” Sadie murmurs. “He sure looks pleased to see you.” She’s only ever known her mum single; Beth always maintained she wasn’t interested in finding a partner while Sadie was growing up. Sadie’s pondering her feelings about this, when her attention is caught by the old man again—something about his face as he glances up . . .

  “Woah,” Sadie says. “That man looks like . . .” She turns to Beth. “He looks like the man in the portrait in the dining room.”

  Beth doesn’t reply. The men reach the bottom of the steps, and the old man leans more heavily on Joe’s arm as they begin to climb.

  Joe looks up at Beth. “How are you?” Belatedly, he tears his gaze from her and smiles at Sadie too. “And how’re you feeling? The police just told us they found sleeping pills ground up in the pantry. That accounts for how dopey we all felt . . .” His smile falters. “They told us about Nina too . . .”

  The old man pauses and coughs into his fist, and even with his face tilted down, Sadie can see he looks utterly miserable. She catches Joe’s eye and looks pointedly back at the old man.

  “Oh yes, sorry,” Joe says. “This is Hendrik Meyer. He owns Raven Hall. He was staying at the B and B last night . . . Hendrik, this is Beth and Sadie.”

  Hendrik barely looks at them but indicates they should all move inside. They make their way into the still-chilly drawing room, and Joe guides Hendrik to the armchair that Roy Everett was sitting in not so long ago. Sadie adds a couple more logs to the fire, and then she joins Joe on the sofa opposite Hendrik. For the first time, she feels self-conscious about wearing nightclothes under her borrowed coat. Amazing how such trivial worries creep right back in, as soon as your life’s no longer in danger.

  Beth returns to the window, to resume her watch over the ambulance.

  Sadie studies Hendrik covertly, strangely entranced by the washed-out blue of his age-clouded eyes. He peers around the room, and his gaze comes to rest on the glass fragments scattered over the black marble hearth. It looked much nicer in here earlier, Sadie wants to tell him. It was quite glamorous and welcoming back then. But she worries it would sound odd for her to try to cheer up this old man, when she’s never met him before. So she stays quiet.

  Joe shifts his position to look at Beth. “The police said we’ve just got to be patient . . .”

  Finally, Sadie remembers what she wanted to ask him. “Was Genevieve there, at the B and B?”

  “Yes.” He gives her a relieved smile. “She was. After all that panic here. Mum said she knocked just after eleven—a young woman with dark hair in a red dress, fur coat. She told Mum she’d been at a house party but got fed up with the other guests—can you believe it?”

  Even in her least responsible moments, Sadie would never have walked out of a job, leaving people to worry over her like that. Still, she’s relieved they didn’t find Genevieve’s body at the bottom of the lake . . . With a jolt, she remembers what happened to Hendrik’s son, Markus.

  “So, yeah,” Joe says, “I jogged back to the B and B and rang the police. And then I found Hendrik, still wide awake, having a drink in the lounge. He flew over from the States just yesterday.”

  “Eight-hour time difference,” Hendrik says gloomily. “It doesn’t get any easier as you get older, I tell you.”

  “I e-mailed Hendrik a few weeks ago,” Joe explains. “I kept seeing vehicles coming and going from Raven Hall—carpenters’ vans, department store lorries. I thought maybe Hendrik was getting the place tidied up to sell, but he said—”

  “I thought it was squatters,” Hendrik says. “And I said not to worry. I wanted to come over for one last visit anyway, sort through some stuff here and get the place on the market. But then, when Joe said he’d been invited to an event here, I asked him to go along and see who was behind it.” He turns his head away to cough, then turns back. “I suppose, before I called the police, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Nina, come back to her old home. But I never imagined . . .”

  “That this was what she had planned,” Sadie says.

  “Exactly.” Hendrik shakes his head morosely. “I’d have let her live here, you know—I’d have given her the house if she wanted it. I did try to stay in touch, after Markus . . .” He pauses, waiting for his throat to settle. “But Leonora cut me off, refused all my offers of money for the child. She took Nina away—to the south coast somewhere.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sadie says. “That must have been difficult.”

  Hendrik sighs. “I should have tried harder to contact her once she was an adult and out of Leonora’s clutches. That’s the other reason I flew over. I suppose I was hoping, if I could find Nina, we might talk face-to-face. I’ve no doubt her mother poisoned her against me, but still—she is my granddaughter.”

  Sadie holds her breath. He doesn’t know yet. She glances at Joe, but he wasn’t there to hear Nina’s final revelation either. And over by the window, Beth remains silent. Should Sadie leave it to the police to tell Hendrik eventually, or would it be kinder to break the news to him herself?

  “Oh, Mr. Meyer,” she says gently. “I’m so sorry. Right before the police arrived, Nina told us—” She hesitates. She has no idea how he’s going to take
the news. Will he be devastated—or might he even be relieved?

  “What is it?” Joe says.

  Sadie swallows. “I’m afraid Nina said she’d found out she wasn’t Markus’s biological daughter. Roy Everett is her father . . .”

  She keeps her eyes trained on the hunched old man in the armchair. He lifts his head and stares straight back at her. He looks neither angry nor surprised, merely confused.

  “Come closer, will you?” he says. “What did you say your name was?”

  Warily, she approaches his chair, and at a gesture from him, she crouches so that he can get a good look at her face. His brow lowers, and his gaze grows sharper.

  “All right,” he says. “Enough. Is this some sort of game?” And then he looks up, and Sadie realizes that Beth has come to stand beside her.

  “Hendrik,” Beth says, “there’s a lot more you don’t know, I’m afraid.”

  Hendrik’s eyes widen. “Nina? Is that you? But the police said . . .”

  Beth shakes her head. “I’m not Nina. I never was. They found me in a children’s home, and they brought me here to act the part of Nina, to try to fool you. I suppose it was because she didn’t look like Markus . . . Oh, Hendrik, I’m so, so sorry.”

  Sadie looks in shock from her mother back to Hendrik. He screws up his eyes, and Beth reaches out and touches him tentatively on the shoulder. For an awful moment, Sadie thinks he’s about to cry, but when he opens his eyes again, she realizes he’s laughing—bewildered, strained laughter, but laughter, nonetheless.

  “Let me show you something,” he says. “Joe, help me up . . .”

  Joe eases Hendrik to his feet, and Hendrik fumbles around in his pockets, eventually pulling out a battered leather wallet.

  “Here it is.” Hendrik sits back down with a huff, and then he slides a photo from the wallet. It’s in color but faded. He passes it to Sadie.

  Sadie frowns. “When was this taken?” She peers at it more closely, her heart knocking strangely. I don’t remember sitting for this. It looks so old-fashioned—was it for an audition? No, there’s nothing familiar about it—not the garden setting, not the blue checked dress, not the plaits . . .

  She passes the photo to Beth and frowns at Hendrik. “It’s not me. Who is it?”

  “She was my wife,” Hendrik says. “Anneliese, Markus’s mother. This was taken when she was sixteen, when I first met her. And you’re her spitting image, my dear. You look even more like her than your mother did.” He eases back in the chair and switches his gaze to Beth. “Now, tell me again about this so-called game.”

  With every minute that Hendrik is in the house, Leonora feels Raven Hall slipping more from her grasp. The way he looks at her with those piercing blue eyes. The way he looks at Beth . . .

  “I’m Nina, sir,” Beth told him, when he arrived. And now she’s playing her violin for him. But Leonora can barely breathe; she’s waiting for Hendrik to leap up, to declare the whole performance a sham, to banish them all from this place forever.

  She curls her fingers tightly in her lap so Hendrik won’t see them shaking. Why did she let Markus talk her into trying this? But then again . . . what other option did they have?

  Beth lowers her violin, and—is it possible?—Hendrik is crying. He’s genuinely crying.

  “That was beautiful, my child,” he says. “You remind me so much of your grandmother, Anneliese.”

  Slowly, slowly, Leonora uncurls her fingers. Against all the odds, it seems their little game might just have worked.

  Beth

  Ican’t tear my eyes from the photo of Anneliese. The blue checked dress . . . the ribbons at the ends of her plaits . . . and her face—so eerily similar to Sadie’s. But how can this be? What does it mean?

  I’m barely aware of Hendrik rising from his chair again. It’s not until he grasps my hand that I finally let the photo fall.

  “Look at me,” he says, his voice raspy. “You remember the first time we met?”

  I expect to see anger or disgust in his eyes, but it’s something else entirely—a mixture of confusion and concern. I can’t find my voice, but I nod.

  “I recognized your outfit,” he says. “Markus had a copy of this photo, so Leonora would have seen it. I thought she must be trying to unsettle me, by dressing you up to look like Anneliese. It felt like a cruel trick.”

  I shake my head. “That wasn’t the trick.”

  “But you want me to believe—what? That you were a stranger? That she picked you at random from a children’s home? A blond musical child who might just pass as Anneliese’s granddaughter?”

  “Yes, so you wouldn’t kick them out,” I say. “And sell Raven Hall. And it worked, didn’t it?”

  He stares at me, and then we both drop our gaze to the hearth, where the photo of Anneliese lies surrounded by splinters of glass. I can feel my whole history trembling.

  “What does it mean?” I say.

  Hendrik shakes his head, frowning. “I don’t know. We must be missing something.”

  “Well, come on, then.” Sadie steps forward and picks up the photo. “There’s only one person who might be able to explain this. And the way I see it, her daughter nearly killed me a few hours ago, and she, at best, took advantage of you when you were a child, Mum.” She looks from me to Hendrik, and her eyes glow with determination. “Leonora owes us some answers.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Why should I tell you anything?” Leonora snaps.

  She sits with her arm touching one of the dining room curtains, in an unsettling mirror image of my earlier position at the drawing room window, and my heart contracts with unexpected sympathy as I follow her gaze through the glass to the ambulance that still hasn’t moved from the driveway. Despite everything Nina’s done, Leonora still loves her. I’m not convinced Nina loves her back, but my own feelings about the pair of them are too complicated for me to analyze their relationship right now.

  “I’m sure if Nina wasn’t okay,” I say gently, “they’d have taken her to hospital by now.”

  Leonora gives a tiny nod of acknowledgment.

  “It’s just . . . ,” I say. “I know about Nina’s biological father now. But still—I’d really like to understand my part in the—in the game. Why you asked me to pretend to be Nina.” I study her closed expression. “You gave me a very happy home here, Leonora.” I cross my fingers behind my back before I realize what I’m doing. It’s as if asking a favor of Leonora has made me revert to being a child again.

  To my surprise, tears well up in her eyes. “I did try . . .”

  “Oh, you did.” Hurriedly, I drag across one of the heavy dining chairs, and I seat myself next to her. “You were always extremely kind to me.”

  She searches my gaze. “I never meant to hurt you, Beth. We were desperate, that’s all. When Stephanie told us Hendrik was coming back . . .”

  “Stephanie, Jonas’s mum?” I manage not to glance toward the half-open door, behind which Sadie, Jonas, and Hendrik are hiding, listening to every word. Thankfully, the police were still questioning Leonora in the study when Hendrik arrived, so she has no idea he’s even in the house.

  “Stephanie was the only other person who knew about Nina,” Leonora says. “She saw me get into Roy Everett’s car once, and that was the evening he . . .” She shakes her head as if it were something she cannot bear to remember. “And she was the one who helped Markus and me get back together, a couple of months later. So when Nina was born only seven months after that, and what with her looks and everything . . .”

  “Ah.” I let this sink in. “But surely Hendrik did the math too?”

  “He couldn’t have been sure, though. Markus and I had been seeing each other beforehand, so for all Hendrik knew, we might have been sleeping together then. And he never saw Nina as a baby.”

  For a second, my sense of injustic
e overwhelms my caution. “But it was none of Hendrik’s business anyway! Nina was Markus’s daughter—okay, not in the biological sense, but in every other sense.” It takes all my effort not to glare across at the door. “Why couldn’t Hendrik just accept you and Nina as part of his family?”

  Leonora gives me a tired look, as if I’m missing the point. “He’d have accepted us if we’d all moved to the States, like he wanted, I’m sure. It wasn’t about acceptance. He just . . . He always suspected my motives for staying in this house. If he found out for sure that Nina wasn’t Markus’s daughter, I was afraid he might . . .”

  “What?” I stare at her. “Oh. You thought it would destroy Nina’s chances of inheriting the house—is that what you mean?”

  She presses her lips together and turns away. I’ve clearly stumbled into dangerous territory. Frantically, I try to pull the conversation back.

  “So, when Stephanie told you Hendrik was coming . . .”

  She relaxes slightly and sighs. “We guessed then, he wanted to sell the house, to force us to follow him to the States. But we thought if we could just show him how much Nina needed to stay here . . . Except to do that, we needed him to believe she was his granddaughter. And we couldn’t change the way she looked, of course. But Markus had this crazy idea that we could get her intensive music lessons, take advantage of Hendrik’s weak spot, because Anneliese used to play the cello. Markus said he’d ask a client of his, a violinist . . .”

  I sit up straighter. “Caroline?”

  “Exactly.” Leonora pulls a face. “But of course, Caroline said Markus was being ridiculous. Nina had no hope of learning enough in three weeks to impress anyone. Caroline told him her own niece had been playing the violin for seven years, and she was still constantly learning and improving . . .”

  I swallow hard. That was me.

  Leonora gazes through the window, lost in her memories now. “But apparently, during this conversation, Caroline mentioned she was trying to adopt her niece. And when Markus got home, he said she’d shown him a photo. And he said, ‘It’s a shame Nina doesn’t look more like Caroline’s niece.’ He said, ‘She’s plump and blond and round-faced, just like my mum’s side of the family.’”