‘Aha.’ Bridget made a noise that she presumably thought made her sound intelligent. ‘Yes, I believe that might be the origin of The Hound of the Baskervilles.’
‘Gosh, Bridget,’ I said wide-eyed. ‘You are well-informed. What made you think that? The fact that we’re on Dartmoor and there was a massive hound with red eyes?’
Bridget glared at me, before thrusting her chin up. ‘Come along, Dingerling. You too, Mirabelle.’ She used the same voice for both of them.
Mirabelle still seemed very cowed. I could even have started to feel a little sorry for her if I hadn’t managed to store up so much anger for her over the years. Mirabelle and Bridget walked on behind Marsha and I caught Mother’s eyes following them suspiciously.
‘Let them be, Pandora,’ Aunt Charlotte sighed. ‘They’re happy.’
‘They don’t look it,’ Mother snapped.
‘Since when were you an expert on that?’ I couldn’t help myself.
‘I’m considering a career as a well-being and life coach, if you must know.’ Mother pursed her lips in defiance.
‘You?’
‘Yes, me, Ursula.’
‘You hate coaches, Pandora,’ Aunt Charlotte said. ‘Remember that trip to—’
‘I don’t care what you think of it. You’re not going to stifle my journey.’ Mother shook her head and walked on after them.
I looked at Aunt Charlotte, who just casually shrugged. ‘It was Pontypridd, August 1997. Dreadful trip. The tour guide was a bigamist from South Shields.’ She nodded towards Mother and Mirabelle. ‘Best not to get in the middle of that though.’
She was right. Mirabelle and Mother’s battle was not mine. Mother doesn’t do friendly fire.
Marsha glanced back towards us. ‘Ladies, shall we get you to your rooms?’
We followed her down the long corridor, lined each side with the portraits of yet more beautiful, wealthy women with sad eyes. It looked like one of Mother’s drinks parties.
One was a painting of a girl about my age, wearing a high, white wig. She was so delicate and looked out at me with a melancholy that seemed to suggest she never got much older. There was a small bird at her feet and a dog. Her pale blue dress had the sheen of silk and was so voluminous it made her seem even more doll-like. Her hands emerged from the vast cuffs, ending in slight little fingers that were barely bigger than a child’s.
‘She’s beautiful,’ I said quietly.
‘If you like that sort of thing.’ Marsha turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘We want to freshen this up. Elzevir thought we might put up a few Banksys.’
As we walked along the dark red strip of carpet, our muffled feet seemed like such an intrusion on this sacred little world. Marsha and Elzevir Black must have felt like this every day. The fake lord and lady who’d taken up residence somewhere they so clearly didn’t belong.
A door was at the end of the corridor on the right. Marsha opened it with a flourish. The first thing I noticed was that there was no lock. Locks are very important to my family. My old therapist, Bob, used to say Mother and I should open the doors to each other more often. We should see each other as a lock and key that fit perfectly. We’ve tried for a while to replace Bob since he embarked on his monastic journey of self-discovery, but after the fifth therapist left we stopped looking. We’ve finished with therapy or therapy has finished with us. Now I just talk to Dad.
‘Ursula, I’ve put you in here. It’s quite Gothic. I thought that would suit you.’ I couldn’t tell if Marsha was being sarcastic or not.
Usually, Mirabelle would offer up a snide little comment at this point, but she stayed silent. It was becoming quite unnerving. I almost wished that the vicious old Mirabelle would resurface from the quiet little shell she’d retreated into. She just seemed so replaced.
‘This is nice, isn’t it dear?’ Aunt Charlotte cast a doubtful eye over the room. She was concerned. Again. Aunt Charlotte spends most of her life being concerned about things she has no intention of fixing.
‘I’ll be fine, I promise,’ I murmured to her.
Marsha frowned. ‘Is everything—’
‘I’m fine. Please don’t worry.’ Somehow, every time I try to reassure people, I manage to make it sound like I might have some lurking issues. I do. But Lady Marsha Black didn’t need to know about them.
‘Right, well if you’re sure you’ve got everything you need . . .’ On this occasion, I was fortunate. Marsha was the kind of woman who had no wish to know anything about other people’s problems. She seemed to have enough of her own. And Mother would be able to fill her in amply on how difficult I am.
Aunt Charlotte gave me another ‘Are you OK?’ face and I nodded.
Their voices disappeared quickly down the corridor, as if they were making a hasty exit.
I was alone.
CHAPTER 8: THIS CASTLE HAS A GHOST
The room was quiet, peaceful except for the sad whine of the wind at the windows. It sounded so forlorn, so pitiful that it was easy to imagine pulling back those thick folds of curtain to see a bone-white face at the glass, the fine skull of the abandoned priest or the vengeful eyes of a cruelly treated wife waiting solemnly. My thoughts landed on Marsha and her disorientating switches between the self-possessed, gauche wife of Lord Elzevir and the barely disguised, anxious victim, consigned to whatever fate she was enduring. She seemed to inhabit two different personas at the same time.
I walked further into the tired room, dust sighing out with every step. The four-poster bed, in the middle of the room, was hung with heavy rose-covered drapes as if a great garden had sprung up around it to engulf Sleeping Beauty. The curtains were open but fell in such vast swathes of old fabric down each side of the window that they covered a large section of the opposite wall. The vines and creepers were beginning to overwhelm the entire room.
Another desperate-eyed portrait glared out from the wall. This woman looked pallid with fear, giving the very distinct impression she might even have been walled up behind the painting. Everything smelled of a room that had just been opened up, freshly disturbed, but the scent of neglect still clung to it. Perhaps Lord and Lady Black hadn’t renovated quite so much of the castle as they liked people to think. Only the areas that were regularly seen had been played with, and even then it seemed like quite superficial work. The bones of it were still the same — all faded carpets and old-fashioned furnishings. They’d been at great pains to blame the Bradshaws for frustrating their grand design schemes, but I wondered if the tales of Lord and Lady Black’s vast wealth were running a little dry. A place like this had to be a money pit. Mother had been very vague about how Lord Elzevir made his money, which is unlike Mother. She likes to know everything about a person’s finances before she starts to assess how much they are worth to her.
This room certainly hadn’t been subjected to any kind of programme of renovation. It was stifled with swathes of ancient fabric, badly worn by age, and dark wooden furniture bruised by time. Even the light was jaded. This room wasn’t just neglected. It had been forgotten. It was the sort of room that makes you doubt that you’ll emerge unscathed in the morning.
There was a small stand in the corner with a little china wash bowl and jug that looked purely ornamental. At least, I was hoping there would be a bathroom. My bag had been carefully positioned at the end of the bed on a small stand. It looked dirty and worn even here. I heard another fierce wave of rain batter against the window and the curtains seemed to sway out into the room. The dim side lights flickered.
I sat on the edge of the high bed. It was hard and didn’t give much beneath me. There was a small bedside table with a few books propped up against an old lamp, all of which looked like disturbing bedtime reads. Titles such as Richard Branson: Finding My Virginity, How to Be More Downton Abbey in the Bedroom, Think Yourself Rich — Think Yourself More Hair and Unleash Your Inner SAS gave away the fact that Lord Elzevir might occasionally sleep in this room. There’d been a nod towards this being a guest bedroom
as someone had added a few tattered classic books that looked as though they’d been bought from one of those companies that sell books by the foot for home décor rather than for reading. But Moonfleet, Rebecca and The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes certainly didn’t look comfortable nudging up against How to Swear Like Gordon Ramsay and Really Mean It.
There was only one book I was really interested in at that moment. I unbuckled the side pocket of my bag and pulled out the battered old Bible. I held it close. Its leather was worn soft and black as a priest’s robes. The thought of that hole hidden behind the tapestry crawled into my imagination and the poor devils left to rot in a small stone tomb downstairs, forgotten, abandoned by all but their faith. Their belief, a dirty secret to hide away.
I ran my finger along the edge of my father’s Bible. Secrets are a necessary evil.
I opened it and there, in the hollowed-out pages, was my father’s hipflask. I unscrewed it and took a great mouthful of the brandy. It passed over my tongue and burned its way into my chest. A feeling of life rushed through me. A transient feeling but worth the moment of illusion. Everybody needs their slipstream in life.
That was the first time that I saw the dark figure here. It was in the corner, watching me. I didn’t move.
Its head was bent and shoulders curved over as if a great weight rested there and never left him. I should have felt something — fear, shock, sympathy even. But I’m immune. My heart is numb now.
‘Dad.’ I took another drink. ‘You decided to come then.’
The figure lifted its head. His ivory eyes locked with mine.
I don’t tend to mention that I see my father’s ghost. Not straightaway. It colours people’s impression of me. They become a little more . . . distrustful. A little more wary round me. He’s always there, even if he’s out of sight. Even if I can’t see him, he still pierces little holes into my brain that just won’t close ever again.
His death is a silent weight now, just as he is a silent spectre. Death robs people of their voices but their actions still reverberate. That’s what speaks for him now. What he did. He is shame, standing in the corner of my room. And I am anger. I can’t let go of that anger. Maybe if I did, I’d let go of him too.
I passed him another dismissive look so he knew that all my rage was still alive. Festering with the thought of his betrayal. Sometimes I feel like I’m becoming the ghost in the corner, but he’s still there to remind me I’m not. He remains.
His shape drifted in the corner as if we were drowning together without a care in the world to save ourselves. It’s very easy to become mired in grief, a great quicksand that will pull you under the surface of life. Just when you think you’ve found safety it drags you back under, not enough to completely smother you, of course, but just enough to make each breath a struggle.
He doesn’t speak. He never speaks. Perhaps I should be grateful for that at least. I don’t even know why he turns up anymore. Not after I found out the truth last year. He’d been an icon to me, something to worship in my darkest hours in my own cramped, broken hiding place. He didn’t used to bring happiness but he did bring a stillness, a calm from the great raging tide of grief that he left behind. I still cherished that sense of kinship even after he died. I was thirteen when I felt the life slip out of him, as easy as air from a balloon. His untethered soul just floated away and left.
At least I thought it did until he started to appear again as if he had unfinished business. Which was true. Last year I found out he wasn’t quite the martyred soul I thought. Not quite the patron saint of me. More a fickle soul in torment seeking forgiveness. He morphed so easily from saint to sinner.
There’d been another woman when he died. He’d cheated on Mother, cheated on me, and then just left us all with the pain of his death. For years, I’d painted Mother as the guilty party, the dark shadow in my loneliness. But I’d been wrong — misjudged their souls. I suppose that’s worthy of punishment too.
I don’t talk about it very much to Mother. Her grief is a closed book. She doesn’t do self-pity. She doesn’t do pity at all. And I don’t talk about it to Dad. The vague, smoky shape just stands there with that look of the damned on his face.
I took another dose of the brandy. ‘I don’t know why you bother to come anymore.’ I screwed the lid on nonchalantly. ‘I should just give you your forgiveness and then you can disappear.’ I looked at the pathetic outline in the corner. His head lifted and, for a brief moment, his eyes pierced me. I turned away.
‘But I’m not going to do that. That’s too easy. So you just carry on floating around and I’ll ignore you. Seems like a simple punishment for us both, I’d say.’
His face clouded over. He was trying to figure me out but he never could. I know that now. I know my desperation and loss had distorted everything. That toxic blend of love and grief squeezed me tight, like a hug that starts to become unwelcome. Sometimes the angle that grief takes can distort everything else.
‘Here’s to punishment.’ I held up the flask to him then aggressively drank.
Knock, knock.
‘Ursula, who are you talking to in there?’
It was Mother. She doesn’t leave me on my own for long these days. Perhaps she should have considered the implications of telling me the man I worshipped, who died in my arms, was a cheat and a liar. But Mother doesn’t do forethought. To be fair, it was Mirabelle who leaked the information first, but she looked like she was getting more than her share of punishment now.
‘I’m coming.’ I pushed the Bible into a small bedside draw and shut it. Someone had hung my coat on the back of the door. It was the kind of house where other people’s belongings were easily interfered with in the name of assistance. I took the Bible back out of the drawer, went over to the door and took down my coat. I slipped the Bible into a large inside pocket. I didn’t look back at the shape of Dad. I didn’t owe him that.
Mother stood at the door, dressed in another country-based outfit that involved a lot of velvet-trimmed tartan. She looked like she’d fallen out of Country Life magazine’s Hogmanay special. The telltale smell of her own hipflask announced itself loudly. A present from me last Christmas, and I’d even hollowed out a copy of Gone Girl especially to house it. It did actually raise a smile from Mother and, more than that, she uses it all the time.
‘I had the radio on,’ I said. We both looked back into the room. It was very obvious there was no radio.
I walked on ahead down the corridor, my footsteps muffled by the thick, red carpet. I could feel Mother’s eyes on my back watching my every move closely as if she might have to describe them in detail at some later date. Mother is always trying to open me up as if she’s attempting to see inside me. She’s always looking for the secret of me. Secrets are so fascinating to people.
CHAPTER 9: NEVER CAGE YOUR GUESTS
Downstairs, most people had changed except for me. I slipped a mint in my mouth. I always carry them. Mother tapped my hand and I handed her one too.
‘Right gang, are we ready for a little safari?’ Marsha looked overly excited in that strained way that seemed to colour everything she did. She and Lord Elzevir had stationed themselves at opposite sides of the pink parlour, each of them clutching a glass. Lord Elzevir was beginning to look increasingly morose as the alcohol took its toll. His face was florid and a thin line of sweat left a sheen on his top lip.
‘I want to show them the gatehouse first,’ he slurred.
‘What? We don’t have time for that now, darling.’ Marsha made it sound almost like a plea. ‘You can do the tour tomorrow morning. There’ll be much more time then, dear.’
Throughout all this, Dupin had edged his way along the perch and was carefully lifting the edge of Lord Elzevir’s toupee again. He was being a little bolder now, pulling the back up much higher.
I looked down at my feet and saw Bridget’s cat had a small sheepskin-style coat on.
Bridget eyed me suspiciously as if I might be some form of threat t
o the cat. I smiled, and that seemed to make it worse. Mirabelle was, of course, sitting next to her and gave me an unexpected smile in return that was even more unnerving.
Mother purposefully and very deliberately looked away. Mirabelle’s eyes fell.
‘Be warned! Zavvy will want to show you everything. He’s got a full tour. There’s hours of the stuff. Cannons, trebuchet, and we’ve even got our own ducking stool.’
‘Yes,’ Lord Elzevir slurred. ‘For any of you wayward little witches.’
As he staggered to his feet, the monkey quickly snatched off the fake hair piece and put it on his own head. The animal began to stumble along his perch in perfect mimicry of Lord Elzevir.
‘What the Devil . . .’ Lord Elzevir’s face was puce now. He slapped his hand on his bald head and began feeling around it. He swung round to see the monkey dancing.
Dupin paused, the wig still on his head. He made a low sound. ‘Uh-oh.’ Then smiled at us all.
‘Bloody buggering animal! Marsha, do something!’
She laughed.
‘Come here, you little—’
The monkey paraded up and down in the gingery-brown wig.
Lord Elzevir lunged at the monkey and clattered into a suit of armour. He looked at the rocking helmet accusingly as if it might have someone inside.
‘Come on now, Dupin darling,’ Marsha said smoothly. ‘Give His Lordship his little wiggy back. There’s a good boy.’
Dupin looked crestfallen but slowly held out the small pile of very ruffled hair.
Lord Elzevir snatched the hairpiece and smacked it down clumsily on his head. It sat at a strange skew-whiff angle with tufts sticking up in peaks. ‘That monkey must go!’
He turned to the rest of us. ‘Right, you witches, we’ve got drinks in the great hall.’ He made an effort to smooth down the wig while glowering at the monkey.
THE SUPPER CLUB MURDERS a gripping murder mystery packed with twists (Smart Woman's Mystery Book 3) Page 6