IN THE BLOOD

Philip Loraine

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Philip Loraine 1994

Philip Loraine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780002325066

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008266240

Version: 2017-06-28

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Keep Reading

Other Books By

About the Publisher

IN THE BLOOD

Lydia Ackland was nearly blind when she fell downstairs and was killed. Her grandchildren have always accepted the official verdict—accident. Besides, they have their own problems: beautiful Kate is ending a love-affair; her brother Daniel is painfully crippled.

But then that letter comes to light. Only days before her death, somebody wrote and warned their grandmother that she was ‘opening a disastrous Pandora’s Box’ and should ‘let sleeping, and perhaps dangerous, dogs lie’. The letter goads Kate and Daniel into asking lots of questions.

First, who wrote it? And why does the answer, once discovered, point to their arrogant Uncle Mark, who, with his ambitious wife Helen, has inherited Longwater, the vast family estate, and the vast fortune that goes with it.

Why were Mark and Helen banished from England in their youth, and what are the secrets behind their long European exile? Kate follows their footsteps through Italy and Corsica, while Daniel continues to ask questions in England. Within days, both their lives have been threatened, confirming their suspicions that all is not as it seems—and perhaps never has been …

CHAPTER 1

It wasn’t surprising that various objects had slipped down the gap at the back of the shelf and so into the cavity between the wainscotting, on top of which the shelf rested, and the wall behind it. This wall was damp, the panelling had warped, causing the gap to grow wider over the years; hence the arrival of Kevin and Ted from J. Frawley & Son, Builders; hence clouds of plaster dust and the splintering of rotten pine.

‘Ho,’ said Kevin, ‘got some treasure trove here,’ and he produced from behind the skirting-board a turquoise-blue comb with several teeth missing, a rusted pair of nail-scissors, two pencils, half a ballpoint pen, the china lid of a Gentleman’s Relish pot, several safety-pins, a tangle of string and a handful of pieces of paper: bills, shopping lists, a picture postcard of Notre Dame, envelopes and a letter or two: the detritus of years, laced with dusty spiders’ webs. The shelf, just by the kitchen door, had always been a good place for putting things so that you’d know where they were.

Kate Ackland took an old tray from the rack and piled the ‘treasure’ on to it. Her brother, Daniel, supported by his crutches and the wall, said, ‘That one on top, that’s Grandmother’s writing.’ Since the grandmother in question had lived here at Woodman’s for several years this wasn’t surprising. Kate took the tray into the living-room and put it on the table, thinking how strange it was that after so long she could still be amazed at the dexterity of her crippled brother’s movements; he swung himself from his crutches into the wheelchair with an economy of effort which was almost graceful, at the same time propping the crutches against the wall where he could reach them with ease.

She left him examining the contents of the tray, and returned to the kitchen to make tea for Kevin and Tom. Both young men eyed her with appreciation; both would probably have said that she was beautiful, but Kate knew she was nothing of the sort, or only at certain moments in certain lights. She knew she had good eyes, clear grey-blue, good skin, good hair and, thank God, a good slim figure; but, as she’d learned with some surprise over the years, these attributes were all subject to one other mysterious element: her personality was ‘attractive’, not only to young builders but to almost everybody—male or female—who encountered it. She accepted this as an endowment of providence, not even realizing how much of it was due to the fact that she liked people; was genuinely interested in what they had to say, gave them her whole attention.

Tea dispensed, she went back to the living-room and found Daniel, reading glasses on the end of his nose, examining what looked like a letter. She said, ‘Nothing really interesting, I bet—there never is.’

Daniel waved a sheet of creamy, damp-blotched paper. ‘This is interesting. Weird really.’ He pushed it across the table towards her.

My dear Lydia,

I’ve asked Sally to read you this letter, and I’ve explained to her that it concerns a very private conversation you and I had last Saturday evening. (I must add, in passing, that you couldn’t possibly have found a nicer, more tactful and loyal companion and/or pair of eyes.)

Lydia, don’t be angry with me, but I really do feel that somewhere, deep in the subconscious perhaps, this bee in your bonnet is connected with Richard’s death. Yes, I know it happened ten years ago, but you loved him so very, very much and, whatever some people say, one doesn’t ‘get over’ the loss of a beloved son, particularly under such sudden and shocking circumstances.

The other night you called me a coward. I know I’ve never been as strong-minded as you, but I absolutely believe that in this case I’m talking sense. Whether you’re right or wrong will make very little difference now; either way you’d be opening a disastrous Pandora’s Box, and either way people will just dismiss you as a ‘batty old woman’. Because the fact is, we are both old and one does tend to imagine things.

By now I’ve probably irritated you quite enough, but I must repeat what I said when we parted. If you do decide to take steps, for God’s sake talk to Andrew first. I know he’s a bore, like most lawyers, but he hasn’t known you for fifty years like old Godfrey, so his advice would at least be unbiased, and perhaps he can convince you to let sleeping (and perhaps dangerous) dogs lie.

Lastly, Lydia my dear, I must confess how sorry I am that I lost my temper when you said it was all in the blood—and I certainly shouldn’t have used the word ‘snobbish’. I was overwrought and so desperately worried about your state of mind.

I’ve asked Sally to burn this when she’s read it to you.

God bless you, my dear,

as ever yours …

The signature was not only an illegible scrawl but a brown stain of damp ran across the middle of it; moreover, the writer had put neither a date nor her address at the top of the page.

Brother and sister regarded each other in silence with identical eyes. Daniel’s hair was also the exact glossy brown of Kate’s; he was two years younger than his sibling, twenty-one, and like her, good-looking, though in his case the looks were pinched and hollowed by the years of pain he’d suffered because of his legs. She would not at the moment consider his legs, she spent too much of her time worrying about them. Besides, they were both disturbed by the letter which had so much of the past, of their own selves, contained in it.

The Lydia to whom it was written had been their paternal grandmother, and the Richard whom she had loved so very very much had been their own father; moreover his death ‘under such sudden and shocking circumstances’ had been caused by the same car crash which had crippled his eight-year-old son. Kate, in the back seat, had survived unhurt, and their mother happened to have stayed at home that afternoon, making curtains. Twelve, no thirteen years ago. If Kate closed her eyes she could see, in the most exact detail, the blue BMW crumpled against the concrete buttress of the flyover, firemen, ambulance crews, police at work around it, the line of crawling cars from which shocked or merely curious faces contemplated disaster, the angered policeman who was urging them to get a move on. It had been one of those hot white summer days, the trees almost black against a glaring sky: somewhere the distant grumble of combine harvesters. Luckily the car had not caught fire or they would never, they later said, have been able to cut Daniel out of it alive.

Brother and sister knew that they were sharing, insofar as they could, the same thoughts and memories; they always knew when this was so. Daniel tore them both away by saying, ‘What do you suppose the bee in her bonnet was on that occasion?’

‘God knows! She always had one.’ No need to add that they were often eccentric or unreasonable. For instance, she had never really forgiven her grandson and granddaughter for surviving the crash when her darling Richard had not. She knew how unfair this was, being neither stupid nor bigoted, but, as obviously, whenever she thought of them or—worse—whenever her cool grey eyes came to rest on them, she could not stem the surge of anger and grief. In fact, it was some years before she could bring herself to speak to them at all. As for their mother, the widow, Lydia had considered her eventual remarriage to be outright betrayal, even though it came five years after Richard’s death; but then she had naturally never liked her daughter-in-law in the first place.

Daniel said, ‘I’d almost forgotten Sally.’

‘We only met her two or three times.’

‘She was marvellous with grandmother, I don’t know how she stuck it.’

‘I think she quite loved her in a funny kind of way.’

‘I wonder what became of her.’

Kate considered possibilities and replied, ‘Well, if she’s not married, men must be stupider than I thought.’

Daniel pulled the letter to his side of the table and stared at it, frowning. ‘“A disastrous Pandora’s Box”! She must have got her teeth into something really nasty. Who’s this lawyer called Andrew?’

‘No idea.’

‘I suppose Sally put the letter on that useless shelf, and then drove herself around the bend looking for it, wanting to burn it as instructed.’ He peered at the bottom of the page. ‘Looks like an R, doesn’t it? Rosamund?’

‘We’re not likely to know, Daniel, we never … really entered into her life, did we?’

‘No date either.’ He sounded disapproving. ‘Just what you’d expect of a woman who thinks all lawyers are bores!’ His work, at which he was expert, was research, legal and to a lesser degree historical; dates mattered to him. The university had started him off in this capacity when yet another operation had put paid to his chances of a degree in Law. Research meant frequent visits to various libraries which he managed in a specially converted Mini with automatic transmission; his right leg could operate the pedals … but for how long? Only last week the specialist had told Kate that the leg was deteriorating; she had already sensed this; Daniel made no mention of it, naturally. His bravery, the sight of his brown head bent over the letter, and his glasses sliding down his nose as usual, brought tears to her eyes, tears of pity and of anger—she loved him so very dearly.

Brushing away any sign of emotion with the back of her hand, and pretending the movement was really made to stifle a yawn (he couldn’t bear to be pitied) she found herself wondering whether this all-absorbing love for him tended to unbalance her feeling for other men. Recent events indicated that it might be the case; she had become embroiled in the kind of emotional trouble for which previous experience had, very evidently, failed to prepare her.

She was relieved to be jolted out of these thoughts by Daniel saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ The semi-trained legal mind had come to life. ‘I wonder if the envelope’s here.’ He spread out the mess of old bills and shopping lists, and found a matching crumple of cream-coloured paper. ‘Yes. Same writing.’ He smoothed it out carefully and held it nearer to the window. ‘By God, you can actually read the postmark for once. Salisbury. Can you think of an R who lived in Salisbury?’

‘No. Is the date legible?’

‘Quite recent. 1990.’ He leaned towards the lights, gave the wheelchair a twist and moved a yard forward. ‘November 1990, can’t see the actual date, it’s smudged.’

Kate said, ‘She died in November 1990.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So this must have been about the last bee she ever had in her bonnet. Poor old Gran!’ As always the thought of Lydia’s death made her glance towards the staircase which clung to the further wall of the living-room. She stood up and went to look at it. Since their grandmother’s day an electric chair-lift had been installed for Daniel’s use—press a button and it made a purring ascent or descent, sliding on a rail.

‘If this had been there then she’d never have fallen.’

‘You think she’d have used it!’ Daniel took off his reading glasses and leaned back, smiling.

‘No, she probably wouldn’t.’

‘I’m damn sure she wouldn’t. She was an independent, bloody-minded old woman.’

Kate nodded. There were redeeming features, but in the years following her favourite son’s death the description was by and large fair. ‘You do take care, don’t you, Daniel?’

‘Care! I rise into heaven like Apollo in some eighteenth-century opera.’

‘No, I mean at the top, with your crutches.’ She had never been able to erase from her mind the irrationality of her grandmother’s death. ‘Why the hell didn’t she call for Sally if she felt … shaky?’

‘Oh, come on, you know she wouldn’t! She’d want to prove she could still do it on her own, shaky or not.’

Kate turned an abstracted gaze on him. ‘Just the sort of thing you’d do.’

‘Kate, I am not going to fall, I don’t want to.’

‘You think she wanted to?’

‘I don’t think she gave a damn, not after Father died. She more or less told me so.’

‘Told you! You were only a child.’

‘That made no difference. You don’t seem to have understood her at all; she didn’t mind being cruel.’

Kate nodded uncertainly. ‘She shouldn’t have said things like that to you.’

‘But that was the point. Since his death she was crippled mentally and I was crippled physically. She was telling me that we were neither of us duty-bound to cling to life if it became impossible.’

Kate was shocked; also touched at how easily he seemed to have accepted old Lydia’s parallel which struck her as lopsided, perhaps immoral. He added, ‘I was rather impressed—grateful in a way. She never used to treat me as a child; I’m surprised you didn’t notice.’

‘I suppose I did. She treated me like a child, she treated you like Father.’

‘Without the love.’ He could say it quite uncritically. Sometimes he made Kate feel young and inexperienced, which, in a way and compared with him, she was.

She went back into the room and sat on the sofa. From the kitchen came continued sounds of splintering wood and falling plaster. Kate kicked off her shoes and put her feet up. Daniel asked, ‘How’s the hotel, how’s Alex?’

‘Making money, mostly in the restaurant—his cooking gets better and better. He wants me to marry him.’ She had worked at Hill Manor for seven years now, ever since, at sixteen, she had decided against higher education in favour of earning money. Any academic talent in the family seemed to have been allocated to her brother: the only thing at which she excelled was languages. This may have had something to do with her finding a good job so easily. She’d answered an ad in The Lady and, a week later, been interviewed by Alex and Rosie Stratton at their already successful country hotel. He was then thirty-four and Rosie thirty-seven, wedded less to him than to the gin bottle: plump, lazy, good-natured even in her cups.

From the start, beaming, she had said, ‘Better watch it, Katie, Alex has got his eye on you.’ Whether this was true or not—and at sixteen it had seemed to her unlikely—she made very sure that neither he nor his wife would ever regret having engaged her. She worked hard, for long hours, and exerted all her charm on their behalf. But Rosie had been right: from his first sight of her, Alex had fallen in love, quietly and gently as he did everything else.

Within three years Rosie had relinquished all responsibility to this level-headed nineteen-year-old, and a year after that she left Hill Manor with relief and forever, going to live with her sister in Torquay, where they both drank gin, played bridge, and behaved like tipsy merry widows. She’d give Alex a divorce, she said, any time he wanted one. He wanted one now; he wanted to marry Kate, eighteen years his junior.

If her brother was surprised by this information he didn’t show it. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said it was a bit of a shock.’

‘Which it wasn’t.’

‘Right. I said I didn’t think I wanted to get married just yet.’

‘I suppose,’ said her brother judicially, ‘you could do worse.’

‘Of course I could. But I’m twenty-three.’

‘And he’s fortyish.’

‘I don’t care about his age.’ But even at that moment, thinking of Alex, there flared across her mind the picture of a very different man: young, flushed, black hair falling forward, black eyes glittering as he knelt above her, naked. Steve—one of her less favourite names, but what the hell had that got to do with it? And he didn’t want to get married either, he’d made that quite clear.

She sighed, thinking that probably the most extraordinary part of it was that it hadn’t happened to her sooner. Carefully she said, ‘As a matter of fact I’ve … sort of fallen for another guy.’

‘Poor old Alex! What’s he like?’

‘Sexy.’ She shook her head violently so that her fine brown hair flew wildly and she had to push it away from her face. ‘Oh God, I don’t know what he’s like. Appalling probably.’ She had postponed discussing this with her brother for four weeks now; it seemed unkind, even indecent, in view of the fact that he himself was forever denied any kind of sexual fulfilment; yet she had always discussed everything with him. She was touched when he jumped the hurdle for her, as he so often did: ‘“The ruling passion, be it what it will, the ruling passion conquers reason still.”’ These occasional quotations seemed to slip into his mind unlearned and unbidden: something to do with his habits of analysis and note-taking. Kate was always astonished. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Pope, I think.’

‘Puts it in a nutshell.’

‘He usually does.’

‘His name’s Stephen Callender, he calls himself Steve, he’s twenty-eight, he was born in Hounslow, he’s sales director for Boyd Electronics.’

‘Young to be a director of anything.’

‘And our meeting stepped out of the pages of True Romance.’

Daniel laughed.

She’d seen him coming into the dining-room, alone but sure of himself, and had moved forward, as usual, to escort him to a table. As soon as he sat down he looked up at her and their eyes met. Something peculiar and hitherto unknown took place in her stomach. She gave him the menu and beat a hasty retreat. But, as in True Romance, there was no unqualified retreat short of walking away from Hill Manor there and then. When she took him his wine—a good one—he watched her opening it and nodded at her proficiency; then said, ‘Can we meet for a drink later, in the bar?’

Naturally, she could have said ‘No,’ but her heart was pounding in an alarming manner and she felt an overwhelming desire to touch his black hair; she had no control whatsoever over her reply: ‘I can’t see why not.’

She was sure that Alex would see them together in the bar; if he did, he would immediately sense that the situation was abnormal: Kate alone with a good-looking young man. She had very occasionally been known to join one or two of the old regulars, but only for an anniversary perhaps, or for a birthday celebration: once or twice because they were so rich or famous that refusal would have been professionally undiplomatic. And of course, Alex did see them, and the expression on his pleasant, fastidious face told her that he understood her better than she understood herself.

Meanwhile, as if it was the most usual thing in the world, Steve rested a firm dry hand on her leg under the table, and she, after a moment’s witless hesitation, put her own on top of it; their fingers intertwined; the attraction between them was like a powerful spring pulling navel to navel. To Kate it was all bizarre, the more so because it seemed so natural. Well, for God’s sake, it was natural; and when they eventually found themselves in bed together she realized, as most women do if they ever encounter it, that until this moment she had known nothing about sex, either as airborne ecstasy or remorseless quagmire.

Later, peering at her in half-darkness, he said, ‘Have you got a thing going with the boss?’

‘No. But he’s in love with me.’

‘Figures.’ And, frowning: ‘You’ll probably think this is bullshit, but I’ve never … felt quite like this before.’

She did think it was bullshit, but she didn’t care. To her brother she said, ‘It’s hopeless, I’ve just … gone overboard.’

‘Had to happen, didn’t it?’ He leaned forward and, at his most gentle, added, ‘Katie, you’re a smashing girl. Don’t think I expect to have you all to myself forever.’

The gentleness struck her like a blow in the face, knocking all thought of Steve right out of her mind. She flared up in sudden Kate-like anger: ‘What the hell are you talking about. No one, absolutely no one, ever, will make any difference to us!’ In anger she looked for a moment quite beautiful, which seemed to her brother to make the words even less believable. People who have been ill and in pain for a long time possess enormous reservoirs of patience and resignation upon which they can draw at any time; he was amused but not surprised that his sister didn’t yet realize this. Grandmother Lydia had realized it all right, because she shared it; that was why she had treated him as a grown man, even when he was fourteen.

As so often, Kate was aware of what was in his mind; her eyes strayed back to the staircase. She said, ‘We weren’t all that interested, were we? I mean, we heard that she’d fallen downstairs and killed herself, we didn’t do anything about it.’

‘She was never very nice to us, not after Father died. And anyway, I was in hospital yet again, you were virtually running a busy hotel, and Mother was married to Colonel Alistair in Aberdeen.’

‘She was always beastly to Mother.’

‘Always.’

‘We didn’t even come down for the funeral.’

‘I’m not sure we were asked.’

‘I hate funerals anyway, but that’s not the point. How did it happen, Daniel? And why wasn’t Sally around? Suddenly I want to know.’

‘Then pop up to the big house and ask The Cousins, they’ve probably got all the answers.’

‘The Cousins’ was their generic term, dating from childhood, not only for Giles, Lucy and Miranda Ackland who were in fact their first cousins, but also for Uncle Mark Ackland and Aunt Helen Ackland, his wife. The appellation had gained considerably in meaning when Kate and Daniel had come to read John le Carré and could appreciate the subtle, faintly derogatory manner in which, according to that writer, British Intelligence referred to American Intelligence as ‘The Cousins’. It exactly fitted their own uneasy relationship with the rest of their family.

In answer to her brother’s suggestion, Kate replied, ‘I don’t want to ask The Cousins.’

‘Ditto.’

‘I don’t even want to see The Cousins.’

‘Ditto.’

And, in unison: ‘The Cousins are rat-shit. Amen.’

It was the old childhood litany, and still, so many years later, it made them both laugh.

CHAPTER 2

In her ignorance of passion—that unbroken maverick which can confound even the most cold-hearted—Kate was irritated to find that she could lie in bed, sleepless, her mind filled with one single and overwhelming desire: to feel Steve’s nakedness against her own.

After a time, a long time, she found that she could exorcise him by fixing her mind on another persistent dilemma: that strange letter. What bee in her grandmother’s bonnet could have produced so agonized, even panic-stricken a reaction from the unknown R of Salisbury? ‘You’d be opening a disastrous Pandora’s Box … If you do decide to take steps, for God’s sake talk to Andrew first … perhaps he can convince you to let sleeping (and perhaps dangerous) dogs lie.’ And why had the writer thought it necessary to ask Sally to burn the letter? It said nothing specific, was in fact maddeningly indefinite.

As for Daniel, he’d been teasing her when he’d said that if she wanted to know the answers to any mystifying questions concerning Lydia Ackland she had only to ask The Cousins. He knew as well as she did that old Lydia had never been on anything approaching good or intimate terms with her elder son, Mark—quite the reverse. Kate was vague as to the details; her parents had probably discussed them, but she had been ten at the time of her father’s death, and the antagonisms between the two brothers and, particularly, those between their mother and Mark would have fallen into the pas devant les enfants department; all the same, she’d gathered that the relationship had always been uncomfortable and could at times rise to savagery. No, there’d be no answers from The Cousins, even if she’d felt like asking any questions; and she didn’t.

Thinking about her family—as an antidote to Steve who had come bounding into her life with a flash of lightning like something out of pantomime—she realized that in fact she knew very little. If Grandmother Lydia had doted on her younger son, Kate’s father, and hadn’t a good word to say for his elder brother, surely this meant that Mark, in his youth, must have behaved very badly indeed. Now, on consideration, it seemed more than possible that this behaviour had led to his departure from England, a long time before Kate herself was born. Had he gone into voluntary exile, or had his mother and father brought pressure to bear on a black sheep? Pressure from Grandfather Robert would have been gentle, therefore bearable; pressure from Grandmother Lydia would have been absolute, possibly virulent.

He must have left some time in the late ’60s, shortly after his marriage to Helen, and had not come back until the 1980s, by which time his brother had been killed, and his mother (as a direct result of her favourite son’s death, Kate had heard it said) was going blind. The banishment, if that’s what it was, certainly had nothing to do with his marriage; Helen had been thoroughly ‘suitable’, coming as she did from one of the grander, if impecunious, families in the south of England.

All this was, to Kate, old old history, made more distant by her ignorance of the facts. What she, like everyone else, knew for certain was that Mark Ackland had now taken possession of his rightful heritage, donning the mantle of wealth and property which seemed to fit him very well. With his wife and children he lived up at Longwater in royal grandeur, for with the big house he had succeeded to the fortune and to the nearly three thousand acres that went with it. Since the estate was not far from Newbury, only fifty or so miles from London and therefore in an area much coveted by the well-heeled commuter, the value of those spreading acres was astronomical. He also owned villages and many farms, he even owned Woodman’s, graciously rented to Daniel, his crippled nephew, at a reduced rent. Apparently this was the ultimate extent of any family feeling; the old hostility towards his brother must have cut deep, and indeed, it seemed to have cut off that brother’s children from any familiarity whatever.

Oh, The Cousins were polite enough if chance led to some awkward meeting, and once a year before Christmas, Daniel and Kate were invited to a large party: the kind of party rich people are inclined to give for all the rag-tag-and-bobtail they feel bound—but not overly bound—to entertain. Knowing this, brother and sister never accepted. As far as The Cousins were concerned, she worked in some hotel—as a chambermaid for all they knew or cared—while he was crippled and did odd, charitably inspired jobs, and, to top it all, neither of them had any money. Finis.

‘The Cousins are rat-shit. Amen.’ Kate had never been bothered by them and was not bothered now; they had never played any part in her life, a non-situation which, as far as she was concerned, could continue until they all dropped dead. Ah, but how far was she concerned? And how far had a certain letter, not at the moment understood, altered the balance of all their relationships … ? But she had forgotten the letter, she had forgotten The Cousins, she had even forgotten the demon lover. She was asleep.

Daniel was not asleep. He slept very little: perhaps three or even four hours a night if he was lucky. His legs pained him, but they’d been doing that for nearly two-thirds of his life; he could live with it, he knew how to arrange them to their best advantage. What really worried him now was the knowledge that his right leg, the one they’d eventually been able to reconstruct with such success, was weakening. He didn’t want to go back to hospital; hospitals had scared him from the very beginning when he had lain there feeling trapped while groups of men and women had discussed his legs which, due to anaesthetics, could well have belonged to someone else. Since then he had returned five times for further surgery, and had once or twice descended into such deeps of despair that he had seriously considered the cold, practical advice of his grandmother: for different reasons they neither of them had any obligation to cling to life if it became intolerable.

He felt that things would have been very different if he could have stayed at university and taken his degree; then his life would have had a clear-cut purpose, keeping him in touch with the world and with people; moreover the purpose would have been an end in itself, validating his disability. Daniel Ackland, lawyer, could have heaved or wheeled himself about some city, secure in the knowledge that he was of use. Daniel Ackland, part-time researcher, was too aware of his uselessness even to consider a city life with its many mind-saving interests; and so he lived in a delightful cottage in the middle of beautiful woodland where his only links with the world were books, radio not television (by choice), his work, and the loyalty and love of his sister. Without Kate he might well have foundered, and they both knew it.

In a way he had genuinely loved his grandmother, Lydia; her spiky and eccentric ways made sense to him, even as a boy, and he had often found echoes of her in his study of the Law, with which, though she despised it, she shared an outstanding lack of sentimentality. So it was in many ways fitting that the discovery of an old letter, written to her and then lost, was about to release him from the bondage of uselessness.

It was the kind of situation which even she might have found amusing; he had only ever seen her smile at the wry contradictions of life.

Kate’s visits to her brother at Woodman’s always felt like weekends, but they could never occupy any part of Saturday or Sunday, when Hill Manor was always filled with guests and fully booked for every meal. Only with the arrival of lackadaisical Monday, or sometimes Sunday evening now that she’d trained her assistant, Maureen, could she escape from her commitments. She knew that in many ways she now was the Manor; people who wanted to book asked for her by name and expected her to be everywhere at all times. Alex, in his kitchen, was the most vital component but, a shy man, he preferred to remain unseen; it was Kate’s efficiency and poise, and in particular her charm, which oiled the mechanism and kept it in smooth running order. So almost every week, and because Alex gave her very special licence, she was able to spend Sunday night, the whole of Monday and part of Tuesday with Daniel.

This particular visit was almost over; would have been entirely over if Daniel had not said at breakfast on Tuesday morning, ‘You know that woman who used to clean the place for Grandmother … ?’

‘Mrs Tyson, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. She still lives in the village.’

For Kate this was a minor turning point. An hour ago in her bath she had decided that the whole business of their grandmother’s death, and the ambiguous letter which had preceded it, were matters best left alone. Her review of their relationship with The Cousins had only strengthened this decision. The past had been turbulent, often bitter, and was best left to moulder away in other people’s memories, since neither she nor Daniel had any personal memory of it at all. The letter had intrigued them, but if damp had not attacked the wainscotting just to the left of the kitchen door they would never have known of its existence, never have been drawn towards the peculiar but irrelevant questions it raised. They had their own lives to lead.

But, she now supposed, there was something more profound lying beneath the calm surface of such reasoning, because her heart jumped at her brother’s piece of information and she knew that nothing on God’s earth could make her drive away until she’d heard what Mrs Tyson might have to say.

‘How would we … I mean, she’ll think it a bit odd, us suddenly asking questions about things that happened years ago.’

‘Why?’ He held up the now dry but still stained sheet of creamy writing-paper. ‘Why shouldn’t we be curious? She’ll remember that shelf.’

Meg Tyson had not changed at all in the five years since they’d last seen her. She was one of those women, aged perhaps fifty, in whom one could clearly see the girl she had been at fifteen: a tip-tilted nose, a firm mouth not much given to smiling, fairish hair, hardly showing a streak of grey, pulled back into a bun. Kate would have betted that she still put it in pigtails at night.

They joined her for a cup of tea in her small kitchen where an ancient but immaculate washing-machine grumbled and gushed in the corner. On the other side of the room an old man sat on a window-seat, filling in football-pools with much reference to various tattered sports pages.

‘Takes them serious, don’t you, Dad?’ There was no answer. Mrs Tyson touched her ear by way of explanation. She wasn’t at all surprised to hear that a number of things had dropped down the back of the shelf. ‘Tried sticking Sellotape along it, I did, but the damp soon put paid to that.’

When it came to somebody whose christian name began with R who lived in Salisbury, who had stayed a weekend with Lydia Ackland shortly before her death, Mrs Tyson was flummoxed, with good reason: ‘I used to go up Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, you see. There was that much to do here come weekends.’ So any guest arriving on a Friday and leaving on Sunday evening, or even early on Monday, moved in and out of Woodman’s with her never having seen them. ‘I remember helping Sally make up the spare bed a while before Mrs Ackland’s death, but just when …’ She shook her neat head.

Kate said, ‘We thought we might talk to Sally too, but we don’t know where to find her.’

‘Ah! Well that’s something I can tell you. Never misses a Christmas, bless her.’ She went to a drawer in the dresser. ‘Such pretty cards, I can always put a finger on them. There we are, Mrs Ferris she is now.’

She had hitherto shown a commendable lack of curiosity about the contents of the lost-and-found letter, but now, as she put the Christmas card on the table, Kate noticed her taking a good look at it. She and Daniel had decided that they’d be wise to keep its contents to themselves, so she placed Sally’s card on top of it and pushed them both over to her brother; he made a note of the address and telephone number, returned the card with a smile, folded the letter and put it in his pocket.

Kate said, ‘It’s just curiosity on our part.’

‘And why not? I can tell you I was pretty curious myself. There was something … I don’t know, something not quite right about any of that.’

Daniel said, ‘You mean her death.’

‘Bless you, yes. It wasn’t … like her to fall, now was it?’

At this, the old man on the window-seat, whose hearing can’t have been bad at all, looked up and said, ‘Fall! That’s a good’un!’

‘Now you be quiet, Dad. Why don’t you go down the Woolpack and do them pools there?’

With surprising obedience he stood up immediately, gathering his pieces of paper, and crossed to the open back door. There he paused, looked back at brother and sister, and said, ‘Fall my arse!’

Meg Tyson was a trifle—but only a trifle—put out. ‘Men! And they call us the gossips!’

Both Daniel and Kate had been fascinated by the old man’s parting shot. Daniel said, ‘Was there … you know—a lot of talk about her death in the village?’

‘In this village there’s a lot of talk if a cat has kittens.’

‘But your father,’ Daniel persisted, ‘seems to think she didn’t fall. What’s that supposed to mean, that she was pushed?’

‘Oh heavens, there wasn’t no end to the daft stories went around! But if you said, “All right, who pushed her then, and what did they stand to gain?” they’d scratch their heads and look stupid—and so they are. Then there was a lot of nonsense about thousands of pounds under the floorboards and a fortune in jewellery. I sometimes think you could certify this whole village and do no injustice.’

‘All the same,’ suggested Kate, ‘you just said it your-self—there does seem to have been something not quite right about the way she died.’

Despite her little speech concerning the stupidity of her fellow villagers, Meg Tyson was by nature sensible and cautious; she considered the matter in silence for a moment, clearly wondering whether or not to go any further: which lent added weight to her words when finally she said, ‘Put it this way. I must have seen Mrs Ackland come down those stairs dozens—no hundreds—of times since she lost her sight, and never once did she ever falter.’ With which she shut her prim little mouth tightly to indicate that enough had been said.

This piece of investigation had taken too long, and Kate, who was always back at the hotel by midday, was now late—which meant driving up and over the Cotswolds faster than she felt to be safe. She was therefore abstracted, and Daniel, sensing it, didn’t ask questions or pursue his own reasoning out loud. When they reached Woodman’s he rolled swiftly out of the car and upright on to his crutches.

Kate said, ‘Sorry! You know what I’m like.’

‘It doesn’t matter—we can discuss it next week. And don’t drive too fast, you’re not that late.’

He stood there, watching her go, and, as always, the sight of his slightly twisted figure, diminishing in the rear mirror, then lost to sight, aroused in her the usual pang of pity and admiration and love. Sometimes she dreamed he was cured—or was it a dream of their youth before the crash?—and they were running together over short springy turf, running and laughing.

Hill Manor Hotel could hardly have been more perfectly positioned as far as Kate was concerned: only fifty miles from Woodman’s, door to door. Daniel had been right, she wasn’t that late, but swung into her parking space in front of the no-nonsense Early Victorian façade with ten minutes to spare. The first thing she saw when she went behind the desk was that Mr Stephen Callender had booked into his usual room, Number 22—there had been no prior arrangement.

All thoughts of her grandmother’s death and of the mysterious letter, which had occupied her mind during the drive, were instantly forgotten. Her stomach dropped inside her and she could not, for a good minute, think of even one of the many duties she ought to be performing. The reaction seemed to her too extreme; it offended her sense of efficiency.

He did not emerge for luncheon but, according to Room Service, ordered a smoked salmon omelette, green salad, and a bottle of Pils to be sent up to him. This was unusual, but Kate, going into the dining-room to check tables, didn’t altogether mind being rid of his presence which, though undemanding, demanded all her attention. The meal on this sunny Tuesday provided trouble enough, with twice the number of expected guests and everybody, for some reason, wanting Dover Sole. Many had to make do with something else because, as was well known, Alex refused to freeze fish or meat.

But despite such preoccupations, Kate’s heart was pounding furiously when, at four o’clock, she tapped lightly on the door of Number 22 and went in. She had expected him to be working, but he was standing at the window staring down into the garden, and even though he was smiling when he turned, some trace of a previous thought, an uneasy thought, still clung to him. Kate ran into his arms and, locked in them, his demanding mouth over hers, fell on to the bed beneath him. They had not seen each other for five days—an eternity.

But sexual satisfaction, however absolute, was one thing, that shadow of unease another. Later, when he was propped on one elbow, gazing down at his hand as it moved gently over her body, she again caught some shadow of it behind his eyes. ‘Steve, what’s wrong?’

Still caressing her, he said, ‘This is.’

She sat up, perturbed, but he pressed her down, leaning on her, hairy chest holding her flat. She said, ‘Look—if this is some kind of brush-off I’d rather have it straight. I’ll survive—probably.’

He grimaced and shook his head. ‘I told you I’d never felt like this before; you didn’t believe me.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘It’s true.’ She saw that it well might be. ‘I want to be with you, Kate. I want us to spend time together, know each other. I don’t go for these … hurried sessions.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Five past five. Less than an hour and you’ve got to be on duty.’

She nodded.

‘I was free all weekend—wanting you, not knowing what to do with myself. But you were working. Then, on Monday when you were free, I had to be in Leeds at a conference.’

She looked away from his troubled eyes.

‘And even if I hadn’t been in Leeds, there’s your brother—don’t say anything, of course you have to be with him, poor sod!’

‘I can’t … Steve, I won’t give up my job.’

‘Why should you? You’ve worked damned hard to get where you are.’ He didn’t need to say that the same was true of him, she already knew it. Like her, he had seen no point in further education, and in any case, he came of a humble background and didn’t possess the qualifications for university even if he’d wanted to go to one. Also, he had a widowed mother in Hounslow who, in spite of a variety of unskilled and demeaning jobs which he hated her doing, was in reality dependent on him.

All this had been woven into his thoughts as he’d stood at the window waiting for Kate, and the more he considered their relationship the less tenable it seemed. He’d become involved with the one girl among hundreds, thousands, whose life ran counter to his. They were fixed in different orbits, forever sweeping past each other in opposite directions.

Steve Callender had started out as a nothing, a dogsbody in one of the larger advertising firms, but he’d been a bright lad, eager to learn, personable, clever at hiding his ambition from those who would resent it. His rise may have seemed spectacular to others, but to him, with his nose to the grindstone, it seemed exactly what it was: years and years of slogging application. The first time he changed jobs it really did look as if he’d misjudged the upward leap and would fall into the gaping abyss of failure. In the event he’d managed to claw his way upward once more and the gamble had paid off. It had also given him courage when, two years later, the opportunity arose again. Knowing he was too young and inexperienced he’d taken another, even more dangerous leap across the chasm to Boyd Electronics; exerting every iota of charm and audacity at his command, and lying through his teeth, he had managed to heave himself up and over and into an executive position: now the executive position.

No, he wasn’t going to abandon that for any girl, not even for Kate, and because of it he understood that she wasn’t going to abandon her job either; she knew it backwards, she was good at languages, and within a year or two she could jump from the eminence of Hill Manor (highly recommended in every guide he’d ever seen) to almost any job she wanted anywhere in the world.

Studying his face, watching the shadows of his thoughts flitting across it, she realized that after all these weeks she was only now seeing it clearly for the first time. Because he was a successful young man in a cut-throat world she had not, until this moment, really believed that he was as soft and vulnerable under the carapace as any other human being. He wanted to spend time with her, he wanted them to know each other and understand each other as deeply in their hearts as they had, from the first moment, understood each other in their bodies.

It shamed her that he had the courage and honesty to face up to the fatal divergence between them whereas she had not. Somewhere at the back of her mind arose the unwelcome thought that he could do this because he genuinely loved her while she had merely been overcome by lust for him.

She rolled off the bed and went into his bathroom for a shower. Normally he would have joined her and they would have indulged in the usual amorous games; but this time he did not, and she felt bereft, already lost without him.

Enfolded in a vast towel she went back to the bed, where he was still lying, and studied him. Weakly, but then she felt weak, she said, ‘I … don’t think I can take it, Steve.’

‘Oh God, how d’you think I feel?’

She would like to have said that she loved him, but had long ago made up her mind never to say it until she was absolutely sure. So she wasn’t absolutely sure! Looking up at her woebegone expression, he reached out and pulled her into the sitting position, facing him squarely. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s really nothing to do with us as people, it’s our jobs. We’re neither of us going to give them up; why the hell should we? We’re not children, we know what life’s about. You may want to go on with this … hole-and-corner affair, I don’t. I care for you too much, Kate, and we’re going nowhere.’ He echoed it with passion: ‘Nowhere!’

‘Do we … you know, have to make it final?’

‘Jesus, how do I know? What’s “final” anyway? But we’ve got to break the link, we can’t go on seeing each other, it’d be too painful.’

‘It’s painful anyway.’

‘Kate.’ He took her by both shoulders and shook her a little. ‘We must be able to live without this constant …’

‘Interference?’

‘Sounds awful but it’ll do. Interference. Always wanting to be with you when it’s impossible. I damn near cocked-up an important meeting yesterday.’

Kate stood and moved away, troubled by a suspicion that he might be right. What about the stab of irritation she’d experienced because his unheralded arrival had momentarily undermined her famous efficiency? And hadn’t she been relieved not to have him in the dining-room, knowing how much his presence there would have unsettled her? She grimaced at these thoughts and said, ‘I tell you what, let’s plan to go on holiday together. We really might … one day.’

Gently, because she sounded so forlorn, he replied, ‘Yes, love, we might.’

‘I know it’s a bit wet, but I can bear it that way, Steve. It’s the finality I can’t take.’

‘OK. I’ll book a couple of weeks in Shangri-La—how about September?’

They smiled tenuously at one another. Only later would Kate wonder if, like her Scottish mother, she was subject to second-sight.

CHAPTER 3

After a restless night—that same ache for a warm body which wasn’t there, might never be there again—Kate realized that work would automatically carry her along until mid-afternoon when it was her habit to take a few hours off, either in the garden or with feet up on her bed. She knew the kind of thoughts which would then seize hold of her, and took steps to circumvent them. She rang Daniel.

He sounded chirpy, full of energy, but this was a telephone manner he kept for her, and it could mask any kind of pain or despair. She said, ‘I’ve just been looking at the map. Doesn’t Sally live in the Vale of Evesham?’

He read out the address: Somerton Farm, Little Norton, near Sedgeberrow.

‘It’s not far from here—Roman roads most of the way. I think I’ll go there this afternoon. Want to drive up and join me?’

No, Daniel didn’t think so; he didn’t feel much like driving (his way, Kate was sure, of not referring to the useable leg, deteriorating. Dear God!) and he had a lot of stuff to type up for Dr Forrester, some Oxford professor whose book on Cardinal Wolsey he’d been researching. He said, ‘You go and see Sally, I’ll stick with the old professor.’

‘You’ve still got the letter, haven’t you?’

‘No. I put it in your glove compartment yesterday.’

‘Take care of yourself. Eat properly.’

‘Ava’s in the kitchen right now, making me a chicken pie.’ Ava (three times a week) had been named after the beautiful Ava Gardner whom her father had worshipped. She was a very plain girl, a reasonable cleaner and a less reasonable cook, but she was cheery and fond of Daniel, and that was what really mattered.

The fine spring weather had faded, and the Cotswold Hills in driving rain soon lost their claim to be picturesque and became grim; but as Kate tipped over the edge of them into the Vale, slivers of sunlight lay across the orchards, touching the fruit blossom with delicate promise. Kate hoped Sally’s husband was not engaged in that most perilous of businesses—a return of frost had already been forecast. He was not. Somerton Farm had shed its land except for an orchard and the garden, but the barns at its back were in good repair and a few new ones had been added. Ken Ferris was a distributor of agricultural seed and feed and fertilizer.

‘Nothing spectacular,’ said Sally, ‘but safe. Everything has to eat.’

She had always been a big girl; child-bearing and, Kate guessed, uncomplicated contentment had made her bigger: blonde and, yes, voluptuous, with an innocent face, innocent pale blue eyes. In her present state, Kate could and did envy her.

They had tea in an untidy, beamed sitting-room, rambling shambling, toys all over the floor. The two children, one and three years old, were being looked after upstairs by their paternal grandmother. ‘With them around,’ said Sally, ‘we couldn’t have got a word in edgewise.’ Kate gave her the creamy, blotched sheet of writing-paper. She shook her head over it. ‘That damned shelf, I should’ve guessed. Spent hours looking for it. Funny how a thing like this can bring back … a whole time of your life. Could’ve been yesterday.’

‘We can’t read the signature. We were pretty sure you’d know who wrote it.’

‘Mrs Howard, Rosemary Howard. She came to stay that weekend before your grandmother died.’

‘From Salisbury?’

‘Yes. She lived in The Close, but the house was too big for her, she was selling it.’ The pretty face seemed perplexed, blue eyes worried. ‘Does it matter?’ She was holding up the letter.

‘We’re just curious. Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t know.’ Perplexity disappeared into a laugh, as it probably always did, she wasn’t an introspective type. ‘Aren’t secrets best left alone? I mean, there’s got to be a reason for them being secrets in the first place. I always think, “Oh well, it’s no concern of mine anyway,” but then I’m incredibly lazy—lazy-minded.’

‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

‘Sort of. Not that I’ve ever known of a cat killed by curiosity. We’ve got eleven out in the barns—eleven at the last count, that is. Curious as hell and all very much alive.’

Kate said, ‘I think Daniel and I are intrigued because ours is a very odd family, full of feuds, hatreds, oh and lots of secrets—they’re kind of in the blood.’

Gazing beyond her out of the window, twisting a fair lock of hair, as she probably had since she was a girl, Sally replied, ‘My family’s as dull as boiled potatoes. She really had it in for her son, Mark, didn’t she?’

‘Always.’

‘I found them a bit … weird, him and his wife.’

‘They are weird. Pompous too.’

‘And living abroad all that time. In Corsica, or was it Italy?’

‘Both, I think.’

‘I imagined him in Australia, Canada, that’s where black sheep usually get sent. Or wasn’t he a black sheep?’

‘I suppose he must have been. I don’t know much more than you do, Sally.’ And the purpose of her visit was to ask questions, not to answer them. ‘Any idea where this Mrs Howard went when she left Salisbury?’

‘She was talking about the south coast, last place I’d want to live. One of those stuffy towns, Eastbourne or Bognor. She wanted to be near her son and daughter-in-law—well, she was over eighty. He was a solicitor down there.’

Kate raised her brows. ‘Andrew? As in the letter?’

‘Yes, of course, Andrew. How dumb of me!’

‘She advised Grandmother to talk to him before taking any “steps”. I wonder if she did.’

‘I know she did; he came over one afternoon. Lots of curly black hair and very pleased with himself—I thought he was the pits.’

‘Even his mother says he’s a bore.’

‘That too, probably. He just thought he was God’s gift. Tried to feel me up in the kitchen, I damn near kicked him in the balls.’ She poured more tea. ‘Come to think of it, I suppose I was a bit curious about some things …’

‘Such as?’

‘This is going to sound nosey, but I never could understand the money side of it. Why did your grandmother have to bury herself away in a tiny cottage? She was used to that enormous house, what’s it called?’

‘Longwater. She lived there most of her life—until Mark decided to come home and take it over.’

‘Why didn’t she stay? She could have had a whole wing—biggest granny flat in the business.’

‘And live with Mark and Helen. You can’t share a house with people you dislike, however big it is.’

‘No, I suppose not. Is it true he never came back to see her, not once in all those years he was away?’

‘Yes, it’s true. He might as well have been in Australia.’ She had realized that Sally was incapable of sticking to one subject for more than a minute. Questions had to be simple and direct: ‘So you didn’t hear what those two old women were discussing—all that business about opening Pandora’s Box, and letting sleeping dogs lie because they could be dangerous?’

‘Not a thing. It wasn’t my business, and they’d shut themselves up in the sitting-room.’ She smiled. ‘I do remember Mrs Howard coming into the kitchen and asking me if your grandmother was talking … well, a bit wildly—obviously meaning did I think she was getting weak in the head.’ She looked at the letter: ‘I suppose this bears that out, doesn’t it? I said as far as I was concerned Mrs Ackland was as bright as a button. She was—even on the day she died.’

‘Must’ve been quite a shock, her death.’

Sally sat lost in thought, again twisting the lock of hair. Kate noticed that there’d soon be more than one chin, but she probably didn’t care. Eventually she said, ‘Yes, it was a shock all right, in lots of ways. I mean, why was I sent out shopping on that afternoon? For all kinds of things we didn’t really need, not urgently anyway. And nothing I could get in the village either, I had to go into town.’

‘And when you got back she was dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘The police must have thought that a bit odd.’

‘They didn’t seem to. I mean, it tied in with their theory, didn’t it? Accident. Blind old lady, steep staircase, companion not on hand to help her.’

With every step Kate took, every odd piece of information that came her way, she realized how little she and Daniel knew about the most basic facts. ‘And was that the Coroner’s verdict, accident?’

‘Yes.’

‘No sign of a heart attack or anything?’

‘None. That’s why a lot of people thought it was suicide.’

‘Did you?’

‘Good God, no. Why would she want to do that? She wasn’t ill or broke, she certainly wasn’t round the bend. And anyway a staircase would be such a … an uncertain way of doing it. Supposing it didn’t come off, you’d end up with a broken leg, hip, you name it.’

‘What actually did kill her?’

‘She hit her head on that ugly great newel-post at the bottom of the stairs. All pointed corners. I’d have sawn it off and chucked it out as soon as I clapped eyes on it.’

They fell silent. Kate had a feeling that there was no more to be learned from this straightforward, uncomplicated young woman; in any case it was time she went back to Hill Manor and got herself ready for the evening. She was just wondering how best to take her leave when, from upstairs, there came a shriek of rage, rising to an ear-splitting crescendo. Placidly, Sally said, ‘That’s Tom.’

A thudding of footsteps followed, and a moment later the door opened to reveal a small, roly-poly woman of perhaps sixty, only just able to carry a large child, exactly like Sally, and at the moment scarlet with rage. She nodded to Kate and said to her daughter-in-law, ‘Sorry, I can’t do a thing with him.’

‘Little bugger,’ observed his mother fondly, taking him in her arms and giving him a massive hug. He stopped screaming instantly. Kate seized the perfect opportunity for escape.

Daniel, when she phoned him that evening, wasn’t surprised that Sally had heard nothing of what had been said by their grandmother and her friend. ‘If she’d been that kind of person,’ he wisely observed, ‘old Lydia would never have employed her.’ He was much more intrigued by the identity of R, late of Salisbury and now living somewhere on the south coast. ‘Rosemary Howard, eh? With a solicitor son, Andrew Howard. You can leave that to me, I’ll find them.’ And, when Kate expressed doubt: ‘Do you mind! I am a researcher.’

Like his sister, he thought it odd that Sally had been sent out to do some unnecessary shopping on the afternoon of their grandmother’s death. Who or what had Lydia not wanted her to see? Or were more things about to be said which had to be kept secret? In any case, their next move was obvious: they must find Rosemary Howard and they must talk to her—pray God she wasn’t dead! There’d be no guessing as far as she was concerned; she knew, her letter proved that. What a mercy the terrible shelf had preserved it from being burned by Sally, or they’d have had no reason to embark on this fascinating quest. Contrarily, and only for a split second, Kate found herself wishing that Sally had burned it. She was surprised by the wish which had sprung from some inner recess of her mind, almost as if to warn her.

Daniel sensed this. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Suddenly you sounded … I don’t know—as if you’d gone off the whole thing.’

‘Don’t be silly, I’m as curious as you are.’ She was. And if there were any further reservations lurking in that same recess she could banish them with ease: because there was no mistaking her brother’s passionate interest; she hadn’t heard him sound so involved for years, and involvement, in his present condition, was worth anything.

Ironically, she was about to surpass him in this respect, propelled by a bizarre series of events, the first being a telephone call from Steve early next morning.

At the sound of his voice her stomach confounded her by turning somersaults, something it no longer had any right to do. He said, ‘I’m missing you like hell, Kate.’

‘Me, too.’

‘So bloody easy to say all those pompous things.’

‘Yes, but … you were right, Steve, we both knew you were right.’

‘Sod that too, but we’ll soldier on. Look, I’m not calling you just to whinge. What’s the name of the disease that’s attacking your brother’s legs? Raynor’s Syndrome?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’ve got a board-meeting, I’m late. Look at page four of The Times, column three. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Be in touch.’ His receiver was replaced.

Page four of The Times, column three, contained a brief report headed, ‘Raynor’s Breakthrough’. It appeared that Dr Wesley Allard of the Blake Clinic, Oakland, California, had just released information which seemed to prove that two of his patients suffering from the rare nervous condition known as Raynor’s Syndrome were showing signs of total recovery. Treatment had been long and arduous, had included physical and drug therapy, and, in both cases, surgery involving the central nervous system. Though the disease was rare and had hitherto baffled the medical profession, Dr Allard’s claim would, if substantiated, bring hope to hundreds of sufferers worldwide.

Astounded, Kate had to read the few paragraphs twice. The news was so unexpected that it shocked her; for a moment or two she felt nothing at all. Then excitement, hope, joy broke over her in a glittering wave; but as the wave withdrew came the instant thought of cost. Useless to pretend that ‘long and arduous’ treatment at a clinic in California was going to be cheap; but surely there were ways, there had to be ways.

She knew she’d be able to think of nothing else all day, and so took the precaution of showing the article to Alex. Though delighted, he tried to warn her of a few of the setbacks and disappointments she might have to face, but Kate was beyond reason, lost in a euphoria of determination and optimism.

After long and agonizing inquiry, she found a telephone number where she could reach the surgeon who had first operated on Daniel and who had returned to the fray three times since then. Yes, he’d heard about the putative cure and was keeping his fingers crossed for Dr Allard whom he knew and liked. But the great difficulty was going to be the matter of cost. Like Alex, he could sense that this overexcited girl had to be seized and bound into the straitjacket of expediency. ‘Kate, the Blake Clinic isn’t a charitable institution, and it isn’t funded by the state. Wesley Allard’s research on this project lasted for eight years, and it’s got to be paid for.’

‘We’ll manage somehow, we’ve got masses of good friends.’

‘My dear, will you listen to me? In both the cases cited, treatment lasted about ten months. The Blake charges, say, three-hundred dollars a day, excluding any treatment, drugs or therapy, and excluding surgery which was appallingly protracted. We’re talking about something well over a third of a million dollars, much more if there are complications, and you’d have to be financially prepared for complications.’ He could tell from the silence on the other end of the line that he had at last got through to her.

In a much duller voice she replied, ‘But you hear of it all the time. People, children, being sent off for incredibly expensive operations—funded by generous neighbours, all that.’

‘And rarely costing a quarter of what this would cost. I’m not trying to put you off, God forbid, I’m only trying to save you a lot of wasted time and heartache.’

She telephoned Daniel’s two specialists; and then his National Health doctor in the country. She telephoned various medical men she barely knew (one of them an infrequent guest at Hill Manor) and several more who were complete strangers. She even called the Ministry. Everywhere she met with the same kindness—there was no mistaking her desperate anxiety—and the same warnings. At the end of it, exhausted, she went for a long walk, barely noticing the heavy mist which soaked her.

Alex had money of course, and would probably lend her some, even if it meant postponing a dream cherished for seven years: six new bedrooms and a new kitchen created from the stables. No, she could never ask him. Steve earned a lot of money, but had a mother to keep and was desperately trying to save for what he called his ‘disaster fund’. Her mother had a small income of her own which, added to Alistair’s army pension, enabled them to live decently, without extravagance, in Aberdeen.

By the time she returned to the hotel, steeled to cope with Friday evening, always a hassle, the idea had entered her mind. By the time she reached Daniel at Woodman’s late on Sunday it had possessed her; she knew exactly what she must do.

Her brother, who had long ago heard about Dr Allard’s cure, was appalled to find that she had now discovered it: doubly appalled by her proposed solution: ‘The Cousins! Kate, you can’t!’

‘Watch me.’

‘I’d rather … Kate, I mean this—I’d rather go on the way I am.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t.’

‘I would. Please listen to me. I know it’s a … a spineless attitude, but I’m … used to myself now. It’s taken a bit of doing but I’ve done it. I don’t think I could take being in hospital again, for months—all that change and confusion. Also, I’m afraid of drugs—you know I am, and I’ve had enough bloody surgery to last me a lifetime. I’m a coward.’

‘That’s the last thing you are. You’re just scared of the cost like everyone else.’

‘Not half as scared as The Cousins are going to be!’

‘They wouldn’t even notice it, they’re stinking rich. And I’m not asking for charity, I’m asking for a loan. They’ll get it back, every penny. I’m going up to Longwater first thing in the morning.’

Daniel made a face. ‘I found out where Rosemary Howard lives—Bournemouth. I hoped we could drive down and see her first thing in the morning.’ He looked like he had at the age of eight, a disappointed small boy, but she was adamant. ‘Later, we’ll do that later.’ And then, overcome by exhaustion, by what seemed to be the opposition of the entire world, and now by her brother’s maddening disinterest: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Daniel, this is important, it’s the most important thing in our whole lives. Finding that letter was just a … a crazy chance.’

Daniel nodded; then said, as much to himself as to her, ‘“A fool must now and then be right, by chance.” Cowper—at least I think it is.’

In her grandfather’s day, and even in the years when Lydia had lived there alone—after her husband’s death but before the accident which changed her life—the drive at Long-water had always seemed friendly, arousing excited anticipation; now, under the aegis of Mark and Helen Ackland, that same drive had subtly changed its character; though it remained exactly the same, the new intention was simply to impress: curving around the serpentine lake which gave the house its name, crossing the famous Palladian bridge, climbing the hill before plunging into a stand of ancient beeches, and only then granting the arriving guest a first, breathtaking glimpse of the north front with its splendid pillars, classical architrave and all the rest of it. Or perhaps, Kate thought, the change was in her own attitude, and in the difference between childhood and growing up.

Whatever the reason, she had no intention of approaching The Cousins via the enormous front door. This would be opened by their noxious butler, Smart, who would regard her with a disdain which out-cousined The Cousins, making them seem hospitable by comparison. She parked her car in the shade and plunged into a shrubbery to the east of the house, remembered intimately as the scene of countless adventures in Amazonian forests or tiger-haunted Indian jungles, according to the whim of her inventive brother. This way she would approach the garden front, wandering up on to the terrace, and so, unannounced, into their lives. For God’s sake, she’d telephoned and made an appointment, wasn’t that enough?

However, she nearly laughed out loud when she reached the topmost terrace to find The Cousins disposed about the lily-pool as if the curtain had just risen on an old-fashioned West End play. Mark and Helen sat at a white cast-iron table on which reposed a silver coffee-pot with accoutrements, including, she noticed, an extra cup for herself. Her uncle had thickened and coarsened since she’d last seen him, and his fairish hair was receding which made his red, admittedly handsome, face seem larger. Her aunt had not changed at all; her dark hair, which never looked dyed, was still arranged in what Kate always thought of as the ‘haute-county’ style (much in evidence at Hill Manor Hotel): ageless, accentuating an almost ageless neck; and her beautiful face, equally well-preserved, remained youngish, pale, patrician. Both seemed to be designed to decorate the society pages of Country Life, or Queen, or the Tatler—as indeed they frequently had and did. Her beige linen dress was perfection; she invariably wore pearls. All in all, she made her husband, in a brownish kind of safari suit, look lumpen.

It was said that in their youth Mark and Richard had been alike, but Kate felt sure that if her father had lived for another thirteen years he would never have shared the coarsening process which had overtaken his elder brother; he was too neat and slim, and had never been much of a drinker which Mark patently was.

Mother and father seemed to have distanced themselves from the two of their three children who were present. Giles, at twenty, resembled his father and would become as gross; for the moment, his fair, confident good looks gave some indication as to why Mark had always been considered so handsome and attractive. Miranda, the younger daughter, was sixteen, usually an uncertain age and in her case a disastrous one; she was fat and had bad skin, and no one would have guessed she was in any way related to the exquisite woman at the table. Brother and sister both wore tight trousers which, as Giles well knew, emphasized his strong legs and his crotch; whether the girl knew that they merely emphasized her hips and bottom was open to doubt. Lucy, the middle child, now eighteen, had opted out.

This family group was arranged to face away from the house, and Kate was overcome by a wicked certainty that here was a conscious display of backs calculated to greet her with utter indifference. Well she’d certainly scotched that little trick, for now she faced them head-on and reflected in the lily-pool. Father and the two children showed surprise, but Helen, in her usual accents of petrified gentility, said, ‘Why Kate, how nice to see you, and what a most attractive dress!’

Kate suspected that this remark was addressed less to her than to her unattractively-trousered daughter, she was that sort of woman. She and old Lydia together must have made quite a pair!

Mark was meanwhile hrrumphing about, moving chairs and making welcoming noises: ‘Don’t see nearly enough of you,’ and other meaningless pleasantries. Giles, who had at least been expensively educated, stood up and struck an attitude which further enhanced his looks and figure. Miranda waved plump fingers but didn’t otherwise move. If either son or daughter imagined they were going to be privy to the ensuing conversation their mother disabused them by saying, ‘Giles, you might go to the stable and see what that ass, Kimble, is up to. And take Miranda with you.’ Thus do the Helens of this world wave their dainty, razor-sharp wands. Evidently no time was to be wasted in getting down to business.

Telling herself yet again that she was not seeking charity, Kate started by asking whether they’d read in the papers that some Californian doctor appeared to have found a cure for the disease, Raynor’s Syndrome, which was ruining Daniel’s life.

‘Oh,’ replied Helen (pronounced ‘Eu’), ‘we wondered if that’s what he’s got.’ They knew damn well it was, and the pretence gave Kate just that edge of anger needed to liberate eloquence. Yes, she was eloquent, carried away by youth and passionate determination; so that it only dawned on her slowly and painfully that she might just as well have remained mute; have stayed at Woodman’s with Daniel, or driven off with him to Bournemouth in search of Rosemary Howard. (‘A fool must now and then be right, by chance.’ No mistaking the fool in this case: as wrong as could be and without the shadow of a chance.) The Cousins had known from the beginning why she wanted to see them—they were quite used to beggars—and after all it wasn’t a great feat of conjecture for a mind like Helen’s once she’d read the newspaper; they had long ago decided just how to answer her.

Uncle Mark was first to bat for the Establishment. It seemed that the entire roof, including most of the lead coping, required urgent attention: worse when it came to the east wing where the actual timbers would have to be replaced. A financial disaster of the kind which only struck one if one happened to own a Grade One Listed Property. Somehow this led to the fact that he was responsible for the employment of over two hundred people, and for the direct upkeep of a hundred and seventy-six properties, a proportion of them nothing but almshouses for old employees, bringing in little or no rent. (This, no doubt, included Daniel and Woodman’s.) And now, as Kate had probably noticed, the south plantation was dying of some wretched, continental disease, would have to be bulldozed, burnt and replanted …

And, added Helen, perhaps fearing her husband might flag, there was Cortiano. (There was where?) Not an enormous house (pronounced ‘hice’) with some return from olives and vines. But the outlay was considerable, the place had to be leased—no one in Corsica ever sold land—and there were more employees to be paid, taxes … Kate had never realized that they’d held on to the Corsican property, perhaps as a nice retreat for secluded holidays.

Now, continued Mark, having regained his breath, if Kate could believe anything so preposterous, the District Council had suddenly announced that the bridge at Little Layton needed rebuilding, and it was his responsibility, nothing to do with them at all.

And then, chimed in Helen again, there was the whole absolutely fearsome cost of the children’s education, with Giles already at Cambridge and both his sisters proposing to follow in his footsteps. Uncle Mark summed it all up in tones of the deepest despondency: ‘They’ve got us over the barrel, Kate. We’re stretched—damn tight. Of course we’d have leaned over backwards for a family matter like this, but it isn’t feasible, it simply is not feasible.’

The humiliation which rose up in Kate, threatening to choke her, had nothing to do with the selfishness and meanness of spirit which lay behind all this verbiage; it had nothing to do with The Cousins at all. The fault lay within herself; that she had ever been so stupid, so childishly optimistic, as to believe that they really might have helped Daniel. God in heaven, anyone would think she knew nothing whatever about the world and its ways! There had never, ever, been the faintest chance of one poor cripple’s fate even impinging on their armour-plated indifference: and the hated brother’s son at that!

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