A Place of Secrets (11 page)

As she hung the binoculars back on the nail she glanced up curiously at the trapdoor. She knew her limits: it
would be stupid to climb up alone and open it—what would happen if she fell? But she did long to know what was on the other side—open sky, perhaps, or another room like this? Regretfully, she lowered herself backward onto the staircase, like a sailor descending a ship’s ladder. She would have to come back another time with Euan. The thought was a pleasant one.

Emerging, trembling and dusty, from
the bottom of the folly, she hauled the door closed, shot the bolt and hung the padlock exactly as she had found it, not locked but looking as though it were. It would be responsible to lock it, but then whoever had left it like that might be annoyed. A sudden picture of a child pulling it open and mounting the steps decided her, but when she squeezed the thing shut, it refused to stay locked.
She left it. There was nothing else to be done.

She turned to walk back to the path, aware that time was moving on, but her eye was caught by something, a mound of fresh earth on the edge of the clearing. It was too big to be a molehill. She walked over, for a moment uncomprehending, then realized it must be where Euan had buried the muntjac. The earth was dark brown, rich in loam. Something
yellowish stuck up from the soil. She pulled it out. It was a broken bone, the thickness of a hose, evidence of something much longer dead than the deer. She dropped it, thinking nothing of it.

She stood up, looking around, troubled by a curious feeling she was being watched, but she saw no one.

Then, just as she reached the trees, she heard the sound of a vehicle’s engine in the lane. It cut
out quite suddenly, then doors slammed. All her terror at Friday’s shots returned. She slipped off the path and made for a thick clump of hazel and brambles and hid. She was trespassing, and it might be the person with the gun. Thank heavens she’d been cautious enough to park her own car back on the road, and the newcomer wouldn’t be looking for her.

Soon she heard a woman’s voice, then the lower
tones of a man. More than one person, then. From her leafy hiding place, she glimpsed them approaching, her eyes widening in surprise. It was Marcia Vane, today in tight white jeans and a low-necked top. She was accompanied by a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty, dressed more for the golf course than a country walk. What were they doing here at this hour on a Sunday morning?

They passed Jude’s
hiding place and she watched them stop at the breach in the barbed-wire fence. The man gave an irritated cry and hunkered down to examine the broken wire. When he stood and spoke to Marcia, Jude could only hear shreds of their conversation.

“… definitely been cut whoever … they couldn’t drive it in here.” The man threw open his arms, indicating the clearing. “… a few trees, I reckon.” Now they
both stared up at the tower. The man walked across and gave the door an exploratory prod with his polished shoe.

“Heck of a job, John…” Marcia drawled. So he was Marcia’s client, John Farrell. Or, Jude judged, by the intimate way she took the man’s arm, something more than that.

Jude took the opportunity of their turned backs to melt away through the trees in the direction of the lane. They
were clearly up to something, and she sensed it was better that they didn’t know she was a witness.

Jude arrived home in Greenwich at nine o’clock that evening, exhausted, but needing to ready herself for an early start the next day. The christening, at a church near St. Alban’s, had been followed by a big boozy party that had gone on all afternoon. By the time she left at six, the end-of-weekend traffic had brought the motorway to a standstill, then after her turn-off it had been
a slow crawl across East London.

She unpacked, made her favorite comfort food—cheese on toast—and checked her e-mails while she ate. There was a reply from Cecelia, which she clicked on at once.

Hey, Jude (I adore writing that!),

It’s really good to hear from you. I’d love to meet up. Jude, it’s the most amazing coincidence, but I’m working at the Royal Observatory down the road from you for a short time! Is there any chance you could meet me there after work one evening and maybe we can go for a drink or a meal in Greenwich? I’m pretty free—Danny’s in Boston—so pick your day!

Much love,

Cecelia

She replied to this, explaining the situation and perhaps optimistically suggesting the next day, Monday, and was just logging off when her BlackBerry rang. It was, at long last, Caspar.

“We’ve been in meetings all day,” he said. “And we’ve just had dinner in this amazing restaurant with the other guys. How was Norfolk?”

“It was fine, thank you,” Jude said in her chilliest tone. He hadn’t been in touch at all since … Thursday, she supposed. But then she hadn’t called him, either. What did this say about them both?

“How were the star books?”

“Definitely worth the trip.” Her
eye fell on the box containing the observation diaries that had somewhat riskily spent the day locked out of sight in her car trunk.

“Good … Good … And your sister and everyone…? Hey … you wouldn’t believe who we saw in the restaurant. Johnny Depp.”

“No!” She forgot her coolness.

“Yes. With his wife and some other guys.”

“Really? What’s he like in real life?”

“Pretty ordinary, I’d say. Nothing
that a well-cut suit can’t do.”

“Oh, Caspar! You’re just jealous. Did you speak to him?”

“What do you take me for? Of course I didn’t.” No, Caspar had too much of a sense of personal dignity to risk being snubbed. “They must hate that, stars. People going up and treating them like public property.”

“Well it’s the public that give them their success.”

“That’s true, I suppose. Now, about next
week. The holiday. Jude, I’ve got a very special ask. Would you mind if I didn’t join you at the villa till Tuesday?”

“What, go down on my own? Oh, Caspar.” Jude was truly dismayed. “Why?”

“Things here,” he said mysteriously. “From what the guys were saying tonight they need us to get working on their British campaign straightaway. I reckon I’d be free by Tuesday lunchtime. Look, you wouldn’t
have to drive down. I could cancel the ferry and you could fly to Bordeaux and Luke could fetch you. I’d pay.”

Jude felt suddenly very tired indeed. “Caspar, no. That’s not fair.” It was her main holiday this year. She wasn’t sure about the whole thing anyway, and now he was ruining it. Suddenly she felt really angry. “It won’t be the same without you there. I don’t know your friends and they
don’t know me. I was only going because you were.”

“But I will be there. Just a few days later. You’ll be fine. The others will be really relaxed, you know. I’ll call Luke and Marney as soon as I get off the phone with you here. We’ll sort it out.”

“No, we won’t sort it out. You’re messing me around.”

“You’re angry, aren’t you? Please don’t be angry.”

“Are you surprised? You don’t call me
for days and then you tell me work is more important than our holiday. What am I supposed to think?”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. Then the tinkling of liquid falling on ice cubes. Caspar swallowed a mouthful of drink and said very humbly, “I’m really sorry. I guess I’ve got so caught up in the work, I’m on a kind of high about it. The trouble is, I’ve promised the guys we’ll
do it. Jack’s all set up. I can’t let him down. Look, can you think about it?”

“I’ll think about it,” Jude said dully. She was really too tired and upset to think straight now. “Can we speak tomorrow?”

“Of course, of course. I’m in and out of meetings, but we’ll catch each other sometime.”

We’ll catch each other sometime.
Like ships passing in the night. Was that what their relationship was
like? Jude wondered, as she lay awake that night, too tired and jittery to sleep. She and Caspar didn’t need one another, not really. Three or four months into their relationship and she couldn’t say that she knew him very well. And coming back home, that sense again of walking into what belonged to her and Mark—those memories were as comforting as the cheese on toast. She’d never allowed Caspar
to stay here, had always arranged it that they ate in town and went back to his, or that it was sometime like a Sunday, when he’d want to go back home in the evening to sort out things for the week. But perhaps she ought to plod on with this relationship, put the work in and wait for it to come good. Maybe there could never be someone she could love with the same intense passion and sense of rightness
that she’d felt with Mark.

On Monday morning the office was electric with tension. It was only half past eight when Jude walked in with her briefcase containing the precious journals, but Suri was already at her desk, head bent over a pile of dusty volumes, elbows tucked into her sides like a frightened animal trying to make itself as small and unnoticed as possible. She looked up at Jude’s entrance, mouthed,
“Hello,” rolled her eyes and made a warning grimace. The sound of raised voices from Klaus’s office told the rest of the story. Just at that moment, Inigo emerged, a look of tragedy on his face to make a Shakespearean actor proud. He hitched up the trousers of his ridiculous suit as he sat down at his desk, then started tapping away furiously at his keyboard, completely ignoring Jude’s greeting.
Klaus, meanwhile, hung in his office doorway, fingers hooked over the frame like a huge, angular bird of prey, and regarded Jude with a fierce gaze.

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking from one man to the other. Klaus summoned her with a brisk movement of his head and she followed him inside.

“Klaus? What’s the matter?”

He ignored her question.

“Yes. Good morning, Jude. How was Norfolk?
I read your e-mails, for which great thanks. We’ve definitely got the collection, haven’t we? It would make a huge difference to our viability. I’ve taken the liberty of including some figures in the budget reforecast I sent upstairs this morning—”

“Did you?” Jude interrupted, a little alarmed. “I’m pretty sure we’ve got it. I was going to check in with Robert Wickham today.”

“Excellent,” he
said, rubbing the tips of his fingers together. “You’d better look at this morning’s figures for the year to date.” He scooped up a transparent document wallet and passed it across the desk.

It took her a few moments to absorb the lines of numbers. What glared up at her were the totals at the bottom. Actual against budgeted sales for the past six months. It was a shock. She knew Pictures and
Furniture were having problems in the current climate, but Books were down nearly a million pounds on expectations, too. Klaus folded himself into his chair, gesturing to Jude to sit down opposite.

“We really needed Lord Madingsfield’s collection,” he rasped, raking his fingers through his floppy, graying hair. “Those Audubon bird manuscripts particularly.” He glared through the glass wall of
his office to the cowed figure of poor old Inigo. So that’s what the row was about.

“It wasn’t Inigo’s fault,” Jude said, with a grudging sense of fairness. “He’s told you. Madingsfield has a cousin at Sotheby’s—”

“I was just telling Inigo … I chose to call Madingsfield over the weekend,” Klaus interrupted in clipped tones, picking up an ivory paper knife from his desk and running his thumb
down the blade. “To say how disappointed we are. His story is a little different. He tells me in that dreadful oleaginous way he has that he didn’t detect that Beecham’s was ‘suitably enthusiastic’ about his collection. I don’t know what Inigo said to him, but it seems he didn’t press the man hard enough.”

“But that’s Madingsfield all over. He would blame us,” cried Jude. “He would hardly come
out straight and admit to nepotism, would he? Come on, Klaus, we know him of old.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Klaus snapped, slapping the paper knife down on the desk and making Jude jump. “The point is that Inigo didn’t go in hard enough.”

“But you’ve told us not to make unrealistic promises in these trading conditions,” Jude said, confused.

The phone trilled and Klaus snatched it up. “Clive?” His
voice was deferential now, nervous even. “You’re ready for us. Five minutes? Yes, yes. You’ve got all the documents I sent up? Yes, I understand completely. Very important. Good.”

Jude’s whirling thoughts cleared. Klaus must be under tremendous pressure from senior management. He, like Lord Madingsfield, was desperate to parcel out blame. Today Inigo was in the firing line. Tomorrow, it might
be her.

Klaus replaced the handset and reached for his jacket and his papers, his long face tense, miserable.

“Get yourself ready for a difficult meeting,” was all he said.

Jude went to collect her things.

“Inigo, are you ready? Suri, would you mind the phones?” Klaus asked, putting on his jacket.

Inigo refused to meet Jude’s eye. All right, she thought, hurt, if that’s the way you want to
play it. It was apparent to both that the wheel of fortune had turned. Inigo was out of favor and, today, Jude was firmly in.

It was when they sat down at the boardroom table, with the chief executive and the finance director, that her eye fell on a handout in front of her entitled “Suggestions to Deal with the Shortfall” and she felt her stomach flip. The first item, in bold type, was “The Starbrough
Collection” with “£150k” printed beside it. She shot Klaus a glare, but instead of shriveling up in his seat, he frowned her into obedient silence.

Clive Worthington, chief executive of Beecham’s UK, informed them tersely that he was interviewing the senior staff of all the different departments in turn to deal with the matter of a devastating downturn of income from recent auctions.

“You’re
not the worst department affected,” he said, looking at Klaus severely over the top of his reading glasses, “but it’s vital that you pull out every stop to meet these figures you’ve submitted. What’s this latest entry? Starbrough? First I’ve heard of it.”

“Jude will explain,” said Klaus, and Jude, her mouth dry with nervousness, described the collection of books and instruments that she’d inspected
over the weekend.