A Place of Secrets (49 page)

The question was whether to leave
the little cart outside, where it might alert anyone passing, or whether to risk her hearing it and apprehending him in his mission. If he were quick, he decided … He rolled the cart inside the tower, slammed and locked the door, then darted back into the cover of the trees.

For two nights, afraid of what he’d done, he kept his deed a secret. Matters were overtaking him. Esther’s disappearance
was interpreted as running away, an admission of defeat, and Alicia announced it as such to the household. Lawyers visited, new documents were drawn up, argued over, signed. The dispute would drag on, with Anthony’s lawyer dogged in his loyalty, but Esther’s vanishment sapped energy from his case.

On the third night, a light was seen in the folly and finally he broke down and confessed to his
mother what he had done. At first she was startled. Who would have thought that her weak sap of an infant could have taken such a decisive action? But then a look of cunning came over her face and he was struck by cold dread. When Alicia summoned Mr. Trotwood and gave him his mission, Gussie took to his room. He’d never in his worst nightmares believed that his action would have such dreadful consequences.
And, though relieved that she’d escaped, he was haunted by his deed all his life until that afternoon on the footpath when he set eyes on Esther once more.

It was the week before Easter, the time when Lord Madingsfield always threw open the doors of his stately home for the start of the summer season. Every year he would mount a different exhibition from his archives and collections, one that showcased some aspect of the history of the house and the family. The thirteenth earl, an Arctic explorer, had inspired the previous year’s “White-Out”
exhibition. The year before that had seen a celebration of the tenth earl’s contribution to the eighteenth-century Agricultural Revolution. And this year, 2009, the International Year of Astronomy, offered the perfect occasion to tell the story of Esther Wickham, the lost daughter of Lucille, “The Lady with the Star Necklace.”

It was this portrait that Jude saw first as she walked into the lovely
paneled morning room for the private preview of the exhibition. Smiling and beautiful, offering no hint of the troubles shortly to beset her, Lucille looked down on the proceedings from her new home over the carved wooden fireplace.

“Euan, this is Lucille,” Jude said, and turned to see where he’d gone. Ah, he’d spotted Cecelia, and was bringing her over.

“I didn’t see you arrive,” said Cecelia,
kissing Jude. “Hey, what a gorgeous dress! Come on, I’ll show you both around before the crowds get here. And then there’s champagne and canapés.”

“There’s so much that’s familiar, of course,” Jude said, glancing around again and noticing the orrery and Anthony Wickham’s big telescope. She had assisted Cecelia in the early stages of preparation for the exhibition, but it was wonderful to see
it in its final form. “Oh, and there’s Anthony’s portrait from Starbrough Hall. It’s such a shame there’s no picture of Esther.”

“There’s plenty about her, though. Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Cecelia said, guiding Jude over to the first exhibit. Jude was transfixed. It was the necklace, cleaned and mended, lying on green velvet in an alarmed case, the diamonds sparkling like tiny fires
in the light from the chandeliers. “It looks … extraordinary,” she breathed.

“As fresh as when it was created, I imagine,” Euan agreed. “I somehow can’t believe that Summer will be allowed to keep it in her bedroom!”

“Still, it’s a fabulous heirloom to have,” Cecelia said. “Now, you start here and follow the exhibition around. You’ve seen some of it already, I know.”

“Well I haven’t,” said
Euan, his eyes crinkling into a smile. “And don’t rush me. I want to make sure I read everything properly.”

Cecelia and Jude smiled fondly at one another. The exhibition had been Lord Madingsfield’s idea. Ever since November, when he’d appeared at the auction of the Starbrough collection and bought up so many of the lots, he’d pursued various different ideas with his trademark energy to make
Esther’s story known to the public.

His press release soon after the sale had set the tone.

Lord Madingsfield is delighted to announce that he has acquired the prestigious Starbrough collection of books, manuscripts and astronomical instruments. The observation journals and autobiographical material concerning Anthony Wickham and his adoptive daughter, Esther, of Starbrough Hall, Norfolk, offer a solution to a fascinating Madingsfield family mystery as well as representing a magnificent contribution to our knowledge of eighteenth-century astronomical discovery.

The auction itself had attracted a great deal of interest. Jude’s article in Beecham’s magazine stimulated features in weekly magazines and daily newspapers, and she was invited onto both television and radio to talk about Esther.
Despite the unfavorable economic conditions, many collectors turned up to bid on auction day. Competition was brisk for some of the items—the rare Sir Isaac Newton volumes, the
Atlas Coelestis
, the orrery—but in most cases Lord Madingsfield won out.

At a drinks reception in the evening after the auction, Jude introduced him to Robert Wickham—the only member of the family who had the heart to
come to the sale—and to Cecelia, who bewitched him, and after that, everything had quickly gathered pace. A week later he contacted Cecelia to ask her to curate a very special exhibition at Madingsfield, where all the items he’d bought at the auction would be displayed, and Esther’s story told at last.

Making money would always be a motive for Geoffrey Madingsfield, as well as high culture, Jude
warned Cecelia. Yet in the case of the Starbrough collection these two interests became entwined with a third, something even more deep-seated and powerful: a passion for the family name. He’d taken a lifelong interest in the Madingsfield mystery—what had happened to Lucille, the Lady with the Star Necklace, and her daughters—and the Starbrough collection had offered a solution. This threefold
motivation proved very creative and effective. Not least because Lord Madingsfield quickly established bonds with the current generations of the Wickham family. His visit to Starbrough Hall just before Christmas caused great excitement in the locality. He pronounced himself “quite fascinated” by the library. With John Farrell’s delighted permission, he was driven up to the folly in his classic Bentley
to examine the place where Anthony and Esther had viewed the stars; soon afterward he revealed an infrequently glimpsed generosity, offering Farrell a dazzling sum of money toward the restoration of the folly.

This in turn had an almost magical effect on the Farrell plans. The first outlines for the development of Starbrough Woods had, as predicted by the parish council, been turned down by the
planning authorities in September, as were subsequent modified ones. When Farrell finally submitted a much more modest proposal for two eco-friendly holiday cottages on Foxhole Lane, offering to make a virtue of the folly by restoring it with Madingsfield’s money and opening it to the public, the council seemed prepared at least to listen. And Robert and Alexia chose this point to announce their
own plans to improve their income—to turn over some of the Hall’s unused bedrooms for paying guests and for Robert to do what he’d always dreamed: to open his own specialist wine merchant’s on the premises. Jude was interested to know what Chantal’s place was in all this.

“Robert and Alexia say there will always be a home for me with them,” she told Jude one chilly January afternoon, when Jude
called around for tea. They sat in the drawing room, for Chantal could not bear to use the empty library. “And I would be very happy here, maybe helping Alexia with her work and the children. But first I will be taking what these silly modern magazines call ‘me time.’ In May I am going to stay with my late brother’s wife near Toulouse and will meet all the family there. In June I visit my old school
friend Audrie in Paris. Then I have booked a cruise. What do you think of that?”

“A cruise, Chantal, how wonderful! Where are you going?”

“I embark at Nice and we travel all around the Mediterranean, in a modest, elegant ship, not one of these huge ones. There are all these places I meant to visit when William was alive, but William, he only loved Norfolk. So now I am alone I must take my opportunity.”

The new sparkle in her eyes at the exciting thought of the trip, made Jude wonder privately whether Chantal would always be alone. She was so beautiful and graceful, and such a lovely person, it was very likely that she would draw people to her, new friends and, perhaps, suitors.

“That sounds like a brilliant idea,” she cried, “but, well, Euan and I hope you’ll be home for our wedding in June.”

“You’re getting married! Why am I surprised? Oh Jude!” Her hug told Jude how happy she was and they talked eagerly of how Chantal could fly back from France for the wedding in Starbrough church before joining her ship in July.

Chantal was also mollified by the idea of the exhibition and the restoration of the folly. “Happy things can come out of sad ones, Jude, we must always remember that.”

She’d been looking forward to the opening of the exhibition today for ages.

“Oh, they’re here,” Jude exclaimed now, waving. “Wow, the whole family’s come!”

There was Robert in the doorway, holding little Georgie’s hand. Just behind were Alexia and Max, no, they’d stopped to gather up Max’s suitcase of wooden trains, which had spilled open. The grown-ups all greeted one another, shaking hands,
kissing and hugging, then Cecelia took Chantal, Georgie and Alexia to see the necklace, leaving Robert to manage Max and Thomas the Tank Engine and to butter up Lord Madingsfield, who had just glided into the room, beaming with triumphant pleasure.

Jude and Euan took the chance to walk around by themselves, starting with the first storyboard. Cecelia’s story of Esther, like all really satisfying
stories, began at the beginning, if we can ever say that there was a beginning, for Lucille, the young, unhappy French wife, had her own story before she arrived at Madingsfield, and maybe it was only possible to guess at how she’d been torn away from family and homeland and, crucially, from an unknown man who’d won her heart, to make a handsome match to a wealthy English aristocrat.

The storyboard
showed a portrait of a sensual, but unsmiling young blade, with a twist of cruelty about his mouth. This was Lucille’s new husband, the Viscount, heir to the Earldom of Madingsfield, darling of his mother’s eye, to whom no one in life had ever said “no.” Cecelia had obviously had marvelous fun digging around in the Madingsfield archives and elsewhere to build up this description of him. But
she’d been scholarly as well and careful to separate evidenced information from mere suggestion and rumor.

Jude had helped by researching everything to do with the dead woman found in north Norfolk woodland in 1765—largely newspaper reports of the time, for the coroner’s papers had not survived. Although it wasn’t possible to say definitively that the woman had been the runaway Lucille, there
were several details that pointed toward it: her clothes, her physique and the fact that her skin and hands were fine, that the coroner’s report had described her “possible foreign appearance.” She’d been shot at close range, the motive apparently not robbery, for a gold ring adorned her wedding finger and some coins were found scattered on the ground. No one knew who she was or where she’d come
from, and though it was posited that she’d borne at least one child, no report mentioned the discovery of two little girls.

One of whom was Esther.

The next storyboard featured a painting of Starbrough Hall and quoted what Esther reported Anthony had told her about finding her in the road as a baby, clutching Lucille’s star necklace. There was a certain amount of careful conjecture about what
might have happened to the other little girl. Jude saw Euan frown.

“Did Cecelia not think that the gypsy girl might be Esther’s sister?” he asked.

“I wondered that. There just isn’t enough evidence, Euan.”

“But Summer thinks she was. I suppose we can’t use dreams as evidence though.”

Jude shook her head at him fondly. “Not really.”

The third storyboard described Anthony’s stargazing hobby.
Two of the observation journals lay open in a case, together with labels offering Jude’s transcript. There was a video, too, with a voice-over, taking the viewer up the folly, where Cecelia’s team had reconstructed the telescope now on display.

The exhibition then moved on to explain carefully the importance of the Starbrough discoveries. Another video traced the story of Herschel’s identification
of the seventh planet, Uranus, and in another case could be seen the entries in Esther’s handwriting that showed that she had seen it first. One of Josiah Bellingham’s letters and its transcription lay next to the journal in the case.

Finally, in another video, Jude knew she would come face-to-face with herself, dressed in eighteenth-century costume and relating the story of what finally happened
to Esther and why she was important. But there was someone already looking at the video. It was Claire!

“Hello, stranger, have you just arrived?” Jude said, coming up and touching her arm.

“Oh, sorry,” Claire said turning round with a smile. “I was just coming across to say hello and saw this. It’s so funny.”

“Funny?” Claire was still capable of saying the wrong thing.

“Oh, not funny ha ha,”
she mumbled, seeing Jude’s face. “I meant it’s kind of weird…”

“I suppose it is.”

“Summer will love it. Here she is now. Summer, come and look at Auntie Jude in fancy dress.”

Jude swung around to see Summer marching in imperiously, little Georgie immediately leaving her mother’s side to pad adoringly behind. Then came Jon, his face as open as a spring day, carrying Summer’s backpack, for he’d
become her humble page. Jude watched him and Euan shake hands enthusiastically before she found herself in his bearlike embrace.

“Great pile this!” Jon said, meaning the house and grounds of Madingsfield. “A good place for a rock festival.”