Brightwood (13 page)

TWENTY-­EIGHT

Daisy went to her mum's bedroom. The last time she had been in here, she had been too busy examining the paintings to pay attention to anything else. Now she took a good long look around.

Among the combs and brushes on her mum's dressing table she saw a Day Box. It was dated the day before her mum had disappeared. But her mum hadn't finished making it. There was only one object inside.

Another envelope. Daisy instantly recognized the handwriting.

She reached into the envelope and felt paper and something soft.

It was the little plush kitten that hung from the rear-­view mirror of her mum's car. The one that she had treasured but gave to her mum because it was the best thing she had. It was wrapped in a narrow strip of paper that had words written on it in big letters:
Accidents happen!

Someone had pulled the kitten's head half off.

For a second or two, Daisy stared at the stuffing coming out of its neck, utterly bewildered. She didn't understand what the kitten was doing there. She hadn't noticed it was gone the last time she'd seen the car. But why would she notice something like that? She hadn't been specially looking for it.

Gritting must have taken it. Daisy didn't know when. Perhaps when her mum was out on a recent shopping trip. Were cars easy to break into? Did her mum ever leave hers unlocked? How long had he been following her before he saw his chance? There were too many questions, and Daisy didn't have answers for any of them. Her hands shook as she lifted the piece of paper up to the light.

He had pressed so violently on the dot of the
i
that the pen had gone clear through the paper. It was only a detail, although for some reason it frightened her more than anything else.

Accidents happen!

Gritting had stolen the kitten, and then sent it back damaged as another warning, the worst yet. And the very next day, her mum had disappeared. Gritting must have known she had gone, arriving at Brightwood Hall with a tool to break the padlock on the gates, expecting the place to be empty.

Had he hurt her mum?

Daisy dropped the kitten and backed away, her stomach tight, her legs heavy with dread. She stumbled out of the room and into the Portrait Gallery. Gritting had talked about her mum in the past tense, the way you did when someone was dead. But she couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible.

On the far side of the Portrait Gallery, the General's medals glittered on his chest. Daisy turned away automatically. Then she stopped. Perhaps the shock of finding the kitten had cleared her mind. Or maybe it was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time. But at that moment, Daisy knew why she had always been frightened of the General and why that fear had grown in the past few days, doubling each time she crossed the Portrait Gallery and caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye.

If she looked at the General, looked at him properly, she was afraid she would see some aspect of her mum in his cold, mad face. Something familiar in his features, or the way he held his head. A sign, a mark, a shadow. And then Daisy would know that her mum was crazy too, just as the General had been.

It was a secret fear, so secret that even Daisy herself hadn't been fully aware of it until this moment. Yet now that she was aware, she knew it was completely wrong. Perhaps her mum behaved in ways that people would call crazy. Daisy still didn't know for sure whether that was true. But if it
was
true, it was only sadness that had caused it. Daisy thought of the walls of groceries and the paintings, and Dolly Caroline lying in her little box. It was the sadness of losing nearly everything and everyone you loved.

Her mum wasn't like the General. She didn't have The Crazy. You couldn't catch The Crazy from anyone or get it just by being sad. You had to be born with it.

Daisy walked up to the picture of the General and stared directly at his face. The tips of his long waxed mustache were as sharp as bayonets, and his jacket was the color of fresh blood. But it was his eyes that held her attention.

Daisy knew those eyes. She had seen them just that morning. The same washed-­out blue color, the same pupils shrunk to pinholes.

The Crazy ran through the Fitzjohn family. As it ran, it skipped whole generations and then it showed up again.

It wasn't her mum. It was Gritting who had The Crazy. It made you do terrible things. Like sending a thousand men to certain death. Or trying to kill a woman and her daughter just because you wanted what they had.

Daisy knew there was no use talking to Gritting. Or hiding from him, or even trying to fight him. The only thing she could do was run.

TWENTY-­NINE

There was no time to pack a bag. Daisy went straight to the window in her bedroom. She slid down the rope by the side of the house, pulling great strands of ivy away from the wall in her haste.

At the bottom, she paused for a moment, her mind racing through her options. Behind her lay the Wilderness. If she took that route, it would take her a long time to make her way through the dense undergrowth. Another possibility was to climb the perimeter wall on either side of the grounds. But then she would be far from the road, and if Gritting saw her, he might catch her on the other side. Her best option was to make for the main gates. Someone in a passing car might see her, and even if there were no cars, she could follow the road to wherever it led.

Except she didn't know where it led. For a split second, Daisy's fear of the outside world was almost as great as her fear of Gritting himself. She shook her head. The road led to people, she told herself. It led to
help.

She ran across the front of the house, keeping to the cover of bushes wherever she could. When she got to the topiary, she made a dash for the area of trees just beyond and crouched down, panting, her eyes on the long sweep of meadow that lay between her and the gates.

It was empty. The air was still, and she could hear the murmur of insects. Far off, a blackbird called its familiar, reassuring song.

Daisy took a deep breath and plunged into the meadow, running bent double through the long grasses, gnats rising in clouds above her head.

It was a long way to the gates. She reached a cedar tree and rested for a moment or two in its green shadow, her heart pounding. The gates were a hundred yards away. She could cover the distance in a little more than thirty seconds if she sprinted.

Daisy took off in a headlong dash towards the Lookout Tree. She had climbed it a hundred times and knew its many perches as well as she knew the great staircase of Brightwood Hall itself. From its long, overhanging branches, she could look over the perimeter wall, and if Gritting was nowhere to be seen, she could drop down to the grassy edge of the road.

She reached the tree and started pulling herself up, her toes finding cracks in the bark, her arms reaching for familiar handholds. She was crawling on her belly along one of the lower branches, when a noise made her look down.

Gritting was standing just below, staring straight up at her.

The shock sent Daisy slipping sideways, her hands grasping at empty air. She fell at his feet, all the breath knocked out of her, and he grabbed her before she had a chance to move.

“Making a run for it?” He lifted her up by her arm as if she weighed no more than a bundle of rags.

Daisy was too busy struggling to reply. But it was no use.

“Where's my mum?” she cried. “What have you done to her?”

“We're not going to talk about that,” Gritting said. “I was going to wait until it got dark and then surprise you. But I under­estimated you from the start. You're far more sneaky than I thought.”

“
You're
the sneaky one!” Daisy shouted. “You're a sneak and a liar!”

“I think you and I need to take a little walk,” Gritting said, ignoring her outburst. “Turn around, that's right.”

He took hold of the collar of her shirt, and they went up the driveway towards the house. Whenever she slowed or hesitated, he gave her a little shove.

“I'm glad you're not trying to run,” Gritting said. “It would be a pity if I had to hurt you. It would be hard to make it look like an accident.”

Daisy remembered her knife, still stuck in the waistband of her trousers. Gritting hadn't seen it because her shirt covered it.

“I don't understand,” she said, trying to distract him.

“I like accidents,” Gritting said. “It was the yacht blowing up that first sparked my interest.”

“The
Everlasting
?”

“That's the one. I didn't have anything to do with the accident, although you could say it inspired me. Afterwards, I realized that once the old lady, your great-­grandmother, died, your mother and I would be the only members of the Fitzjohn family left. We'd be the last heirs to Brightwood. My own mother didn't count. She was never in the best of health. That was why I was sent here every summer.”

How casually he talked about people dying.

“I saw how convenient accidents could be,” Gritting continued. “Ever since then, they've been a specialty of mine.”

They were at the front of the house now. From the corner of her eye, Daisy could see the topiary with True's body lying at its center. Sweat ran down her neck and trickled under her arms. Gritting gave her another shove. She turned down the path towards the walled gardens.

“Please just tell me what's happened to my mum,” Daisy begged.

“Let's just say she's not acting crazy anymore,” Gritting said.

You're the one with The Crazy!
Daisy thought.

“It didn't have to come to this,” Gritting said. “I was polite. I was
reasonable
. I sent your mother letter after letter, telling her she had to share this place with me. That's all I asked for! To share it, to make it into something. There's room for a hotel
and
a golf course. Cut down the trees and drain the lake, and you've got land for twenty or more luxury homes.”

Daisy remembered how he had spent a whole day measuring everything with his little wheel and stick.

“Your mother wouldn't see sense,” Gritting said. “Eventually I gave up and went abroad.”

“To Australia,” Daisy said. “I found the card you sent.”

“You
have
been a good little detective!” Gritting said, shoving her again.

“That partner of yours. It wasn't an accident, was it?”

“He was about to accuse me of stealing money from our company,” Gritting said. “He fell down a cliff instead.”

“Don't you have feelings?” Daisy burst out. “Don't you care about
anything
?”

He didn't reply. They had passed the glasshouse, and now they stood on the edge of the Wilderness. The path that led through the trees was dark and narrow. Daisy looked quickly from left to right.

“Don't get any ideas,” Gritting said. His grip tightened on her collar. “Remember, I know this place almost as well as you do.”

The branches of the trees were laced together, forming a tunnel over the path. Brambles tore at Daisy's trousers. The path wound into a nettle bush and then disappeared. Gritting pushed her onwards, through the stinging leaves.

In the distance, Daisy heard the sound of the old stable chain, clanking steadily as if to summon her. She shrank back.

“I don't like it here,” she said. “I don't want to go.”

But they were already at the stables. Ramshackle buildings surrounded a yard. Doors hung from their frames and vines tugged at the walls. Through the empty windows, Daisy glimpsed the dark shapes of long-­forgotten things, made strange by rot and creeping weeds.

Gritting nudged her to the center of the yard. He kicked at a wooden board that lay on the ground, shifting it sideways to reveal the black mouth of a well. Daisy drew back in surprise and fear. She never went to the stables and hadn't known there was a well there.

“They used it to water the horses in the old days,” Gritting said. “I used to come here when I was a kid, before they covered it up. It was one of my favorite spots.”

He paused. “You asked me whether I cared about anything. The only thing I care about is Brightwood Hall. It's the only place I've ever belonged. The Fitzjohns couldn't see it, of course. They made a great pretense of being kind, but they never liked me. I didn't fit in with their stupid parties and gardening and tennis. I didn't care. It didn't matter. It still doesn't matter. Do you know why?”

Daisy shook her head. Somewhere deep in the other side of the Wilderness, a peacock gave a shrill scream.

“Because accidents happen,” Gritting said, and pushed her into the well.