House of the Lost (30 page)

Remembering this, she felt as if a huge clenched fist had come smacking out of the darkness and punched her in the throat.

When they asked Matthew about the secrets, even if he wanted to tell, he could not. He knew nothing.

Then how long would they leave her here?

The present

Theo had been typing at top speed, but when Mara realized she was imprisoned in the macabre old well-house indefinitely, he could not go on. He always identified closely with his characters, but this was far more than that. It was as if he was living through the whole thing with them. He could smell the sour darkness inside the well-house and if he half closed his eyes he could see the shadowy outline of the well cover. He could feel Mara’s terror as if it was his own.

Had this woman, Zoia, actually existed? Annaleise had certainly existed – she was mentioned in Guff’s book as being a close associate of Elena Ceau
escu, and according to the book had met an untimely death. Matthew had existed as well – he might still exist – and at some time in his life he had been to Melbray. If he really had done that sketch of Charmery – if he had been the one to make her look like that – then there must have been a strong link between them. Perhaps a love affair. If Matthew was still alive, he would only be in his late forties now – fifty at the most.

He took the sketch down from the wall and examined it yet again, deciding he needed to be sure that the hand who had created it had been the same hand that had drawn the convent pictures. He thought for a moment, then replaced the portrait, found his mobile and called the number of Lesley’s studio flat in Earl’s Court. It was a quarter to seven, a time when she might reasonably be expected to be at home. After she left the Slade, she had gone to work for a small auction house specializing in fine art, mostly helping with the restoring of paintings. According to Guff, who liked to send bulletins round the family, and who was Lesley’s godfather, she was enjoying herself very much.

The phone rang for a long time and Theo was about to hang up when Lesley answered, sounding breathless.

‘You sound as if you’ve just run upstairs,’ said Theo.

‘I have just run upstairs. In fact I’ve just run almost the entire length of the street because it’s pelting down with rain – and then I heard the phone ringing two flights down, so I ran all the way up because there’s no lift here.’

‘Shall I call back in ten minutes?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ said Lesley. ‘I’m just ferreting for a towel to dry my hair . . . Wait a minute . . .’

Theo waited, smiling at the endearing image of Lesley’s short feathery hair with rain clinging to it. When she emerged from the towelling, he said, ‘I’m at Fenn House for a couple of months. I don’t know if you knew that?’

‘Everyone knows it,’ said Lesley. ‘Guff was quite worried that you’d lapse into melancholy out there. He thought you might start communing with ghosts or something and he was planning on coming to see you.’

‘By himself?’ Guff was a gregarious soul who liked company when he travelled, and his journeys were always planned well in advance and with an attention to detail that would not have shamed a Victorian explorer bound for remote Tibetan peaks or the deserts of Araby.

‘Nancy said she would drive him. It’s all right though,’ she said quickly as Theo drew in breath to swear, ‘I headed them off. I said you had gone to Fenn to work and you wouldn’t take kindly to interruptions. You did go there to work, didn’t you?’

‘More or less,’ said Theo, knowing that by communing with ghosts, Guff meant Charmery. ‘Lesley, on the subject of interruptions, are you by any remote chance free for a couple of days fairly soon? Say this weekend? I want you to help me with something.’

‘What is it?’

Theo hesitated, then said, ‘There’s a sketch here of Charmery and I’d like your opinion on it.’

‘I don’t think I’m qualified to give opinions yet,’ said Lesley doubtfully. ‘And I don’t remember ever seeing any sketch of Charmery at Fenn.’

‘Nor do I. But there’s one here now, and I’d like to find out a bit more about it. Just quietly and off the record.’

‘Off the family’s record, d’you mean?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘I’d have to jiggle a couple of things – the twins were coming up for the morning, but I can jiggle the twins,’ she said.

‘Would they mind being jiggled?’

‘No, I can see them next weekend just as easily. I could probably take Monday as a day’s holiday.’

‘Could you? That direct train from Liverpool Street is probably still running,’ he said.

‘High noon on Saturday,’ she said, and Theo heard the smile in her voice and knew she was remembering how Charmery had named it the High Noon Saturday train, and how she and Lesley – later Lesley’s brothers – had made a small ritual about always travelling on it.

‘I’ll meet you in Norwich,’ said Theo.

After he rang off he returned to the computer. It was starting to look as if he might have to read up on Romania’s grim prison system from those years, and he contemplated this prospect with mixed feelings because it would be the darkest kind of research. It had better be done, though. He could try the library in Norwich when he drove out there to meet Lesley on Saturday, but although he could probably get the basics on Ceau
escu and the revolution, he wanted first-hand accounts of places, lists of names and dates, archived newspapers, communist-slanted articles as well as objective ones. The internet would provide some useful leads, of course, but there was nothing quite like handling and reading the real thing. Still, the worldwide web would be a good start. It was quarter past seven – was that too late to phone BT? He only needed to know how soon they could reinstate the landline to Fenn House so he could link up to the internet. Surely they had 24-hour call centres.

The call was not very satisfactory. The phone line to that address could certainly be reinstalled, said the BT operator. But since the connection had lapsed more than three months ago there would be a small delay.

‘How small?’ said Theo, suspiciously.

‘About ten days. Perhaps two weeks.’

‘Damn,’ said Theo. ‘Can’t you make it any sooner?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Well, all right. Will you set it up, please?’

He rang off, then on a sudden thought, hunted out the local phone directory and called St Luke’s. The Bursar answered, sounding exactly as Theo remembered her, practical and down to earth. She expressed herself pleased to hear from him – they were still discussing his visit and the excellent talk he had given, she said. They hoped he would visit them again while he was in Melbray.

No plotter ever had a better opening. ‘As a matter of fact, I would like to do that very much, but there’d be an ulterior motive, Bursar.’

‘Quid pro quo,’ she said. ‘What can we do for you, Mr Kendal?’

Theo said, ‘Do you suppose I could have a brief session on your computer? Say an hour or so?’

‘I don’t see why not. Has your own broken?’

He remembered her saying none of them were very well versed in modern technology, and smiled at the choice of words. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I need a connection to the internet for some research, and I can’t get one set up here for a couple of weeks.’

‘I’d need to clear it with Reverend Mother,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure it will be all right. Sister Catherine’s the one who really knows about the computer so you’d probably need to have her around when you come in.’

Catherine, thought Theo, and found he was smiling at the memory of that cool irony and those direct eyes, and the hint that there might be a rebel held in check beneath the surface. He said, ‘Well, if she could spare the time . . .’

‘We’ve got a visit from several nuns from our sister house in Poland over the weekend so she’ll be a bit caught up with that. What about Monday?’

‘Monday would be fine,’ said Theo. Then, as if suddenly remembering, he said, ‘Oh, wait, I’ll have a cousin staying here until Monday evening.’ Lesley had phoned back to say she would come to Melbray early on Saturday morning and would not need to return until Tuesday if Theo could put up with her until then.

‘Bring him with you,’ said the Bursar.

‘It’s a her,’ said Theo.

‘All the better. Would you like to come along about twelve, and we’ll give you both lunch before your computer session.’

‘I’d love to. I’m sure my cousin would as well.’

‘Don’t get too enthusiastic, Mr Kendal, Monday is shepherd’s pie day,’ said the Bursar caustically.

Saturday morning brought a post delivery, which was a sufficiently rare event at Fenn House to be modestly exciting.

There was a card from Theo’s mother who had just got back from Paris, and wrote that it had been hot and indolent and she hoped he was enjoying Melbray and not working too hard. There was also a pamphlet inviting him to have solar heating fitted to his house, a leaflet reminding him that Jesus Saves, and a note from his agent wanting to know if he was still enduring the rigours of East Anglia, reporting some pleasantly high sales figures from a Dutch edition of his last book, and ending with a question as to how the ex-paratrooper’s exploits were coming along.

Lesley’s High Noon train was delayed and by the time they had collected provisions in Norwich, and Theo had negotiated the traffic, it was five o’clock before they reached Fenn House. Lesley paused in the hall, staring about her, and Theo tried to gauge her reactions.

‘D’you know,’ she said, ‘I was a bit frightened of coming to Fenn again. I suppose I was expecting to sort of sense Charmery’s presence. But I’m not sensing anything. I’m just remembering how much Charmery loved this house.’

‘We all loved it,’ said Theo. ‘After Helen and Desmond died, Charmery used to come here on her own for long stretches.’

‘I know. I always hoped she’d ask me to stay but she never did.’

‘I don’t think she asked any of the family,’ said Theo. ‘I think she liked to be on her own sometimes.’

‘If she
was
on her own,’ said Lesley, with a brief grin. ‘You know Charm.’

‘Yes.’

‘She did like being on her own here, though,’ Lesley said thoughtfully. ‘The family never understood that – they never really understood her, did they? You were the only one who did. Everyone used to wonder why you fell out.’

‘We didn’t fall out. It was just a cousin thing,’ said Theo lightly.

‘Was it? My mother once said it was because of Charmery that you stopped smiling.’ She was not looking at him and Theo was glad. ‘It’s so good to be here again,’ said Lesley. ‘I’m going to walk into the village tomorrow, I think, just to re-visit a few old haunts. But . . .’ She looked back at him.

‘But it’s sad, as well, isn’t it?’ said Theo, gently. ‘Coming back to Fenn like this, without her.’

‘I miss her so much,’ said Lesley, and then, as if shaking off the memories, said, ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to go all Gothic and gloomy on you. I’ll go up and unpack. Am I in my old room? Oh good. I’ll only be ten minutes.’

One of the nice things about Lesley was that she never expected people to fuss or run round after her. Charmery, arriving at Fenn, would say haughtily, ‘Could someone take my case up to my room? And I’ll have a bath before supper.’ She would come down to supper just as it was being put on the table, freshly bathed and shampooed, while everyone else had been peeling potatoes or looking for the corkscrew or dashing into the village for milk because the fridge had stopped working.