Chapter 47
1980
I felt two hands close in around my neck. Even though I was warm under the blankets, I suddenly felt cold all over as those icy fingers clawed closer together. I tried to speak, to cry out “Stop – ” but the hands continued to constrain my throat and I thought I was going to die. My hands flailed by my sides as I tried to move and shift those glacial fingers.
Then all of a sudden I broke free from the tight grip. I sat bolt upright in bed and gasped for air. It was pitch dark and my hand patted around on my bedside table to find my torch. I put it on and staggered over to the light switch. I was breathing heavily as I went back to bed and pulled the covers tight around me. What a horrible nightmare. It hadn’t recurred for ages, months probably, and now here it was again, those memories surging back just when I thought they’d disappeared.
I slipped out of bed and went to the door; my hands were shaking as I turned the handle. I shone the torch down the narrow stairs as I headed for the bathroom. It was ridiculous but I’d actually contemplated getting a chamber pot to save me this dark, chilly trip down one flight of ancient steps in the middle of the night. I still didn’t believe in ghosts and yet there was something unnerving about going down those centuries-old, narrow stairs in the pitch dark. A couple of nights before, the moonlight had shone through one of the narrow windows and it was somehow more unsettling as I was convinced I saw shadows on the stairs. I bolted upstairs and back to my bedroom.
I couldn’t get back to sleep, so lay there trying to think of anything 219 to take my mind off that harrowing weekend; but I could not. Len had picked me up from my halls of residence one Friday afternoon and taken me away to a romantic hotel in Aberdeenshire for the weekend. It was somewhere near Banchory, which I think is some considerable distance – to the south, I think – from Fyvie. On the first morning, we lay in bed with cups of tea and he began to ask me about friends at university. I was being deliberately vague but I’d let slip that I’d been at a Medics Ball. The minute I said the words, I knew it was stupid and I guessed what was coming.
“So who invited you?”
“Oh, no one, I just went with my friend Mary, you remember I told you she’s doing medicine?” I tried to change the subject and said how excited I was about the delicious breakfast in bed we had ordered the night before.
But he continued. “What about that boy who was also doing medicine, you mentioned him yesterday – Rob, was it?”
My stomach tightened as I took a gulp of tea, then spluttered as it was far too hot.
“Oh, yes, Rob – well, he’s Mary’s friend so I was kind of making up numbers with the whole gang of them.” I put down my cup and started to get out of bed, but he grabbed my arm, tight, and pulled me back. He gripped both my wrists and yanked me towards him so my face was only an inch away from his.
“Is he your boyfriend, Maggie?” His voice was very strange, almost unrecognisable.
“You’re hurting me, Len,” I said, trying to shake him off my wrists.
“Then tell me the truth,” he hissed.
I’d just opened my mouth to say something when there was a loud knock on the door. I jumped off the bed and ran to open it. A teenager who’d served us in the restaurant the night before stood there, his trolley laden with silver cloches, an elegant coffee 220 pot and dainty cups and saucers. He came in and began to set it all out on the table in the next room; Len had, as usual, booked the suite. I grabbed my dressing gown and put it on then stood chatting to the boy while he laid the table. He handed me the bill to sign just as Len came through from the bedroom, face like thunder. The waiter looked from him to me and his eyes widened.
I took the pen to sign but Len came over and snatched it away from me. “I’ll sign for this. I am paying, after all.”
The boy attempted to smile when Len handed him back the bill and I watched him go out, glancing to the left, into the bedroom. Oh God, he must have thought how weird I was, sleeping with a man so much older. Or worse, that I was being paid for my overnight services.
When I turned around to face Len, he looked even older, as if he had aged overnight. Normally all I could see was a handsome rugged face; that morning I saw a frown set in his deeply furrowed brow and a hard look about his eyes that I didn’t like. I decided to say nothing and sat down at the table and began my breakfast, rubbing at my sore wrists when he wasn’t looking.
The morning after my nightmare, I staggered over to the mirror and shook my head when I saw the bags under my eyes. What a terrible night. I must have got back to sleep eventually, but only for an hour or so till the alarm woke me. I stood under the shower for ages, trying to eliminate the memory of last night’s dream. Soon, I was ready to face the day and headed downstairs to the kitchen, where I made myself a strong coffee before going to the entrance hall to begin the first of my three tours of the day.
I’d guided my eager visitors through the library and we all stood at the entrance to the cabin, so-called because a recent laird of 221 Fyvie had been in the Royal Navy. I pointed to the portrait on the wall inside the small room and told them it was of Grizel Seton, née Leslie, Alexander Seton’s second wife.
“Grizel, Lady Fyvie, is dressed in an exquisite cornflower blue dress made of silk damask, with a narrow brocade of flowers around the neckline. As you can see, it’s relatively simple in style for the era, given her status, but we mustn’t forget how young she was at the time, still really only a girl.”
“And how old was he when he married her?” boomed the stout woman who had been taking notes, which at first I’d found rather unsettling, but now found slightly irritating.
“Well, Grizel was just sixteen when she married and he must have been forty-six.”
I looked round them all and every single one either shook their head or grimaced.
The woman’s pencil scratched away and she raised a hand.
“Yes?”
“What’s that necklace round her neck? It looks rather grand.”
“I was just coming to that, actually,” I said, fixing my smile. “The necklace is part of a set called a parure. This is a set of jewels intended to be worn either together or, as you can see here, separately. The necklace contains rubies, emeralds and pearls, all strung together with coils of gold. The gold was from the Leadhills estate in South Lanarkshire. In the sixteenth century, this area was called Crawford Muir, and that’s where there was important gold mining. The gold from here was so valuable, it was used to refashion the Scottish crown for King James V, who was Mary, Queen of Scots’ father.”
A hand went up. Thankfully not from the persistent note-taker.
“All those pearls in the necklace – where would they have come from in those days? I thought they all come now from Japan and China.” 222
Luckily, I’d read up on this. “Freshwater pearls came from Scottish rivers. They were extremely precious then, but not as rare as they are nowadays.”
I looked over to the woman with the notebook whose hand had again shot up. The man beside her had been stooped until now, muffled in a scarf and a woolly hat, so I’d never noticed his face. But now, as he stood up straight and loosened the scarf, I gasped. He stared directly at me and for a moment I couldn’t speak. Was it Len? An icy shiver ran down my spine. I turned my head, as if stifling a cough then looked back. The man was still watching me. His nose and his eyes were so similar to Len’s, it was uncanny. But now his eyes were crinkling into a smile, his mouth was wide and full, kind somehow, unlike the menacing sneer I’d come to know in Len. I sighed with relief. “Excuse me,” I said, clearing my throat.
I nodded to the note-taker.
“Is it true this parure has been lost for centuries?”
So she knew all about these jewels. That was clearly why she’d asked me about the necklace. She’d also been overly interested in all the Raeburn paintings, peering at them far too close. When I told her to “please be careful not to get too near”, she ignored me and continued to inspect them at close range. I looked at her and a sudden thought occurred. I’d caught sight of one of her pages of notes and she’d sketched a diagram of one of the rooms’ layout. Was she taking all those notes because she was part of a consortium of thieves, checking out Fyvie and how easy it might be to steal something?
“Well, the parure is certainly not on display here, but that’s all anyone knows about it.” I started to head back into the library but she continued, “Does the family who live here not have it then?”
Now she was more than a little annoying. “No,” I said, turning towards the next room and ushering everyone out.
My tour continued without many more questions, but when 223 we arrived back in the entrance hall I checked to make sure she left with all the others and wasn’t lurking around. I was standing at the door watching her on the grass gazing back up at the castle walls when Andrew arrived for the next tour. I beckoned him over and pointed at the woman, explaining my concerns.
“Oh,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s been before. Not on my tour, but Silvia said she was a bit of a pest, kept asking questions. At first, we reckoned she was a busy-body, but then I wondered if she was from a newspaper, you know, trying to find a story about the jewels.”
“Should I tell Mr David?”
He shrugged. “He won’t do anything.”
We both looked outside where she was heading down towards the car park. “Anyway, if it’s the jewels she’s after, it’s not likely she’ll find anything. Even Mr David doesn’t know where they are.”
“Really? I presumed they were in one of the safes in the Charter Room.”
“Not what he told me,” Andrew said, before heading back inside in a haze of aftershave.