It was a twenty-minute taxi ride from the Gare du Nord to Paris’s leafy seventh arrondissement. Past the Opéra Garnier, past the Hôtel de Crillon and the majesty of Place de la Concorde, over the Pont de l’Alma and the waters of the Seine turning inky in the dusk, and on towards the Eiffel Tower, lit up for Christmas on the Left Bank of the city. It was a smart part of town, thought Cate as the taxi pulled to a halt in a little street off the Parc du Champ de Mars. Black spiky trees lined the road, tiny dogs trotted behind chic owners, joggers pounded past the tall cream porticoed buildings on their way to the green open spaces.
Cate checked the address scribbled in her diary and waved the taxi off. Weary from the Eurostar, she drew a deep breath and pressed the buzzer next to a tiny bronze plaque that read ‘Holden-Jones’. The door clicked open and she entered the tiny lift with its old-fashioned pulley door and small velvet stool parked in the corner. Let’s hope I’m not wasting my time, she thought as the lift jerked upwards through the spiral of stairs to the top of the building.
The heavy wooden door to Aunt Sarah’s apartment was slightly ajar by the time Cate reached it. She pushed it open and edged into a hallway that smelt of lilies.
‘Bonjour,’ she shouted. ‘It’s Cate.’
‘I’m in the salon,’ said a small voice. ‘Keep walking through.’
Sitting by the long sash window that overlooked the twinkling lights of Paris sat Sarah Holden-Jones, a cream and copper King Charles Spaniel lying at her feet. Cate’s only memory of her aunt was of a terribly chic dark-haired lady who constantly smoked, her long, pianist’s fingers covered in diamond rings. She’d changed, of course. Cate thought she must be over seventy years old. The hair was now completely white, pulled back with a tortoiseshell clip into a tight chignon, while the chic Parisian chiffon shirts Cate remembered had been replaced by loose cashmere knits and flat soft leather slippers. Sarah’s face cracked into a delighted smile when she saw her niece. She pulled herself out of her Louis XV armchair using her cane.
‘No, no, sit back down,’ said Cate, rushing to the window. ‘Don’t get up because of me.’
The old lady eased herself back down, and gestured to the chair opposite her. ‘Well, come and join me over here then,’ she smiled, stroking the dog’s head. ‘Catherine, say hello to Charlie.’
The dog trotted over to where Cate was standing and began to lick the top of her boot. ‘Friendly,’ smiled Cate.
‘A good companion.’
There was a long pause. What do you say to a relative you have only met twice and who had shown practically no interest in getting to know you, thought Cate uncomfortably.
‘You must be tired,’ said Sarah, beginning to pour two glasses of Bordeaux from a bottle on the table. ‘Might a drink help?’
Cate nodded and took a sip.
‘I’m really sorry about your father,’ said Sarah after another pause.
Cate raised a brow. ‘Really?’
‘Nobody wishes death on anybody.’
Her niece shrugged. ‘Well, I know he wasn’t your favourite person. Otherwise we might have seen more of you,’ said Cate.
‘It became difficult,’ said Sarah, looking out of the window and running a craggy finger over the rim of the glass. ‘I didn’t want to see him after your mother died. I just felt bitter that he’d made her life so miserable, and I felt that if I saw him again …’ She trailed off. ‘Well, let’s just say I felt I would be betraying Maggie somehow.’
‘I understand,’ said Cate, noticing for the first time how much Sarah looked like old photographs of Cate’s grandmother. ‘Although you could have tried to see us when we left home …’
Sarah tapped Charlie’s fur with her cane so he scampered across the room. She slowly got up and walked over to a walnut bureau, shaking her head as she did so.
‘The beauty of living in Paris, my dear, is that this has become my world. It is so close to what I know, yet so far away. I feel connected to my old life, but at the same time I can forget.’ She turned to look Cate directly in the eye. ‘There’s been so many times I’ve wanted to fly over to London to see all you girls,’ she said sadly. ‘I still can’t get used to that Eurostar – a train under the Channel? Non, non,’ she smiled, her eyes twinkling mischievously.
She turned her back to stoop over the desk and, as she did so, pulled out a stack of papers and envelopes from the drawer. Returning slowly to her chair, she began putting the contents into a neat pile on the table. ‘Just because I don’t see my nieces doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’ve been up to.’
She looked proudly at Cate and passed her a pile of newspaper and magazine cuttings. There were pictures from Paris Match of the girls at glamorous parties, reviews from The Times of Serena’s films and Venetia’s design books, and pages torn from Cate’s magazines with her by-line or picture, each one neatly, lovingly trimmed around the edges. Cate put them back on the table and looked at her aunt.
‘Don’t ever think I don’t care, Cate,’ she said softly.
Cate wanted to give her a hug but, feeling awkward, just touched her lightly on the back of the hand. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said.
Sarah smiled and reached out her arms, pulling Cate down into an embrace. Disarmed by the gesture, Cate spoke softly into her aunt’s shoulder. ‘We’re in trouble. I don’t know what to do.’
Sarah looked at her knowingly and nodded.
‘We are being blackmailed.’
‘Go on,’ said Sarah.
‘You know that my father is dead. His body was found in the moat …’ Cate stopped, not wanting to think about it all over again. ‘That was all distressing enough, of course, until a friend of my father’s, a writer called David Loftus, appeared at the house to tell us that he thinks that Oswald was murdered.’
‘And how does he know this, if the police don’t think so?’ asked Sarah, her intelligent eyes bright.
Cate looked down and began shaking her head. ‘Loftus had been ghostwriting Dad’s memoirs and he’s been reading between the lines. Somehow thinks we all had a motive. He says he’s going to the police with his information if we don’t pay him a lot of money.’
‘I see. But that would only be a problem if you had something to hide,’ Sarah observed.
‘But we don’t!’ shouted Cate, suddenly. She began to flush slightly, embarrassed by her reaction. She glanced at Sarah’s open, enquiring face and took a deep breath.
‘Did we all have a difficult relationship with our father? Yes. Do his diaries probably suggest that? Quite possibly.’ Cate stopped. ‘But kill him, absolutely not. I did not, and I trust that my sisters did not.’
Sarah noticed that her niece’s hands were slightly shaking and she reached out to steady them.
‘It’s never quite as simple as having nothing to hide, is it?’ said Cate after a pause. ‘Of course everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but even the slightest whiff of scandal and, well, it isn’t going to do any of us any good. We have careers. High-profile lives …’ She tailed off, a tear for the first time appearing on her eyelash.
Sarah patted her niece’s shoulder reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ she said. ‘It appears that the bulk of what this Loftus is saying is clearly opportunistic conjecture. However …’ She took Cate by the arm and led her through long double doors into her bedroom. Cate wished it were her own. Tiny Chanel jackets hung off cream padded coat hangers; surfaces were covered with silver photo frames and big glass perfume atomizers. The walls were lined with dove-grey silk and a huge cream and gilt sleigh-bed sat in the centre of the room.
‘Forgive the mess,’ said Sarah absently, motioning at a pile of beautiful, delicate clothes draped over the back of a chair. ‘I’m just going to find something.’
Cate sat down on the eiderdown so that her feet just dangled over the edge of the bed, and watched as her aunt began rummaging at the back of her wardrobe, finally pulling out a big cream wooden box. She put it on the bed next to Cate and sighed.
‘I knew this would all come out sooner or later,’ she murmured, wiping a layer of dust from the top of the box and opening it. ‘This is what I wanted to talk to you about.’
Cate kept quiet, waiting for her to continue.
‘We were close, your mother and I. She was the beautiful one. I was the sensible one, the typical elder sister, always nosing around to see if she was behaving herself.’ She laughed, enjoying the memory. ‘But in the days when you were all little girls, your mother and I hardly saw each other. As you know, Marcus, my husband, was in the diplomatic corps, and he got posted all over the world – which meant that I had to go with him.’
By now she was flipping her fingers through bundles of letters in a rainbow of coloured papers.
‘But Maggie, your mother, she loved writing letters. Wherever I was – Singapore, Honduras, Lagos – at least twice a month I would get something through the post. I’d always know it was her,’ she smiled. ‘Maggie never wrote on white paper. She said to do so was boring.’ She chuckled again as she started reading snippets, her eyes darting from letter to letter. Sarah finally reached a faded lilac envelope and placed it in her lap.
‘At first, Maggie and Oswald’s marriage was good. He could be terribly charming when he wanted to be. However, after Venetia was born, the relationship deteriorated rapidly. Their jet-set life together was over. No rushing off to Marrakech at a moment’s notice – not for Maggie, anyway. Your mother found it hard to lose the weight from pregnancy – it was difficult in those days when mothers didn’t breast-feed – and your father belittled and teased her. Oswald loved the high life; I think he felt bitter that a family and the responsibilities were tying him down. He started drinking heavily and then gambling in all those smart clubs in Mayfair. Far too tempting for a weak and willing man like Oswald.’
Sarah’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘He would stay in London all week, going out with that group of friends – Philip Watchorn, Nicholas Charlesworth, Jimmy Jenkins. The newspapers thought they were such a glamorous bunch, and I suppose it was glamorous if you were young, free and single. But your father wasn’t single and, all those exciting things he should have been doing with your mother, he started doing them with his friends. He completely neglected her and his children.’
Sarah unfolded the letter from its envelope and passed it to Cate, who drew the tips of her fingers across the navy-blue ink and the distinctive, swirly handwriting of her mother.
‘It was a very lonely time for your mother,’ continued Sarah. ‘Oswald wasn’t around for days on end, I was out of the country, and our parents were dead by that point. At Huntsford, friends were thin on the ground.’
Cate looked up. ‘So Mum had an affair?’
Sarah was nodding slowly. ‘A few, I’m afraid. One gentleman was a friend of your father’s. Alistair Craigdale. Oswald, your mother and their friends were always up at Craigdale Castle, his home. It was a wonderful place for shooting, fishing, parties. I suppose one thing led to another. Alistair was terribly charming …’
Cate let out a bitter laugh. ‘The Craigdale Killer? Oh, Christ.’
She sat back to let it all sink in for a minute. Although the murder of Gordy Spencer, a groom at Craigdale Castle, occurred before Cate was born, it was a slice of criminal history that had always fascinated her. Only the Lord Lucan episode eclipsed it as the scandal in the upper classes during the seventies. The story went that Alistair Craigdale, the Earl of Loch Lay, had shot and killed his groom at point-blank range after having suspected him of having an affair with his wife. That Oswald and Maggie were two of the guests at Craigdale that weekend had only added to its intrigue for Cate: not that either of her parents would ever refer to that weekend, except in the vaguest of terms.
‘Such a ghastly time,’ said Sarah softly, taking another sip of wine.
‘My mother had an affair with Craigdale?’ repeated Cate, slowly mulling over the facts. ‘But Alistair was in love with his wife, wasn’t he? Certainly enough to kill a man for it.’
Sarah shuffled off into the kitchen and fetched a white china plate piled high with pale green, pink and chocolate sugary discs.
‘Macaroon?’
Cate shook her head, decidedly unhungry. Sarah settled down and continued her story.
‘Everybody thought Alistair killed Gordy Spencer for having an affair with Laura, his wife. He didn’t. It was because he found him with Maggie.’ She paused, struggling with the next words. ‘I believe he found them in flagrante.’
The glass of claret in Cate’s hand trembled slightly, spilling a tiny droplet of wine, like a spot of blood onto the grey silk eiderdown.
Sarah was now pulling more letters out of the white box and handing them to Cate.
Up at Craigdale again this week. Each weekend there seems to get better and better. The groom there is quite charming and terribly handsome. I am afraid I’m having another crush.
She reached for another dated one month before the shooting:
I am calling it off with Alistair. Each time the men are out shooting I go to the stables with Gordy. I know it’s wrong, dear Sarah, don’t judge me, but I can’t help myself. Gordon is so kind and good, he makes me feel alive.
Cate was shaking her head. Forget the Swinging Sixties; her parents’ group of friends were obviously all in and out of bed with one another all the time!
‘Enough, please stop.’ The thought of an affair tarring the sacred memory of her mother was bad enough, but two affairs? ‘Did my father know?’ Cate asked nervously.
‘About Alistair? Yes, shortly before the shooting. Maggie called me, hysterical. Oswald had found out. He’d pushed her down the stairs, and had apparently threatened Alistair quite violently,’ she said quietly. ‘He could be vicious.’ Cate saw the old woman bare her teeth.
Cate climbed off the bed and paced to the window, pressing her palms against the glass. She looked out onto the skyline, vaguely focusing on the outline of the Eiffel Tower. While it was all shocking and perversely fascinating, she doubted its relevance to the death of her father.
‘You’re wondering why I got you here?’ said Sarah behind her.
Cate turned and shrugged. ‘Well, I thought it was to do with Dad’s death. What happened at Craigdale – I can’t really see how it’s significant because it was so long ago. My mother is dead, Alistair is dead …’
‘Is he?’ asked Sarah gently.
Cate looked back, puzzled. ‘But I’ve heard the story a hundred times over,’ she said. ‘After Alistair shot Gordon Spencer, he disappeared. His car went missing and was found days later by Loch Ness. Everyone assumed he’d done the honourable thing and drowned himself.’
‘The loch was dredged. They found nothing,’ said Sarah.
‘But the loch is over fifteen hundred feet deep. They’ve never found Nessie with all their million-dollar equipment,’ Cate countered feebly.
‘That’s probably because Nessie isn’t in there either.’
Cate flopped into the chair by the window, confused and tired. Sarah joined her and continued her story. ‘A couple of months after the Gordon Spencer killing, your Uncle Marcus and I arrived in London for a couple of days. We’d been living in Singapore at that time and were on the way to Marcus’s new posting in Honduras. As you might imagine, I was desperate to see Maggie. I knew what a rough time it had been for her. Gordon dead, now Alistair too.’
Cate looked at Sarah intently, sensing a development in the tale.
‘Maggie came to my hotel room when Marcus was out. She seemed jumpy, on edge. And I finally got it out of her.’
‘Got what out of her?’
‘Something that she would never tell me in a letter.’
Cate kept staring at her.
‘Maggie had received a letter from Alistair. From Belize. After his disappearance. It was short, coded, but it basically said he was alive and well, but that for obvious reasons he couldn’t and wouldn’t contact her again.’
Cate stared at her aunt, trying to make sense of it all.
‘So Craigdale didn’t kill himself?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘Which means that he is quite possibly alive today.’
Cate bit her lip. Suddenly they had a suspect.