Cate rested her elbow on the windowsill next to her first-class Eurostar seat. They were shooting through the tunnel now and she watched almost hypnotized as the blackness flashed in front of her eyes. Her body felt numb, her eyes drained of tears. She had spent the night at Aunt Sarah’s, lying back in the antique sleigh-bed, listening to the sound of Parisian traffic, the car horns fading to a silence in the winter’s night. She hadn’t had a moment’s sleep. Her mind was too full.
She blinked as the train came out of the Channel tunnel and the greyness of the English countryside came into view. Immediately her mobile began ringing, lost at the bottom of her bag.
‘Cate? It’s Nick.’
She mumbled a hello, unable to muster any enthusiasm, even for him.
‘I was just ringing to see how you were …’
She was tempted simply to ring off, but instead she told him, ‘I’ve been in Paris just sorting a few things out.’
‘Paris? What’s happened?’ asked Nick, instantly recognizing that something was badly amiss. ‘Are you all right?’
She wanted to lie to him, but she could feel hot tears begin to well in her eyes. She looked around: thankfully the carriage was empty and no one could see the droplets spill down her cheeks.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, suddenly wanting to tell somebody. ‘I can’t really speak now. I’ll call you when I’m back home,’ she said softly.
‘When does the train get in?’ asked Nick anxiously.
‘In about forty minutes. Look, I’ll call you later.’
‘You know who I don’t like,’ said Camilla, kicking a clump of frosted grass with her riding boot. ‘Michael Sarkis.’
‘What have you got against ageing himbos?’ smiled Venetia, pushing her hands deeper into the pockets of her Barbour. The two sisters had taken a walk around the Huntsford grounds to clear their heads, but it was so cold it had only succeeded in freezing their fingers.
‘You know he’s asked Serena to marry him?’ said Camilla.
Venetia stared back at her, wide-eyed. ‘No! When? Hell, why didn’t she tell me?’
‘It only happened on Christmas Eve. He turned up in his limo with a massive rock and asked her to go to Vegas. Classy,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I guess after what’s happened, Serena’s just kept it quiet.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Venetia slowly.
‘I can,’ said Camilla, lifting a brow.
‘Why?’
‘If Sarkis marries Serena before the baby is born, their child will be the heir to Huntsford.’ She swept an arm around them, gesturing towards the house and the hundreds of acres of picture-postcard England stretched out in front of them. ‘All this.’
‘Only if Daddy and Maria don’t have a son,’ replied Venetia absently.
Camilla looked at her sister. ‘Well, that’s not going to happen now, is it?’
Venetia shrugged, still not used to talking about her father in the past tense. ‘So what are you saying?’
‘Think about it,’ said Camilla, her sharp brain whirling. ‘Sarkis kills Daddy, marries Serena, and he effectively gets control of Huntsford. I read somewhere that he was looking to expand in Britain and this place would be the perfect English country hotel. He was at Huntsford that night. He had motive and opportunity.’
Venetia gave a hollow laugh. ‘Cam, are you off your rocker? Michael’s many things – he’s ruthless, certainly – but he’s not a murderer.’
Camilla turned to look at her. ‘How do we know?’
‘Cam, you should really read the diary pages of our national newspapers before you start lining up the suspects.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Michael Sarkis is in today’s Daily Mail. A big picture of him at some fancy London party on Christmas Eve. I don’t know how long he was here wooing Serena, but by the early hours of the morning, he was living it up in Mayfair. How can he have killed Daddy when he was strutting his stuff for the cameras ninety miles away?’
Camilla stamped a foot on the frosty grass. ‘Shame,’ she said sardonically. ‘I really wanted it to be him.’
Nick was already waiting at the end of the platform as the train hissed into the station. Wrapped in a brown tweed coat and wearing a sad smile, he stood there and waited for Cate to walk up to him. He gave her a hug, wrapping her up in the fabric of his coat. He picked up her small overnight bag and handed her a takeaway coffee as they walked in silence to the car park. Nick had an old British racing green MG. The seats were low and cramped and their legs almost touched as they sat back in the black leather seats. As Nick sipped his cappuccino, Cate simply told him what had happened with David Loftus and what she had learned in Paris.
‘What do you want to do now?’ he asked, wiping a white frothy moustache from his lip.
‘I want to go home. Will you come?’
Serena had always fancied playing a glamorous detective in some blockbuster Hollywood movie, and now here she was, being given the chance to star in her very own murder mystery. There were less fanciful reasons for her poking around her in father’s study, of course. She needed another suspect. David Loftus might be a snake and a profiteer, but Serena had to accept that she did not exactly look innocent in the recent chain of events. The police would be well aware that over half of all murders were committed by a family member. There had to be something here that shifted suspicion away from herself and her sisters.
It didn’t look promising, however. There was nothing much in his desk drawers: pens, paper, art auction catalogues, a file of correspondence relating to the Huntsford Musical Evening, an old black-and-white photograph of Oswald and their mother on a yacht, curled up at the edges and spotted with blue ink. Serena touched it and wondered about her parents’ relationship. She had always supposed it to be cold and loveless, but the happy, intimate photograph looked loved and well handled. She shrugged; the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the hot and cold of Oswald and Maggie Balcon’s marriage was something she would now never know about.
Serena looked around the rest of the study. The only place she had not looked was in the walnut trunk by the window. She lifted the heavy lid and coughed as a puff of dust lifted into the air. It was very old stuff in here: yellowing notebooks, deeds, letters. She rifled through, sorting them into piles, but none of it looked at all interesting. But then, near the bottom, she came upon a stained, crumpled envelope with a handwritten address, incongruous among all these official documents. Serena straightened herself and pulled the letter out. She only needed to read a few lines to know that she had found something important. Her heart started beating faster and she whistled through her teeth.
Holy shit! This guy really hated her father, she thought, turning the page to see who the letter was from. She squinted to decipher the scrawled signature and stopped dead. It was from Alistair Craigdale. It was from the Craigdale Killer.
The journey to Huntsford took a couple of hours. The roads were quiet and, inside the car, Cate and Nick were even quieter. The snow had stopped, but telltale patches of ice were sprinkled at the side of the road like broken mirrors. As they turned off the A-road and down the narrow lane into the centre of Huntsford village, Cate’s eyes were drawn to the long spire of the church stretching up into a steely sky soiled with dark clouds.
Cate tapped Nick’s knee. ‘Do you mind if we pull over?’ she asked.
The MG purred to the side of the lane and she pointed to the graveyard. ‘My mum’s buried here, you know. Can we …?’
They buttoned up their coats as they walked slowly through the grounds, crunching on the frosty grass. Cate stopped at a gravestone, in front of which was a tiny posy of yellow roses, still fresh. Cate wondered who had been down so recently. She bent down and touched the petals, ashamed that she had not brought any flowers to her mother’s grave herself. She pressed her hand against the cold stone.
‘He gave you a horrible life. I understand,’ she whispered. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
Nick put a hand on her shoulder and Cate exhaled sharply, her cheeks puffed out like two pink golf balls. They walked on to the perimeter wall of the churchyard and sat down on a bench, Cate feeling the cold stone even through her thick coat.
In the distance there was the sound of a heavy door closing. In the church entrance stood an old woman in a red coat, carrying a long bristle brush. As the figure moved closer, Cate recognized who it was.
‘I thought it was you,’ said the old woman as she approached the bench. She was about seventy-five; her hair was almost blue and swept up into two clumsy clips, her old face kind but heavily lined. ‘How strange,’ the old woman continued, ‘I was just going to come and see you. I’m sorry about your father.’
Cate turned to Nick. ‘This is Mrs Graham,’ she said. ‘Her husband was the gamekeeper at Huntsford for many years.’ She looked at Mrs Graham. ‘You weren’t at the Christmas party, were you? I expected to see you both there.’
A cloud of sadness came upon Mrs Graham’s face. ‘Leonard died. Over a year ago now.’
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Cate.
Mrs Graham gestured towards the church. ‘I miss him, but I keep busy. I clean here.’
They smiled politely, sensing that conversation was quickly running out. Nevertheless Mrs Graham pressed on. ‘I was going to drop by the house, but if you can come to me, it would be better. I think you should.’
Cate glanced at Nick, wondering what the old woman was talking about.
‘I have something I must give you,’ said Mrs Graham vaguely. ‘Do come, my house is only over there.’
Cate was apprehensive. ‘What is it?’
‘Come to the house, I’ll tell you when we’re all there. I’m sure we could all do with a nice cup of tea,’ she smiled.
Silently, they walked to the house, a grey cottage with three windows and a highly polished blue front door in a row of almost identical grey cottages. Inside, it was small and homely. A ginger cat came over to Mrs Graham, stroking its furry head against the brown nylon of her tights.
The room was half filled by a Christmas tree decked out with gold baubles. There were at least fifty Christmas cards strung up on ribbon around the room.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ asked the old woman, taking off her coat and hanging it on a wooden peg.
‘No it’s fine,’ said Cate, keen now to hear what the woman had to say. Mrs Graham was not to be rushed. She bustled into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea before sitting in front of them in a wicker chair. Cate noticed she had a small envelope on her lap.
‘I don’t know what this is,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Although I’ve nearly opened it a hundred times, I can tell you.’ Mrs Graham smiled thinly at Cate and leaned forward to pass her the envelope.
‘Leonard was ill for quite a while before he left us,’ said Mrs Graham quietly. ‘About a week before he died, he gave me this and told me to look after it until a time when both he and Oswald Balcon were dead. Then I was to give it to one of his daughters.’ Mrs Graham smiled. ‘I wanted to give it to you, Cate. You were always my favourite,’ she said kindly.
Cate made small talk for a few minutes, then excused herself, Mrs Graham insisting she take some homemade jam with her.
‘Things just get stranger,’ said Cate, as she and Nick stepped into the lane. It was beginning to get dark; the sky had a cast of dark blue and the trees stood out in silhouette.
In Nick’s MG, Cate ripped open the envelope and unfolded the letter inside; it was dated fourteen months earlier. As each word unfolded, her blue eyes grew wider in confusion and shock.
If somebody is reading this letter it means that both I and Lord Oswald Balcon are now dead. Please forgive my cowardice in leaving it until now to reveal this information – perhaps I am a coward – but it is something I have to say. It just feels safer revealing it now I am no longer around. At least in death, I can unburden myself.
Eleven years ago, I buried a body. My employer, Oswald Balcon, asked me to do it. His daughter, Camilla Balcon, had knocked over a man with her car and the man was killed. The victim was an old vagrant who sometimes passed through the village. Oswald said his life did not matter and that we should hide the body to protect the life of his daughter. I was scared of Oswald so I agreed to help him. It’s not something I am proud of. I regret what I have done more than anything in my life.
Oswald’s words have weighed heavily on me all these years. No life is worth nothing. Every life means a great deal whether you are rich or poor. However, Oswald has been good to me and my family ever since that night. For this I am grateful, and that is why I did not want to tell anyone until Lord Balcon had also died. But as my own death approaches, I must tell someone about it. You may choose to do with this information what you wish. Be merciful on Camilla Balcon. She was young, it was an accident, and her father insisted that they should cover it up. Camilla was desperate to go to the police, but Oswald forced her into silence. What could she do? What could any of us do? It has been a terrible secret I will carry with me to the grave. But please believe that what I am saying is the truth. I hope people can understand what I have done.
Yours faithfully,
Leonard Graham
The paper trembled in Cate’s hand as she passed it over to Nick to read.
‘My God,’ he said quietly, whistling through his teeth.
Cate folded up the letter and put it in her pocket. ‘I think we’d better show Camilla.’