Chapter Forty

Highclere Castle, April 3, 1973

Brograve decided to drive them to Highclere. Sometimes they caught the train but Eve’s walking was still unsteady. Besides, they were going for a week and had a suitcase each. The weather was unpredictable, switching from sunshine to showers in the blink of an eye, and they needed clothes for all eventualities because they tended to spend a lot of time outdoors. These days there were never any porters in railway stations to help with your luggage so it was tricky for elderly folk like them.

“I still miss driving,” Eve remarked, as she watched him switch on the ignition. She could feel the vibrations, hear the change in engine noise as he raised the clutch and pressed on the accelerator. She used to love being behind the wheel, but she’d gotten tunnel vision after one of her strokes and the doctors said it wasn’t safe for her to drive. It had been a bitter disappointment.

After they married, Brograve had bought a Ford Model T, which was a practical car for driving around town. She used it more than he did, because he was at work during the day. She sped around shopping and visiting friends, or driving to Highclere to visit Miraculous, then going to race meets once he was ready for the track.

In 1929, Brograve had given her the best birthday present ever—a car of her own, an Austin Seven with dark green paintwork and leather seats. She couldn’t stop grinning as she took it out for a test drive. It was smooth to run, with an engine noise like the purr of a big cat, and the top speed was said to be seventy miles per hour. No one was allowed to drop so much as a crumb in that car. When she collected Patricia from school, she put a piece of carpet in the footwell to protect it from muddy feet.

Eve sucked in her lips to stop herself criticizing Brograve’s driving on the way to Highclere. He was too cautious in London traffic; you had to be decisive and push your nose out or it took all day to get anywhere. He rode the clutch too, which would wear out the gearbox.

“Do you know if Porchy has a lady friend at the moment?” Brograve asked, with merriment in his eyes. “One of his boozy floozies?”

Eve tried to remember. She spoke to her brother on the telephone every week or so but he rarely confided in her about his women. Catherine, his first wife, the mother of his two children, had left him back in the 1930s. Their great love affair, conducted against a background of parental disapproval, had not survived his philandering and her fondness for the bottle. Which came first, Eve wasn’t sure. To her great sadness they divorced and Catherine lived in Switzerland now, from where she sent them a Christmas card every year.

His second marriage to an American actress called Tilly hadn’t lasted long at all—Eve and Brograve scarcely got to know her—before she fled back to the States. Since then there had been a string of mistresses but Eve could never remember their names. Mabel? Ivy? They didn’t stick around. Happiness in love was something her brother struggled with.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” she said.

She felt emotional heading back to Highclere. Being there made her think about Pups’s funeral, and about her mother’s sudden death just three years earlier. Almina had choked on a piece of chicken, of all things. Both her parents had died unexpectedly, and it made her sad to dwell on them. Of course, there were happy memories at Highclere too, if she delved further back: parties on the lawn during long summer evenings, cantering around the estate on her pony, swimming in the lake with Porchy. As they turned into the twisting driveway and the turreted towers came into view, she felt a quickening of her pulse. Although she had loved Framfield dearly, in many ways Highclere was still home.

The butler, Taylor, showed them through the saloon into the drawing room, where Porchy was sitting, whisky in hand, by the windows that looked out toward the stables. She noticed he’d hung a painting of Catherine above the fireplace, looking as beautiful and luminous as when they first met, before the booze marred her looks.

The butler poured them each a sherry and gave Porchy a generous refill of whisky, adding a splash of water before returning the jug to the sideboard.

Porchy took a swig. “Do you know, I’m still getting begging letters from Almina’s creditors?” he complained almost as soon as they sat down. “I got one yesterday. She seems to have promised all kinds of hangers-on that she would leave them money in her will, and instead all she left was debt. But try getting them to believe that . . .”

“It wasn’t her fault.” Eve had spent years trying to broker peace between the two without success. “She was brought up with money on tap and could never reconcile herself to it drying up after Alfred de Rothschild died. She was too generous, always a sucker for an underdog story.”

“She was hideously irresponsible!” he exclaimed. “We could have lost Highclere because of her. I’m still negotiating with the tax office, signing over paintings right, left, and center.” He glanced up at his ex-wife hanging on the wall.

“At least you won’t have to pay death duty on Almina’s estate if she left only debt,” Brograve commented. “The rates are sky-high under Harold Wilson’s government.”

Eve knew he was trying to steer conversation away from a contentious area. Her brother’s arguments with her mother had been a source of great sadness to her. She picked up a silver table lighter that had belonged to Pups, and ran her finger over the engraving of his initials: GESMH. It was complicated when an estate was inherited by the eldest son while the wife was still alive, but there was no doubt that if she’d been in charge, Almina would have run the place into the ground. She never had any sense when it came to money.

All the same, it had been cruel of Porchy to force her to declare bankruptcy. Brograve took his side, saying it was the only prudent course of action, but Eve used to slip her mother money in secret. Poor Mama. She had been a rather distant mother but it wasn’t her fault. The train of thought brought to mind Ana Mansour and her separation from her children.

“I wonder if you ever found any Tutankhamun relics lying around at Highclere?” she asked Porchy, interrupting a conversation about the shortcomings of the Wilson government. “I think there may be a few bits and pieces Pups brought back from the tomb.”

He snorted like a horse. “You ask me this every bloody time we talk on the phone, Baby Sis. You’re getting senile. I told you his entire collection went to the Met.”

“Are you sure it all went?” she asked. “Was nothing left behind?”

Her father’s Egyptian collection used to be housed in two cupboards built into the wall cavities between the drawing room and the smoking room. There were shelves inside, and artifacts were kept in old tobacco tins. As a child, Eve loved to explore the treasures, which she knew off by heart. “Test me!” she’d demand, and Pups would choose a tin at random and show Eve the contents. Without fail, she would be able to relate the provenance of the item, the dates, and the symbolism of the ancient imagery of gods, ritual ceremonies, and strange composite animals that were part this and part that.

“I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law,” Porchy backtracked. “There are three hundred bloody rooms here, so maybe the odd Egyptian knickknack is gathering dust somewhere.”

“Would you mind if I have a poke around tomorrow? Just out of interest?”

Before Porchy could answer, Taylor cleared his throat. “Pardon me for interrupting, sir. I believe there are some small items in the old cupboards, behind the panels.” He pointed toward the wall adjoining the smoking room. “They were boarded up during the war, when we heard evacuee children were coming to stay. I assumed you knew about them, sir.”

Eve’s stomach gave a lurch. She got up and went to the spot where the cupboards had been, in the doorway between the two rooms. When she knocked on the panels, she could hear it was hollow behind.

“Good god,” Porchy said. “I suppose we had better have a look, in that case. I’ll get a man to remove those panels tomorrow morning. Maybe you can help to identify things, Baby Sis. You were always more interested in those crumbling old relics than I was.”

Eve glanced at the walls, feeling a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. Maybe there would be something there to help Ana Mansour get back to see her children. She shivered. It felt as if there might be a ghost or two lurking inside.