In the new day, Claire drove quickly to Brighton. But it was still two hours before she arrived at the garage to Marine House. The back façade of the building was, as always, hidden in shade. Would the racketeers searching for Harry Stone and his money now drift away? He was now beyond their grasping hands, but just the thought that these thugs could still be loitering, searching for the ghost of Harry Stone, bothered her. Claire fumbled with her key to unlock the back door.
Marine House felt forbidding in its silence. And the antagonism of this place, Harry Stone’s final home, immediately touched Claire as if it was hanging in the still air. This was a house that some members of the Jackson family had demanded ransom money for.
In the kitchen, she quickly switched the lights on, but it did not relieve the tension she felt just being in this now silent, grand building. She walked straight to Stone’s study. The room gave her the shivers. It was untouched since she had last been here, with no attempt by Stone to cover over what she had found in the scam.
The piles of untidy paper scattered across the desk and the floor, as if they had been thrown randomly by Harry Stone, were like a barren area, a hostile place for doing any work. But the oasis was in the centre of Stone’s desk. A new large white envelope with her name, Claire, written on it in large capitals stood in the middle. It was Stone’s handwriting, and she felt the envelope staring at her as a mirage, something not real, as if he was there in the room with her. With the long silver paperknife, that had always rested on his desk, even in Arrow Hall, Claire carefully slit open the envelope addressed to her.
Her hands shook slightly as she unfolded a sheet of plain white paper. There was a short paragraph, written in a spidery scrawl that was Harry Stone’s handwriting.
Claire,
Sorry I’m not here to see you open this.
You’ve worked not only for me but with me; many times you’ve slowed me down. I owe you for that. I say sorry for my messy attempt to squeeze more out of Arrow Hall. It was never going to work while you were in charge there.
I had a visit from Lady Ruth. She squared with me what her children had taken; she didn’t want me to talk about Josh’s sexual assault accusations; and we did a deal to buy Marine House. I’ve signed the paper to start that running. You told them what a mess that family had made – it got Marine House for me; I always knew you would. So, you’re in my will. I’ve now left this big house to you. And I know Her Ladyship will be satisfied with you as the new owner.
Harry
Claire sat on Stone’s chair facing the desk. Before folding the letter back into the white envelope, she read it again twice. A short, brief note saying it how it was without emotion. It was typical Harry Stone. It was the person she had known better than probably anyone else. And the short note left her stunned. Claire had wanted today to be just another way of closing off this chapter of her life. But this place was to become hers. That left the final pages too wide open.
It was ghostly quiet as Claire walked back to the kitchen, and she made a strong black espresso coffee. Holding her hands round the hot cup, she tried to warm herself before she wandered around the large rooms of the house. The elegant sitting room had been tidied where Nurse Carol had been round. Opening the French doors let the air flow through, but Claire continued to feel the detached formality in the place. The room was grand, with high ceilings and a large chandelier in the middle which she had hardly noticed before. But there were no touches of untidiness, with scattered papers, that said Harry Stone had lived there. Or ever been in that room for that matter.
Claire walked into the wide entrance hall to gather up the letters delivered that morning. Three junk mail envelopes she left where they had fallen, but a crisp white envelope addressed to Mr Harry Stone caught her eye. She pulled out a letter from the same children’s hospice in East London.
Thank you, Mr Stone for your further gift of £60,000. Your continuing generous support will enable us to complete the new garden play area and to refurbish two of the bedroom suites.
Claire put the letter back into the envelope quickly and shook her head. Harry Stone’s gifts to the hospice in the past few weeks Claire knew was part of the measure of the man. Some surprising generosity made the picture of him complete.
Alone, her own thoughts now racing with excitement, Claire settled into a comfortable chair in the elegant room and reread the letter to her for almost the tenth time. Marine House? This large, empty building with seven bedrooms? A formal, grade-II-listed, prestigious Regency house on the seafront built for a bygone age? Claire had twisted the arm of Lady Ruth for Stone, but this place could surely never be hers.
For an hour, Claire wandered again around all the spacious rooms, but she got no feel of the place. It was a large, impersonal building, cold and silent, and its time as a grand family home was surely coming to an end. Locking the back door of Marine House, Claire walked to the front façade where the midday sun, in a cloudless blue sky, was shining with a dazzling brilliance. She strolled across the road to the beach and sat on a bench facing the sea.
How would the funeral go? A quick half hour in an empty crematorium? No fuss. No observing by anyone but her how Harry Stone’s life had been lived? Yes, she would deal with that, even with all its gloomy sadness surrounding it.
Along the side of the beach, from a kiosk she bought an ice cream and, like a schoolkid, walking slowly along, it tasted good even as it messily melted in the heat of the day.