Carl Witherby was not in the best of moods as he parked his car behind Fergal’s by the quay in Yarmouth. He had not had the easiest of journeys.
“Well, dear boy. I am here. Why is it you’ve dragged me from the peace and serenity of my college rooms and brought me to this foreign land?” Carl asked as he shook his erstwhile student firmly by the hand.
“How was your journey?”
“Bloody. My head aches, my back will be stiff as a board in the morning and all for what will undoubtedly be nothing other than a wild goose chase.”
“I promise you it won’t be. Now follow me, The Lodge is a little difficult to find.”
Fifteen minutes later Fergal rang the bell by the impressive front door. He had thought about using the back door but wanted the professor to get a real impression of the importance of the house.
Fergal made a point of formally introducing Skye as soon as the door was opened. “Professor Carl Witherby, allow me introduce you to our host, Skye Lacey.”
“Skye Lacey? Lacey?” He looked at Fergal questioningly.
“Yes, Professor, Skye is Sir Arthur’s daughter.”
“His illegitimate daughter,” Skye added, perhaps unnecessarily. “Please do come in.”
As they settled around the table in the kitchen Skye realised that the professor had not looked her in the eye once and spoke only to Fergal.
“How old is she? Nineteen? I doubt she could be his daughter. Isn’t he impotent? This girl is a fraud. Why have you been taken in by her? Because she’s quite pretty, not beautiful, but pretty in a cloying sort of way?”
Fergal had hoped that the professor would not be his usual, deliberately outrageous self and for a few moments he worried for Skye until he realised that she was well able to stand up for herself.
“Since he has recognised me as his daughter there can be no doubt. Also, so you have some accurate information, I was twenty-one in January.”
Carl still did not look towards her and she was reminded of her father, and the reading of the will. “So she was born when—”
“I was born in 1993, when my father was still a member of the cabinet,” Skye interrupted.
“I don’t recall hearing any rumours,” Carl said, as if that proved she was lying.
“I don’t think I ever made the papers.”
“If that is the case someone must have worked really hard to keep you a secret.”
“Also,” Skye continued defiantly, “when my mother died and it all went to court, I was referred to as ‘Baby S’. My father had been sacked by then and the papers weren’t much interested.”
The professor was still not looking at her as he replied. “Then she must have been a clever woman, or a very devious one, to have tied him down.”
“I don’t know why you have to be so rude.” Skye had had enough. “Fergal phoned you because he wanted you to see something he thought you’d be interested in. I honestly don’t give a shit what you think about me or my father.” Skye made no effort to keep the dislike she had taken to Carl from her voice.
“I’ll say what I like where that dreadful man is concerned.” He still did not turn towards Skye. “Anyway, my boy, as I asked you some time ago, what are you doing in this God-forsaken part of the world? I always imagined the Isle of Wight to be, well, I don’t know what I imagined it to be because I can’t ever remember imagining anything about the Isle of Wight. It’s such an out-of-the-way nothingness of a place. Unless, of course—”
Fergal interrupted. “This house belongs to Sir Arthur and he has employed me to make a report on its condition and contents.”
“And have you done that? One always owes a duty to the man who pays the bills. He who pays the piper, etcetera etcetera. Though I am not going to ask why you are being paid to report on the condition of the house and its contents. Surely that is the job of a surveyor, or one of those awful people who advertise house clearances in the windows of local newsagents.”
“For whatever reason I’m very glad I’m here. And so will you be if you will just stop playing the arrogant academic and listen for a moment.” Fergal’s voice was calm. He was used to Carl’s ways.
Carl turned towards Skye. “Point taken. I suppose I must apologise. I am, and always have been, completely unable to make polite conversation.”
“Or be polite,” Fergal added.
“I do occasionally try.”
“Well try now.”
Carl looked at Skye and gave her a brief smile which she considered very insincere. “I will do my level best. Now, Fergal, say again why you are here.”
“I am here to write a report on the house and its contents. Skye has been very helpful considering Sir Arthur is about to throw her out of the only home she’s ever known.” Fergal wanted Carl to understand that he should not treat Skye so badly. “She’s spent the morning showing me round and I’ve taken a lot of pictures and with her help I’m making enough notes to satisfy Sir Arthur and Lady Barbara. But I must admit I’m more interested in other things.”
“Other things?” Carl looked Skye up and down meaningfully.
“Ignore him Skye, he’s just trying to provoke. We’ve found…” Fergal noticed Skye purse her lips in disapproval and corrected himself, “…Skye found something that is far beyond my pay grade to interpret. I thought it would be of interest to you and she has been kind enough to allow me to invite you here.”
Carl shrugged off the charming persona as easily as he had used it. “You didn’t ‘invite’ me, Fergal, you were very insistent that I should hotfoot it to this backwater, if being stuck in traffic in our country’s ghastly motorway system and then taking an hour or more to cross a small stretch of water can be considered ‘hotfooting’. Just tell me what it is that you want me to see.”
“Follow me, Carl,” Fergal said loudly, and then under his breath, so Skye could not hear as she followed them out of the kitchen, “She’s OK, Carl, back off a bit. She doesn’t know what you’re like.”
Carl was about to make a smart reply as they entered the library when he saw the titles of some of the books and was silenced. Waving his hand in a gesture which Fergal understood to mean he should stay quiet, Carl began to look more closely along the shelves. Then his attention focussed on the chest sitting on a red velvet cloth on the large, ornate table that occupied the middle part of the large room. “You managed to open it?”
Fergal nodded his head in acknowledgement of the unspoken compliment and lifted the unsecured lid.
Carl said nothing as he carefully lifted the portrait out of the chest and inspected it.
It was not a large painting. It portrayed a man standing in a pose that was very familiar to anyone with an interest in Napoleon Bonaparte. The left leg was slightly in front of the right, the right arm tucked into the white waistcoat. The blue jacket, the epaulettes and the red sash would all be familiar to any serious student of that era.
“It is known that Jacques-Louis David painted several copies of the same picture, at least three are known to exist. All show the General in the same pose though the details of the uniforms vary. I cannot recall ever seeing this version.” The professor spoke as if giving a lecture. “It is said it was the portrait the Emperor liked most of all the many hundreds that were made of him, perhaps because it flattered his face and figure somewhat.” He carefully placed the portrait on the table before his tone changed to one of dry sarcasm. “Where was this box found? Presumably it has not been in this room for the past two hundred years?”
Skye explained briefly about the builders and the storm.
“And it has not been opened before?”
“Not until Fergal opened it this morning. I’ve had other things on my mind the past four and a half years.”
“You had no curiosity at all?”
“It wasn’t that,” Skye said fiercely.
Fergal felt he had to come to Skye’s defence again. “Skye hasn’t had any opportunity, she’s spent the past four years or more caring for her invalid aunt, and anyway I doubt she could have opened it. I don’t think I could have done without your training.”
“Still…” Carl seemed unconvinced that caring for someone should overcome intellectual curiosity.
“I’m sure that what made my Aunt Audrey ill in the first place was finding the bag. She didn’t want anything to do with it and it wasn’t my job to upset her.” Skye responded but wished she hadn’t. She did not have to justify herself, or Audrey, to this man.
Carl shrugged, it was not his way to accept that he was ever in the wrong. “As far as you can tell that wall had been untouched since sometime in the nineteenth century?”
Skye nodded. “We did open the bag. Audrey and I worked out the writing on the side. We decided it was Roman numerals for 1784. It was one of the last things we did together. Look.” She showed them the letters on the side of the bag.
Carl was quick to deny that that date could have any significance, but both Fergal and Skye noted the care with which he handled the flags and the cockade, and the reverence with which he treated the uniform jacket.
“You do realise this jacket is the same one that is in the portrait.”
“How could I? Until this morning I’d never seen the portrait.” Skye wished the professor would be fairer to her. Perhaps, for some reason she could not begin to imagine, he was trying to trick her.
He removed the second picture and held it at arm’s length. A woman sat on what looked like a red velvet upholstered throne, her right arm draped over an ermine-lined cloak, and near her left hand was a crown. “Empress Joséphine,” Carl whispered before placing the picture next to the one of her husband.
The silence lasted a few seconds before Skye picked up the yellowed piece of paper that had been lying alongside the portraits and read the words that were faded but still legible. “Je suis mort, vive Claude Olivierre. I am dead, long live Claude Olivierre,” she translated.
“I think we were quite able to work that one out for ourselves,” Carl said scathingly before shaking his hand impatiently in Skye’s direction. His assumption of authority was absolute and she handed the paper to him.
“There is a date le douze juin de l’an mille huit cent, vingt-et-un which I think we will all agree without the assistance of Miss Lacey’s schoolgirl French is the twelfth day of June in the year 1821.”
“June 1821 was only a few weeks after Napoleon died, wasn’t it?” Fergal suggested.
“It would have taken that time for the news to reach the Isle of Wight.” Carl spoke as if to himself.
“I’m beginning to think the unthinkable,” Fergal said, the hairs bristling on his arms as he spoke.
“There were rumours at the time,” Carl conceded, speaking slowly and quietly, weighing every word. “They were never substantiated and quickly suppressed.”
“Rumours?” Fergal prompted.
“There were rumours that the British Secret Service—”
“Was there one then?” Skye interrupted and was rewarded with a frown from Fergal and a glare from the professor.
“There were rumours that the British Secret Service,” Carl repeated with over-emphasised patience, “resisted the calls by Parliament to imprison or execute the captured Bonaparte. They understood that he would be more useful alive and talking. They wanted to give him lifelong parole on the condition that he assisted them. These intelligence men, unlike the lumpish and self-centred politicians of the day, understood that their prisoner would have had unparalleled knowledge of the spy-systems on the continent and further afield. Remember, even though the Battle of Waterloo ended war with France, Great Britain was still at war with the Americans. And you must not forget that we had made many powerful enemies in Europe. You must think of the Russian, the Austrian and the Ottoman Empires amongst others, all volatile and likely to pick a fight with anyone and everyone, especially with Great Britain. It has been the accepted history that Parliament overruled the documented advice of their secret services and that Napoleon was exiled to St Helena.”
“History is a set of lies agreed upon?” Fergal quoted Carl’s favourite phrase as a question.
Carl nodded before continuing. “There were weeks of horse-trading while the erstwhile Emperor was held on board the Bellerophon in Plymouth harbour. For most of the month of July 1815, while he was held as a tourist attraction in Plymouth harbour, the corridors of Whitehall were awash with devious double-dealing. It has been the accepted history that he transferred to the Northumberland and sailed to St Helena, there to die either of arsenic poisoning or stomach cancer, six years later. But, perhaps, after all, the Secret Service was cleverer than history has allowed it to be. Perhaps…” Carl’s voice tailed off, before he continued positively, “No, Fergal, what you are thinking is definitely not inconceivable.”
He turned back to the chest, ignoring Skye. “Fergal, film me as I remove these. Your phone does that doesn’t it? Good, with sound? Good.”
Skye watched in silence as Carl took the items, one by one, out of the trunk, and listened as he described each one, his voice betraying no emotion, before placing them on the table.
There were inscribed boxes that, when opened, displayed medals lying on velvet beds. There were notebooks whose pages were covered with tight, untidy writing and with small maps and sketches. There were a number of portraits of women and children in delicate frames.
For nearly an hour Carl gave the details of the medals, summarised the subjects of the portraits and briefly described the contents of the notebooks. Finally he told Fergal to stop recording. “Lucky that,” Fergal said, successfully suppressing any evidence of the excitement he was feeling. “The charge is getting a bit low.”
Carl turned to Skye. “My dear girl, Skye, I most sincerely apologise for my earlier rudeness. It was unforgiveable of me. I can give no excuse other than I am an old man who was concerned that he has driven to the edge of the civilised world for no reason. Now I see I would have driven to the ends of the universe. This chest, and the bag, undoubtedly belonged to Emperor Napoleon.” There was a period of silence before Carl continued, with less theatrical pomposity, “I cannot tell you how much this means to me. It is a veritable treasure trove. But what we have to do is work out what to do with what we now can allow ourselves to suspect. I’ve done a great deal of talking and I could do with a drink.”
“Tea? Beer? Wine?” Skye offered, in no way taken in by Carl’s change in attitude.
The clock in the hall struck the half hour, breaking the silence that followed. Carl waited until the last chime before answering.
“You have a hotel, Fergal? Shall we go there? Will they be able to put me up? If not I’ll share with you. And I’ll need some supplies from the town, I came unprepared for an overnight stay.”
“Am I allowed to come too?” Skye asked when she realised they had all but forgotten about her.
*
“Now,” Carl said as they sat around a table in the bar of The George Hotel, “tell me how the daughter of Sir Arthur Lacey has such an attractive name.”
Carl, Fergal thought, could turn on the charm when he needed to.
“I’ve always thought it was either because it was the most unlikely name for the daughter of my ultra-conservative father or because I was conceived there. I hope my mother chose it to spite him.
“Can’t you ask her?” Carl probed.
“She died in a car accident when I was a year old.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, things all worked out for the best in the end.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Sir Arthur didn’t want to have anything to do with me but then neither did my mother’s parents. So after a battle where only lawyers were ever going to win Audrey agreed to have me and I’ve lived here ever since.”
“Audrey?”
“Sir Arthur’s elder sister, Skye’s aunt.” Fergal answered for Skye.
“It is interesting she really is your aunt, not just an older woman given that honorific. She must have been quite elderly when she took you on?”
“She was sixty-three.”
“It would have been a big decision for her.”
“I think it was. I hope it was one she never regretted.”
“And your Aunt Audrey has always lived in that interesting house?”
“Since she was evacuated there during the war. She was able to stay there until she died even though it belonged, I mean belongs, to Sir Arthur.”
“And he lets you live there?”
“Only until the end of the month.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“He’s kicking her out so he can do the house up and sell it,” Fergal added, wondering whether Carl recognised the importance of what he was saying.
“And what are you doing working for him, Fergal? I wouldn’t have thought he was your kind of politician.”
“Funnily enough he hired me to research his family history, though that’s not why I came over here.”
“You said you were over here to do some kind of inventory?”
“Yes. Now he’s taking back the house he wanted to know what contents are worth keeping—”
“What contents are worth keeping?” Carl asked coldly. “Has he no idea of the value of that library?”
“He’s only interested in removing anything of value from the house. I have to tell him what cannot end up in a skip before he guts the house and renovates it to sell.”
“I like the man even less, if that were possible. But why have you to do this?”
“Skye suggested it was because I’m available and he would rather not go to the expense of paying someone who is properly qualified.”
“She’s undoubtedly correct in that assumption. I’m surprised, though, that he has any interest at all in his family history.”
“He hasn’t, well, not in an accurate history anyway. It’s just something he thinks would be useful to back up his claims of being the archetypical Englishman. I had been planning on telling him to stuff it but now, well, now nothing will prise me away from the project until I’ve got to the bottom of it.”
“So you’re nothing to do with his political shenanigans then?”
“No, definitely not. He says I am unsound.”
“He’s undoubtedly right on that, if nothing else.”
“I’ve only been doing the family stuff for a few days but already I think he’s a fraud. As far as I can see most of the population of Scotland is more English than he is.”
“How far have you got?”
“I’ve concentrated on the straightforward stuff, getting names and dates and places of births and deaths, you know, just building up the family tree through the baronetcy line.”
“Well let’s hear it. I want names please, and dates, and any other little snippets.” Carl’s demand was not to be denied, and while Skye had a hint of what it would have been like to be in one of Carl’s tutorials Fergal was transported back ten years as he did as he was instructed.
Referring to his tablet Fergal gave the outline of his researches. “Sir Arthur is the seventh baronet—”
“Only the seventh? We’re onto the eighth Duke of Wellington already, even the Marlboroughs are on the twelfth. You’ve got to be on at least the eighteenth like the Norfolks to be taken seriously, the seventh can mean only a nineteenth century title at best.”
“As I was saying. He was born in London in 1935. His father, Sir William, was born on the Isle of Wight in 1888. He inherited the baronetcy in 1919 and died in London in 1961.”
Skye saw an opportunity to contribute. “Don’t forget about Henry.”
“Henry?”
“William’s brother, Arthur and Audrey’s uncle. I do get fed up with family histories when they always seem to ignore anyone but the eldest son, it’s as if younger sons and all the daughters don’t matter.”
“Point taken. But I’ve been concentrating on the baronetcy, which tends also to ignore everyone but the oldest son.” Fergal justified himself with what he intended to be a joke, but Skye was not going to let the point go.
“Audrey looked after Uncle Henry for years. That’s how I know all about him.”
“Delightful as the man must have been, we must move back through the generations. Who was Sir William’s father?”
Skye seethed with indignation as Fergal continued his summary. “That was Sir Bernard. He was born in 1852, inherited the baronetcy in 1917 and died in 1919.”
“Only two years with the title. Was it Spanish influenza? The timing would be right.”
“Yes it was,” Skye confirmed, determined not to be sidelined. “Audrey told me.”
Fergal continued, referring to his notes. “This is where it becomes quite interesting because the generations get a bit mixed up. Sir Bernard was the fifth baronet but he was actually the grandson, not as you would expect, the great-great-grandson, of the first.”
“How come?” Skye asked, aware that she was undoubtedly showing off her ignorance.
“It’s easier if I go back to the beginning. The baronetcy was created in 1815. Sir Bernard Lacey, the first baronet, died in 1832 and his elder son, Henry, then inherited the title. Henry died in 1878 and the title passed to his son Augustus. Sir Augustus died in 1882 and the title passed to his son, also named Augustus, who was, therefore, the fourth baronet. This Augustus died in 1917 without issue so the title passed to his nearest relative, his great-grandfather’s younger son’s son, Sir Bernard the Fifth. So you see, Skye, younger sons do come into the story.”
“Eventually,” Skye rather grudgingly allowed.
Fergal turned his iPad around so Skye could see her family tree. Carl had made his own notes.
“I only knew back to Henry’s father. I’d love to know what their stories are.” Skye allowed her enthusiasm to overcome her resentment. “Wouldn’t you? Aren’t you at all curious about who these people really were? I mean, they all seemed to have died pretty young, well, the Augustuses anyway.”
“Let us go back to the beginning. Do we know why Sir Bernard’s baronetcy was created?” Carl asked, ignoring Skye.
“Not yet. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find out.”
“Well, do. It might be important.”
“And who came before Sir Bernard the First, as you call him? And how does the man called Claude Olivierre fit into it all?” Carl began to list the questions that needed answers.
“I haven’t found anything about an Olivierre family but then I haven’t been looking, I only saw his name for the first time today. And as to the first baronet of Oakridge, he appears to have come from nowhere. None of the usual reference websites tell us much. His parents aren’t named, nor are his place of birth or his education, there’s nothing in the way of detail at all. He is definitely a bit of a mystery.”
“There are no mysteries, Fergal, at the very most there is information yet to be unearthed.”
“Fair enough.” Fergal took the criticism without ill-feeling. He knew there were many sources yet to be investigated.
“And Oakridge? Where does that come into it?” Carl asked before adding, “I’ve never heard of the place.”
“I’ve no idea,” Fergal said. “How about you Skye?”
“There’s no place to hear of. It used to be the name of the estate next door.”
“Next door? To The Lodge?” Fergal smiled. “I didn’t think there was a house within miles.”
“Well Oakridge Court was about a mile away, its land adjoins ours.”
“Was?” Carl prompted.
“What used to be the Oakridge Estate has been broken up and the old house demolished. Nothing has been called Oakridge since the First World War when there was some sort of convalescent home there.”
“The Laceys must have lived there at some time for the baronetcy to have that geographical,” Carl said firmly. “You say the old house was demolished?”
“A couple from the Midlands bought it ten years or so ago and knocked it down so they could build some modern monstrosity. There was a lot of talk about how they got permission. No one thought they should have been able to knock the old building down.”
“So there’s no history left there then?”
“None. They even changed its name.”
Fergal closed the cover on his iPad. “Anyway, that’s the family tree so far.”
“I can’t think that you’ve done very well for a week’s work, Fergal,” Carl said critically.
“It’s been more like three days and it’s not been easy. I’ve had to try to fit in with Sir Arthur’s way of doing things and then I had to source a decent computer and get it set up and then meet with the people who could get me access to the sources I needed. Give me a chance! I thought I’d done quite well.”
“Well there’s obviously far more to the Lacey family than you have been able to find, Fergal. We must find hard evidence that Claude Olivierre was who we believe he might have been. Hard evidence, Fergal, evidence that will stand up to intense scrutiny, and the Laceys are, as is said in modern detective stories, ‘our only lead’. We must begin by discovering everything possible about them. Once we have achieved that I feel certain that we will know more of Claude, his accoutrements were, after all is said and done, found in a Lacey house.”
“I’m interested in how the Laceys came to live here,” Skye said when Carl had finished.
“What do you mean?” Fergal asked.
“Well, Claude Olivierre must have lived here, because his stuff is in the wall and the Laceys must have lived at Oakridge Court because of the title, so how come the Laceys moved to The Lodge? And when? Was Claude actually a Lacey?” Skye looked from Fergal to Carl and back to Fergal. Seeing their doubts in their faces she added, “I’m only asking.”
Carl did not give Skye a direct answer. “All will be revealed by studying that wonderful library. I am certain it will provide the answers to all our questions and that is where I will concentrate my efforts.”
“I’ve hardly touched the top of the internet iceberg,” Fergal added.
“I want to look through the attics.”
“The attics?” Carl asked suspiciously.
“There’s two rooms and they’re both full of boxes of papers and stuff.”
“Papers and stuff?” Carl quoted back, disliking the imprecision of Skye’s description.
“I told you, household accounts, diaries, old pictures, that sort of stuff.”
“Stuff?” Fergal joined Carl in wondering what further material may be stored in a house where the same family had lived for nearly two hundred years.
Skye explained. “Audrey never wanted me to go up to the attics. She said the floor was dangerous. Apparently Uncle Henry went up when he was a boy and had an accident. I don’t know exactly what but it was serious and he put the fear of God into her about it. She said it was unsafe and I was not to go up there. I did, of course, but only once and then I didn’t stay up there long. I didn’t like disobeying her and there’s no way I could have spent any time up there without her knowing.”
“Did you see anything when you were up there? Can you remember anything?”
“As I said, there were boxes of what looked like household accounts and diaries, pictures that haven’t hung on the walls for years, that sort of thing. It would have taken ages to go through everything and there’s never been any reason to.”
“Up until now, that is. However, we have to search the library first.”
“It’ll take some time to get it all done properly,” Fergal said, more to Skye than to Carl.
“And, don’t forget, I’ve got to leave at the end of the month.”
“We have only three weeks before that philistine has control of the library?”
“And everything else in the house.”
“Three weeks and two days to be precise,” Skye said. “We did tell you.”
When Carl eventually spoke it was almost as if to himself.
“If we can prove what we now suspect to be the truth we must understand that the ripples will spread very wide. The defeat and exile of Napoleon form a crucial part of our history, it is part of what makes us what and who we are as a nation. Do we want to prove this was all a lie?”
It was meant as a rhetorical question and neither Skye nor Fergal gave any answer before the professor continued.
“Do we want to do this? If we do then we have so little time to exhaust the resources in the house. So little time,” he repeated.
“We’ve got to do it.” Fergal turned to Skye. “That is if it’s OK with you.”
“It might be a way to really stuff my dad, mightn’t it?”
“It might be the only way,” Fergal agreed.
Carl hadn’t been listening. “If I am right, which I believe I may well be, we will be exposing Englishmen far more important than your father as being as devious and duplicitous as, throughout history, we have accused every other nation of being. At the very least we will make enemies of the French, who will feel we have made fools of them. We could also destroy the reputations of men such as Wellington and Liverpool and all the others who must have known the truth and who kept quiet.” He paused, aware that he would also be condemning much of his own life’s work. “But we cannot hold back, can we? This information is too important to sweep under the carpet. We must investigate. We must learn exactly what happened in those months and years after Waterloo.”
“But it would really screw my dad, wouldn’t it? I mean if there was a link to, well, who we think there might be a link to?” There were people coming into the bar.
Carl leant forward and spoke more quietly than he had all afternoon. “We must find the evidence. We must be prepared to answer any and every question that might be thrown our way. No one must be able to find the slightest flaw in our argument.”
“The trail of history, you used to call it. We students used to call it the trial of history because you were so exacting. But you were right,” Fergal continued enthusiastically. “It’s like having an antique, like that locket you wear around your neck, Skye. You know from the hallmark when and where it was made and you know you wear it now, but to truly understand it you need to know who has owned it in all those intervening years, whose necks it has been around, who has given it to whom, what it contains and how it came to be where it is now.”
Skye put her fingers up to the chain around her neck. She would have loved to have been able to ask Audrey many of the same questions.
“I found it in Audrey’s box of special things after she died. I think her cousin Rowan gave it to her. It’s a pendant really, it can’t be a locket because it doesn’t seem to open.”
The bar was filling up and there was no further opportunity for private conversation. “It’s been a very long day and I for one could do with another drink and something to eat. There are exciting times ahead but for now Fergal, what have you been up to since I last saw you? Off you go, Skye, we’ll see you in the morning.”
*
Driving back to The Lodge Skye’s emotions were confused. She was resentful that she had not been asked to stay for supper at The George. She was excited at the prospect of discovering the story of how the bag and the chest came to be hidden in the chimney of the Lodge. And she was worried by the prospect of having to spend any time with Carl who, she decided, she did not like at all, even if he was going to help her find a way for her to get back at her father.