As we followed Bates up the grand staircase to the first floor, I thought about this some more.
Rollo de Warlencourt, the master whom we’d not yet met. This was his vase, that was his portrait of one of the King Charleses – I or II, they both had long hair – on a horse. And that was his beautiful circular ceiling high above, where his fat cherubs blew his clouds across his heavenly sky.
Cumberland Place was so different to Longcross. There were no cracked windows or worn carpets; everything was pristine. The walls were painted in delicate shades of duck-egg blue or turquoise, and there was gilding everywhere – on mirrors, picture frames and the rims of priceless Chinese vases. Not footballer gold, but pale, delicate, expensive gold, just like in the drawing room. Here on the stair there was Christmas greenery too – great swags of holly and ivy above the pictures and mirrors. The carpets were deep and silent, the wallpaper hand-painted, the chandeliers dripping diamond brilliants. If Longcross Hall was dark wood, Cumberland Place was bright glass. If Longcross was medieval, Cumberland Place was Georgian. And it all brought home to me that throughout history, before, since and in between, the de Warlencourts had been at the top of the tree. At every step we’d passed maids and footmen and under-butlers who were scuttling about discreetly to do the family’s bidding. Rollo had so much, and into the bargain he was running the whole show. He was the ruling class, and after him – could it be true? – his son would rule too.
If it bothered me, it bothered Shafeen a lot more.
Once Bates had shown us to three opulent rooms and then buggered off to have our cases collected from the car, we collected in the elegant chamber I’d been allocated and Shafeen went into full-on rant mode.
‘It’s shameful. Rollo de Warlencourt is an unelected representative, and he’s making the laws of the land. All because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.’
Nel said, ’I thought members of the Houses of Parliament were elected.’
‘The House of Commons, yes,’ countered Shafeen. ‘But the Lords are there either because they’ve been born with the privilege or they’ve been given a peerage by their cronies. No one’s elected them. So it’s full of the cream of society, as they are known.’
‘Because cream rises to the top, right?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘Samuel Beckett said it was because posh people are rich and thick. But you’re right, of course.’ He ran a hand over the silken curtains of the bed. ‘Cream rises to the top. And you know what else rises?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Scum. They are the scum of the earth, the Medievals, and the worst one is Rollo de Warlencourt, that arsehole who hunted my father at Longcross.’
I sat on the bed, which was nice and squashy. ‘Oh give it a rest, Shaf. We’ve got bigger problems.’
‘Like what?’
‘Are you kidding? Like the small matter of Henry being alive.’
He didn’t look at me or Nel, just shot back, ‘That’s highly unlikely.’
‘Whaddya mean?’ I replied. ‘She just said it. His own mother saw him at Longcross and he told her to expect us.’
‘And that’s impossible,’ he declared.
‘Then how did she know we were coming? And who told her about the three of us?’
‘The twins? I don’t know.’
Nel said reasonably, ‘I suppose, like she said, she had just seen them at Louis’s – and Cass’s – party.’
‘Where she said she also saw him.’
There was one ace I wanted to keep up my sleeve – the unassailable argument that I had seen him. But I did have one other card I could play. ‘Henry was not in the family tomb. How do you explain that?’
‘Greer …’
‘There was no one in the tomb,’ I repeated stubbornly. ‘You saw. You both saw.’
‘But the priest –’
‘Works for the family.’
‘And the police report –’
‘There were police reports both ways. One for alive, one for dead, remember. Each twin got one. And riddle me this: if Henry’s dead, how did he know we’d come here?’
‘If he’s alive, how did he know we’d come here?’ countered Shafeen. ‘We didn’t even know we were going to come here.’
I got up and walked to the window and looked out at the snowy park. Everything was blunted with snow, like the furniture I’d seen waiting under the dustsheets at Longcross. But it was all still there, all underneath. ‘When I went to Louis’s room in Honorius he was playing chess,’ I said. ‘He said there’s a human chessboard at Longcross and they all used to play on it when they were little: him, Cass and … Henry. And Henry had chessboard stockings, d’you remember, as part of his Medievals uniform at STAGS?’ I turned to face them both. ‘I think Henry’s playing chess with us now. We are all sliding around the board and he’s always one move ahead.’
‘So you do honestly think he’s alive?’ asked Nel.
‘Yes,’ I said, just as Shafeen at the exact same moment said, ‘No.’
‘Then how do you explain what Lady de Warlen- court – Caro – said?’
He shrugged. ‘There’s something a little off.’
‘About this place?’
‘About her. About the Countess of Longcross.’
‘How d’you mean?’ I asked.
‘She’s so … twitchy and abstracted. She’s like … Lady Macbeth in Act Five. All hollow and nervy and sort of not all there.’
I’d endured, rather than enjoyed, a movie of Macbeth recently. I remembered Marion Cotillard acting just like that as things started to unravel. Exactly as ‘Caro’ was behaving just before she realised we were in the room. Lady Macbeth, Lady de Warlencourt.
‘And did you see how Bates shut her up at tea?’ pressed Shafeen.
‘I think we all saw that,’ I said. ‘It was pretty unsubtle.’
‘I think he was trying to stop her saying something.’
‘Exactly. That Henry was alive.’
It was all getting a bit fraught, Shafeen and I facing each other like a warring couple with Nel in the middle like the kid in Kramer vs. Kramer. I had to break the tension. I gave a little laugh. ‘It’s Mulder and Scully 101.’
‘Not that again,’ sighed Shafeen, sounding tired. ‘Don’t tell me – Mulder believed in aliens, Scully didn’t.’
‘Well …’ said Nel slowly. She’d been fiddling with some monogrammed silver hairbrushes on the bedside table, trying to stay out of it. Now she spoke for the first time. ‘It’s not Mulder and Scully. But it is Louis and Cass. Cass wanted Henry to be alive. Louis didn’t. You two are the same.’
This was awkward. I couldn’t deny that I wanted Henry to be alive, but I didn’t like to be so transparent.
Nel broke the silence she’d created. ‘So are we actually going to stay here?’
‘Where else can we go?’
‘The Durrant Hotel. Like I said.’
‘We can’t exactly walk out now,’ said Shafeen. ‘Besides, we are here to do a job.’
‘What job?’ asked Nel.
‘To find out what’s going on,’ he replied. ‘To get to the bottom of all this conspiracy. I vote we stay.’
This, at least, we agreed on. ‘Me too. If Ty’s at Longcross, alone, we can cope here, the three of us. At least for one night. Dinner is always pretty illuminating at these places, don’t you think?’
‘And we get to meet the King of the World when he’s back from a hard day of ruling,’ said Shafeen scornfully.
I eyed him closely. I think whatever he said, he was dying to square up to the guy who had kicked sand in his father’s face all those years ago. There were bound to be fireworks.
‘Fine.’ Nel headed for the door.
‘Where are you going?’
She turned with a smile. ‘To … what did she call it? Freshen up.’
Once the door had closed Shafeen drew me to him. ‘I’m sorry, Greer,’ he said. ‘I lost my temper. There’s no excuse, but there is an explanation.’ He wound a strand of my gross hair between his fingers. ‘Just when I think I can relax, someone else says that bastard is alive.’
This was so breathtakingly honest I couldn’t help but react to it … In that moment I completely understood him. It was time to tell him what I’d decided in the hospital, that, whether Henry was alive or dead, it was Shafeen all the way, that I was ready to seal the deal. I hugged him tight, so tight. I kissed his lips tenderly and he kissed me back, not tenderly at all. My legs buckled and we ended up on the bed. Mostly my eyes were closed, but I opened them briefly and saw a flash of silver. What I saw made me shove Shafeen away from me and sit up.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not here. This is Henry’s room.’ I reached out and picked up the silver-backed hairbrush from the bedside table. The one Nel had been fiddling with. I turned the back to Shafeen so he could clearly see the curlicued monogram engraved in the silver.
H de W
He sat up too. ‘Jesus. They’ve put you in Henry’s room?’
‘Yes,’ I said, sitting up. ‘Look.’ There was a hand mirror and a comb there too, all with the same monogram.
Shafeen jumped up, as if he couldn’t bear to touch the covers that Henry had slept in.
‘It’s a double bed,’ he said slowly.
‘So?’
‘Presumably they think their golden boy is going to come back from Longcross and share the bed with you. That’s what all that “beautiful” stuff was about. Droit de seigneur. Jesus Christ!’
‘I thought you said he was dead.’
‘Oh, but it doesn’t matter what I think, does it?’ he said irrationally. ‘It matters what they think.’
‘Of course it matters what you think!’
I put my head in my hands, fingers raking through my greasy hair. ‘Look. Can we not do this now? I need to –’
‘Freshen up?’ His voice had a dangerous edge.
I got up too. ‘Well, wash my hair at least.’
‘Why?’ He’d gone suddenly still. ‘Why, Greer? Why do you need to wash your hair? Who are you washing it for?’ He looked me right in the eyes.
I couldn’t reply, because the answer was loop-the-loop, round-the-twist, batshit crazy.
I hesitated a second too long.
‘Got it,’ he said.
And he left the room.