A KNOCK ON HER DOOR. ‘ARE you up, Lily?’ Tom shouts.
Lily opens her eyes and slowly swivels her legs out of bed. The whispers of ghosts that have chased her in her sleep fade away. ‘I will be in a few minutes.’
‘The clues are already here. In presents in the drawing room, Sara found them first thing and she’s gone off with Gray into the grounds.’
‘Give me five minutes. Ten, tops, and I’ll be down.’
‘OK,’ Tom says, in the tone of voice that says it’s not OK. That there’s excitement to be had.
Lily smiles. Coming back here, Tom has regressed into a little boy in the best of ways.
*
In the drawing room, Lily holds the clue in her hand. The yellow ribbon with red spots that had wrapped up the present lies coiled like a measled snake. She reads it through another time, getting caught on some of the lines. Her heart aches once again.
We used to sing together, remember?
Weeping candles, mulling wine; you recall,
Perhaps, the ice-bound, snow-rimed December
Of ’97, on the twenty-fourth?
Outside the house, rose-cheeked, iron feet?
We sang as a family, the last time,
Then a duet till Eve fell into sleep.
Does it ring a festive bell? Does it chime?
It should. The next dark night my sister left
Us. Found by the valet inside the maze.
A strangely bloodless death. We were bereft,
Some even meant it. Today, the ache stays:
Faultline inside sedimentary rock,
Ready to crack open, never forgot.
Shame floods through her. How could Liliana do this? Spelling out her mother’s death in a sonnet. As if death can be made pretty by poetry. As if clues should be shoehorned into apparent suicide. But then, isn’t disproving that why she’s here?
‘God, I’m sorry, Lily,’ Tom says. ‘Can’t be easy to read this.’
‘And it’s not even true,’ Lily says. ‘I was the one who found her, not a valet.’
Tom grabs her arm. ‘Maybe that’s the point. In the first two sonnets, you pointed out areas that stood out as “wrong”.’
‘And this is definitely wrong,’ Lily agrees.
She reads it again, trying to calm herself. After all, Liliana told her that the answers would be revealed, and here she is addressing things head on. And what does this mean, ‘strangely bloodless’? She must have known Lily would try to remove the supposed blood and find it fake. Is it supposed to point to another method of her mum’s death? If she didn’t slit her wrists, why did everyone think that she did? And if not, how did she die? Strangled, as in the first clue?
‘Lily, are you OK?’ Tom is saying, waving his hands in front of her face.
‘I was just thinking,’ she replies.
‘Don’t ruminate, if you can help it,’ Tom says. ‘I know it’s difficult, and that sonnet’s not going to help.’ He pauses, kinks his head to one side. ‘Maybe we should play the game. Try to take your mind off your mum.’
‘And how is reading and rereading about her going to do that?’
‘For starters, we could work out what that bit about “valet” means, and go from there. At the very least, you’ll get to beat Sara again.’
He has a point. Concentrating on the poem will help her find out who really did kill Mum, and how she died. And that in itself will help her move on.
Lily looks over at the remaining two presents on the fire surround. The labels are addressed in Liliana’s handwriting to Philippa and Ronnie. She feels a pang – ghost handwriting to the dead. The gifts are wrapped in burgundy paper embossed with the maze, tied with those yellow and red-dotted ribbons. There’s something especially poignant about presents that will never be opened. Ribbons that will never be undone.
Lily reads through the poem again. ‘I think there’s something else in the poem that’s off.’
‘What is it?’ Tom jumps up and down, then stops himself. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Not appropriate in the circumstances.’
Lily smiles. ‘But it does take my mind off things.’
‘So,’ Tom says. ‘Let’s start with your odd part.’
‘There was one line that didn’t scan right, but that’s quite usual. Then I went back to it. “Outside the house, rose-cheeked, iron feet.” ’
‘I think it’s referring to when we sang carols that last year before you left,’ Tom says. He’s staring into middle distance as if he can see it. ‘We were all there. My mum and dad . . .’ he stops. His eyes flick over to her then away.
‘And my mum,’ Lily replies, keeping her voice flat as if held down by pattern weights.
‘I didn’t mean to . . .’ He rubs his hand over his face. ‘Told you I wasn’t good at this.’
‘It’s fine,’ Lily says, squeezing his arm. ‘Anyway, that line is one syllable short.’
‘You’re going to have to take me through it – you were the one who listened to Liliana, not me.’
‘Sonnets are in iambic pentameter,’ Lily says, ‘which means that there are five beats in every line, with a rhythm of iams.’
‘Yum. Cat food,’ Tom says.
Lily bites back a Sara-style sarcastic reply. ‘It’s an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable.’
Tom’s eyes are wide. ‘How do you remember all this?’
Lily feels herself flushing again. ‘Grandma Violet said I had a mind like hers. I can remember most things I hear, see or read, like in a video clip.’
‘You could be a spy, like her.’
‘Bit late for a new career,’ Lily says. ‘And Grandma was a codebreaker, not a spy.’
‘Never too late. And that’s what a spy would say,’ Tom says.
‘Aunt Liliana made it easy, too – she was a great teacher. She told me to remember it as “I am”, the stress on the am.’ Lily smiles at the memory. ‘She said that if I could state who I was with such emphasis then I would always hold my head high.’
‘And can you?’ Tom asks, gently.
‘Not yet,’ Lily replies. She tries to smile again but can’t.
‘OK, so that line is missing some kibble,’ Tom says. He reads through it, counting on his fingers.
‘It is, unless you count one of the words as two syllables.’
‘But that would be cheating, anyone could do that.’
Lily picks up Tom’s pen and adds an accent to one of the words, turning ‘rose’ into ‘rosé’.
‘Shit!’ He smiles. ‘Time to break out the wine.’
*
The steps down into the cellar creak under their feet.
‘Ssh,’ Tom whispers to them, ‘don’t give us away.’
Lily suppresses a giggle. She knows she shouldn’t be enjoying this. Upstairs, Ronnie is grieving and outside, Philippa won’t ever wake up, but part of Lily is revelling in solving the puzzle. And if she can solve the top layer of the clue, maybe she can find what’s in its cellar.
‘Whoa,’ Tom says, as he scans the floor-to-ceiling wine racks. ‘There must be thousands of bottles down here.’ He takes out a few and looks at the labels. ‘And arranged in alphabetical order by wine and region. Bet that was down to Aunt Liliana.’
‘Sara’s probably already had them valued,’ Lily replies.
‘Sounded like they made a right mess down here yesterday,’ Tom says, ‘but if it weren’t for the complete lack of dust, it looks as if nothing’s been touched. It’s all been put away.’
‘Which means that Mrs Castle was busy last night before . . .’ She can’t finish the sentence.
‘Before we found Philippa. Yes.’ He pauses, thinking. ‘You’d think she’d have heard something, being so near where Philippa died.’
‘You don’t think she could have – ’
‘Nah,’ Tom says. ‘Can’t see Mrs Castle as a killer. Although we don’t really know why she’s here. And we don’t know why Philippa was up in the night.’
‘Ronnie said something to me, before he went to rest. Something about Philippa going to check on someone.’
‘Someone?’
‘That’s what he thought.’
‘So, whoever she went to check on, could have killed her?’
‘It’s possible,’ Lily replies. ‘She didn’t tell him any more than that. At least not that he can remember.’
‘Maybe more will come back to him when the shock wears off,’ Tom says.
Fear rises in Lily. ‘What if Philippa was killed because she knows something? And what if Ronnie knows, too? Should we be keeping an eye on him, in case he’s a target?’
‘I think he’s safe, unless he recalls something important,’ Tom says.
Something twangs in Lily when he says ‘recalls’. She’s read it recently. In the sonnet. She separates the letters of the word RECALL out in her mind, and rearranges them. And then again, until they form a word.
‘What are you doing?’ Tom says, waving his hand in front of her face.
‘Reassuring myself that we’re in the right place.’
‘I believe you – where else would you keep rosé in a posh country house?’
‘In an anagram of “recall”.’
Tom takes a moment, then claps his hand. ‘Cellar! You’re brilliant, Lil. Any other idea where to look?’ He walks through into the next room that stores spirits. ‘It’s pretty big.’ Tom picks up a bottle of whisky and whistles. ‘Bottled in 1963! That’s ancient. Probably tastes terrible. Like old tyres and piss.’
‘Some things get better with age,’ Lily says.
Tom starts talking about all the many things that do get better, then worse with age, then better, then worse again, like Star Wars, but she’s focusing on the other line of the poem that stands out. There was no valet who found her mum. They didn’t even have a valet at the conference centre. There may have been one at the hotel, Lily supposes, she’d have to check. But that’s not going to help her find the key.
Why is she so keen to find it anyway? Part of her asks. The rest of her replies that she’s not keen, she’s just distracting herself, helping Tom. Besides, the better she knows the poems, the better she can unravel their secrets. And she may have found one of them.
‘ “Ready to crack open,” ’ she reads out.
‘You crack open bottles of wine,’ Tom says, breaking free of his monologue.
‘And to do that you . . .’ Lily waits for a reply.
‘I saw someone on telly use a sword to slice off the top and not lose a drop,’ Tom says.
‘And if you don’t have a sword to hand?’
‘Then I’d ask what kind of a country house this is?’ Tom stands with his hands on his hips in mock disgust. Then drops his hands when he sees her face. ‘OK, I’ll stop messing around. You uncork it.’
‘I think that’s where we’ll find the key – a “faultline inside sedimentary rock”.’
‘Wait, I get it,’ Tom says, getting out the poem from his pocket. ‘Sediment is found in bottles, and rock is an anagram of cork! It’s in one of the corks.’
Lily nods.
Tom reaches for her hand. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you this into anything for ages,’ he says.
‘I know, I shouldn’t be.’
‘Tragedy doesn’t mean that you can’t have joy,’ Tom says. ‘Sometimes emotions are back to back, connected. Like Grandma always said. Fear is the other side of the wall to excitement.’
‘I don’t see how death can be the other side of joy.’
‘It helps us appreciate life,’ he says.
‘You are very good at your job, you know.’
He lets go of her hand and gives a bashful grin. ‘Oh shush, you. Now, let’s get back to the task in hand. Uncorking all of this wine. We’ll have to drink it, I’m afraid. It’s the only way forward. Unless there’s a reason not to drink?’
Lily searches his face for signs he knows she’s pregnant, but there’s none. ‘Not sure that’s going to help us long term,’ she replies.
Tom pouts. ‘Fine. Presumably we’re looking for a rosé, then.’ He paces along each section. Right at the back, in the third of the cavernous rooms, he says, ‘Ah ha!’
Lily walks over to a wall of wine that looks like it’s been poured out of her pink bathtub.
‘Look at the poem again,’ Tom says. ‘Liliana would have given us something to go on. What about the valet thing?’
But Lily is already pulling out a wine right in the centre of the wall. She shows Tom the label.
‘Tavel,’ he says, frowning. Then he smiles. ‘Tavel!’ He’s got it.
*
‘I don’t get it,’ Holly says.
They’re in the kitchen, where Lily is digging the cork out of the bottle. She had tried using a corkscrew first but it had got stuck on the key buried in the centre.
‘You mix up the letters in valet,’ Rachel says, patiently. ‘And you—’
‘That I get,’ Holly interrupts, ‘But, Lily, why did you go down to the basement? There were clues pointing towards the cellar yesterday, and yesterday was a trick.’
‘That’s my mother for you,’ Sara replies. ‘Try being her child. She liked to misdirect, and then laugh at me when I ended up in the wrong place.’ She turns to Tom. ‘And you call me cruel and obtuse. She’d have loved seeing me trot down to the cellar yesterday then reading the clue and assuming she was doing the same today.’ Sara folds her arms.
‘Liliana can’t be trusted, even when six feet under,’ Rachel says.
‘Mum was cremated,’ Gray says. ‘She’s in a pot at home.’
‘She’s in a pot here, actually,’ Sara says.
Lily looks up to see Gray’s face get even paler. ‘Why?’ he asks in a voice that reminds Lily of when he was a little boy.
‘I thought she should be scattered at her precious Endgame,’ Sara replies. ‘She’s in my washbag. I should get her out, pop her on the mantelpiece so she can see how her game is playing out.’ Sara, too, has regressed, to the angry little girl she used to be. Summoning rage to stand in front of the tears. For the first time, Lily truly sees the impact Liliana’s ways have had on her eldest biological child. Her aunt spent so much time with Lily that it’s no surprise that Sara is resentful. She never could live up to Liliana’s idea of a great brain. Now she never would. And Liliana could never now be the mother she should have been to Sara.
Gray also looks as if he’s about to cry. ‘She didn’t want to be in the ground,’ he says. ‘She hated being cold.’
‘Fine, then we’ll stick her by the boiler in the airing cupboard. She’ll love it. It’ll be like that Caribbean holiday she never took us on.’
Gray raises a hand to wipe away a loose tear. His sleeve drops back, showing a bandage around his wrist. Seeing Lily looking, Gray places his hands behind his back. He then walks away, trying to tug his jumper over his hands. Oh Gray. Not again.
The knife slips while Lily isn’t looking. It flicks up, nicking her other hand holding the rim of the bottle. Blood trickles onto the cork.
‘Careful,’ Tom says. ‘Do you want me to do it?’
‘She doesn’t need a man to help, Tom,’ Sara says.
Lily gives her a smile which is thrown back with a scowl. Fine. It’s easier this way.
The cork comes out, piece by piece. At last, Lily is able to pincer out a part with the key in. Peeling off the remainder of the cork, she holds it up. ‘The third key,’ she says.
‘I wish I had your brain, Lily,’ Holly says.
An expected feeling of pride bubbles up inside Lily. She’s not used to thinking of her mind as anything other than an internal representation of her flat – piled high in a jumble sale of material that will never be used.
‘I’d keep your own brain,’ Sara says. ‘Lily is all alone in hers. You get to be loved.’
And Lily’s fizzing pride dies like uncorked champagne at the end of the night.
As she puts the key in her pocket, she remembers about Philippa’s. ‘When you moved Philippa’s body, did you find her key?’ she asks Sara.
‘I hope you’re not accusing me of anything?’ Sara says, moving forwards, hands on her hips.
Tom holds up his arms. ‘Nobody’s accusing anyone. It’s a valid question, and you brought it up the night she died.’
‘No one will have killed her just for the key, though,’ Holly says. ‘That’s no justification.’
‘You think there is a valid justification for murder?’ Sara says, glaring at Holly now.
Holly backs away. ‘Not at all, I just—’
‘How about,’ Tom says, standing between Sara and Holly like a mediator in an unequal boxing match, ‘when Ronnie wakes up, we look in their room for the key. It’ll be in a drawer, or a jewellery box or somewhere. We don’t know till we look.’
‘Makes sense,’ Sara says, the grudge in her voice obvious. She turns to Lily. ‘But are you sure you want that key, if Philippa could have been killed for hers?’
A shiver slides its finger up Lily’s spine. The keys don’t matter. She has to stay focused on who killed her mum. ‘You keep it then,’ she says, handing Sara the key.
Tom takes a deep breath. He’ll give her grief for that later. Right now, she doesn’t care. She pictures Philippa in her ice tomb and knows she doesn’t want to be there. Lily realises, then, that she’s conjuring Philippa lying on her back, but she wouldn’t be able to.
‘When you moved Philippa,’ Lily says, ‘you made sure you didn’t touch the knife, didn’t you?’
Sara nods. ‘Of course. I’ve seen Line of Duty. Although . . .’ she pauses.
‘Although what?’ Tom prompts, with a sigh that says, ‘What have you done now?’
‘Gray reached out to steady it when we turned her over to place her on the ice.’
‘Face down?’ Rachel says, shuddering.
‘It was either that or pull the knife out,’ Sara says. ‘And that would be tampering with evidence.’
‘Bit late for that,’ Tom replies.
*
Lily opens the back door to see Gray leaning on the wall, smoking a cigarette as thin as he is. ‘Would you like one?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. She gave up when she found out she was pregnant, and only had a week of bone-deep cravings before she found the smell of cigarette smoke made her feel sick. Same as red wine. From here, she can see Sara in the kitchen. If only pregnancy aversion kept her away from toxic people as well as substances.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ Gray asks, in surprise, as if she’d have no reason for being out of the house.
‘To check on Philippa,’ Lily says. ‘Feels wrong her being alone.’
Gray nods. ‘I went earlier for the same reason. But it’ll be difficult to get out there now. The snow’s been coming on thick.’
He’s right. Despite the bright start to the day, the snow had resumed without her noticing.
‘Don’t worry. She’s OK,’ Gray says. ‘I secured the ice house. Made sure no animals could get in.’
‘Right,’ Lily says, blinking. ‘Well done.’ She hadn’t even thought of that.
Gray sucks on his cigarette and blows out the smoke. The edge of his bandage shows over his cuff.
‘Are you OK, though?’ Lily asks. She gently touches his sleeve.
Gray backs away. ‘It’s not what you think. I had an accident.’
Lily nods, because that’s what you do.
‘No, really. Ask Sara. I was chopping wood. For the fire in her room, and slipped. That’s all.’
‘You can tell me anything,’ Lily says. ‘I really do understand.’
Gray looks into her eyes and comprehension passes between them. ‘I know you do.’ He looks as if he’s considering it, maybe weighing up whether Lily is worth investing with his problems.
‘If you’d rather not talk to me, I know Tom would be happy to listen.’
‘He is a good listener,’ Gray says, nodding slowly. He then drops his cigarette into the snow and watches as the spark dies. ‘The dead listen, too.’
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Lily says, ‘for Philippa’s sake.’
‘I’m glad I am, too. She’s my first proper dead person.’
Unnerved, Lily watches as Gray walks slowly, sedately, across the kitchen garden, and back into the house.