The room emptied silently like an assembly hall full of admonished children. Marnie couldn’t look at them as they filed out. Her focus fell on the cabinet full of Lilian’s artefacts once broken and mended with gold. Imperfectly perfect. Or was it perfectly imperfect? Lionel was last out of the door. He closed it gently behind him and gave her a smile of support.
‘Come closer, dear,’ said Mr Wemyss, beckoning her forward from the back of the room to the chair which Titus had occupied, still warm from his great fat body. ‘I expect this has come as quite a shock to you.’
‘Bit of an understatement,’ she answered.
‘Congratulations, Miss Salt. You are now the Lady of the Manor of Wychwell. You can’t sell it, of course, but the revenue it raises will all be yours and your heirs’. I understand you are already quite au fait with its potential.’
Marnie’s mouth opened to ask questions, but it was as if they were all rolled up into a hard ball that refused to budge from her throat.
‘Why . . . why me?’ was all she eventually managed.
Mr Wemyss pulled out an envelope pressed between the pages of his notebook. It bore Marnie’s name on the front, in old lady spider scrawl.
‘This should explain. Or, at least lead to the explanation.’
‘Can I open it now?’
‘Be my guest.’
Marnie hesitated. This, she suspected, was a life-changing moment. This was when she found out if she was a Dearman herself. If it was more than coincidence that she shared the dark, green-eyed looks of the woman who had her portrait on the staircase and that her birth date matched that of Lilian’s pregnancy. Her heart felt as if it was beating in her mouth when she slit the top of the envelope open with her finger. She lifted out the heavy hammered sheet of paper, unfolded it and read.
My dear Marnie,
If you are reading this, then I am with you no more. But I die knowing that Wychwell is in the safest of hands, of that I have no doubt now. Lilian was right to trust you.
I have written the full story in my journal, but let dearest Lionel tell you, in his own words, about us.
I wish you a long, healthy and happy life and one full of love. God bless you.
Your great friend Emelie Tibbs x
Lionel. Why Lionel. About us? Who is us? She was no more enlightened and felt the crush of disappointment deep in her chest.
‘Emelie was a very wealthy woman, Marnie,’ said Mr Wemyss. ‘Her family might have arrived from Austria with nothing but the clothes on their backs, but her father was a shrewd investor and taught his daughter how to play the markets well.’
Mr Wemyss handed a sheet of paper to Marnie.
‘The bulk of the money is bequeathed to the Wychwell estate to help with the rebuilding and upkeep. The sums earned from Emelie’s literary works are to be for your personal consumption. I will prepare a breakdown for you in due course.’
Emelie’s literary works. So, she was Penelope Black, Marnie had been right all along.
She read the figures on the paper and the numbers started to swim around. They could rebuild London with that amount, never mind a piddly little village in the middle of the Dales.
‘Why . . . I don’t . . . why did Emelie live in a tiny damp cottage then if she . . . she had this?’
‘I think you should let Lionel Temple explain everything to you,’ said Mr Wemyss, reaching down for his briefcase. ‘I shall be in touch re the transfers of money and various other paperworks of which there are many.’ He stood and held out his hand and Marnie lifted hers to meet it.
‘Lilian and Emelie spoke very highly of you, Miss Salt. Enjoy your good fortune. It is a unique one and I hope a tide-turner.’
Marnie sat on the chair in front of the beautiful desk and she thought, I own that desk now. She owned the carpet it was sitting on, the room it featured in, the manor in which it was housed. And the lake, the lands, the farm, even Titus Salt’s house. Everything. She owned the beautiful Japanese Kintsugi pieces mended with gold. All of it. She would need to absorb this in bite-sized pieces. She knew how lottery winners must feel now. She’d nearly had an aneurysm the day she won a hundred pounds on a scratch card so she had no chance of taking all this in in one gulp.
She heard a soft knock on the door and then it cracked open. Lionel.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked. Marnie nodded. He put his hand on her shoulder and she raised her eyes to his.
Emelie’s voice whispered from the page: . . . but let dearest Lionel tell you, in his own words . . .
‘Are you my father, Lionel?’ Marnie asked.
‘My lovely girl,’ he smiled, sitting beside her, taking her trembling hands in his. ‘I only wish I were.’