We must have presented a strange sight, had there been anyone present to observe us. We had all put on whatever clothing we could find that would fit us and help keep us warm. There was a log fire blazing in the hearth, but in spite of this the temperature in the dining hall was on the cold side of frigid. Barbara had utilised a device I’d never seen before to keep the food warm. It was a water-heated serving dresser, like a forerunner of the Hostess cabinet. Brian had produced a couple of bottles of claret which he placed on the hearth close to the fire to keep at drinkable temperature. ‘We dare not light the fire in here during daylight hours,’ Barbara explained, ‘the smoke from the chimney would have been a dead giveaway. We were lucky that Brian’s father had the Aga converted to run on oil, otherwise we’d have had to survive on cold rations. Only the reception rooms and the bedrooms have central heating, and it’s temperamental at the best. Don’t worry, there’s an open fire in your room. I lit it an hour ago.’
‘If that’s not sufficient,’ Brian added, ‘I’m sure you can find some way to keep each other warm.’
‘Brian, don’t be vulgar,’ Barbara scolded him. He grinned sheepishly, but winked at me. I was still marvelling at the extent of his recovery, when Barbara asked, ‘Anyway, how did you find us? How did you know we were here?’
‘Adam worked it out from the amount of food you took from Linden House. He realized you would have needed access to fridges and freezers otherwise a lot of it would have gone off before you could eat it.’
‘We had this long discussion about whether or not to tell you where we were hiding. In the end we decided it was safer for us; and fairer for you. That way you couldn’t be dragged into the case as accessories, or tricked or bullied into giving away our location.’
‘I’m glad we didn’t know; it made it far easier to deny any knowledge of you when Ogden pressed us.’
‘In the end, it was academic anyway.’ Brian grinned as he explained, ‘The phone lines to the Hall have all been disconnected. That’s hardly surprising, as the house has been empty for the past twelve months.’
‘I’m surprised the electricity was still on.’
Brian smiled. ‘It wasn’t. They switched it off at the main, but luckily they didn’t disconnect the supply, so all I had to do was locate the switches and turn it back on. It only took a few seconds.’
‘Yes, it took far longer to go round every room in the house,’ Barbara interrupted, ‘to ensure that no lights had been left on. A task I was given, for some reason that I haven’t yet fathomed.’
‘It’s called the art of delegation, I believe.’
The derisive snort Barbara gave expressed her opinion of the art of delegation better than words.
‘We had to make certain that there was no risk of anyone passing by seeing lights on in a house that was supposedly unoccupied,’ Brian explained. ‘We were restricted to four rooms at the back of the house where we knew we wouldn’t be overlooked.’
‘Plus the bedroom,’ Barbara added; then blushed.
Brian changed the subject quickly. ‘So you worked out where we were simply by taking note of the food we’d got from Barbara’s fridge and freezer?’
I nodded. ‘Of course it was easier for me because I knew your identity, which Ogden didn’t.’
‘Nevertheless, it was a bit of clever detective work.’ Brian paused, before changing the subject. ‘I owe you both an apology. The time I met you, after Eve hit me on the head, I was confused, but nowhere near as badly as I made out. I put on a bit of an act because I wasn’t sure who you were, or what your intentions might have been. Seeing you there in the place where Babs should have been, almost immediately after I’d seen the children really threw me. When anything happens to upset me, I tend to regress, so the safest thing to do was to retreat back into the forest. If Babs hadn’t come looking for me, I might not have ventured out again for weeks, months perhaps.’
‘I suspected it was Brian who’d been at Linden House but I couldn’t be sure. Even when he rescued me from Charles I had my doubts; his voice was wrong.’
‘What made you suspect?’ Eve asked.
‘It was the skipping rhyme. Brian always got the words wrong. I used to tease him about it when we were children. He said “covered with blood” instead of “covered in blood”. So when Adam repeated that verse and told me exactly what the tramp had said, I thought the coincidence too strong. So I went to find out.’
‘Queen’s English,’ Brian added by way of explanation. He got to his feet. ‘We could have eaten in the kitchen, but we thought it worth celebrating tonight. Hence the posh nosh and the claret.’
He walked over to the hearth and retrieved one of the bottles to top up our glasses. He raised his to Barbara’s. ‘Here’s to the future; and to the future mistress of Rowandale Hall.’
Congratulations followed, and when the meal was over, we pulled our chairs around the fireplace, which enabled us to peel off at least one layer of clothing as we chatted about their plans and so much more.
Although Brian Latimer appeared much improved, I was concerned that bringing up the subject of his past, and in particular stirring up memories of his imprisonment and torture could have damaged his fragile recovery. In retrospect, however, I think being able to tell his story to comparative strangers proved far more therapeutic than harmful. The other, unforeseeable result of where the conversation led us was without doubt the most astonishing outcome of the evening.
It was Eve who touched on the subject first. ‘How does it feel to be back here in the Hall?’ she asked, ‘It must be a bit strange, given the circumstances surrounding your departure. We were told about the row with your father,’ she added.
‘I had to bully and cajole him to get him inside,’ Barbara explained.
‘I thought the place would have been locked, barred, and bolted to prevent burglary, or squatters and the like. How did you get in?’ I asked.
Brian chuckled. ‘The same way I used to sneak in when I’d been out late as a teenager. I devised a foolproof way of getting inside without anyone knowing. It still works, even after all these years.’
‘Go on, tell us.’
‘I turned myself into a sack of coal.’ Latimer’s smile widened at our puzzled expressions. ‘There’s a chute where they used to tip coal into the cellar. Although there’s a cover over the entrance, there’s no lock on it, simply a bolt. If the insurance company knew how vulnerable the Hall was, they’d probably have cancelled the contents policy immediately. That method of entry isn’t available any longer. I secured it once we were safely inside.’
‘And you’ve no regrets about being here, now you’ve spent time in the Hall?’
Brian stared into the fire, seemingly lost in watching the flames that danced and curled round the bark of the logs he’d just placed there. Eventually, he cleared his throat and spoke, his voice quiet and reflective. ‘My father wasn’t an easy man. Not someone you could warm to, or get to know easily. He was unapproachable; people thought him arrogant, which wasn’t really true. They didn’t appreciate the problems he had to contend with. To be fair, neither did I, and I was far closer to him than most. Outsiders only saw the estate and believed there must be a fortune to go with it. That certainly wasn’t so when I was growing up.
‘It didn’t help that my mother died when I was born. That left Father to bring me up with only his mother to help. Not that Grandma was much help. She had her own problems.’ He touched his forehead with one finger. ‘The estate was all but bankrupt. Father managed to rescue it but I think the strain took its toll. He was remote sometimes, at other times he’d rant and rave; then again you’d find him in a jovial mood, the best of company.
‘At the time he accused me of theft he was–let’s be charitable and call him unpredictable–whereas I was young, impetuous, hot-headed, and with a violent temper.’
‘You still are,’ Barbara interrupted, ‘except you’re no longer young.’
Brian grinned at the insult. ‘True enough, I reckon.’
The fact that he responded well to the ribbing was another sign of how far he’d come along the road to recovery.
‘I was so furious and sad that he should even begin to believe that I would steal from him. So I told him that if he thought so little about me, could suspect me of such dishonesty, then I wanted nothing more to do with the Hall, the estate, and in particular I never wanted to speak to him or see him ever again.’
He smiled with bitter irony. ‘Well, I got my wish there. I left here determined never to set foot in the place again. I was determined that the Latimer dynasty had run its course here. Future generations would have to live elsewhere.’
‘If you and Babs were so close, then why didn’t you leave together?’ Eve asked.
‘Barbara was away when I walked out. Not having Barbara to share my troubles with was the darkest moment of my life. I wrote her a letter, including the address and phone number of friends in York. I asked her to call me. I said I’d be there until my visa was sorted out and begged her to come to America with me. When she didn’t reply, I assumed it was over between us. I even wondered if she believed the stories about me. If she, like everyone else, thought I was a thief, then that explained her failure to call.’
‘Not everyone believed the tale,’ I corrected him. ‘Stan Calvert didn’t, for one. Neither did his father. Stan got into several fights because of it.’
‘Really? Good for Stan. As it turned out, Babs didn’t believe the lies either.’
‘I never got that letter,’ Barbara explained. ‘When Brian told me what he’d done with it, I knew why. He left it with the butler to deliver; the man who was sacked and went to jail for the theft Brian had been accused of. He hadn’t even the decency to pass the letter on.’
‘How mean and spiteful,’ Eve said, her tone furious. She looked at Brian. ‘So you didn’t know that your father had become aware of your innocence?’
‘No; by the time the truth came out I was busy dodging Viet Cong bullets.’
‘And when I believed Brian left without a word I could only think that he didn’t want me. I thought he meant more to me than I did to him. I’d have gone anywhere with him; all he had to do was ask. But I waited for word from him and when nothing came. I got angry. Finally, we heard that he’d been killed in Mexico. I believed it, like everyone else. In desperation, I married Charles Lewis.’
‘Why did you return here, Brian? Why hide in the forest?’ I asked.
‘That’s not easy to explain, because my mind was still mixed up.’
‘It still is,’ Barbara interposed.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Brian smiled briefly, then his face changed as he related some of what he had undergone at the hands of the North Vietnamese. How he had been detained for three years, brainwashed, kept in solitary confinement, and beaten on a regular basis. ‘The American prisoners were kept together, so that they could be paraded in order to prove how brilliant the Viet Cong were. By contrast, I was kept hidden, as I believe other non-US personnel were. This was because they were afraid their people might wonder how just the cause they were fighting for was if people from different nationalities were contesting it.
‘They never referred to me by anything other than “English”. “Now you eat, English. Now you talk, English. Now we punish you, English”. That last one was their favourite.
‘By the time I managed to escape the war was as good as over. It took me ages to get back to Europe. I was stateless, homeless, rootless, and pretty much mindless. Eventually, I managed to make my way to Yorkshire.’
He stopped speaking and sipped his wine. ‘The answer to your other question, why live in the forest? That’s simple. After I escaped in Vietnam, the only way I managed to avoid being recaptured was to stay in the forest; in deep cover, living off the land. The Vietnamese think they’re pretty good in the forest, but I was better, thanks to the military and all the training I got in my youth with Zeke and Stan. When I got back here, the forest seemed the most natural place to be. It was only when I saw Barbara again that I realized I’d been fooling myself. She was the real reason I’d returned.’
‘When was that?’
‘I’d seen her out with the horses several times but was unsure of my reception. I certainly didn’t know I was supposed to be dead! Goodness knows who that poor devil was,’ he added. ‘Once I’d been inside Linden House with you that awoke a lot of sleeping memories; ones I’d suppressed, but these were happy ones.’
Brian’s mention of the racing stables prompted my next question. I had no idea that his answer would provide the key to the riddle surrounding the murders and everything connected with them.
‘What were you doing in that loose box when Eve disturbed you?’
‘I went inside to look for something I hid there just before I left for America.’
‘But there wasn’t anything in the loose box. The room was completely empty.’ Barbara said.
Brian looked at her, seemingly reluctant to explain. ‘It wasn’t quite empty. I found what I was looking for. Unfortunately I seem to have lost it again.’
I fumbled in my jacket pocket, produced the gold coin and passed it to Brian. ‘Was this is it? Was this what you were looking for?’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘It was on the loose box floor. You must have dropped it when Eve clouted you. But why did you hide it in the first place? I mean, what made you choose that place?’
As I spoke, I glanced at Barbara, who had gone red in the face. Brian too appeared embarrassed. He looked at her, saw her nod of approval. ‘It was in that loose box that we first made love.’
Tactfully, I changed the subject. ‘Where did you get the coin from?’
‘My father gave me it on my twenty-first birthday.’
‘That was an unusual coming-of-age present. Did he explain why he chose that?’
Brian smiled. ‘Don’t get me wrong, that wasn’t the only present he gave me. He told me his mother had given him it when he was twenty-one, and he decided to do the same for me. Then he told me a very strange tale. Even now I don’t know how much, if any of it is true; and how much came from either his imagination or my grandmother’s ramblings.’
It had been clear from Barbara’s response that this was the first time she’d heard of the coin’s history. She hadn’t recognized it when I’d shown her it at Linden House, now it was obvious she didn’t know it belonged to Brian, which I found rather surprising, until I realized that this must have been only weeks before he’d left Rowandale.
Barbara’s question confirmed my thoughts, and her slight pique at not having been taken into Brian’s confidence earlier. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about it, Brian? I liked your grandmother, even though she was dotty. I’d have loved to have heard one of her weird stories.’
‘You were away when Father gave me the coin. He told me it was the Latimer family legacy, and then laughed. I can understand now why he thought it was comical. For years the estate had been run down, the Hall had been mortgaged to the hilt, and there had been times when there was barely enough money to pay the wages. He’d spent most of his waking hours with his nose buried in the Financial Times, trying to find a way to dig us out of the hole we were in. To his eternal credit and a huge slice of luck he managed it, and secured the estate for the future.’
‘How did he do that?’
‘He invested every penny he could spare in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries just as they were beginning to make huge leaps and bounds via technological advances. The shares he’d bought rocketed in value, and he was lucky enough or astute enough to sell out when they were at their peak. That’s how I came to have money of my own; the other part of my twenty-first present.
‘As for the coin, you have to take everything with a pinch of salt. As Barbara said, my grandmother was far from normal. I think they call it senile dementia. Amongst her strange behaviour she’d taken to wandering around the Hall and the estate clad only in her nightgown. That wasn’t the worst part of it. If anyone tried to stop her, she’d get extremely angry and accuse them of trying to steal her fortune. Her language was appalling, using words we didn’t even think she knew. Given our circumstances, I suppose the idea that we had a fortune or anything worth stealing had its comical side. Father said she was beginning to act and talk strangely even before he was given the coin. He blamed the fact that Grandfather had died young and she’d been on her own for so long with the whole burden of managing the estate on her shoulders.
‘The gist of her tale was that the coin came from Africa, Cameroon to be exact. I do know that Grandfather had been posted there as a young infantry captain at the outbreak of the First World War, so at least that part has an element of truth to it. Apparently he returned to Africa once the war was over, and that was when he contracted the tropical disease which killed him. In her lucid moments she used to talk about him. It was all rather sad. He used to lock himself away in the study for hours on end; only emerging when it was time for dinner. Towards the end, he even stopped doing that, and eventually, he died in there. I think that is possibly why my father never used the study much.’
‘What possessed your grandfather to go back to Africa?’ Barbara asked.
‘That’s exactly what I asked Father; and that’s where the fantastical part of the story comes in. According to Grandma, he went to recover some treasure he and another soldier had looted from a dead German. If you believe Grandma, it was worth a fortune, even at the values current all those years ago.’
‘Surely he would have cashed the treasure in long ago, especially if the estate needed money so badly,’ Eve objected.
‘He might have been tempted to, if it existed at all, but that might not have been possible. The coins would have been seen as stolen property in the eyes of the authorities. It’s regarded as theft if it’s carried out by private individuals, but it’s the spoils of war if the government does it. Grandma reckoned he knew he was dying; knew he would never be able to profit from it personally, and decided to secrete the treasure somewhere around the house or the estate. He told her there was a document hidden somewhere that would provide a clue to whoever went looking for the gold once the heat died down. As I recall, she said something along the lines of, “Your grandfather told me the clues he had left would shed light on the whereabouts of a hidden fortune to anyone who knew how to interpret his message. I hope they’ll find it when the time is right”. Whatever she thought he meant by that, I really don’t know.’
‘That last bit seems to bear out the theory that he dare not cash them in for fear of being arrested,’ Barbara pointed out. ‘If we’re to believe any of it, that is.’
Brian smiled a trifle sadly. ‘That’s it; now you have one small example of why we thought Grandma was loopy, God bless her.’