Viola found herself thinking about Chase Matthews again after her brother had left for London. Why was he still hanging around the estate? And why did it bother her so much that he was?
She hadn’t seen either Seraphina or David for a few days and she wondered what was happening about the house, or if another buyer had been found. Since the argument with Chase, Viola had tried to go about her days pretending everything was as it should be, trying to believe that this was a normal summer, not the last one she might ever spend here.
Was there any way that Haverford could be saved? The only way she could think of was if there was some reason for the Conservation Trust to get involved, and even if she could find a reason to interest them, the trust would want to make substantial changes. The stories of Annie Bishop would certainly have to stop. The trust was a serious historical and conservational body – it was unlikely to want to keep peddling local legends. Annie Bishop would be confined to pub gossip.
But at least I’d still have a job, Viola thought to herself.
And keeping her job was important to her. She knew that her brother often thought her indecisive and she knew that indecisiveness frustrated him. But this time she knew exactly what she wanted – she wanted to keep Haverford open to the public. She just needed to work out how before David Montagu sold the whole estate.
She decided to call Seraphina and see how she was. She should probably tell her that she’d seen Chase wandering the grounds. He had been a paying visitor and was entitled to be on the estate during opening hours but she’d told him that they tried to avoid the public going near the old boathouse, so why had he chosen that specific place? It was a bit odd. She flipped open her phone and checked for reception. It was usually quite good on the estate since a new mobile phone mast had been built on the other side of Cranmere. Surprisingly, the villagers hadn’t objected to it, instead embracing modern communication methods. Cranmere was remote enough, especially in the winter.
‘Viola darling,’ Seraphina said when she answered the phone. ‘I’ve been meaning to call you. We must catch up.’
‘I just wondered if there were any further developments on the sale of the estate,’ Viola said. ‘Sorry, I’ve been so busy with the festival since we last spoke.’ She didn’t mention that she’d been avoiding thinking about what might happen at the end of the summer and especially avoiding thinking about the house being turned into a hotel.
‘We must catch up though,’ Seraphina went on. ‘I haven’t had a chance to apologise for all that fuss the other day over the hotel business. I’m so sorry. What must your brother think of us?’
‘Oh, don’t worry, he knows what families can be like.’
‘I just can’t believe that David didn’t tell me he was trying to sell to Montgomery Hotels and that man you went out with was Reese Montgomery’s son. Did you know?’
‘Of course I didn’t know! I would have said something if I’d so much as had a feeling about it.’
‘Well, I’m terribly sorry about it all anyway. Come to dinner tonight and let me make it up to you. David is in America on business so he won’t interrupt us with a new scheme. Bring your brother too.’
‘Sebastian’s had to go to London for a couple of days,’ Viola replied, thinking that if David was in America there was definitely no need for Chase to still be here. What was he up to?
‘Just the two of us then,’ Seraphina replied. ‘Shall we say about seven?’
*
After she’d finished work for the day, and before it was time to go down to the dower house for dinner, Viola walked out to the far side of the lake to where she and Sebastian had last seen Chase. She didn’t expect to bump into anyone. The grounds had closed for the day and the Shakespeare Festival was yet to open, but she felt compelled to have a look, to check that he hadn’t secreted himself somewhere after closing time, still in cahoots with David Montagu. Or even to go ghost hunting as he’d joked about the first time they’d met. He had seemed so genuine, so interested in the house and grounds and everything that had happened there. Viola had well and truly been taken for a fool.
There was definitely nobody about – just her and a few birds – but that didn’t stop her wondering why Chase had been lurking around. What was his purpose? What had he seen when she’d brought him here that had compelled him to come back, despite claiming that Haverford shouldn’t be sold as a hotel?
Viola decided to leave the birds to it and walked back across the grounds to the dower house. Perhaps she wouldn’t tell Seraphina about seeing Chase again. It was just another thing to worry her with and until Viola knew more, perhaps she should keep it to herself.
They talked about the Shakespeare Festival over plates of spaghetti Bolognese.
‘What’s it like to see Sebastian again?’ Seraphina asked. ‘Has he forgiven us for our silliness? I must introduce myself properly when he comes back from London. I can’t believe he saw me shouting my head off like that.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘A film star at Haverford and I’m screaming like a Banshee.’
‘It’s so lovely to have him here, to see him every day. I think this is the most we’ve seen of each other in one go since I left Australia. And don’t worry about the other day. Seb thought it was funny to be honest.’
‘I’m still so angry with David about it. I just don’t think I can bear to see the house become a hotel.’
‘Ultimately it will be up to David, though, won’t it?’ Viola said despondently.
‘Well yes, but I think I’ve managed to buy us some breathing space for now at least. Although what good it will do I don’t know. The estate will have to be sold eventually.’
They fell into silence for a moment so Viola changed the subject.
‘You know, Seb really loves it here. He’s been wondering what I’ve been doing out here in the middle of nowhere but now he’s seen Haverford he understands. He’s taken to wandering the grounds in between rehearsals.’
‘That’s lovely to hear.’ Viola is sure she hears a note of sadness in Seraphina’s voice.
‘I took him up to the other side of the lake where the disused boathouse is the other day.’
‘That was always one of my husband’s favourite parts of the estate – it’s one of the reasons why I don’t advertise it to the public. If they come across it by accident that’s OK, but it keeps it peaceful, doesn’t it, if people aren’t walking around there all day.’
‘I can stop taking people up there if you prefer,’ Viola said thinking rather guiltily that her brother hadn’t been the only person she’d taken to the boathouse that week.
‘No, no,’ Seraphina interrupts. ‘It’s beautiful up there and I don’t mind staff and so on going up. Jeremy and I used to walk up there a lot when he was alive but, well… I’ve told you about how Jeremy’s mother and aunt closed up the boathouse after their brother died.’
Viola watched as the dowager countess sat back in her chair and looked away slightly as though remembering.
‘This was before the First World War of course,’ Seraphina went on. ‘They kept a small boat in the boathouse and as soon as Daniel Montagu came home from boarding school each summer he and Cecily and Prunella spent their days there. I imagine in many ways they barely knew there was a war going on for half of their childhoods. Daniel and his mother died after the war and that was when they shut it all up. When we moved back here and Jeremy opened up the house, he tried to keep that area as private as possible in memory of the uncle he never knew.’
‘He never knew his aunt either did he?’ Viola asked, even though she knew the answer.
Seraphina shook her head. ‘No, Prunella died before he was born as well. There was so much tragedy in that family.’ She paused and looked at Viola. ‘That was why it was so important to my husband to move back here, open the house up and breathe new life into it. Before the First World War Haverford was the hub of everything around here, but afterwards things were never the same I suppose.’
‘That must have been true for so many similar families and estates,’ Viola said quietly.
‘Of course. The world changed a lot after that war. But locking up the house and moving to London didn’t help. I do understand why Lord Albert did it but so many people lost their livelihoods because of it, and Jeremy used to think about that a lot. Then after Albert finally died – he lived to be ninety-two you know – and Jeremy became earl, he always wanted to do something about that. We’d only been married a year when Lord Albert died and it was a while before we had the money to put into reopening the house. It cost us a lot, both financially and emotionally, but it’s not something I ever regretted.’
‘When did you open it to the public?’ Viola asked.
‘After Jeremy’s death. There were a lot of taxes and so forth to pay and it wiped the coffers out somewhat. I moved to the dower house and we began opening the house to the public. David and I have been arguing about it ever since, but it was something I wanted to do, something I had to try. And then you arrived out of nowhere and saved the day.’
‘Only temporarily saved the day,’ Viola said.
‘Yes… well…’
‘And how do you feel now?’
‘The world has changed again, many times.’ Seraphina sniffed and shook herself as though pulling herself together. ‘And it’s time for us all to move on.’
‘No second thoughts?’
‘We don’t have the money for second thoughts anymore, my love,’ Seraphina said leaning across the table and squeezing Viola’s hand briefly. ‘Besides, ultimately it’s not my decision to make as you said. It’s David’s.’
Viola decided that tonight was definitely not the time to say anything at all about whether or not Chase Matthews was hanging about the disused boathouse.
*
‘Have you made a decision?’ Viola asked Sebastian when he had returned from London. ‘Are you going back to Sunset Bay?’
They were sitting in the folly, which had become their favourite place to meet in the early evening. Today when they’d met, Sebastian had reached for his customary cigarette but had changed his mind, putting the packet back in his pocket. ‘I’m trying to give up,’ he’d said. ‘You’re right – it’s a disgusting habit.’ It wasn’t often he listened to his sister.
Now he nodded slowly in response to his sister’s question. ‘I’m going back,’ he said. ‘The studio want me to start filming in November so I’ll probably fly out at the end of the summer.’
Viola felt her stomach drop and she wasn’t really sure why. She knew now that he was unhappy, that he wanted more stability, and it was clear he wanted to go back to Australia even if she was still in two minds. And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to living on a different continent to him.
‘Going back to Australia and giving up smoking,’ Viola said with a smile she didn’t feel. ‘That’s a lot of decisions for one day.’
‘And what about you, Vi? Have you made any decisions? Do you fancy coming back with me?’
Viola sighed. By the autumn when Sebastian flew back to Australia it was looking increasingly likely that she would be without a job. There were jobs she could apply for all over the country – she’d been looking at the advertisements if not actually filling in any application forms – but none of them lit her up in the way Haverford House had when she’d first read about it. Besides, did she want to spend another cold, dreary winter in England in staff accommodation that would undoubtedly be badly heated? She didn’t mind it at Haverford so much, not least because she got to spend so many evenings with Seraphina in front of the fire at the dower house but what would it be like somewhere new? Did she want to spend another Christmas alone, when her brother would be on the beach surfing?
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she admitted, knowing how much those words and her indecision would frustrate Sebastian. ‘I guess I’m still hoping that we can save the house somehow, and that I can save my job.’
‘You love it here that much?’
‘I really do. I can’t imagine not living here.’ She paused then, trying to imagine what would almost definitely happen in a few weeks’ time. ‘But the chances are I’ll have to leave before the winter,’ she went on turning to her twin. ‘Can I let you know then?’
‘Of course,’ Sebastian replied, putting an arm around her and giving her a squeeze. ‘It’s an open offer. You can come out and join me anytime.’
‘I’ve been up to the boathouse again,’ Viola said changing the subject. ‘But it doesn’t look like Chase has been back.’
‘Oh, you’ve been looking for him have you?’ Sebastian teased, a glint in his eye. ‘I knew you liked him. Waiting for another date are you?’
‘It’s not like that,’ Viola said, but she could feel herself blush and knew that it was a little bit like that. If he hadn’t lied to her about who he was she would have jumped at the chance of another date. ‘I can’t date him anyway after what he did.’
‘Seems to me he was just reluctantly following his father’s orders. That doesn’t make him a bad person.’
Viola hadn’t thought about it quite like that but she didn’t want to start now.
‘Anyway,’ Sebastian went on. ‘I’ll leave that mystery in your hands while I solve another one for you.’
‘What mystery have you solved?’ Viola asked.
‘Well, none really,’ Sebastian admitted. ‘In fact, I might have made things more complicated actually.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The mystery of Annie Bishop.’
‘What have you found out?’ Viola asked. ‘And how?’
‘I have this friend,’ Sebastian replied. ‘He works in historical research, and he helps me when I’m working on a role set in the past – like that detective show on HBO. I asked him to see what he could dig up on your lady’s maid.’
‘Really?’ Viola felt her stomach fizz, and not about Chase for once. ‘Does he know what happened to Annie?’ Did she want to know if he did?
‘Well no. Annie Bishop disappeared without a trace that night and nobody can find any records of her afterwards but two other people disappeared on the same evening.’
‘The gardener’s assistant,’ Viola said suddenly, remembering something somebody had told her in the pub one night years ago when she first came to Haverford. ‘Didn’t the police eventually blame it on him or say he ran off with Annie or something?’
Sebastian nodded. ‘Edward Callow, or Ned as everyone called him. He was never seen again after that night and, like you say, he was probably used as a bit of a scapegoat after they stopped questioning the American actor.’
‘But who was the other person?’
‘A young woman called Polly Mather. She was married to a solicitor who lived in Cranmere, but before she married him guess where she worked?’
‘Here at Haverford?’ Viola asked, the fizzing in her stomach getting stronger.
‘Yup, she was a housemaid.’
‘Which means she must have known Annie Bishop.’
‘Probably knew her quite well, if you think about it. All those servants living on top of one another in those attic rooms.’
Viola was silent for a moment wondering how it all fitted together. ‘If you’re right,’ she said slowly. ‘If Annie left and lived a life somewhere else, she probably did it with this Polly woman.’
‘Maybe. Or with Ned. Maybe the three of them ran off together.’ He stopped, shrugged. ‘You never know.’
‘You’re right – you have made this more complicated than it was!’
‘Sorry but that’s all my research guy could find in the time he had. Records for the lower classes weren’t exactly meticulously kept in the 1930s, especially for women. Like I said, it was a lot easier to disappear back then.’
‘I wonder what they were disappearing from,’ Viola mused.
‘So you think they did disappear now do you?’
‘I have no idea what to think anymore!’
If what Sebastian was saying were true then it was definitely an argument for Annie Bishop getting away from Haverford that night. But what was she getting away from? Something, or someone specific? Or just running from the drudgery of domestic service? And what about this Polly? What did she have to do with it all, if anything? ‘You found all this out in two days?’ she asked.
‘Jonathan’s pretty fast and has access to records that the rest of us would have to apply for special permission to see.’
Viola nodded slowly. ‘What about police records?’ she asked.
‘Such as they were in rural Yorkshire in 1933,’ Sebastian replied. ‘He’s going to do a bit more digging but it doesn’t look like much was recorded. The case seems to have just fizzled out, like you said.’
‘Seraphina seems to think that Lord Haverford paid the police off to drop it.’ The dowager countess had told this to Viola in confidence when she’d first started working at Haverford. She’d made it very clear that, while she didn’t mind the legend of a disappearing lady’s maid being used during the tours of the house, she didn’t want her husband’s family to be dragged into it. It had felt like double standards to Viola at the time. Why should Annie’s life be worth less than the Montagu family’s reputation? But that was the way it was seventy years ago. In truth it was the way it was now, whether Viola liked it or not.