He turns to Lottie. ‘Phyllida can’t possibly be Dorothea, if that’s what you’re implying. It’s just a coincidence.’ The heat must be doing something to their powers of reasoning, he thinks, because the idea that it isPhyllidawho has been on Scotland Yard’s Most Wanted list for half a century is completely stupid.Ludicrous.
‘Why on earth would she murder this viscount?’ He peers into the shadows at all the books on the dark blue shelves.There is a message here somewhere for him, he thinks. Some kind of bookish test. Phyllida likes puzzles. She likes the obscure and the old and the forgotten. But she also likes to laugh. Was she laughing at them? Was that why she’d sent Lottie on this ridiculous quest to find Francis? So, her granddaughter would take an interest in the past? Delve into a strange unresolved story that is missing its final chapter?
No, he thinks, fanning himself with a piece of paper as the room becomes oppressive. Phyllida liked to see the lighter side of things, but there was nothing light in this. Phyllida was not Dorothea. She was simply not capable of ending a man’s life.
He heads to the kitchen to get the fan, a niggling memory tugging at him. David, as they swam across the river, a length of rope twisted over his shoulder. They had climbed the huge river gum and were lying along the length of its overhanging branch to tie the rope swing. David, swinging from the tree like Tarzan, lithe and strong, the crescent-moon-shaped birthmark on his right arm as perfectly pink as the sunset.
26
FRANCIS
NOW, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
Francis swallows two paracetamol tablets. Prophylactic insurance. If he is going to survive this party, he will soon be making his way with determined vigour through several bottles of Araminta’s best fizz. He likes to plan ahead.
He regards himself in the mirror. Not terrible. The green silk shimmers across his shoulders and the brooch is really quite adorable. In low light, he is still passable. Not that the man of his dreams will be there tonight, he supposes.
He has thirty minutes to kill in order to make a fashionably late entrance, and he might get away with another thirty without a fatal outcome. Although, Minty could be frightening when you crossed her, so perhaps only fifteen. He sits down at his computer and checks for a Google alert. Nothing. It has been the same for years, apart from those days when the old story is dragged through the papers again on a slow news day, or the murder ofLord Edward Fitzhenry briefly makes an appearance in some scurrilous true crime podcast or cold case television show. Not that he is searching for his father’s name, per se. The search is always for Dorothea. But it is as if she disappeared off the face of the Earth in 1975.
He feels a swoop of disappointment but rallies, as he always does, and navigates the computer to play Wordle. He gets it in four lines.Greed.WasThe New York Timeshaving a dig? Out the window, he can see the lights twinkling from the lower level at Bleddesley House; a yellow glow across the new layer of snow that lies between his cottage and the great hall. Really, he should gift the place to Araminta. She deserves it.
He wants little from life, when it comes down to it. A well-stocked cellar and his villa at the edge of Montefalco in Umbria. Small but lovely. Views across vineyards in one direction and olive groves in the other. A partner to share a glass of Brunello in the courtyard at sunset as they breathe in the scent of lavender and roses. A comfortable, modest life.
He’d said as much to his darling friend Ellery once, and she’d laughed and told him that only a privileged twat could think of his Umbrian life as modest, and the fact that he doesn’t have to work for a living should be a clue. Ellery is one of those annoyinglygoodpeople; she campaigns for schools who help children in Africa and puts on drinks nights in her bookshop to support homeless people and animal charities. He pops in, of course, because she is jolly decent company and who doesn’t want to help the animals and the starving children and the homeless people?
Ellery likes a cause. She had once tried to explain the reasons he should sign a petition against bear bile farming, and he’dnearly thrown up. He’d told her to stop assaulting his ears immediately with such brutal horror stories and had emailed Araminta to set up regular donations to whatever charity sorted such things out. Then, because he didn’t want to be the clueless imbecile Ellery seemed to think he was, he sent a further email copying in Araminta to tell them to look at something for chimps in captivity too. Araminta had replied, reminding him it was all tax deductible, so did he want to look at campaigns against elephant tourism and the exotic pet trade, as well? Good god, the level of cruelty in the world was unfathomable. Araminta took care of it all, thankfully. She was a good egg, Minty. Pity she kept horses for her own entertainment, poor horses. Still, nobody was perfect.
Francis googles detective agencies. He’s hired three different detective firms over the years, but they’d all been stumped by the mystery. It was as if Dorothea and Louis had gone down with theTitanic, without the accompanying serenading violins. They’d left him and Mrs Wilson and, briefly, his stepmother Cricket, adrift in the cold, soulless lifeboat of Bleddesley House.
Late on the night of his father’s disappearance a policeman from the local constabulary had climbed aboard with them. The following day, after a search, police had found his father’s bloodied body in the log store.
When Francis was at university, Cricket had explained what had really gone on that evening and he’d come to quite appreciate the elegance of her subterfuge. He wondered why she’d confided in him. Delayed guilt, perhaps?
All he clearly remembers from the aftermath is that Mrs Wilson had served his favourite lamb chops the next night, with mashedpotato. He hadn’t eaten much, but both of them had known the significance of the meal. His father couldn’t abide mash, but it was Francis’s favourite.
He pours himself a gin and tonic. A little snifter to get himself ready for the party. The new private detectives could try looking in Asia, or Africa. The pair were certainly not in the United Kingdom or the United States. Continental Europe had been thoroughly scoured too, with the occasional false alarm raising his hopes then dashing them.
Perhaps he could also find a detective agency in Australia. He supposes they have them; supposes there are some excellent investigators down there, with their laid-back way of meandering through life without airs and graces. It would allow them to slip in anywhere, unnoticed. He likes Australians. Wonders why he has never visited Sydney, with its incredibly beautiful Opera House.
His favourite nurse when he had his little episode—twenty years ago now—was an Aussie. A total sweetheart. He’d been drinking too much at the time, nursing his broken heart after his Canadian boyfriend had run off with a woman he met at Francis’s opening night after-party. Then the show had flopped, his costumes had been ridiculed and the next day one of his oldest friends had been killed in a rockslide in Umbria. It had been a tad too much. He’d gone on a bit of a bender and ended up in a Liverpool gutter looking up at the most terrific brick tower on the docks, thinking he might learn to fly. He had somehow called Minty, and she had sent a chap she knew to scrape him up and deliver him to her favourite health retreat in The Lake District. They had doctors and nurses there too. Terribly good service.The doctors thought perhaps the stress of theatre life was getting a bit much.
Minty sorted everything, back then. He thought of her as a sister, more than a cousin. Francis would have liked to grow up as part of a large family. Four, five, six siblings. One of them was sure to have been to his liking. Someone to have coffee with every week. Perhaps that’s why he’s never given up on finding Louis. You don’t give up on a brother.
And he isn’t giving up. He has plenty of reasons why he needs to find them and plenty of resources at his disposal. He clicks on the website of a new detective agency. The set-up looks extremely professional, and they have affiliate offices all over the world.Yes,he thinks,it’s time to throw the net as wide as it will go.
Why has he waited so long?
27
DOROTHEA
1975, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
It wasn’t that she had intended a swim today, or that it was especially hot, but somehow they found themselves at the lake after lunch. Had Francis suggested it? Dorothea couldn’t recall. She was bone tired, the baby crying through the night. In those cold hours after midnight, she felt so alone and so wretched, as if every living bit of her had been wrung out.
Late last night she went to make a cup of tea, and Mrs Wilson had been sitting in the shadow of a kitchen lamp, a glass in her hand. She looked at Dorothea with a sceptical air. ‘Nightcap?’ she offered.
‘Oh, no. Thank you.’
