Chapter 29 #2
The back of the house looked so different to the elegant facade at the front. Weeds poked up through gaps in the pathway, gutters sagged, a drainpipe sat at an angle. The door was small, and dark with age, its rusted lock shadowy in the dim light.
She paused, crouched in the moon-shadow of the house, her breath sounding loud against the silence. Christina lifted the back door mat. No key. Damn. There must be one somewhere.
Where would Hugo keep a spare key? He was careless and lazy, but sentimental in small, stubborn ways; he clung to his odd little rituals and revelled in family heirlooms.
She started with the stone lion head by the steps, scrapping off the slick green fur of moss between the ears, her fingernails rasping over stone in the hope of metal. Nothing.
She tried underneath a rock that had slipped from the drystone wall – just damp grit beneath stone, then the old, rusted boot scraper, clawing through packed, sour-smelling mud. Still nothing.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
She paused, thinking. Her gaze drifted to the old lead water butt. She stepped closer, squatted, and slid her hand down the slimy, cold gap between metal and the wall.
Her fingertips struck something small, hard and cold.
Bless you, Hugo, she thought, a breath of relief lifting her chest.
She eased the key into the lock. The mechanism groaned in protest but turned. The door creaked open an inch – then another.
Cool air spilled out like secrets finally told.
Inside, the darkness was absolute. Christina shut the door behind her, wincing at the clicking noise, which sounded as loud as a drumbeat, then blinked rapidly, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
Hands outstretched, she felt her way along the wall until her fingers found the edge of the boot room door. She slipped inside, the familiar, slightly sweet smell of damp coats and wet dog towels greeting her. For a moment she stood still, pulse thudding, listening for any sound in the corridor.
Then she moved to the row of jackets. Ernest’s Barbour hung where it always did, on the last hook. Christina patted the pockets, first one, then the other, breath snagging in her throat. She felt something firm and slipped her hand inside.
Her fingers closed around something long and cold. A key.
She drew it out slowly, the faintest sliver of moonlight from the tiny window catching the metal. Only then did she realise she’d been holding her breath.
She stepped back outside, tiptoed her way to the north corridor and crept forward, slow and steady.
Then her foot touched something on the floor, squat, and dark.
The strongbox. Christina dropped to her knees and turned the key in the lock.
The ‘click’ wasn’t loud, but to her ears it felt like a gunshot in the silence.
She paused, but no sound came from beyond any of the closed doors in the corridor.
Her hand hovered over the piles of paper. Then she saw it in the gloom. A single sheet of thick cream paper.
Deed of Variation of the Family Trust – Schedule of Residual Chattels
This was it. The document that removed the loving cup from legal protection and placed it into Ernest’s grubby claws. She slipped it into her bag and reached to close the strongbox.
Then, she heard footsteps.
Christina stood and pressed herself flat against the wall, barely breathing. The corridor stretched ahead, unfamiliar in the dim light. A door creaked open at the far end, and an expensive floral scent filled the corridor.
Amy.
‘I’m telling you, I heard something, Hugo,’ Amy hissed, her voice wound tight. ‘Like a . . . like a click. Or something brushing the wall. I’m going to turn on the light.’
A grunt. Then the telltale clink of ice against glass.
‘Oh, leave it,’ Hugo slurred. ‘That’ll wake Ernest, and you know how he gets if he doesn’t get his eight hours. If someone’s broken in, they won’t be skulking around the bloody servants’ hall.’
Christina stayed perfectly still, the thump of her pulse loud in her ears.
‘I’m sure I heard something,’ Amy repeated.
A hiccup from Hugo – and then padding footsteps of a different kind. Slower. Softer. Four-legged.
Marmalade.
The dog shuffled into view, tail wagging in a lazy half-arc, nails clicking against the flagstones. He paused, nose in the air, then gave a curious sniff. He sniffed again. His ears perked slightly. He knew she was there. Oh God.
He ambled over, tail thudding gently against the wall, and sat – right in front of her, panting. In the darkness she could just make out his cloudy eyes looking up as if to say hello, old friend. Then he dropped his muzzle and gave one of her boots a perfunctory lick.
Christina shut her eyes.
‘Marmalade?’ Amy called, footsteps halting. ‘Where have you gone?’
The dog wagged harder, and Christina gritted her teeth. Please, just go. She tried nudging him away with a foot, her heart pounding, but he sagged against her then rolled onto his back, feet aloft, as if waiting for her to scratch his tummy.
‘Marmalade . . . I tell you, Hugo, he’s found someone.’
‘He’s probably smelled a mouse,’ Hugo muttered. ‘He’d bark if there was a stranger. Come on old boy, let’s go.’
Christina let her breath out gently as Marmalade rolled over, staggered to his feet, gave a long, theatrical yawn, and shuffled off down the corridor – tail still wagging – as if nothing at all was amiss.
Amy huffed. ‘He’s too old to be wandering around at night.’
‘So am I,’ Hugo replied. Ice clinked against the glass. ‘Let’s go. There’s nothing there.’
Their steps faded. The door closed.
Silence fell again.
Christina waited. She counted to thirty.
Then rose slowly and crept back down the corridor.
She gently shut the lid of the box and closed the padlock as softly as she could before retracing her steps, ears straining for any sound, and replacing the key in Ernest’s coat.
At the back door, she paused again, ears cocked, before slipping outside, her heart beating fast against her ribcage.
The wind caught the edge of her coat ripping it open. She clutched it shut and jogged back down the slope, boots soft in the wet grass. Her breath fogged in the chilly air, the sea became louder, roiling in the distance.
Christina slid behind the wheel of the car and gently inched the door towards her, until the latch caught with a muted click.
For a moment, she stayed still, breath shallow in her throat.
Then, finally, she turned the key and eased the car forward, hands steadying on the wheel, as the driveway curved away from the house.
In the rearview mirror, the Manor was already vanishing behind a veil of mist.
When it disappeared, she pulled over and cut the engine.
Her breath came out in a long stuttering gasp, and she realised how tightly she’d been holding herself.
She snapped on the overhead light – bright and harsh against the dark that had filled the car just moments earlier – and laid the document flat across her lap.
She pulled a loupe from her pocket and looked closely.
The signature – Flora Pemberton – didn’t look quite right.
The F and the P were too narrow. They lacked the practiced flourish Flora always used, the sweeping top curves. This version was stiff.
Christina sat back, lowering the loupe, and read the prose.
“I, Flora Pemberton, confirm that the cup known as the Loving Cup has remained in my personal custody since 1993 . . .”
Of course it read well. That was Ernest’s strength. Not the signature – never that. But the words. The performance. The illusion of authenticity.
She remembered one of her first ‘Ernest commissions’, two years ago, a silver coffee pot ‘by’ Hester Bateman.
She’d spent three nights hand-etching the fake maker’s mark, referencing photographs from her books, trying to replicate the slight irregularities that might have developed over 250 years of wear and polishing.
Her fingers had ached for days afterward. But the result had been seamless.
When she delivered it, Ernest had brought out a single sheet of paper, with a flourish and a self-satisfied smile.
‘Don’t touch it without gloves,’ he warned, presenting the page like a relic. ‘This is eighteenth-century paper. Linen rag content. Very rare. I bought a bundle from a collector in Utrecht.’
She watched him dip a quill pen in handmade ink and compose a letter from a Bristol merchant to a wealthy client:
“The enclosed vessel is of the finest silver,
commissioned upon your father’s request and bearing the appropriate mark.”
The phrasing was effortless. The tone was perfect. The signature at the bottom? Entirely invented. Just some plausible surname, written in his usual spidery hand, passed off as an eighteenth-century merchant.
‘No one’s going to try and verify a merchant’s signature from 1764,’ he’d said with a shrug, slipping the paper onto a blotter to age the ink. Of course, he was right.
But he never forged noble hands. He shunned those whose signatures could be checked. That’s why this was a mistake. Lady Flora wasn’t obscure. She was present. Alive! Her signature was known. And this version most definitely wasn’t hers.
Christina folded the document, more gently than it deserved, and tucked it back into her bag.
All she had to do was ask Lady Flora to confirm this was not her signature, and she would save the cup from Ernest and Frank.
If that meant confessing to Flora and Hamish about the forgeries she’d made for Ernest well, so be it.
Christina was tired of secrets, and the hold they had on her.
She turned off the overhead light and started down the drive toward the village with her headlights off and her breath steady. The moon lit the road like bone beneath the clouds.
She used to think staying quiet kept her safe. Now she knew better. Christina wasn’t the assistant anymore. She was the resistance.