Chapter Sixteen #2
Peggy gives me a long look. ‘When Daniel turned up with you all damp and bleeding like that, I thought you’d been half murdered.
’ Daniel is the name of her brother, I remember her telling me.
He must be the boy I fainted on to – my flat-capped knight in shining armour.
‘You gave us the fright of our lives! And you wouldn’t let me tell anyone up at the manor you were here for love nor money.
They must be wondering where you are?’ Her voice rises in a question here, seeking a reason for my strange secrecy.
I see Arabella’s expression again, as she let the river take me. She must think me dead. Of course I am dead: the curse came for me. Even if it ended up being by her own two hands. Her logic won’t allow her to believe otherwise.
A lump rises in my throat. I’d thought she loved me, that she had finally chosen me over her paranoia.
That together we could be free of the past. But in the end, I was nothing more to her than a sacrifice to offer up in place.
‘I had a … falling-out with Lady Lascy,’ I say at last, looking down at my fingernails.
There’s some kind of green scum caught under them.
‘I didn’t want to see her while I was ill. ’
Peggy huffs. She’s clearly unconvinced by my explanation, but can’t work out why I would be lying to her. ‘I told you she was no good,’ she mutters. ‘So what do you want to do now?’
The betrayal is still a hot knife in my back.
But I’m not so much sad, I realize, as angry.
I thought Arabella was different, but it turns out she’s just like all the rest of the rich and powerful.
Rotten to the core. Not to mention Reacher, whose true colours are just as rancid.
Once the pair realize I’m alive, there’s every chance they’ll deliver on Reacher’s threats to call the law, or else they may just try to kill me again.
Even if I promise to leave them alone from now on, I’ll always be a potential danger while I know what I know.
They can’t let me go freely about my life after this.
All to say, I can’t go back to Harfold. However, returning to Cardiff is also closed to me: too many strangers who think they know me from the newspaper accounts, my friends suffering for my mistakes.
I shuffle through the few things I have in my favour like cards in a deck.
The only allies I can really count are Peggy and – at a distance – Lou and Gladys.
I don’t think Tom and Mrs Allen would have been involved in either cousin’s scheme, but I have no way of knowing, so should treat them with caution.
But perhaps I can still weaken my enemies: if I was just able to make Arabella believe me about Reacher, I could drive a wedge between them.
Use the crack to wriggle in. Turn them against each other, so they’re too busy warring to worry about me any longer.
No, that won’t do it. Whoever emerges the victor would eventually remember me, and I’d be back in the same position.
Shuffle, shuffle. My hand is weak, the luck of the deal not on my side.
I could try to slip away, start again with another new name.
I can forge a reference, or maybe ask Gladys to do me one.
Find a fresh position. Hope it won’t be as much of a fucking nightmare.
But why should I be the one to fold? Allow Arabella and Reacher to punch me down, then roll over and let them continue on their path as if nothing’s happened.
I realize that what I want is to finish the game. To win it. But to do that, first of all, I’ll have to acquire a trump card. I need to get my hands on whatever secret is hidden in Arabella’s diary.
My plan is to return to the manor later tonight, though Peggy isn’t keen on letting me go walking alone, and at such an hour. ‘You’re not back to your full strength. What if you have a tumble again?’
‘I’m fine,’ I protest. ‘Look, I need to speak to Lady Lascy, that’s all.’
‘After your “falling-out”?’ asks Peggy, quoting my own words back at me. ‘You aren’t going to tell me what that was about, I suppose?’
‘I can’t really say. Sorry. It’s a personal matter.’
She meets this with a sour expression. ‘So you’ll be staying there overnight, will you?
’ A hint of jealousy in her tone. I think Peggy may be a little sweet on me!
Perhaps she’s guessed some details of my relationship with Arabella; God knows what I said while I was out with that fever.
Well, she needn’t worry about that any more.
‘No, I’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ I say.
‘In fact, if you haven’t seen me by then, maybe you could send Daniel up to check for me?
If you’re so worried about me being out alone, that is.
’ Hopefully it won’t come to that: I intend to be in and out long before anyone realizes I’m there.
But it never hurts to have a second plan in reserve.
This time around, I approach from the back lane, where I saw Peggy and Ellen out walking just before Christmas.
From the low angle, I can’t spy much of the house over the rose garden wall, just the chimney stacks and slope of the roof, the tops of the upper-floor windows.
As I’d hoped, all the lights appear to be out, the manor’s inhabitants safely asleep.
I enter the grounds through the rose garden gate.
I’d guessed correctly that nobody would have thought to lock it, Tom being out of the habit since I took up the duty.
There’s heavy cloud cover tonight: perfect for anyone looking to pass unseen through a garden.
Only occasionally, I’ll catch a small glint of the moon, now waning from its fullness of a few nights ago.
To help me blend in further, I’m back in my own dark grey overalls, kindly laundered by Peggy while I was under her care.
I’ve had to borrow a new pair of boots, though.
Unlike the rose gate, the main house will most certainly be tightly secured by this hour, but I’ve thought of that, too.
Back when I was moving all those newspapers into the cellar, I’d noticed the room’s external hatch, designed for passing down coal and barrels and that sort of thing without having to bring them through the kitchen.
I don’t recall ever seeing any kind of lock on it: just a simple sliding bolt from the outside.
Keeping low in a shuffling run that makes my poor muscles twinge, I cross to the exterior wall of the kitchen, beneath which the access hatch nestles in the soil.
The bolt is stiff with rust, but with a bit of jiggling, I’m able to pull it back.
Squat to open the hatch. It won’t budge.
Try again, straining this time. Still nothing.
There must be a lock after all, and I didn’t notice it before.
Unless … Maybe it’s just stuck with old dirt.
I scrabble around for a stick, then run it around the seal of the door, scooping out gobbets of slime.
Once I’ve cleared the whole perimeter, I take the handle again, lifting with all my might.
The wood groans, resists, then surrenders.
Groping around, I find the top of the wooden ladder on the other side.
Scurry down. It’s near total darkness, but I don’t want to risk a light yet.
I think I can still remember the way through the empty wine racks, if I hold my arms out in front of me as a guide.
Dirt crunches as I walk, and a cobweb kisses my face.
My toe hits something. I tap around with my boot until I’ve confirmed it’s the first step of the stairs to the kitchen.
When I reach the top, I pause at the door, straining my ears to make sure the Allens aren’t on the other side.
Even if Tom and Mrs Allen aren’t involved in Arabella’s and Reacher’s plots – and I very much hope they aren’t – I can’t know what they’ve been told about me in my absence, and my appearing now from the cellar in the middle of the night would take far too much explanation in any case. Thankfully, all is quiet.
As I open the door, I’m welcomed by a gust of warm air, the stove no doubt continuing to throw out heat from when the evening meal was prepared. I feel as though I’m rising from the grave. A ghost come back to haunt Harfold.
Moving on tiptoe, I pass through the servants’ quarters into the main hall.
Now, where would Arabella keep her diary?
I’ve never seen it lying around unattended, which is normally what happens to her possessions when she’s done with them, so she must have a particular hiding place for this one.
I try the study first: it’s mostly Reacher’s territory, but Arabella uses it occasionally to write in, when he’s away.
It doesn’t take me long to search it over, since I know the new filing system so well.
The diary isn’t here, but I do find the deed to Harfold in one of the desk drawers.
Hold it up to the meagre moonlight from the window to see that my signature is still there.
I’m not sure why they haven’t destroyed it yet, except that perhaps Arabella thinks my name needs to remain in place to prevent the curse returning on her. I tuck it away in my pocket for later.
Coming back out of the study, I’m about to use the drawing room as a passage to the library when I see – fuck!
There’s a band of faint light under the drawing room door.
The low warmth of a single candle, by my guess.
Someone must still be up. How did I not spy this earlier, either as I approached the house, or as I came into the study just now?
I must have been distracted by the cat-burglar rush of my mission.