Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
All the guests were getting ready to leave and saying their goodbyes the next morning.
I stood with Mark and Fiona in the hall as chatter and laughter echoed around us, and Fiona told us she’d decided to move back to the UK permanently.
‘I’ll return to New Zealand and sell my house, which might take a while, but then I’m going to make plans to settle in Surrey and be a hands-on granny.’
‘That sounds great.’
I smiled at her, thinking how energised and excited she looked.
‘A brand-new chapter.’
‘Exactly.’
‘What about Clive?’
asked Mark.
Fiona smiled.
‘We’re not really on the same page, to be honest – maybe because he’s a decade younger than me. It was fun while it lasted, though, and I’m sure we’ll stay friends. But right now, I’m ready for a whole new adventure.’
‘And this spooky Gothic pile hasn’t put you off Surrey at all?’
I chuckled, looking around me.
‘Nope. It’s just made me love it more! I’ll see you outside. I’d like to have a peek at the grounds now that it’s finally stopped raining.’
She disappeared, and Mark smiled at me and took my hand.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine.’
I conjured up a smile from somewhere. It was time to leave . . .
‘I’ve enjoyed being Sherlock to your Watson, solving the mysteries here.’
‘Er, I think I was Sherlock,’ I joked.
Smiling, he glanced over at the painting of Lady Annabel, which was still propped against the wall after falling off its mooring.
‘I should really try and get that back on the wall for Sarah before we go.’
I nodded.
‘Good idea. I’ll help.’
‘I’ll find some step-ladders.’
As Mark went off to find Sarah Frobisher, I wandered over to look at the painting at close quarters. The colours had obviously dulled a little over the years, but Lady Annabel still looked striking in her fashionable costume, posing with that mysterious half-smile of hers.
‘What secrets are you hiding?’
I murmured, suddenly wishing she could come to life and talk to me. How fascinating that would be. (And how utterly terrifying!)
I was about to walk away when my eye suddenly caught a flash of something on the floor behind the painting. Curious, I bent and retrieved it.
It was an old envelope. Very old. I guessed it had once been white or cream but the years had given it a yellowy tinge. It wasn’t addressed and there was no name on it, but I could feel there was something inside.
The flap hadn’t been sealed.
I held my breath, staring down at it. Historical things like old letters and documents had always fascinated me . . . that entrancing glimpse into the past . . .
With fingers that trembled slightly, I drew out the contents. Three sheets of thick, quality writing paper.
The ink had faded with the passage of time but it was still clearly readable, and the writer had filled both sides with their rather curly script. I wondered how long it had been there, presumably tucked behind the painting, only releasing its secrets when the picture crashed to the ground.
Then I saw the date.
November 2nd 1925.
A shiver of shock ran along my spine. It had been written exactly one hundred years ago. To the day!
The signature at the bottom of the third sheet was extra spidery but with a heart beating urgently in my chest, I deciphered it easily.
Lady Annabel Fortescue.
With a quick look around the hall – people were lingering over their goodbyes, no eyes on me – I hurried over to a chair in the darker recesses of the hall and sat down to read.
An attack of conscience made me hesitate. Should I really be reading Lady Annabel’s letter before Sarah Frobisher knew of its existence?
But my curiosity was too piqued to stop now!
I had to find out what she’d written . . .
To Whomever May Find This Letter . . .
This is my true and honest confession.
My name is Lady Annabel Fortescue and I was married to a cold, heartless man who beat me often, the way he would discipline a horse if it did not do his bidding. He never showed me true affection in the whole course of our marriage. I believe he preferred his horses to me.
I was eighteen years of age, he twenty years older, when our families made the match. Our lands were adjoining and Father knew it would be a powerful alliance that would elevate our position in society. I knew that there was no way out for me. I had to marry Lord Alfred Fortescue. If I refused, my family would disown me.
In my child-like innocence, I imagined being married would be romantic. But my dreams were swiftly dashed. Not even a month had passed before he took his first mistress, and when I begged him to be true to me, he laughed and told me I should be grateful for the huge wealth and standing in society that our union had afforded me.
But I did not want riches of that kind.
It was love that I craved.
I learned he could be cruel with his fists if he was angered. Once, he held me by my throat and put a steak knife into my cheek. The scar is still there but as with everything else, the horror is hidden from public view. A beauty spot conceals it always.
On another occasion (the worst and the best day of my life), he forced me half out of the open bedchamber window, taunting me that one push from him and my life would end on the lawn below. I screamed that it would be murder. But my dear husband declared that he would tell the constabulary that I had been slowly descending into madness and had thrown myself from the window, meaning to die!
I knew they would believe him. I thought I would perish that day.
But someone saved me.
A young footman called Harold Sowerby.
He knocked and entered the bedchamber at the very moment when I thought my life as about to be extinguished. That was also the day when I began to truly live again.
Disturbed by the footman’s arrival, my husband laughed and let go of me and feigned that we were play-acting. Then he marched out and left me there, trembling violently on the bed. Harold poured a glass of water and gave it to me to drink, and when I saw the pity and the kindness in his eyes, I started to cry and could not stop.
I knew he had seen everything, and in my torment, I confessed to him my loathing and fear of the man I had married against my will. He listened and he comforted me, and after that a friendship grew between us. It had to be a secret. What a scandal there would have been if it had become generally known that the lady of the manor wa.
‘cavorting’
with a footman on her staff!
But it was nothing so cheap as that.
I loved him and he loved me.
And oh, those bliss-filled nights we shared when the master was away, at his club in London! Lying naked in one another’s arms, we planned our escape. We would defy convention and live abroad as man and wife where no one knew who we were – far away from society’s rigid expectations.
We were so happy in those moments, although we knew in our hearts that our dream of a new life in a far-away place could never be. But Harold had lifted me out of my despair and made me want to sing, and I could have been happy forever in that house, just to have him there near me.
But one day, the master returned from London red with rage and he demanded to know if the rumours were true. Wicked lies had spread that I was entertaining young men in my boudoir whenever he departed for London.
I tried to protest that it wasn’t true but he forced me over to the open casement again and held me over the ledge. It was a hot day in summer and I remember the beads of sweat on his forehead as he held me there, his eyes burning with rage.
I was certain that this time, I would die.
I screamed for help and when the door burst open, the master released me, turning in surprise to find Harold standing there. My love looked defiant and brave. I could see in his eyes that he was no longer prepared to bow down to his master!
‘Leave her alone,’ he said.
The master laughed.
‘So this is the lowly servant you chose to besmirch your honour with?’
He curled his lip at me. I denied it for Harold’s sake but he was ordered from the house and told never to darken our door again.
I felt a fury rising up inside me. I despised my husband for what he had done to me. And now he was taking away my only reason to live.
He was lolling back against the casement, mocking us both and telling Harold he would make sure he never worked again. And that was the moment I knew I had to fight. I was no longer the meek and mild lady of the manor who obeyed my husband always. I refused to be cowed by him one moment longer!
I ran at him with a howl of rage and pushed him violently, hammering at his chest with my fists.
I remember the shock on his face. The worm had turned! Surprise made him lose his balance and he stumbled back against the open window. With a roar of anger, he grabbed a handful of my hair. The pain was terrible and I pushed him away.
Burned into my memory is the look of horror in his eyes as he lost his balance and knew he was falling . . . backwards through the window and onto the lawn below.
I had a bout of hysteria then and Harold wrapped his arms around me to calm me, and when I quietened, we stared down at his body lying spread-eagled below us.
Desperate to save me from the gallows, when the constabulary came, my lover made a false confession. But I knew nothing of this, weeping again and half-crazed with shock and horror at what I’d done.
Only later, when they took Harold away did I realise what was happening.
He was being charged with murder!
I wished then that I had died as well because I knew, even as I ran after the police constable and protested Harold’s innocent, saying that it had been an accident, that the police wouldn’t believe me. Harold was firm in his admission of guilt. They took him away and I wept bitterly because I knew he was doing it to save me and that he’d be hanged for murder.
I have lived with the guilt of killing a man ever since that day. But the guilt I have felt over what my lover went through for my sake has been much worse.
So this is my confession. It is long overdue. But here it is.
I killed Lord Alfred Fortescue.
I am the murderer.
And I am also a coward who never confessed to her crime while she was alive.
I am old now and soon I will be gone. But I need the world to know what I did so that I can die without the great weight of guilt I have carried with me ever since . . .
I finished reading and sat there, stunned, just staring into space.
Annabel had been forced into a torturous marriage with a horribly abusive man, but she’d kept her pain hidden from the world, covering up the evidence of violence with a beauty spot. But Harold the footman had come to her rescue. What a hero he was. They must have been so much in love. How distraught she must have been on the day he hanged. It really didn’t bear thinking about . . .
I looked down at the three pages that contained her account of such raw pain and emotion.
Then I realised there was more writing on the reverse side.
Quickly turning over the last page, I started to read again . . .
I am happy to say that my lover did not go to the gallows as I’d thought he would.
With my support, Harold altered his story, saying that he had entered the room just as his master fell from the window, and he had wrongly assumed that I had pushed him. So he ha.
‘confessed’
in order to save me.
When I heard that they were dropping the murder charge and my lover was a free man, I almost fainted with joy but was revived quickly by my ladies’
maid, Bessie, with smelling salts!
I had taken Bessie into my confidence when the constabulary first took Harold away, and I had told her everything that had happened.
Bessie had vowed to help and she had given a statement saying that she had entered the room at the same time as Harold and he had been standing near the door when the master had fallen to his death. So she could swear to the fall having been an accident. She said she had been too afraid to come forward at first, but that knowing Harold might hang, she had known it was her duty to save him and report what she had seen.
After the tragedy of Lord Fortescue’s accident, the world looked upon my need to remove myself from the scene for a while – in order to recover from the trauma – as a natural response. An extended tour of Europe, it was agreed, would be the change that Lady Annabel needed so that she could breathe the air and see the sights and try to shake off the horror of what had happened.
They didn’t need to know that along with my loyal maid, Bessie, I had another companion on my wonderful, sunny, restorative tour of the lands of the Mediterranean!
Harold joined me in Paris and we travelled through Europe as man and wife as we’d long desired – and lovely Bessie kept our secret to the very end of her life.
We returned to Riverbend Hall. I resumed my duties as Lady Annabel and Harold returned as the new butler. There were whisperings and scandal, of course, but neither of us cared. We were together and the master was gone from my life forever.
How could I not be happy?
I will end my account here. I am old and tired and I need to sleep.
But you who are reading my confession must tell the true story of how Lord Alfred Fortescue died. Rumours lingered that Harold had murdered him and I want this to be refuted finally.
Harold was a hero, not a murderer.
I lost my love to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 and I have mourned him these last seven years. But I have held him in my heart all that time – the memories we shared have warmed me –and I know that I do not have long to wait until we are reunited in joy forever.
Lady Annabel Fortescue
‘What’s that you’re reading?’
I looked up and there was Mark, smiling down at me.
I drew in a long breath and blew it out.
‘It’s a murder confession. But a very beautiful murder confession.’
He chuckled, looking bemused, clearly thinking I was joking.
Then he sat down beside me.
‘Speaking of confessions, there’s something on my mind that I need to tell you.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, listening to Fiona talking so positively about a fresh start, I’ve been thinking I might be ready for a whole new adventure myself.’
‘Really?’
I looked up at him, a sliver of hope in my heart.
I’d been feeling quite down ever since I woke, thinking how wonderful it had been, being with Mark again . . . the precious hours we’d spent together last night, making up for all the lost time, but knowing it was coming to an end because he’d soon be flying back to New Zealand.
But maybe . . . ?
‘I think it’s time I came back to the UK,’
he said.
‘There’s so much to tempt me here now . . . family, grandchildren. And you.’
Joy soared inside me.
‘Oh, my God. Mark, that would be so wonderful!’
The words burst out of me and I laughed afterwards because it wasn’t like me to be so free and vocal about how I was feeling. I was so used to being reserved . . . keeping my emotions under wraps for the sake of my TV persona.
But none of tha.
‘celebrity’
stuff mattered now. It was real and true how I felt about Mark, and it was time to let all those scary but thrilling feelings out!
I’d tell him in a moment about Lady Annabel’s letter.
Then I’d take it to Sarah Frobisher so she could read about her ancestor’s incredible love affair.
I had a feeling that when the story of their forbidden love was out in the world, on TV and in newspapers, the public would be keen to see this incredible country house where it had all happened.
Sarah would have her investor to help turn the hall into the perfect wedding venue, and she and her brother would be able to hold onto the old family home for future generations.
But all that was for later.
Right now, my darling Mark was gazing at me with such a look of love in his eyes.
And I was walking into his arms for a kiss . . .