Chapter Four #2
“Just that on the surface, Mr. Mountbatten may have been everything a man ought to be—attractive, charming, from a good family,” Florence said. “But that only made him all the more dangerous. It hid his barbaric nature. Mr. Mountbatten was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Detective Church paused a moment, as if he were struck by the severity of Florence’s words. “Did you ever witness Mr. Mountbatten being violent toward Saoirse?” Church asked.
Florence smiled wryly. “Those kinds of men are good at hiding their ugliness from those whom they don’t wish to see it.”
“You speak as if you have some experience with the type,” Church said.
Florence pursed her lips. “Something like that. Would you like to see the terrace?” she asked, already moving toward one of the French doors on the other side of the room. So Church followed her.
The terrace was long and wide, built of the same limestone as the house. Directly in front of them, in the distance, was a view of the ocean, and to the left, mountains. Curved staircases on either side of the terrace led down to the gardens and, to the left, an Olympic-size swimming pool.
Church emitted a low whistle. “That’s quite a pool,” he said.
“Augustus Towers built it for his second wife, Scarlet, as a wedding present,” Florence said.
“She was terrified of swimming in the ocean. All those things you can’t see, you know, lurking beneath your feet.
So he built her this pool and tiled the bottom with white stones from Sicily, to make it glow at night in the reflection of the moon. ”
“Augustus Towers,” Church said. “That would be Saoirse’s grandfather?”
Florence nodded.
“You must have known the whole family quite well,” Detective Church said, “growing up here as you did.”
“Yes,” Florence said. “Charles, Saoirse’s father, and her aunts, Verity and Astrid, we all came of age together. The four of us were thick as thieves when we were children.”
Florence glanced down at the enormous pool below them.
She remembered summers as a girl when she had practically lived in that pool.
Charles would challenge her to breath-holding contests, and she would play Marco Polo with Verity and Astrid.
Those summers were endless, bliss-filled days of picnics on the lawn, treasure hunts in the cove, and building forts out of old sheets in the playroom.
They ran around barefoot and sunburned, their lips sticky and sweet from the lemonade the cook would make for them that they’d drink straight from the glass pitcher, too busy and bursting with energy to bother with cups.
She and Verity would climb into their twin beds in the nursery at the end of the day, pleasurably exhausted, still dressed in their bathing suits, their hair wet and tangled.
Florence sighed and shook her head to clear it. She didn’t usually allow herself to get swept up in nostalgia. There was too much that required her attention in the present to bother with that. “Would you like to see Saoirse’s room?” Florence asked.
They took the short back hall from the ballroom to the kitchen next, and then the staircase up to the wing of the house where the family’s quarters were.
Saoirse’s bedroom was an odd mixture of ornate and adolescent, as if a bedroom at Versailles had been inhabited by a teen from the ’80s.
In the middle of the room was a large four-poster bed with a gossamer canopy, neatly made, a mountain of pillows resting against the headboard.
There was a marble-top vanity and a floor-length, gilt-framed mirror to one side and a sitting area that looked out toward the balcony and the garden.
But there were also posters of the Go-Go’s plastered on the walls, and shelves of trophies and ribbons from Saoirse’s dressage and show jumping competitions, and a memory board stuffed with photos of Saoirse with her friends and pinned with notes and old concert tickets, now yellowing and curling at the ends.
“It’s just as she left it,” Florence said. “The maids come in once a week to clean, but other than that, nothing has been touched or rearranged.”
Detective Church walked around the perimeter of the room, snapping pictures, and Florence stood unobtrusively to the side.
Her eyes skimmed the memory board next to Saoirse’s bed, and a flash of bright pink caught her eye.
She leaned forward to read the bubbly cursive on one of the notes pinned to the board.
Went to library to study. Meet me in Henley Hall after algebra final. Love, T.
Florence’s heart pinched in her chest. After all these years that had gone by, it was easy to forget that Saoirse had been just a teenager when she disappeared. An innocent child.
“Were you and Saoirse close?” Church asked, interrupting her reverie.
“Oh, yes,” Florence said, a smile warming her face.
“I daresay I knew her better than most. I was her nanny when she was just a baby. She was so tiny when she was born—barely six pounds. Had colic more times than I could count. I’d stay up all night with her in the nursery, holding her to my chest, rocking her.
She used to cry—wail—when anybody but me or Charles would hold her. ”
“You must have felt very protective of her.”
“I did,” Florence said, “like she was my own.”
“And how did you feel about Senator Towers removing her from school?” Church asked. “It sounded like Saoirse took that quite hard.”
Florence was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “But everything Ransom did was to protect her.”
“So he acted in good faith,” Church said, “but you didn’t agree with his decision?”
“It wasn’t my place to have an opinion,” Florence said.
“Ransom was her legal guardian, and he did what he thought was best. The poor boy was barely more than a child himself. It was tragic, really, losing both of his parents so young the way he did, and then his brother, Theo, too, not long after.”
“The Towers family curse,” Church said.
A chill went up Florence’s spine, and she crossed herself.
“Are you superstitious, Mrs. Talbot?” Church asked. “I didn’t take you for the type.”
“Not superstitious,” Florence said. “Catholic.”
“Ah,” Church said.
“You’re not a religious man, Detective?” Florence asked.
Detective Church shook his head. “In my line of work, I’ve seen too many things to believe in God,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I see,” Florence said. “Yes, I imagine that is quite hard, day after day, to see the worst in humanity and believe we came from something better than us.”
“That’s the thing I never understood,” Church said. “If we were made in God’s image, then why do we do the things we do to one another?”
“Because we have a choice,” Florence said.
“And we don’t always make the right one.
But sometimes we do.” Florence reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a small silver rosary ring.
“When I was a girl,” she said, “when I was lost and abandoned and in my darkest hour of need, someone showed me grace. They had no reason to do it, nothing to gain. But they did it anyway. My life today would be fundamentally different—unimaginable, really—if not for that act of kindness. That person gave this to me, and I’ve carried it around with me ever since.
Not just to pray the rosary but to have something tangible to hold on to that reminds me of the good people are capable of, if only they choose it. ”
“That’s a very noble way of looking at things, Mrs. Talbot,” Church said.
“How we look at things is a choice too,” she said. “People are rarely as simple as good or bad, right or wrong. In my experience, they’re a bit of both, somewhere in between. Here.” Florence handed him the rosary ring. “I daresay you need this more than I do.”
“Oh, that’s very kind of you,” Detective Church said, “but I couldn’t—”
“Take it, please,” Florence said. “You don’t have to use it for prayer. Just—you know, in the midst of all the chaos and the darkness that you see, let it remind you of the good.”
Church reached out hesitantly and took it. He ran his thumb thoughtfully along the burnished silver beads on the edges of the ring and then slipped it into his pocket. “Thank you, Mrs. Talbot,” he said.
“Please,” she said. “Call me Florence.”