Chapter Ten
TEN
‘HOW DO YOU ever find anything you need?’ I ask.
Arabella looks about the mess of the study as if the problem hasn’t occurred to her before now. ‘Well, I suppose I just hope it will be wherever I think I last saw it.’
‘How’s that been working for you, then?’
A quick laugh. ‘Abominably.’
We’ve taken it upon ourselves to organize Harfold’s historic accounts, but it’s been enough of a challenge to locate them in the first place.
They are scattered all over: stuffed into crates; stacked on every surface, pinned down by glass weights; crammed into the pages of books; overflowing from desk drawers; confused by reams of duplicates and illegible notebooks with thoroughly battered covers.
It seems like each piece of paper has simply been stored wherever it was last cast down.
I didn’t realize when I offered to help that it would be such a task to sift through the stew of information.
Mrs Allen has been pitching in when she has the time, mostly cleaning up the grime we uncover whenever we move something.
Patches of mould, dead insects, dried-up mouse droppings.
She tackles all of these without comment, though I catch her shaking her head occasionally, as if there’s another housekeeper who’s responsible for the negligence that’s led to this point.
We’ve made the study our centre of operations – a room on the ground floor with wood-panelled walls and windows on two sides.
Arabella’s influence is less present here, although several extremely large vases of ostrich feathers adorn the corners, and a copper bathtub inexplicably filled with seashells almost blocks the doorway.
Still, this is normally Reacher’s territory, and his hand’s visible in the glass case of delicately coloured birds’ eggs on the windowsill, the relative cleanliness of the desk and shelves.
I would’ve assumed it was Reacher’s job to keep all the papers in order, but clearly – for all his complaining – he’s no better than Arabella when it comes to household organization.
Well, this will be a nice surprise for him when he’s back from whatever his business is in London this week.
Arabella says he’s only pretending to work, but really bothering the lads round Piccadilly.
I’m not sure if this is true, or just another of her jokes at his expense.
Still, I don’t blame him if he is off looking for warm company: unlike Arabella, he doesn’t have an option so nice and close to home.
I lean over Arabella now to deposit a fresh folder’s-worth of documents on to the desktop, brushing against her arm on purpose so that she smiles at me.
It’s been a few weeks since Christmas Day, and Reacher can hardly have failed to notice our new proximity.
I spend more nights in Arabella’s bed now than I do in Charlie’s.
But this isn’t the only change at Harfold.
Since our conversation that night, Arabella has turned over a new leaf – she’s taking her destiny into her own hands.
There have been no mentions of the curse, and she’s even taken to heart my suggestion about clearing the place up.
This paperwork is just the start: by the end of the year, we’ll have Harfold looking like a habitable house. At least, that’s the intention.
Arabella holds up a time-worn sheet of paper, browned to the colour of a strong cup of tea. ‘Would you look at this,’ she says, ‘the deed to Harfold. I did wonder where it had got to.’
‘We’ll make a secretary of you yet,’ I tell her, sorting a statement from Barclays Bank into the correct pile.
She examines the deed a moment longer, lost in thought.
Mrs Allen comes in at this point, carrying a basin of water and a handful of rags.
‘I’m done in the other room,’ she says. ‘I’ll get those windows while I’m here.
’ I move aside to let her through. She has to weave round a particularly vibrant array of ostrich feathers before she can start scrubbing at the glass panes.
Under her breath, she’s singing ‘Rock of Ages’ – ‘Wash me, Saviour, or I die’ – which strikes me as a little blasphemous.
Arabella gives a reflective hum. ‘I always thought it would be interesting to have a job.’
Mrs Allen pauses her tune to snort, and I try and fail to hide my own smile.
‘What is it? What did I say?’
‘Nothing,’ I reassure her. ‘You just tickled me there. Interesting.’
‘Is it not interesting?’
Mrs Allen stops singing. ‘That doesn’t matter either way.’
‘You’re not doing it for the entertainment,’ I elaborate. ‘It’s always about the money.’
‘Oh,’ says Arabella. ‘That bloody stuff.’
‘Can’t stand it,’ I say, giving her a nudge.
‘One never has enough, does one?’ She pats a stack of letters from the bank, sorted by us into their own pile over the course of the morning.
Many of them had been sitting unopened for God knows how long before we got to them.
‘Nothing but debts. I knew we were struggling, but dear Morry has kept me from the extremity of our position. I hope you aren’t expecting to move back into that cottage any time soon. ’
‘Well, my current accommodation is pretty shabby,’ I say. Then, leaning closer to whisper, ‘The landlord’s making me share a bed!’
Arabella pats me on the rear. ‘And more besides.’
Of course, there’s no real need to keep this exchange out of Mrs Allen’s earshot.
She’s the one who washes the sheets, after all.
She hasn’t commented on our new arrangement directly, though: the closest we’ve come to talking about it was one morning, early on, when she caught me leaving Arabella’s room.
I’d tried to stammer out an explanation, and she’d held up a hand to silence me.
‘Not my business,’ she said. And that seems to be the sum of it.
Arabella clears her throat, then plucks up one of the letters, holding it out to me. ‘But look, this one from Mr Gerrish makes a change.’
The name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. ‘Who’s that, then?’
‘Gerrish? He’s the man who owns those fields over the river.
Farmer Watts’s boss. He bought the land from Daddy when everything had to be sold off, but he isn’t at all interested in agriculture himself, as far as I can tell: he runs it all from the safety of Warminster and leaves Watts to do the grunt work for him.
’ She glances again at the lines of handwriting.
‘Looks like he wrote this last year to enquire about buying the back paddock from us. He wants to convert it into further farmland. Extend the empire, as it were.’
‘There you go,’ I tell her, ‘that’s good, then. Something to line the pockets. And it’s not as if we’re using the land, without any horses.’
Arabella wrinkles her nose. ‘No, that patch is simply too close to the house: one wouldn’t have a moment’s peace or privacy with farm hands roaming around. I couldn’t live with it.’
Surely there can’t be any harm in at least entertaining the option, though.
When she’s not looking, I take the chance to slip the letter into Reacher’s in-tray.
Just to see what he makes of it. Later, Mrs Allen heads off to make tea, and I find a stash of old photographs mixed in with the kitchen receipts.
One of a chubby little boy in spectacles – Reacher – held in the lap of an unfamiliar woman.
‘That’s Morry’s mother,’ Arabella tells me, ‘Auntie Edith, my mother’s sister. He came to live with us after she died.’
‘What about his father, then?’
Arabella raises her eyebrows. ‘You should take another look at the genealogy one day. His supposed father – Auntie Edith’s husband, Arthur – died a clean twelve months before Morry was born.’
I feign outrage. ‘An affair!’
‘Neither Edith nor my parents would ever acknowledge it – in fact, we have always celebrated Morry’s birthday in August rather than November. But the genealogy doesn’t lie.’
‘I’ll have to take a look again,’ I say.
I’ve been back to the closed wing once since Christmas Day.
I know it wasn’t strictly right of me, but the curiosity had been gnawing at my mind ever since I caught Arabella there, until I was desperate to know what she’d been doing, what she keeps in that wooden cabinet.
So, as soon as I had a chance, I silently borrowed the keys and slipped into the disused corridor, creeping my way to her old bedroom, every creak of the floor a gunshot in my ears.
The way the boards moved underfoot, it sounded as if there was another tread following directly behind me – enough to make me glance back over my shoulder.
In the semi-gloom as daylight filtered through the shutters, everything was so still, so lifeless, like a tomb.
But then I noticed that the thick dust that coats the floors in this wing was disturbed by a clear passage along the corridor to Arabella’s old room, between the door of that room and the cabinet, as if someone had been walking this way with regularity.
I don’t know what I thought I’d find there.
A hidden fortune, maybe. Old love notes from a previous flame.
A written confession to a deep, dark, terrible secret.
More needlework portraits of me. But when I pulled back the cabinet door, heart swaying in anticipation, there was nothing in there.
Empty. I put my hands in to be sure, felt around.
Just the smooth gloss of dark wood. The must of furniture that’s stood dormant for too long.
Still, I’m sure Arabella was putting something back in there when I caught her. Perhaps she realized after that I would come looking, and moved whatever it was to another hiding place. None of my business, but I can’t help speculating …