Chapter Eighteen
EIGHTEEN
ARABELLA LEAVES HARFOLD the day after Reacher’s funeral, packing the few belongings she’s decided to take into a taxicab to the station.
Her hand grips tight to the lip of the door as the driver starts the ignition, her knuckles showing stark white.
I wonder if this is the first time she’s been in a car since she knocked George down.
Then she’s off. I stand on the front step to watch as the car recedes down the drive, passing between my yews and finally through the gates, until it’s absorbed by the waiting woodland.
The official line is that the vicar must have forgotten to lock the church that evening, and Reacher found his way inside.
There’s a lot of debate in the village over whether he was simply exploring and fell – yet another tragic accident in the Lascys’ long history of misfortune – or if he jumped on purpose.
People want to know my thoughts, of course, as someone who was close to the family.
It’s hard to know, I tell them, but he was a lonely sort of man, so dependent on his pet bird for companionship that he was just heartbroken when it escaped.
Maybe he was even looking for Finchley up there?
Arabella has told everyone that she needs to get away from Harfold, start afresh. That she’s left me as the house’s custodian.
Tom and Mrs Allen naturally have a lot of questions.
Sitting around the kitchen table after Arabella’s gone, I decide to tell them a version of the truth.
I explain how Arabella – convinced the curse was coming for her – signed Harfold over to me so that it would take me instead.
How, when Reacher realized this, he threatened to kill Arabella and frame me for her murder, forfeiting my claim to the house in the process.
That I tried to warn Arabella about this, but, too caught up in her fear of the curse, she responded by pushing me into the river, meaning to leave me for dead.
When they both learned that I was still alive and could well reveal all of their secrets, the stress of it must have got to Reacher.
I don’t like to speculate, I tell the Allens, but perhaps he just couldn’t live with that hanging over his head …
Although it really should have come first in the story, I leave the truth about George’s death until last.
‘No,’ says Tom, after I tell him. Shakes his head slowly, Adam’s apple jumping in his throat.
‘I don’t know what you think you read in those diaries, but that can’t be true.
George fell— He jumped— He …’ Tom presses his fingers to the corner of his eyes, as if he can stop the blooming tears this way. ‘Lord Lascy, he would never have …’
I exchange glances with Mrs Allen. Her face is an ashen grey, a grim downturn to her lips. There’s pity there as well as sorrow: she believes what I’ve told them without question. She’s always seen the Lascys in a clearer light than her husband is able to.
‘I know you respected Henry Lascy a great deal,’ I press, ‘but he didn’t deserve it. He lied to your face for years – they all did.’
‘No.’ Tom slams a fist on the table as he says it, the word no longer a denial, but a shout of rage. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen him moved to anger.
Mrs Allen immediately wants to take Arabella to the police, but I hesitate at the suggestion.
Until now, Arabella and I have been in a standoff: if she accuses me of fraud, I’ll reveal her crimes; if I reveal her crimes, she’ll accuse me of fraud.
But whether or not to seek justice for George isn’t my decision to make.
Arabella’s diaries have returned from Daniel by now, so I hand them over to Tom.
It’s only right that he gets to cast the deciding vote.
But Tom shakes his head at the suggestion, tears shining down his cheeks.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Lady Lascy … well, she was barely more than a kiddie when it happened, and she was only doing what her parents told her. If anyone was to blame, it was them two – after everything I gave to them.’
‘Tom …’ Mrs Allen stands up to rub her husband’s broad shoulders, as if soothing a child.
‘I know what she tried to do to you was awful, Vee,’ he says, turning to me, ‘but she hasn’t been well for a long time. I don’t believe she’d really have wanted you to come to harm, deep down.’
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as good-hearted as Tom.
Treating Arabella with compassion, after everything she’s done …
The twist of pain is still far too raw for me.
I clear my throat. ‘It’s up to you both what to do next.
But I should tell you first, just so you have all the information: I don’t think Arabella will challenge my claim to Harfold if we keep her secret for her.
I’m planning to sell up – the house is falling apart, but the land must be worth something.
I see half the money as yours by right. Two thirds, even.
God knows, you deserve it more than me.’
‘So she thinks she can bribe us,’ Mrs Allen says.
‘Maybe. Or she could paint it as blackmail, if we try to go to the law. Accuse us three of forging those diaries, even. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try it, but it may be a game we can’t win in the end. On the other hand, if we—’
‘Let her get away with it?’
‘Yes. You could use that money to start over. Go and set up near George’s family, spend it on them.
I don’t know if that’s what he would have wanted, but it’s what I would want, if I was him.
In fact …’ I pause, not sure whether to say the next part.
I know that what I saw on the riverbank was only a hallucination – the spectre of a fever.
Unless it wasn’t. ‘After Arabella pushed me, when I came out of the water, I thought I saw something,’ I tell them.
‘A man. As if he’d been the one to pull me to safety.
He looked a lot like you, Tom. It was probably no more than a dream, but at the time, I thought it was George. ’
Tom lets out a loud sob, and I worry for a second that I’ve said the wrong thing. Then I see he’s smiling. A look of complete delight. ‘I knew it,’ he says. ‘I always knew he was watching us all.’
At last, it’s this that seems to settle it. While Mrs Allen’s clearly still not keen on letting Arabella get away scot-free, she concedes to Tom’s decision to take the money and put the ghosts of the past finally to rest.
So now it’s just me. Alone. I haunt the halls of Harfold, feeling the echoes of its history following in my wake.
None of the rooms are off-limits any longer: I drop into them at will, touch their surfaces, move items between them as I please.
With Arabella’s hoards cleared out, they all seem much larger, far emptier.
At night, the dark corners feel like they could be miles and miles away.
Perhaps this is the real reason that Arabella crammed them so full of whatever she had to hand.
One of the first things I get rid of is the Lascy family genealogy.
Lifting it off the wall, it suddenly looks far less imposing.
I’m not sure what to do with it. I consider donating it to a local museum, thinking surely it will be of historic interest. But then I think, why should the names of all these lords and ladies be remembered, when nobody gives two hoots about what my ancestors were called.
The only real difference between Arabella’s family and mine is that someone bothered to keep track of hers.
That doesn’t mean they deserve to be remembered for ever more.
So eventually, I take it out to the bonfire heap, lay it down on top as if on a funeral pyre.
Strike the match. The material is so old and dry, it catches almost immediately, the flames blackening first the corners, then racing all the way across its surface.
The snarl and hiss and pop of burning stitches. Just like that, the Lascys are gone.
Now that I have the deed back, I’ve managed to arrange for it to be legally verified with Arabella’s tepid blessing – or at least, her agreement not to get in my way. She recognizes our delicately balanced situation as well as I do.
I’ve already auctioned off any fittings and furnishings that are worth anything, passing a good portion of profit on to the Allens.
Nora – as she’s finally invited me to call her – has at last achieved her dream of a bed-and-breakfast in Somerset, close at hand to George’s children.
The ‘kiddies’ are all grown up now and building families of their own.
She and Tom write to me about their antics: the first guests they have to stay; the fabric they choose for the curtains before realizing it’s too pale to stop the coming summer light; the local church choir that Nora joins; the new puppy that Tom can’t help but carry home when he sees its face peeping out of the pet shop window.
I’m welcome to stay for free any time, they say – so long as I’ll help Tom sort out the patch of dirt that’s currently serving them as a garden!
Peggy and Ellen visit me on occasion, take a walk round the grounds to keep me company, let me drive them back to the village in one of the motorcars from the coach house – mine too, now.
Peggy is growing bolder in her flirting, and I expect she’ll make an approach in the near future.
I’ll be sorry to turn her down – the last thing I want to do is hurt her, after all the kindness she’s shown me – but I’ll be leaving Harfold just as soon as I can. Better to make it a clean break.