Chapter 42
A Proper End
ALISTAIR
We are ready.
Christopher has the access card Brodie sent through.
Henderson has two cars on standby. We know the layout, the timing, the number of men.
We have been standing in the sitting room for twenty minutes in our coats—all of us, Ivy beside me, Ariana on the sofa with Henderson at her shoulder—waiting for Brodie's call.
My phone rings. Brodie. I put it on speaker.
“You’re on speaker,” I say.
“Hargrove is dead, sir.”
Nobody moves.
“What?” Christopher says, breaking the silence.
Henderson’s frowning, not letting go of Ariana.
Brodie’s voice is calm and certain. “Confirmed forty minutes ago. Matthew Parkinson is confirmed dead. His people have already handled the scene.”
“That's not possible,” I say. “We haven't moved yet. What happened? Who got to him?”
“Sir—”
“Talk, Brodie. How is he dead?”
Ivy looks at me, eyes wide, not understanding.
“Sir,” replies Brodie. “I need to tell you something.”
“Don’t tell us to fucking sit down,” warns Christopher, then looks at me, agitated. “He’s going to tell us to sit down.”
I inhale deeply. I need to stay calm. I squeeze Ivy’s hand.
“Sir,” says Brodie. “Mrs Ravenscroft—Isobel—is gone.”
“What are you talking about?” I demand. The words come out hard. Gone? What is that supposed to mean? “She's not gone. She's here. She's in her room, resting. She was in the orangery an hour ago. What are you going on about, Brodie?”
Ivy’s let go of my hand and is already out the door. I hear her on the stairs as she sprints to my mother’s bedroom. Silence. Her coming back down, slowly. She appears in the doorway. Her eyes are wide and glossy with tears.
I look back at the phone. It looks alien to me. Nothing is making sense.
“She had intelligence you were not privy to, sir,” Brodie says. “She knew the gallery viewing time and went herself. She knew you would have stopped her.”
“Of course we would have bloody stopped her!” yells Christopher, pulling at his hair.
“But it's over now, sir. And I'm sorry. You have my deepest condolences.”
Something happens to my legs. I put my hand on the back of the nearest chair. Ivy runs to me and props me up until I regain the strength in my knees.
I am still holding the phone. I don't remember ending the call.
Ariana makes a sound, pulling me out of my dumb shock. She doubles over and Henderson catches her. She grabs onto him and won't let go. Ivy goes to her, gets down on the floor beside her and puts her hand on Ari’s back as she heaves and sobs.
Christopher’s face is buried in his hands.
I collapse into a chair and remember her smooth, cool hand on my cheek this morning. The way she looked at me before she left the orangery. It was a goodbye.
Sometimes a dead body is the only way to put a proper end to things like this, she had said at breakfast. I thought she’d meant Hargrove.
We don’t hear Gregory coming until the music announces him—the tinny cheerful leak of it from his headphones, getting louder down the corridor. Then the door opens.
Canary yellow waistcoat. Paisley shirt. Reading glasses on his forehead. Half-eaten toast in one hand. Head swerving on his neck to his classical music, in a world entirely his own.
When he sees Ari on the floor he stops and looks at the rest of us. The lightness goes out of his face.
My father yanks his headphones down around his neck. “What's up?”