CHAPTER FOUR
‘It’s definitely got me intrigued,’ Connor declared, his voice booming around the electric Smart car that Cristy had borrowed from David’s mother that morning.
She hadn’t found the volume control yet, but at least she’d managed to hit the right button when Connor’s name had flashed across the screen letting her know he was calling.
‘It’s different,’ he continued. ‘Usually this kind of story is all about someone who’s gone missing never to be seen again. Here we have the victim, so to speak, we just need to find out who lost her.’
‘Or gave her away, or whatever,’ Jodi added. Connor’s wife always took a keen interest in their podcasts and Cristy always welcomed her input.
‘Presuming the chapters we’ve seen so far aren’t fiction,’ Connor said, ‘and I don’t reckon they are, not with the names being the same and dates tying in … I’m seeing them as more of a … confession?’
‘Purging of conscience?’ Jodi suggested.
‘It’s hard to say when there’s so little to go on,’ Cristy said, taking a careful right turn onto a heavily wooded road where almost nothing was visible through the dense fog that had fallen overnight.
She’d scanned and emailed the latest chapter first thing this morning while David was still in bed sleeping off a few too many glasses toasting in the New Year.
With so many friends and family at the party and him being the host, he’d found himself in such demand that Cristy had barely seen him after midnight.
She’d lost track of Juliette too, not that she’d been keeping an eye out for her, though she’d noticed her when she’d appeared on the dance floor – with David.
How closely and well they’d moved together, and how intimate they’d seemed, until David had caught her eye and winked.
Anyway, she was determined not to start exercising herself over his past, it was clearly what the woman wanted and Cristy was damned if she was going to allow herself to be dragged into childish games.
She just hoped Juliette had slept well on the bunk in Laurent’s room while David had crashed out in his own bed next to Cristy.
‘Are you still there?’ Connor’s voice was slightly broken as he asked.
‘Sorry, yes, just not a great reception. Anyway, I’m clearly not getting off this island today, there are no flights or ferries probably until tomorrow, or Wednesday, so I’m on my way to meet Mia Winters.
Unsurprisingly, Sadie doesn’t want me to reveal why I’m there, so I’m just a new friend who’s visiting the Gaudions, while actually getting a take on how batty, or not, the old lady is.
That’s Anna’s word, by the way. Sadie insists she’s quite lucid when she wants to be and uses her battiness to avoid things she doesn’t want to do, or discuss. ’
‘Sadie’s got to have realized that if it turns out she was abducted her aunt’s going to have some hard questions to answer,’ Jodi pointed out. ‘Is that really what she wants?’
‘All I can tell you,’ Cristy replied, ‘is that she believes there’s a lot more to her story than we’ve seen so far, and I don’t think we can argue with that.
So let’s try not to jump to obvious conclusions before we have a fuller picture, and whether we get that through more pages, or hard research, remains to be seen. ’
‘Do you have any recording equipment with you?’
‘Only my phone, but I’m not about to go covert on the old lady.’
‘I wasn’t meaning that. You could just lay down a description of the house, grounds, that part of the island, et cetera.’
‘If I could see it, I would,’ she retorted wryly, as she plunged into a deeper morass of fog. ‘I don’t think I should be out in this, to be honest. There’s no one else on the roads … If I can find the place without going over a cliff it’ll be a miracle.’
‘Maybe turn back,’ Jodi suggested. ‘It’s not as if it’s urgent. Wait for the weather to clear and go then?’
‘It’s not far now, and Sadie’s waiting for me. With any luck she might have found more pages by the time I get there.’
‘Call us again when you have news from the aunt, or Sadie,’ Connor said. ‘Meantime I’m going to start working on what we already have.’
‘It’s New Year’s Day!’ Cristy cried, and immediately gulped as she almost hit a roadside rock. ‘I really should ring off,’ she said, ‘I need to concentrate on where I’m going.’
As the call ended, the sudden silence that descended felt oddly disorientating, leaving her with a disturbing sense of isolation in this tiny car that was inching along a barely visible highway with only the satnav to guide her through the virtually invisible mass of fallen cloud.
Keeping the speed right down she followed the map on the screen, mounting a hill, dipping around a bend and climbing another before a disembodied voice suddenly bellowed, ‘You have reached your destination.’
Certain she was in the middle of nowhere Cristy came to a halt, praying that nothing approached from behind, or in front, to slam her and the little Smart car into the great beyond.
She looked around. It wasn’t until a space briefly opened in the drifting fog that she saw the towering gates to Villa des Roches, the Winters family estate.
Relieved, and amazed she’d actually got here, she turned gingerly into the welcome layby and decided to call Sadie rather than try to find a bell to gain entry. However, the gates were already starting to swing slowly open, telling her that someone must be watching on video.
She’d moved forward only a few yards when Sadie appeared out of the mist and gestured for her to open the passenger door.
‘That’s where Jasper and I live,’ she said, jumping in.
‘The lodge, not that you can see much of it in this. It’s a bit clearer down at the house, or it was when I left half an hour ago. Are you OK? I’m surprised you came.’
‘So am I,’ Cristy muttered, and quickly swung the car to the right as she mounted a low, grassy bank.
‘It’s more or less straight now,’ Sadie told her, ‘and it’s all downhill.’
‘So the house itself is on the coast?’ Cristy asked, eyes glued to the tarmacked drive.
‘Not exactly, it kind of overhangs, but for some reason the fog never seems quite as bad in our cove as it does elsewhere. Great party last night, wasn’t it?’
Cristy nodded. ‘What time did you leave?’
‘Around two, I think. Jasper’s not in the best shape this morning, so I left him in bed while I went to check on Mia. I had a bit more of a dig around in Lottie’s rooms while I was there, but nothing new, I’m afraid. What did you make of the pages I gave you last night?’
‘I’ve just spoken to my partner, Connor, and he’s as intrigued by what we’ve seen so far as I am. So you need to fill me in on everything you’ve done to try to find out where you came from.’
With a sigh, Sadie said, ‘Not very much, is the answer, I’m afraid.
I mean, the obvious stuff, like DNA and Google searches, but when I have so little to go on …
Ancestry-dot-com can’t help without the names of my mother and father – I put in Martin and Vanessa Winters, but that was never going anywhere without dates and places of birth.
And anyway, we already know that my aunts didn’t have a brother.
Sorry, it’s sounding a bit hopeless, isn’t it? ’
‘Don’t let’s give up yet,’ Cristy advised, and felt a slight unravelling of tension as a truly spectacular Arts-and-Crafts-style mansion, with towers and turrets, whitewashed walls and red-brick chimneys, emerged from the haze like a fairy tale castle.
‘It’s impressive,’ she murmured, coming to a stop outside a wide, arched front door with enormous pots of topiary either side and a church-like stained-glass window above.
‘It’s insane, really,’ Sadie declared, ‘but it’s home and I think you’ll like it inside. They’ve always kept it up together and there’s plenty of space for entertaining. Lottie loved to throw parties. Come on, the door’s unlocked so we can go straight in.’
The hexagonal entrance hall turned out to be every bit as grand as Cristy had expected, and was, she suspected, most likely flooded with light on a good day from the ornate ceiling lanterns high overhead.
The walls were painted a creamy white, the floor was pale oak and the furnishings, so many of them, were colourfully and tastefully in keeping with the distinctive turn-of-twentieth-century period.
‘Lottie’s rooms are over there,’ Sadie announced, pointing towards a set of oak-panelled double doors, both closed, with exquisite fan-shaped wall sconces either side, ‘but come and meet Mia first.’ As she trotted down three steps to lead the way through another set of panelled doors, Cristy followed, admiring everything they passed, from the sumptuous William Morris wall coverings and Klimt-style paintings (maybe they were originals?) to the art-deco cabinetry and a fascinating collection of vases and lamps.
Eventually they were in a kitchen-cum-living area, which, though large, was much simpler in décor than what she’d seen so far.
A superb and vast hand-carved cast-iron fireplace with a log fire burning in the grate was between two sumptuous cream-coloured sofas, while a round eight-seater table and matching chairs filled a circular breakfast area where tall windows offered uninterrupted views of a mist-shrouded sea.
The kitchen itself was almost discreet with teal-coloured units and a wraparound bar.
‘Ah, ha, you must be Sadie’s new friend.
’ Mia Winters entered the room from another door, all smiles and quirky elegance in a beige-mix tartan pinafore and cream rollneck sweater.
She was in good shape for seventy, no doubt about that.
Her chin was an arresting feature, seeming a little large for her face, while her abundant, expertly coloured hair was carefully flicked up at the ends, and the dark amber jewels in her ears matched the colour of her eyes.
‘I’m Mia,’ she said, offering a slender hand, ‘and I’m very pleased to meet you. ’