The Lost Empress (3 page)

Chapter Three

Kent. Present day.

‘Get off my property!’

It wasn’t the first time Jefferson Tayte had heard that line, but its delivery on this occasion was among the most aggressive. It made the usual trials of his flight to England seem calm by comparison. As soon as the man knew who Tayte was and why he was there, he’d deliberately made a show of rolling up his shirtsleeves, as if he were bruising for a fight. Every word he’d spoken since was punctuated by jabbing an index finger at Tayte, almost making contact several times. But Tayte wasn’t giving up just yet. Right now he had very few leads, and the Metcalfe family were key to his assignment. He looked along the drive, trying to catch a glimpse of the house, but his view was blocked by the sunlit trees that lined the way, and more immediately by the man standing like an ox in front of him.

‘I’d just like to speak with Reginald Metcalfe for a few minutes,’ Tayte said. He began to smile, but quickly decided that a show of charm was ill-advised under the circumstances. ‘I believe he’s the current owner of the Hamberley estate.’

‘It’s
Lord
Metcalfe to you. Now piss off before I throw you off!’

The ox was called Raife Metcalfe. Tayte had managed to get that much information from him when he’d met him by the gatehouse, before he’d introduced himself. Tayte thought he looked to be in his mid-thirties, and at around six feet tall he was a few inches shorter than Tayte, but heavyset and muscular. He had wavy brown hair and thick, wiry sideburns, the likes of which Tayte thought belonged in a period drama.

‘Alice Stilwell was Lord Metcalfe’s grandmother,’ Tayte persisted.
‘She was your ancestor, too.’

‘Yes, that’s right.
My
ancestor—and none of
your
damned business!’

‘Don’t you even want to know what it is about her that brought me here?’

‘No, quite frankly, I don’t, and neither does my grandfather. Now get off our property, or I’ll set the dogs on you. I won’t tell you again.’

Tayte put his hands up. ‘Okay, I’m going. But give him this, will you?’ He offered out a calling card, which Raife Metcalfe took and tore up and threw back in his face.

‘You’re not welcome. If you come around here again, I’ll see you off with the lead from my shotgun.’

Ten minutes later, Tayte was in his hire car, driving through the Kent countryside towards the centre of Rochester. It was mid-afternoon and he was already beginning to feel tired from the travelling and the jet lag, so he’d put some music on and turned the volume up to help keep him going. He was listening to ‘Mr Mistoffelees’ from the
Cats
soundtrack he’d packed for the trip along with several other show-tune CDs, although on this occasion he didn’t feel much like singing along.

As his journey progressed and the view beyond his windows changed from the green of the countryside to the grey of town, he began to wonder whether his first day in England could get any worse. The door he’d hoped would lead to many answers about Alice Stilwell had been slammed, none too delicately, in his face. Now his already tentative connection to the Scanlon side of the family through Alice’s Aunt Cordelia, who, according to the 1911 census, had lived at Hamberley, looked to be heading the same way.

Tayte had no home address for the present-day Scanlon family. As soon as he’d got back into his car, he’d called the phone number of the business premises he’d previously identified as belonging to a Mr Lionel Scanlon, whom he believed was a descendant of Alice Stilwell’s aunt and uncle, Cordelia and Oscar Scanlon. Receiving no answer, he’d left another message, but he wasn’t holding his breath. The business was located in Rainham. It was less than ten miles away according to the car’s navigation system, so that’s where he was heading now. He hoped he might at least find someone he could talk to about the Scanlons. Maybe then the day would end on a brighter note.

He pulled up at a junction with the main road he needed to take towards Chatham, and the traffic became busy to the point of congestion. He sat listening to his CD and the plink-plink of the indicator until a few cars began to build up behind him. Then he saw his gap and put his foot down, pulling out and joining the flow of traffic. Somehow the car behind him managed to squeeze out, too, and Tayte made a mental note that he had to be more assertive with his driving in England if he wanted to get anywhere.

Several minutes later, as he left Chatham and the pace began to pick up again, he considered that his day had really started going wrong as soon as he’d stepped off the plane and called Jean. The surprise visit he was hoping to drop in her lap had backfired when she’d told him she was in Spain and wouldn’t be back in London until the weekend, which, as it was now only Monday, seemed a long time off. Jean had told him she was attending a series of royal history seminars on the kings and queens of Spain, with someone called Nigel, whom, Tayte noted with great interest, she had mentioned more than once during their conversation. But what did he expect? If he’d called Jean more often—if he hadn’t let his research take over his life like it always did—he would have known she was away this week.

Tayte had apologised to her for being so aloof in recent months, and with great enthusiasm he’d told her he was finally making progress with his own research and that although he’d hit another brick wall, he was waiting on a phone call he hoped would bring that wall tumbling down—as if any of that justified his behaviour. She had sounded genuinely pleased that he was making progress at last, but there was something in her tone throughout the conversation that told him he’d blown it. When he’d added that he hoped to go into the details with her in person when he next saw her, she had given him no reply.

‘So, can I see you when you get back from Spain?’ he’d asked her.

‘I don’t know, JT. I need some time to think. I’ll call you when I get back to London.’

‘When exactly is that?’

‘Next Saturday afternoon.’

‘And you’ll call me then?’

‘Yes, JT. I’ll call you then. I promise.’

And they had left it there.

Tayte couldn’t help going over the conversation again and again. He tried to focus on the road, but try as he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about Jean and whether she wanted to see him again. And there was Nigel. Tayte hadn’t been able to get that name out of his head since he’d heard it. He figured he was just a colleague—a like-minded associate whom Jean knew through her work.
That’s all he is,
he told himself, but it didn’t matter how many times he did so, he still couldn’t help picturing the two of them together, staying in the same hotel, seeing each other every day. He sighed as he navigated a roundabout, watching for his turn, wishing he could be there in Nigel’s place—not that he thought he deserved to be. He knew that now and only hoped it wasn’t a lesson learned too late.

The traffic had thinned, and Tayte supposed from all the houses he could see beyond the street lamps and neatly trimmed hedges to either side of him that he was passing through a residential area. He’d become so lost in his thoughts about Jean and how he was going to win her affections back that he hadn’t realised he was driving so fast. He slowed down and began to reminisce, picturing the goofy expression Jean had pulled for the photograph he’d taken of the two of them outside Buckingham Palace on his last visit. He smiled to himself, and then his smile suddenly dropped as a flash of silver coachwork shot past his side window, slamming into his front wing, knocking all thoughts of Jean Summer from his head.

Tayte’s hands tightened like a pair of vices on the wheel as he tried to control the car, but the force of the other vehicle as it careened into him made it impossible. A split second later he was forced half onto the verge, wheels spinning and the car sliding out of control. He saw the other car briefly as it sped past him. The driver clearly had no intention of stopping. Then as Tayte’s car fully mounted the verge and began to spin, he couldn’t help but stare at the steel lamppost he knew he was about to hit.

Chapter Four

Kent. Saturday, 18 April 1914.

Five days had passed since Alice Stilwell’s objectionable encounter with the Dutchman known to her only as Raskin. She had followed his instructions, trusting and hoping that if she complied, then he would be true to his word, and her family would be safe. She still had no idea how she’d managed to compose herself enough to go down to reception that morning to collect the letter that was left for her, precisely one hour after the ordeal, as Raskin had said. She had been shaking violently and crying until the moment the telephone rang, and she was shaking again by the time she got back to her room with the letter and opened it. What she read immediately lifted her spirits, causing her to laugh and cry at the same time. Her children were to be returned to the hotel that afternoon, but as she read on she learned that her husband was not.

The letter contained little by way of an explanation as to why her husband and children had been taken from her, simply stating that she must return to England at the earliest opportunity, and once there await further instructions. It gave no clue this time as to how contact would be made, only that it would. She was to tell no one of what had happened, and to anyone who asked, she would say that her husband had to remain in the Netherlands on unexpected business. The letter also reiterated that her husband’s life, and the lives of her children, depended on her full cooperation.

As Alice sat in her old bedroom at Hamberley, her parents’ home near Rochester, purposefully delaying her appearance at the dinner party her father had thrown for a few friends and family, she recalled the last part of the letter again, and it sent a shiver through her. It was clear that her children, who were now safely asleep in their beds, had been taken in order to scare her, and she had little doubt that these people could get to them again if they so wished. She had, of course, asked Chester and Charlotte—almost to the point of interrogation—what had happened that day, and she had come to realise that Henry had cooperated for their sakes, because the men who had taken them had caused the children no apparent distress. To the contrary, she was surprised to receive them back so full of joy. The children had by all accounts enjoyed a grand outing, having been told that Mummy wasn’t coming with them so they could spend more time with their father.

Alice pictured the towering image of Raskin again, as he had stood in the hotel lobby, holding her children’s tiny hands in his, as though having throughout the course of the day formed a bond of friendship with them. It made her feel sick just thinking about it. She wondered again who Raskin was and more importantly, whom he was working for. She had gone over their brief conversation outside the Hotel Des Indes many times since her return to England, and she distinctly recalled him using the word ‘we’ rather than ‘I,’ suggesting that he was perhaps as much a pawn in these terrible events as the men who had arrived in that cream-coloured car and more directly stolen her family.

A knock at Alice’s door preceded the appearance of her mother, who had no doubt come to find out what was keeping her daughter from the dinner guests. She came into the room as full of smiles as she had been since Alice first arrived at Hamberley, and it had forced Alice to realise that her mother, who always seemed to have her best interests at heart, must have missed her and the children a great deal since they had made the decision to settle in America. Alice returned her mother’s smile, but it was tainted by her thoughts and all the dark possibilities she could not block from her mind.

‘Oh, dear,’ her mother said. ‘Don’t you want to come down? Are you missing Henry? Is that it?’

Henry . . .

Alice could neither hear nor think his name without feeling her stomach cramp with worry. Instinctively, she clutched at the engraved picture locket she wore on a chain around her neck: a wedding gift from Henry.

‘I heard you again last night,’ her mother added. ‘Will you at least let me call for the doctor? I’m sure he could prescribe a tonic to help you sleep.’

‘No, I’m well enough,’ Alice said. ‘Really, I am. It’s as you say—I’m missing Henry, that’s all.’

‘Well, come along then. Stand up and let me have a better look at you.’

Alice drew a deep breath as she rose, and then she smiled more fully as she looked at her mother properly for the first time since she had entered the room. Her hair was pinned up in a tight roll, and her dress was dark grey below the waist and white above it. She wore nothing bright or colourful, and Alice blamed her father’s influence for that—not that Alice felt like wearing any of her own colourful dresses any more, but they were all she had packed.

‘Your father has invited someone special along this evening,’ Alice’s mother said. ‘Someone to see you.’

Alice could only think of one person in the world her father would invite to dinner specifically to see her.

‘Archie?’ she said, already knowing the answer.

Her mother nodded. ‘It wasn’t my idea. You know how your father is.’

Alice knew very well. Archie Ashcroft had been introduced to her before her memories began, which she supposed was on her third birthday because she could vividly remember the rocking horse her parents gave her, with its long black mane and its bright red and gold painted stand. She couldn’t recall anything before that day, when she had been guided into her bedroom with her hands over her eyes. ‘No peeking,’ her father had said, but she had. Perhaps she was just a baby when she and Archie first met, neither having any clue as to what their parents had planned for them.

Those were such carefree times,
she thought, and her memories made her smile. ‘It’s quite all right, Mother,’ she said. ‘I shall be glad to see him again.’

‘It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I don’t believe you’ve seen him since the wedding.’

‘No, I’m sure I haven’t,’ Alice said. ‘I suppose he’ll barely recognise me.’

Her mother gave a small laugh. ‘Oh, I’m certain he will.’

Dinner was at eight, although the guests at Hamberley had all arrived by six thirty for canapés and cocktails, and Alice, who wasn’t in any kind of mood for small talk was glad to have missed it. She arrived in the dining room along with the creamed chicken soup, and without looking at anyone, she followed her mother to the head of the table, where they each took a seat beside her father, Lord Charles Metcalfe.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, Father,’ Alice said.

‘Are you? I was beginning to think you weren’t coming to your own dinner party at all.’

There was more than a hint of sourness in his tone, and Alice, when she glanced at him, could see that pinched expression she knew so well, hiding beneath his beard. It told her to choose her words carefully, or better still to say nothing at all.

‘Charles.’

It was her mother, speaking softly. Alice saw her pale hand land as gentle as a butterfly on her father’s arm, and it seemed that all the tension drained from him. He sat back in his seat, and Alice turned away, thankfully distracted by the bowl of soup that had been set before her. She was aware that the general conversation, which had been lively when she first entered the room, had now stopped, and as she forced a smile and nodded to each of the guests in their dinner jackets and evening gowns, she saw that the reason was because everyone was already smiling back at her. The dining room, with its many old family portraits, always felt overcrowded to Alice, no matter how many guests had been invited to dinner. Tonight, though, the attention of all those eyes, which now seemed to stare at her, was close to unbearable.

‘How have you been, Alice?’

Frank Saxby’s silky tones drew Alice’s eye, and she turned to him.

‘We don’t see much of you these days, do we, Bea?’ Saxby continued, addressing her as he turned to his wife, Beatrice, who was sitting opposite him.

‘No,’ Beatrice said. ‘Hardly at all since the wedding.’

‘I’m very well,’ Alice said, smiling politely to disguise the truth.

She knew Frank as Uncle Frank, although he was no relation—just a good friend of her father’s since long before she was born. She had never directly asked, but Alice was of the impression that their friendship harked back to their school days. Saxby was a businessman who had made his money selling asbestos to the building industry, and according to her father, was someone so adept at his profession that he could sell snow to Eskimos.

At the opposite end of the table were Lord Abridge and his wife, whom Alice had only met a few times at one event or another in connection with the Admiralty. Then there was her Aunt Cordelia and her husband, Oscar Scanlon, whose poorly advised business ventures had all but left them in financial ruin, and was the reason why they had now been in residence at Hamberley going on five years—much to her father’s displeasure. They had a son, Edwin, whom Alice thought as disagreeable as his father. Thankfully, he was away at university, which was something else her father’s estate was paying for.

Archie was sitting immediately to Alice’s right, and the years since she’d last seen him had done little to alter his appearance. He was still the same slim-figured boy she had known all her life, with tidy medium-brown hair and dimples in his cheeks whenever he smiled. She had teased him about his dimples so many times as they were growing up, but in truth she had always thought them quite a charming feature. Seeing him again brought back so many fond memories of their time growing up together that she felt her spirits lift, if only for a moment. As soon as he spoke, he seemed to inject the life back into the room as everyone continued their conversations and began the first course.

‘It’s awfully good to see you again, Alice. You look very well.’

‘Thank you, Archie. It’s good to see you, too. You haven’t changed a bit.’

‘Really?’ He sounded disappointed. ‘But surely my sideburns must have grown a little by now? You know how I’ve always wanted a pair.’

Alice picked up her spoon and laughed to herself as she tested the soup. There had always been laughter between them, and she welcomed it now. ‘I’m sure they’re very fetching.’

Missing from the gathering were Admiral Waverley and his wife. He was another close friend of Alice’s father, and she couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t have been invited. She thought the Admiral must have been otherwise engaged on important naval business.

‘No Admiral Waverley this evening?’ she asked, and the room fell silent.

Alice looked around the table at all the faces that were now staring at her as though she had just asked her father to explain something as inappropriate as how a steam turbine worked.

Her father’s beard twitched several times before he spoke. ‘I’m sorry, Alice. I should have told you before now.’ He paused.

‘Whatever is it?’ Alice asked.

Her father sighed. ‘Our good friend Christopher Waverley has passed on.’

Alice’s face dropped. ‘He died? When?’

‘Barely two weeks ago.’

‘But how? What happened?’

‘They said it was a heart attack, although what he was doing near Tilbury Docks in the middle of the night is beyond my reckoning.’

Lord Abridge spoke then. ‘He was found on the muddy riverbank between the docks and Tilbury Fort, poor fellow. It was lucky the tide didn’t take him.’

‘Quite,’ her father said. ‘Another half an hour and his body might never have been found.’

‘That’s terrible news,’ Alice said.

‘Yes, and I’m afraid that’s not all of it. His wife is missing.’

‘Missing?’ Alice said, scrunching her brow. This was all too much to take in.

Alice’s mother joined the conversation. ‘Florence hasn’t been seen since her husband’s death,’ she said. ‘It’s all very peculiar.’

Lord Abridge cleared his throat and said, ‘There’s something fishy about the whole bally business if you ask me.’

Alice’s father placed a hand on hers. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me for not breaking the news to you sooner.’

‘Of course, Father.’

Everyone continued eating again, but without speaking for a few minutes as though out of respect for their friend departed. When the silence broke, it was Lord Metcalfe, speaking to Archie.

‘I should have liked your father and mother to attend this evening, Archie. But duty first, eh?’

‘Of course, but His Majesty’s Navy has always been my father’s first mistress.’

‘As well I know. And yours, too, no doubt?’

‘My first and only mistress at this time, sir,’ Archie said, stealing an awkward glance at Alice.

‘And how are you finding things in Whitehall?’

‘In all honesty, sir, I’d sooner be a fighting man again, serving aboard one of His Majesty’s warships.’

Lord Metcalfe laughed. ‘I admire your spirit, Archie, but you’re still boxing for the Navy aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but it’s not quite the—’

‘Well then,’ Lord Metcalfe cut in. ‘And you shouldn’t underestimate the work that goes on at the Admiralty. Battles are rarely won on the front line these days. And our defensive strategies, particularly when it comes to our homeland, are just as important as our offensive strategies.’

‘Hear, hear!’ Lord Abridge chipped in.