The Lost Empress (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Present day.

Tayte managed to stay afloat no more than a minute in the cold sea off the Medway estuary where the
Osprey
had left him. As soon as he hit the water, all he could see was the stormy sky above and the sea rolling around him, further disorientating him. He held his breath as time and again the sea crashed over him, taking him under and tossing him around as if his life had already left him. He willed his legs to kick beneath him—to tread the water—but they would not. A high swell took him under again, and before long he felt his breath run out. Slowly, he began to let it go, and he watched the bubbles rise, wishing he could go up to the surface with them, but he knew now that the only way for him was down, and the more air he exhaled, the deeper he sank.

This wasn’t supposed to happen . . .

Tayte thought about Jean then. He couldn’t bear the idea of things ending this way between them. He imagined she would miss him, or at least he thought she would miss the idea of him, despite everything. It was no consolation to him, though, in his last moments to know that she would be the only person in the world who would. He tried to clear his mind, which had become surprisingly lucid since hitting the water, in spite of the debilitating sedative Davina had given him. He closed his eyes, and it was as if the sea were suddenly filled with light. He opened them again and thought he must be close to death because he could see the guiding light—the one all the stories told you not to go towards.

But very soon, Tayte had no choice.

There was a splash above him, and a moment later he was no longer alone. He saw a diver’s mask and a pair of eyes staring back into his. Then both men were rushing up through the water towards the light. Tayte felt his face break the surface, and he gasped for the air that was howling down around him, flattening the sea. Above him he heard the drone of a helicopter, and then he was flying above the sea, being winched to safety. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The emotions that rushed out in that moment were a mixture of both. He was alive.

Below him now he heard a voice over a megaphone, drowned out as it was to some extent by the rotor blades spinning above him as the winch continued to pull him up. He turned towards the indistinct voice below and saw another spotlight shining onto the
Osprey
from a vessel that had moved alongside it. The
Osprey
was not as far away as he’d imagined. He saw Davina and Raife out on deck. Then he saw several police officers boarding, some with guns drawn.

About time,
Tayte thought as the helicopter moved closer to the boats, heading towards land. The air-sea rescue helicopter above Tayte directed its own spotlight onto the vessels, floodlighting them as it went closer, and in that moment Tayte saw Davina look up at him. Their eyes met, and with a scornful glare Tayte ripped his shirt open and pulled out the concealed wire he’d been wearing since he left Bishop earlier that afternoon. He held it out for Davina to see, knowing that it had picked up every damning word she’d said.

As the helicopter passed beyond the vessels and Tayte was hauled inside, his thoughts drifted back to the previous afternoon when he’d met Davina at his hotel. It was there that she had tripped herself up, although Tayte hadn’t realised it at the time. It was not until he was back in his room after visiting Lionel’s workshop that he knew she had lied to him about her research into Phoebe Dodson. Aside from the practice of following up other people’s research, he had also wanted to look for details of the inquest he knew must have been held following the house fire that had taken Phoebe’s and her mother’s lives.

What Tayte found was that the newspaper report Davina had apparently printed off, concerning the house fire in Charlesbourg, did not exist in any online archive today. The
Quebec Daily Mercury
ran from the early 1800s to the 1950s, but Tayte had discovered that—possibly due to fire or other environmental damage—archives only existed for the newspaper between 1870 and 1903, meaning that it was impossible to find such an article from 1914 and print it off today, as Davina had said she had done. The copy she had shown him then could only have been made from an original copy of the newspaper, which had to have been another of the legacy items handed down through the Scanlon family. Davina had therefore had it all along.

Having explained all this to DI Bishop on the way to London the following morning, the pair had hatched their own plan to sign the notebook out of the SIS archive and to use it to draw Lionel Scanlon’s killer out. Tayte had readily agreed to wear the microphone and transmitter that would be used to record his conversations. Then he had called Davina and dangled the bait, knowing that Bishop and his team would be watching and listening, and that all the required services would be on standby, ready to act when the right moment came—before any harm could come to Tayte.

As the air-sea rescue helicopter reached land, heading for a hospital, Tayte thought he would have to have a word with Detective Inspector Bishop about his timing as soon as the opportunity arose.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Following a restful night under observation in a hospital bed, where he’d slept like a baby, courtesy of the acute sedative Davina had slipped into his drink the day before, Jefferson Tayte spent the morning with DI Bishop at the police station. He had gone there to give his statement, but he’d found he couldn’t recall much of what had happened during the time between stepping aboard the
Osprey
and waking up at the hospital.

‘Don’t worry,’ Bishop had said. ‘You and Davina played your parts well.’

Bishop had then taken Tayte into another room, where he’d played back the recordings from the wire Tayte had been wearing. It had filled in the blanks in his memory caused by the Rohypnol, and all Tayte had to do then was confirm that he had gone aboard Davina’s boat that afternoon and that it was his voice on the recording.

‘What’s going to happen about those Swiss bank accounts?’ Tayte asked, having been reminded of the war-fund gold Frank Saxby and Oscar Scanlon had reportedly secreted away.

‘Who knows?’ Bishop said. ‘They’ll be checked out, of course. If there is anything there after all this time, one thing’s for sure. Neither Davina Scanlon nor Raife Metcalfe will see a penny of it.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Safely locked away for now. Raife Metcalfe still hasn’t said a word, but Mrs Scanlon made a full confession during the night.’

Tayte didn’t see how she could have done otherwise. The charges ran the entire gamut of murder-related crimes, including planning and sanctioning Lionel Scanlon’s murder, attempted murder in Tayte’s case, and actual murder in the case of the young restaurant manager, Luca. With everything that was said on the recordings, and with Luca’s dead body found in one of the cabins, the evidence against them was undeniable.

Bishop had also apologised to Tayte for not intervening sooner than he had. ‘Once the
Osprey
left the marina,’ he’d said. ‘I had to hold the team back so as not to be seen. It put a few minutes distance between us. Then when the
Osprey
stopped, you were in the water before we could get close enough to prevent it.’

Tayte had learned that he hadn’t actually been in the water anything like as long as he felt he had. The helicopter had moved in as soon as Davina had pushed him overboard. Raife had then started the
Osprey
up again in an attempt to make an escape, which, along with the current and the sea swell, was why Tayte quickly lost sight of the boat.

‘All’s well that ends well,’ Tayte had said, and then he’d turned his thoughts back to Alice Stilwell and the further business he felt he had to conclude before his assignment was over.

The letter Davina had shown Tayte—the letter Alice had sent to her father soon after arriving in Canada off the RMS
Laurentic
—had been found alongside the notebook in Davina’s handbag. Tayte had read it in Bishop’s car on the way to Hamberley. He felt
he had
a duty to set things straight for the Metcalfe family, as Lady Vivienne Metcalfe had previously asked him to when she’d brought the photograph of Alice to him. So the letter had finally arrived at Hamberley, albeit a hundred years late, but Tayte felt that in this case it really was better late than never.

With the entire household still in shock over the murder and attempted murder charges brought against Raife Metcalfe, Tayte had read Alice’s letter to Lord Metcalfe in the hope that it would offer him some degree of reconciliation with the memory of his grandmother. The letter contained Alice’s full account of what had happened in the spring of 1914, from that fateful day in Holland to her arrival in Quebec, and the hopes she carried with her of seeing Henry again, of returning to England and to her children, not as a criminal, but as a mother who had been forced to act as she had for the safety of her family. Tayte had also felt it his duty to remind Reginald that had Alice not done the things she had done, he might never have been born.

Tayte and Bishop left Reginald Metcalfe in his chair by the window, to ponder over the contents of the letter in silence and to draw whatever conclusions he wished to from it. Another record had been set straight as far as Tayte was concerned—the past repaired. The Metcalfe family now knew the truth, and Tayte could do no more than that. It was just after midday when Lady Metcalfe showed them out, offering her thanks as they walked—thanks for what she believed would now bring peace to her husband’s mind over the former black sheep of the family, if not over his grandson’s arrest.

‘Only too happy to help,’ Tayte said with a smile. Then as the doors to Hamberley closed, he ambled back to the car with Bishop beneath a blanket of low grey cloud that looked settled in for the day. It was time to leave the past to memory again and move on.

‘I found out what that phone call was all about,’ Bishop said. ‘The call Dean Saxby said he’d overheard at Lionel Scanlon’s workshop.’

‘You did?’

Bishop nodded. ‘Lionel was talking to Raife Metcalfe’s wife, Miranda, about the items of antique furniture the Scanlons were trying to acquire for them. Apparently, the conversation became heated when Lionel said he was having trouble finding one of the pieces and wanted more money for his trouble. Miranda Metcalfe said she remembered the conversation clearly.’

‘What about that receipt for electrical work? Did you find out why Dean Saxby never mentioned it?’

‘Yes I did,’ Bishop said. ‘I’m paraphrasing here, but he told me he spent an afternoon doing some re-wiring work for Mr Scanlon shortly after he went to sell him that cigar case. He told me he didn’t mention it because he thought it would strengthen their association and implicate him in the break-in at Mr Scanlon’s workshop before he was killed. He knew I’d find his arrest record and his history of violence, and with the poverty-line lifestyle he was leading, he thought I’d try to pin the break-in and subsequent murder on him. The newspapers reported that Mr Scanlon’s murder was suspected at the time to be the result of a burglary attempt gone wrong. Dean Saxby must have read that and panicked.’

‘Well, you got your case solved in the end,’ Tayte said.

‘Yes, and I want to thank you, Mr Tayte. Your assignment played a key role after all. I really wasn’t expecting anything to come of it.’

Tayte offered the Inspector a smile. ‘Team effort,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’

‘Why do you do it?’ Bishop asked. ‘I mean, what motivates you to keep delving into the past lives of people you’ve no relation to?’

‘We all need to make a living.’

Bishop scoffed. ‘Don’t give me that. It’s not about the money with you, I can tell. You wouldn’t have offered to put yourself in harm’s way like you did if it was just about earning a crust.’

‘No, perhaps not,’ Tayte said, thinking over the question again and finding no single answer. He wanted to say that he had to delve into the lives of other people’s families because he didn’t have one of his own to delve into, but thanks to Marcus Brown and the contents of the safety deposit box he’d left him, that was no longer true. They reached the car, and Tayte followed his briefcase into the passenger seat.

‘Well, whatever drives you,’ Bishop said, ‘you’ve got quite a story to take back to your client. I’m sure she’ll be chuffed to bits.’

‘Yes, I’m sure she will,’ Tayte said, ‘And I can let her know about her extended family, too. Being connected to British aristocracy always goes down well. I don’t know whether either side will want to get in touch, but I’ll certainly offer to open the door for them.’

‘That’s a nice gift to be able to give to people.’

Tayte smiled. ‘Maybe that answers your question. Maybe that’s why I do what I do.’

Bishop started the engine and the car began to move off, gravel crunching beneath the tires. ‘I suppose you’ll be heading home now.’

Home . . .

Tayte thought about Jean and reminded himself that home was where the heart is. ‘No, not just yet,’ he said, knowing she would be back in England in a few hours. When he’d thought he was going to die in the sea off the Medway estuary, all he could think about was Professor Jean Summer. He’d known then that she’d already had a profound impact on his life. When he’d been in life-threatening situations before, it had always been the need to find his family that had made him want to survive. Now it was Jean.

‘I’m hoping to spend a few days in London,’ Tayte said as he gazed thoughtfully out of his window at Hamberley for the last time.

He had decided not to wait for Jean’s phone call. He was going to meet her at the airport. He had to see her again, if only to say goodbye. If it was over between them, he didn’t want to find out down a phone line. He recalled one of Marcus Brown’s many pearls of wisdom then. It was a line his old friend had been fond of telling him.

‘The past is already written, Jefferson. The future, on the other hand, is a story yet to be told. So write it well.’

‘And then,’ Tayte continued, smiling to himself as he began to dream about that possible future, ‘who knows?’