The Love Letter (75 page)

Lucy bustled back into the kitchen recess and re-emerged with a pot that now contained hot water, teabags, milk, sugar and several biscuits all ready mixed. ‘You can drive up to the hall to talk to the police while Legs is having a bath, can’t you Francis? They can hardly arrest you for drink driving on your own private roads. Tell them Legs can’t possibly speak with them until the morning. But tell Hector
I
must speak with
him
urgently.’

Francis reluctantly limped to the door, towing Legs behind him out onto the porch, where he covered her hand with both his and held it against his chest. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he promised. ‘The police will want to talk to you about Byrne too, but I’m sure it’s just a formality.’

‘Why do they want to know about him?’ She asked, colour mounting on her cheeks. ‘It was Liz who wrote those letters.’

‘The Lucian Freud nude is missing.’

‘I thought you sold it to Vin Keiller-Myles?’

‘I did. He was going to take it home with him tonight, but when I went upstairs to fetch it, it had disappeared. It must have been taken when the lights went out.’

Legs’ laughed incredulously. ‘Why blame Byrne?’

‘He had access and motive. Now he’s disappeared too. It all adds up’

‘What “motive”?’

‘Money, of course.’

‘He doesn’t need money!’ She bit her lip, realising she mustn’t betray Byrne. ‘Are you sure it hasn’t just fallen off the wall? It could be a Freudian slip.’

He gave her a withering look, but then his handsome blue eyes creased with amusement, ‘Darling Legs, you are my light relief at the end of the tunnel. How could I survive without you? I knew my mother’s ring would be safe with you.’ To her horror, he stooped to kiss her. She kept her mouth tight shut and wriggled quickly away.

‘I need that bath.’

‘Of course you do. You must feel like hell. I will dedicate tonight to you, as I will dedicate the rest of my life. I love you. Now don’t you dare go away.’ Kissing her nose, forehead, each cheek and chin before blowing her a kiss from his fingers, he turned to go, then turned back. ‘Why
were
you in the cellars when Liz came up through the sea passage, by the way?’ he asked again.

‘I was checking on progress on Poppy’s sculpture,’ she bluffed, emotion suddenly wiring her jaws so tight they hollowed like pricked balloons.

‘Much better, isn’t it?’ he smiled fondly. ‘No idea why she tried for that awful Scarfe caricature stuff. Abstract naive is definitely her limit.’ Nodding farewell, he headed off into the gathering storm, Land Rover engine roaring louder than the approaching thunder.

Legs waved him off with relief, wondering if it might have been preferable to tumble over that cliff after all. A life without Byrne was unbearable. She slumped down on the porch step of Spywood, her little haven of comfort, and hugged the oak upright of its porch.

She had to be strong and tell Francis there was no future. But while dumping her motherless, romantic, scholarly first love once looked like misfortune, to dump him twice looked like deliberate cruelty. She raked away mounting tears with her palms.

Now the Land Rover tail-lights had disappeared down the tracks, Lucy appeared at her side on the Spywood doorstep. She was proffering a vast brandy, having raided the Christmas surplus which was stored in the trunk below the stairs. When Legs shook her head, she had a large swig herself. ‘Thank God he’s gone, you’re alive and you’re here. Oh Legs, darling.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper and sat down beside her. ‘Lucian Freud’s nude’s upstairs.’

It took Legs’ overwrought mind a few moments to comprehend what her mother was saying. ‘The painting’s here?’

Lucy nodded, looking frantic. ‘Hector took it – it was hanging up amid my watercolours in the kitchen when Ros arrived this evening. I only spotted it there because she accused me of painting disgusting filth, but I recognised it straight away, of course. It used to hang downstairs by the old butler’s pantry at Farcombe, and Hector would get guests to guess whether it was genuine or not.’

‘Is it?’

‘I very much doubt it,’ Lucy shook her head, art restorer judgement reigning supreme despite her panic. ‘But Hector never let on, and I have no doubt the Protheroes think it is.’

‘Francis has just sold it to Vin Keiller-Myles for a fortune,’ Legs told her, the truth about Farcombe’s financial shortfalls spilling out.

‘Then it must be a fake. Why else would Hector smuggle it here? Vin’s bound to want it authenticated. Hector knows I always liked it enormously. It was no doubt intended to be a noble parting gesture before he goes back to Poppy. But you can imagine the trouble it will cause if it’s discovered here.’

‘Why didn’t you just tell Francis?’

‘We were rather distracted by the thought that you’d just gone over a cliff.’ She started to snivel as the horror of that struck her afresh. ‘Now I just want it gone. It’s another reminder of Hector’s wild flights of fancy.’

‘I’ll get rid of it,’ Legs reached across to hug her shoulders. ‘Francis need never know. If the police really are involved, it must get returned to Farcombe as soon as possible.’

‘But Hector will get in such terrible trouble.’

‘It’s Francis who sold it,’ Legs muttered. ‘He’d do anything to save Farcombe.’

‘Whereas his father would still gamble it away on a whim,’ Lucy sighed, patting her daughter’s arm. ‘He was always sending me into William Hill in Bude with a roll of fifties.’

‘Do his bets still all have musical names?’

‘How did you know that?’

Legs told her about discovering Hector’s old system, the winnings going to charity. Then she found herself confessing that she had worked it all out in a frantic attempt to persuade Byrne his father hadn’t fallen victim to Hector’s cruelty, but rather his legendary and over-effusive philanthropy. ‘Of course, Hector stealing Poppy away from Brooke is rather harder to forgive.’

‘How he could have a son as upstanding and trustworthy as Francis still amazes me,’ Lucy eyed her closely.

‘Yes, Francis lays down the law while his father lays bets and wives.’

‘Poor darling Legs,’ Lucy gripped her daughter’s hand on her shoulder. ‘There was me thinking that you were so lucky to have the son all these years when I was denied the father, but the sins of both have been waged against us. You don’t want to marry Francis at all, do you?’

‘No.’ She hung her head.

Lucy squeezed her hand, ‘We all love Francis, of course, and he’s family to us, but you’re both young. You’ll both find—’

‘Don’t say it. It’s already happened.’ Legs tipped her head against her mother’s shoulder and watched lightning flashing like a distant rave party over the horizon.

‘Jago,’ Lucy sighed, ‘the man with barbed wire round his soul.’

She nodded, breathing in her mother’s familiar scent. ‘I’ve lost
my heart to somebody who thinks love is a weapon of mass destruction.’

‘I guessed as much when I saw you together. Such a clever man,’ Lucy sighed again. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ She was trying very hard not to slur her words, but it was obvious she was struggling to keep focus.

‘Not particularly,’ she apologised. ‘I think only a bath can take my tears right now.’

‘Your father always says that you carry more guilt in your shoulders than the rest of the Norths put together, including your God-fearing sister and all the Catholics on my mother’s side. He used to call you our Madonna child, do you remember?’

‘That’s because I sang “Like a Virgin” into my hairbrush in front of the mirror, Mum.’

‘Was it?’

They stood up, arm in arm, and went inside. Ros had been putting the finishing touches to a bath brimming with Hector’s muscle soak bubble bath. She’d even lit a few candles, and placed a freshly brewed mug of tea between the taps.

While Lucy reeled cheerfully back to the newly opened brandy bottle, Legs stifled a yawn and lent on the door frame as she watched her sister pulling clean towels from the laundry cupboard. ‘This is such heaven. Thank you.’

‘It’s not every day we get you back from the dead,’ Ros said chirpily, testing the temperature in the bath.

It only now occurred to Legs that her sister must have set out from London long before her clifftop drama began. ‘What are you doing in Devon?’

‘I came on here after dropping Nico with his father,’ she said then lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I think Dad’s about to stage a walkout with Vegan Megan from the antiques shop. I went in there yesterday and she was giving him … head …’ a clap of thunder overhead blotted out all noise ‘… in full public view.’

Legs stepped hurriedly into the bathroom and pulled the door closed, whispering: ‘Did you say “head”?’

‘That’s right. Indian.’

‘Indian head? Is that a Kama Sutra thing?’

‘Massage,
Legs. Indian head massage,’ she hissed it as though it was the Kew equivalent of soliciting on a street corner.

‘Oh that’s all right then,’ Legs said with relief. ‘Vegan Megan is totally not Dad’s type. The only pulses she sets racing are mung beans.’ She stared at Ros as something ground-breaking occurred to her. ‘Did you just say you actually went to Inkpot Farm?’

Ros straightened her neat bob in front of the mirror over the basin. ‘Of course not. We met Nico’s father at Taunton Services. He was late, of course.’

‘It’s so great you’re doing some of the driving.’ She yawned tiredly, knowing Will and Daisy would be hugely gratified; they desperately needed Ros to be more practical and onside.

But Ros looked pained by the compliment. ‘It’s just this once. I wanted to come here and say goodbye to the old place before I lose it.’ She gazed around the bathroom tearfully, at the bowing whitewashed beams, the cracked old enamel, broken tiles and rusted taps. Then her eyes alighted on her sister. ‘You look terrible, Legs. Are you feeling cold? Clammy? Difficulty breathing? Let me look at your pupils.’

‘I’m fine.’ She pulled off the tattered coral dress, exhaustion overwhelming her.

Ros eyed her with concern. ‘Why are you wearing men’s underpants?’

‘I’m toying with the idea of a sex change.’

‘I really have never understood your sense of humour. That letter you wrote to Francis had some very odd jokes in it. I was in two minds about sending it frankly, but I’m terribly pleased I did. It’s made all the difference, hasn’t it?’

Legs gaped at her. ‘You sent it?’

With a saintly smile, Ros turned to the door. ‘I discovered it
when I was cleaning your flat after that dog stayed the night. The letter was spread out on your bed, along with my wedding dress which you bought from eBay. That is just
so
sweet.’

Legs closed her eyes. She’d blamed Kizzy for falsely framing her, but it had been a team effort all along; working independently, one had dug out the misleading clues, the other had packaged them up and labelled them as evidence.

‘I would have given the Ditchley dress to you had I known, Legs,’ Ros went on. ‘I always said you should wear it to marry Francis. The least I could do was help fate along with a first class stamp. You scrub up for his return – he’ll be back any minute.’ She blew her a kiss as she slipped out of the door, immensely proud of her act of big-sisterly kindness.

Legs plunged into her bath as eagerly as Ophelia seeking oblivion.

It was such heaven to wash her hair at last that for a brief moment Legs almost forgot her woes, water lifting every follicle, threading its warm fingers through the loosening tangles and caressing her scalp like Vegan Megan’s Indian head massage. She lay for a long time in the bath, letting the water go cold and running more hot in, listening to the candles guttering and the storm circling around the headland. Spywood’s little, flickering bathroom felt safe, this deep enamel tub she’d once shared with her sister and later shared many times with Francis, those summers that they had spent nights here alone, crammed together in the hot bubbles, legs hanging over the side of the bath, lust and laughter keeping the water hot.

She topped up again with a scalding jet from the hot tap and sank back more miserably, dreading the conversation to come.

To add to her turmoil, she could hear Francis returning now and talking loudly to Ros outside the door, obviously about to come in and see her.

‘Nobody there apart from Imee,’ he was complaining. ‘The police have all gone home. Kizzy’s taken Liz Delamere back to her
wardened flat. Édith’s buggered off too, and Dad’s had to take Poppy to hospital – she’s still quite convinced Liz wanted to kill her, and that she mistook Legs for her because she was wearing Poppy’s turban and dress. She’s suffering the most ghastly panic attack, although Dad seemed quite cheerful about it when we spoke on the phone, saying that at least he was getting the old girl out of the house for once. Is Legs in here?’

Splashing water everywhere, she managed to clamber out of the bath and wrap herself in a towel just as he came in.

‘Darling, don’t get up on my account,’ he joked. ‘You look much better.’ He’d put on a jumper and was wearing old jeans now. He looked so incredibly handsome and cheerful, she wanted to cry.

‘I just need to – um …’ She rushed past him into the main cottage room, towel trailing and hair dripping. ‘Mum, can I borrow something to wear?’