The Room Beyond (22 page)

‘It can’t be. I would have noticed it. My bedroom looks out onto
nothing but sky and a brick wall.’

‘Yes, you’re right, because the angles are all wrong. And none of
the other inner-facing rooms look out onto it either. The library simply
doesn’t want to be gaped at by any old person.’

‘You speak about it as if it were a living thing.’

‘And who says it isn’t?’ he asked. I could see the tension in his
eyes again: the urgency, the tight string poised to snap. ‘Don’t you believe
that buildings have a life of their own?’

‘Whoever built this place must have been a master craftsman of some
kind. A famous architect.’

‘No he was nothing of the sort. He was a man called Walter
Balanchine. I’ve spoken to you about him before I think, the first time we
met.’

Walter Balanchine. That name just kept cropping up again and again.

‘Sasha would be very interested in this place then,’ I said,
treading carefully. ‘Isn’t he some sort of expert on the man?’

‘Sasha would cut his right hand off to come here,’ he answered in a
voice so dry that it set my teeth on edge. And then he suddenly smiled up at
me, as if shaking the subject of Sasha off. ‘We’re lucky we still have this
place actually. A large part of the Manor, including the library, threatened to
cave in on itself a few years ago. Subsidence.’

‘It must have cost a fortune to repair.’

‘Yes... luckily we were sort of, bailed out, at the last minute so
to speak.’

I gazed around the room; it would have taken weeks, months to do
justice to the jungle of books and manuscripts and endless artefacts that had
been crammed into the library walls. No part of its circumference had been left
bare and where the shelving ended it was replaced by drawings and paintings and
mounted shotguns and stuffed birds in cases and a thousand other things.

‘It’s like Marguerite Avenue, but on steroids.’

‘Yes, you’re absolutely right about that!’ he laughed.

But one large oil painting did draw me closer; it seemed only
natural at first as it was bigger and more imposing than anything else in the
room. And yet there was something more to it than that, a funny sort of
magnetism about it that made me breathe a little faster with every approaching
step. The beautiful girl at the centre... I knew her, I’d seen her before. Somewhere.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? My favourite painting in the house,’ said
Raphael. He’d followed me across the room and I could actually feel his
presence on the back of my neck. ‘It was commissioned in the 1870s by an
unknown artist.’

There were two people in the painting: a middle-aged man and the
young familiar woman sitting on a horse. The man, who was standing at the
horse’s head with the bridle in his hands, was broad-chested and stocky and
looked as if he would have been far more comfortable sitting on the horse
himself. He had large grey whiskers and a rather arrogant, bulldoggish
expression on his face.

But the girl’s eyes shone out so piercingly from the painting that
it seemed as if she was staring straight at me. She had tints of red in her
hair that were set off by what must have been a very smart riding habit, and
she sat mounted on the lovely chestnut horse as if she owned the world and
despised everything about her at the same time.

‘The great Stephen Hartreve,’ said Raphael, breaking the silence.
‘The man in the painting. This was his room, it was built for him.’

‘And the woman?’

‘His daughter, Lucinda.’

‘Lucinda Hartreve, the one who lived in Marguerite Avenue?’

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘You never did tell me about her.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘I feel as if she’s a person I was familiar with once but need
reminding about. Don’t you think she’s laughing at us all in this painting, as
if everything’s a big joke?’

‘Yes, you’ve got a point. I suppose that nowadays we would label her
as nothing more than a rebel, but she was called far worse in her time. Lucinda
and her father parted on bad terms. She ran off with the wrong man when she was
quite young and eventually had an illegitimate child with someone else. Lucinda
was her father’s favourite, he had a son as well who went to Africa as a
missionary and died there. That’s why the inheritance eventually came to our
side of the family.

Lucinda was the apple of her father’s eye: strong-willed, a good
horsewoman and very much admired for her beauty. After she left, Stephen
retreated into himself. His wife had died many years before and he started to
go mad rattling around Druid Manor on his own. And so he got Walter to build
this library for him. He wanted something large enough to contain everything he
might ever need to keep him occupied and yet so private that he should never be
bothered by anyone.

As he got older he spent more and more time here. He was drawn to
its discreet grandeur; he loved the novelty of being able to disappear into it
as if by magic. In fact invisibility became quite an obsession for him; you’ll
find a whole section on it in this library, along with books on ghosts, the
occult and so on. One wouldn’t associate a man like that with such subjects,
but his daughter and, her legacy, changed him I think. He started to look
inside himself until it became an obsession.’

‘It’s so sad, a good story though. You seem to know a lot about
him.’

‘I have excellent sources.’

‘What happened to Lucinda?’

‘Ah, that’s not a good story. But we should go, I expect Beth will
be back by now and I have a number of things to do. Do you remember the way
back?’

‘No.’

‘Well let’s hope I do then!’ he answered with a low laugh. He
reached out, drawing me from the painting with his hand.

Eva eventually arrived with Robert late into the evening. They
pulled up the driveway in a glimmering Aston Martin and we all assembled
outside to greet them.

Olly stroked the bonnet of the car with an adoring hand. ‘Like the
motor!’

‘A present from the oligarch, just before she jilted him,’ said
Raphael.

‘Didn’t he want it back?’

‘No,’ replied Eva. ‘I think he’d already forgotten about it.’

‘Couldn’t you have strung him on a bit longer then, got a few more
pressies out of him?’

‘No.’

I trailed behind as the cousins swept into the house chattering
loudly, and when no one was looking I disappeared upstairs. In my bedroom I
peered through the window into the black night air. Slowly the outline of the
brick wall that shielded my view of the library roof began to take form. It
seemed impossible that that gigantic glass dome was only a short distance away,
when all I could see was a patch of jet black sky and the silhouette of a
crooked mound of ugly bricks. A secret library, hidden so cleverly from the
world’s eyes. My spine tingled. And poor old Stephen Hartreve, withering away
in that vast place, alone and heirless. What did happen to Lucinda in the end?

I woke up the next morning to the glare of bright sunshine and the
clamber of animated footsteps running along corridors and up and down stairs.

‘Serena!’ my door burst open and Beth came flying onto my bed. ‘It’s
the Christmas Eve treasure hunt, get up! Oh they’re always so brilliant,
Grandpa and Uncle Rupert do it for us and you’ve got to come too. Oh please,
please!’

‘Calm down!’

‘I’m trying to, I really am, but I can’t breathe. You will come
won’t you?’’

There were bright red circles in her cheeks and her eyes were
sparkling with excitement.

‘OK, let’s get dressed.’

Seven of us eventually congregated in the grand hallway for the
beginning of the hunt. I was surprised to see Eva there, joining in, dressed in
a thick fur coat. She seemed to be avoiding my gaze. Raphael was there too.

‘We have to look for the first sign,’ announced Estella, sombrely,
and Beth squeezed my hand until it felt as if most of the bones had been
snapped in half.

‘Look, old Harold’s got it!’ Robert exclaimed, dashing over to a
suit of armour in the corner. A rolled up piece of paper had been tucked into
the mouthpiece and was only made discernible by the dangling end of the red
ribbon that tied it.

‘Uh, I thought that was blood dripping from his mouth!’ cried Beth.

Olly unleashed the clue and read from it with great pomp and
gravity:

Seek that which takes us up and over

Close to the place with the four-leaved clover
.

Everyone paused in deep concentration.

‘Estella once found a four-leaved clover in the bottom field,’
murmured Raphael.

‘Yes you’re right,’ cried Estella. ‘I was just thinking that. It was
years ago and Daddy helped me press it under lots of books in the library.’

‘The bottom field it is then!’

The bottom field turned out to be a muddy bog. I squelched across it
ahead of everyone to try and keep up with Beth who squealed triumphantly
through the air,

‘Look...
up and over
... the clue’s on the stile over there!’

‘Well done!’ I shouted, beaming at her success.

She looked ready to explode with pride and clutched onto Olly as he
read the next clue:

See the smoke above the great pane,

Find the place from whence it came.

‘Oh that’s easy,’ said Eva, casually lighting a cigarette and hugging
her coat around her. ‘The
great pane
must be the stained glass window on
the side of the east wing.’

We trudged back through the mud and found it soon enough: a massive
stained-glass window set in the far side of the house depicting saints and
angels and writing in Latin. Nestling on the roof above it was a cluster of six
chimneys, only one of which was emitting a curling wisp of smoke.

‘Now all we need to find out is which room that chimney belongs to.’

‘It has to be the Rose Room,’ concluded Estella.

But when we arrived, sweating and breathless in the shabby old
parlour of that name, we found nothing but an untouched hearth that hadn’t been
used for a decade. Seconds later the scroll was found tucked away under the
stone mantelpiece of Rupert’s haphazard office next door.

Find me safe in the turtle dove’s wings

Close to the place where tonight the parish sings
.

‘Is there a midnight mass tonight in the local church?’ I asked
gingerly.

Raphael smiled. ‘Well done, it’s just on the edge of the estate. Let’s
go!’

I could feel my face colour up with the glory of my small success
and my heart fluttered in spite of myself. As we marched back across the
estate, breathing steam clouds into the air, I thought back to all those
Christmases with Jessica: the endless telly, the dry roasted turkey breast and
the inevitable game of draughts to break things up a bit. I swallowed hard with
shame at thinking about Jess like that, but it felt so glorious to be part of a
real family for once.

The old Norman church rose up like a pile of building blocks by a
side entrance to the estate. To get to it we had to walk out through stone
gates and around a small and picturesque lodge cottage that guarded them to the
right. Now all we needed to do was find a turtle dove.

‘Shall we go inside the church, maybe there’s a statue or
something?’ suggested Estella.

‘No, they’re not in the church. They’re
close
to it.’

‘I’ve got it!’ shrieked Beth suddenly. ‘It’s the wooden carving in
Miranda White’s house!’

‘What wooden carving?’

‘The one that sits on the kitchen dresser.’

‘Let’s go and have a look then, I know where the key’s hidden,’ said
Olly.

I felt myself pause, my eyes locked on them in dumb amazement. The
group ran back to the lodge cottage by the gate.

Miranda White

I knew that name already of course. She was the woman in the old
photograph that Seb carried about with him. He’d described her to me as a
...
rather special person in my family
. Yes, that was it. They even shared the
same surname. But now, it seemed, she was connected to the Hartreves as well...

By the time I entered the old and deserted building, they’d already
found the next clue, nestling in some wooden wings in a lumpy Victorian carving
of two turtle doves.

‘Why do you call this place Miranda White’s house?’ I asked, not
even sure if anyone was listening.

‘Because a woman of that name once lived here, a long time ago. No
one has ever lived here since.’

It was Eva who spoke, with a soft and almost loving voice. I gazed
back at her.