The Winter Folly (24 page)

She blotted it, folded it and tucked it into one of the yellow envelopes turned crisp with age. The gum on the flap was brown and useless so she slipped it closed instead and wrote her
father’s name and address on the front. Then, getting up, she went to the hall and put it on the silver tray by the door where she had seen Nicky leave letters. At that moment she saw Thomas
emerging from the butler’s pantry down the hall.

‘Thomas!’ she called. ‘There’s a letter here. Can you see that it’s delivered today, please? By hand, not by post.’

‘Yes, miss,’ he returned briefly and disappeared down the hall. She watched him, picking up the smallest hint of impertinence in his manner. She had a feeling that if the servants
had not already connected her with Mr Crewe of the Old Grange, then they would before the day was out.

Present day

‘This way.’

Delilah led Susie up the creaky wooden stairs to the attics over the east wing, switching on the light bulb as she reached the top. She coughed slightly in the thick dusty air.

‘Goodness!’ Susie reached the top of the stairs and looked around, blinking in the murky light. She glanced at the piles of old packing cases, boxes spilling their contents and
furniture stacked up high to the eaves. ‘What a treasure trove! Have you explored it?’

‘No, just the odd trunk. I don’t like it up here very much.’ ‘So dusty – it’s not very pleasant to breathe, is it?’ ‘No. You do get used to it,
but still, it’s not very nice.’ Susie put her hands on her hips, her eyes falling on things of interest. ‘But you could spend hours up here rootling around it all.’

‘You know these old families – they never throw anything away. I’m sure there are some valuable things up here. But what I was interested in was the clothes.’

‘Ooh, yes.’ Susie rubbed her hands together. ‘Bring it on!’

Susie had replied eagerly to her invitation to visit. She was always on the lookout for new treasures for her auction house, and as she specialised in vintage couture, she was the perfect
person, Delilah felt, to help her take a look through the clothes in the attic and see what was up there.

‘This is the tin trunk I mentioned in my email.’ Delilah lifted it open a good deal more easily than she had the first time. Inside lay the drawer of gloves, stockings and ties and
all the other wrapped oddments.

‘Oh,’ Susie said happily. ‘Look at these! How gorgeous! I must get my hands on them.’

‘You’re like a child in a sweet shop.’ Delilah smiled.

‘I can’t wait to get stuck in.’

‘There are some more cases and trunks that I haven’t looked inside yet. I’m hopeful of some really good finds. But I don’t want to open them up here in the dust and
dirt.’ She closed the steamer trunk and pushed the catches back into place. ‘Shall we take one or two downstairs and open them there?’

‘Good idea. Let’s.’

They enlisted Erryl’s help to get three trunks of clothes down from the attic and into the old guest room at the front of the house, a room that must once have been very grand with its
white and gold curtains and gold carpet but was now bedraggled. The curtains were falling to pieces in places, their embroidery hanging out in dull straggles, and the carpet was stained and
threadbare. The twin beds looked grubby and as though they had not been slept in for decades.

‘Golly, look at this place!’ Susie said, gazing about. ‘It’s like a room that time forgot.’

‘Oh, time’s remembered it all right,’ Delilah said ruefully, looking at the thick dust on the plaster mouldings and the ceiling rose. ‘It’s people that forgot it.
I’ll ask Janey why no one’s been keeping this room clean.’

‘Must be hell doing the housework in a place like this,’ Susie remarked, then she grinned at Delilah. ‘Although not so bad if you’ve got servants.’

‘Staff!’ said Delilah in a mock scandalised tone. ‘We don’t say servants.’

‘Staff then. Still sounds pretty bloody grand if you ask me.’

‘Point taken. But this place would be impossible to look after alone. I’m not sure this room is much better than the attic, but come on, let’s take a look.’

They knelt down on the dusty carpet and opened one of the cases that Delilah had not yet looked into. A strong smell of camphor and fusty clothes came out. Inside they discovered some antique
furs, slightly moth-eaten despite the camphor balls, but otherwise in fine condition.

‘These would be worth a lot if you wanted to sell,’ Susie said, stroking a russet fox fur admiringly, her fingers sinking into the lush pelt. ‘I have lots of clients
who’d adore this. They wouldn’t touch new fur but don’t feel so bad about wearing vintage.’

Delilah shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think John would allow it. But I’ll talk to him. There’s not much point in it all rotting upstairs. But I wondered about setting up
some kind of exhibition – you know, the clothes of Fort Stirling. With outfits next to old photos, if I can find enough matches. Or else a kind of imagined country house weekend
tableaux.’

‘I like it!’ Susie’s eyes glinted with enthusiasm. ‘And
then
I could sell the clothes.’

Delilah laughed. ‘Maybe. Let’s see what else we’ve got.’

They spent a few very happy hours going through the trunks, finding treasures that included a hand-beaded twenties flapper dress from a prestigious Paris fashion house, and a couple of original
Chanel pieces from the thirties. There were skirts, cashmere cardigans, silk and rayon blouses, little strapped shoes and felt hats, and tweed suits. Some of the knits and silks had suffered damage
but the mothballs had been effective on the whole.

‘Damn moths, how I hate them!’ exclaimed Susie, rubbing at some of the grainy strands left by moth cocoons. ‘I have to treat everything before it comes on the premises –
I don’t dare infect the stock. Come on, let’s look in the other trunk.’

With sighs of delight, they found some ballgowns: chiffon, silk, organdie and heavy satin thickly embroidered with seed pearls. A black velvet gown with a long train seemed particularly grand
and designed to go with diamonds. Tucked away in the corner of the trunk was a smart leather box with a handle on the top for easy carrying. Delilah opened it and found that inside was a tarnished
coronet, a circle of silver gilt with sixteen grubby silver balls around a puff of dark crimson velvet topped by a round golden ornament, and with a tiny strip of threadbare ermine around the
bottom rim.

‘Oh my goodness!’ Susie laughed. ‘An actual coronet! What’s it doing there?’

Delilah examined it with interest. ‘I wonder if this is the same as the one in some of the portraits downstairs. Some of the viscountesses were painted in full robes with their little
crowns on.’

‘Put it on!’

Delilah flushed. It seemed rather presumptuous to put on something she was not entitled to. ‘I’m not sure . . .’

‘Come on, what does it matter? We’re just dressing up. Go on,’ urged Susie, flapping her hand at Delilah as though trying to float the coronet up onto her head.

Delilah lifted the little coronet almost tentatively. It was lighter than she’d expected.

‘Go on,’ Susie said. ‘You might have to wear it for real one of these days. If there’s a coronation, you might be summoned to the Abbey in your finery.’

Delilah thought instantly of a large black-and-white photograph of John’s grandparents in their ceremonial robes, dressed for the coronation of George VI. They stood side by side on a
covered dais, their heads held stiffly under their coronets. John’s grandmother wore a stiff gown of white satin. Over the top she wore her stately red-velvet robes edged with gold thread and
ermine, worn like an overdress with little cap sleeves and fastened at the front over her bodice. An ermine-edged cloak hung from her shoulders and fell into a long train at her feet, and she wore
a many-stranded pearl choker with a large cameo pinned to it. She looked magnificent if rather frightening.
This must be the coronet from that photograph
, thought Delilah.
Another link
to the women of Fort Stirling, although Alex probably never wore it. She’d have been too young for the last coronation.

Delilah perched it on her head. ‘There,’ she said, flushing.

Susie did a mock curtsey, which looked rather odd in her sitting position. ‘Oh, your ladyship!’

‘Don’t.’ She whisked it off and put it on the floor. ‘The robes must be somewhere. I’ll show you the picture of them downstairs.’

‘If they’re in the attic, I bet the moths have got the velvet,’ Susie said mournfully. ‘That’s exactly the kind of thing they do, the evil critters. The more
valuable the fabric, the more they like it.’

‘Let’s look at the other trunk. I want to show you the clothes I discovered.’ As she reached for the other trunk, she felt a strange buzzing sensation and the thought floated
into her head:
But these are
her
clothes
. When Delilah had first seen them, she hadn’t known what she did now. She hadn’t seen so many images of Alex, or known that
she’d killed herself, or looked for her body. She hadn’t dreamed of her on the top of the folly, ready to leap to her death . . .

‘Love the trunk – a real vintage steamer,’ Susie was saying, but Delilah barely heard her. Instead she was only aware of the rushing in her head and the curious buzzing in her
ears. She stared as Susie reached across her to lift out the top drawer and reveal the clothes beneath. Folded just below were the black dress and matching coat she had tried on in the attic and
she watched, almost frozen, as Susie lifted them out, exclaiming at the quality and shaking them out to examine more closely.

‘Don’t,’ Delilah said, snapping back to herself. She put her hand out towards the dress.

‘What?’

‘Leave it. Not that. Put it back.’

Susie looked at the dress. ‘What’s special about it? I mean, it’s a beautifully made dress and coat set but—’

‘I don’t know. I tried it on and it made me feel . . . strange. Unpleasant.’ She remembered it now – the horrible sensation she’d felt as she’d pulled that
dried flower from the coat pocket.

Susie looked at her, eyebrows raised quizzically. ‘Are you getting sensitive to the spooky in a place like this? I’m not surprised with so many dead people’s possessions around
you. Come on, it’s just a dress like all the rest of the stuff. You didn’t mind about that.’

‘I can’t explain it. I don’t like it being touched. We should put it back.’

Susie climbed to her feet, lifting the dress with her, leaving the coat on the floor. ‘Okay, I’ll put it back – let me just look at it.’ She held the dress up against
herself, admiring the way it fell to just above her knee. ‘It’s gorgeous! If you don’t like it, can I try it on?’

Delilah felt a rush of panic, as though she had to protect Alex in some way. ‘No, Susie, please – put it back!’

The door opened and John put his head round it, saying, ‘Hello. Erryl told me he’d carted a ton of stuff for you two— oh.’ He had seen the dress that Susie was holding
and he stopped abruptly, staring at it. ‘What’s that?’ he said in a changed voice.

‘Just a dress we found in a trunk,’ Susie said. ‘What do you think? Does it suit me?’

Delilah stared, agonised. Of all the terrible luck, that they should be looking at his dead mother’s things as he appeared. He would probably not have seen these clothes since he was a
boy, since his mother had worn them.

His smile vanished and he came slowly into the room, his gaze fixed on the dress. He’d gone pale. ‘No,’ he said in an odd, almost robotic voice. ‘No, it doesn’t
suit you.’ He walked past Susie, who stood there still holding up the dress, her expression surprised, and reached the trunk. He looked down into it: lying on the top were folded jumpers with
distinctive patterns, skirts and a striped pussy-cat-bow blouse. He turned his gaze to Delilah, who was kneeling by the trunk and staring up at him, horrified. He seemed to have been slowed by what
he was seeing, as though reduced to half speed. ‘Were these upstairs with the rest?’

She nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

He stared back at the clothes, whiter than ever, his mouth set in a hard line. He seemed to be seeing them not as they were now, folded on beds of tissue paper, but as they once had been, worn
by a living, breathing woman. He turned back to Delilah and said in a curt voice: ‘Burn them.’

‘What?’ she replied, taken aback.

‘You heard me. Burn the lot.’

‘There’s no need for that, John!’ Susie interjected, smiling. ‘If you don’t want the clothes, I’d be delighted to take them off your hands and sell them. My
commission is thirty-five per cent and—’

‘I said
burn them
.’ His eyes were frozen granite and his voice harsh. ‘I don’t want to see these things in the house again.’

He turned and strode out without another word, leaving Delilah and Susie staring at one another in shocked silence.

It was much later that night. Delilah lay in bed, pressed up against John, her front to his back so that her body nestled into his and her arms wrapped tightly around his
middle. He wasn’t moving but she knew he wasn’t asleep. From the faint flutter she could feel as he breathed in and out, she knew that he was agitated. She was trying to transmit warmth
and comfort through her body, to calm him down and reassure him that he was safe and loved.

He’s afraid of something
, she thought. All she could imagine was that his boyhood trauma, the loss of his mother, had been awakened by the sight of her clothing. It had been
appallingly insensitive of her. She should have waited until she knew John was out of the house before bringing his mother’s things downstairs. She was furious with Susie for displaying that
particular dress as John walked in. If she had only put it down when Delilah had told her to, he might not have seen what they had been looking at and all this might have been avoided. As it was,
she had to explain to Susie that it was best if they put a stop to the clothes show for now, and returned to it another day. Susie had stayed for lunch as they’d planned but the sparkle had
gone out of the day. Delilah was distracted and unable to do much more than think about John and where he was, and what mood he was in. It wasn’t long before Susie made her excuses.