Read The Company She Kept Online
Authors: Marjorie Eccles
The Company She Kept
SHE KEPT
Marjorie Eccles
CHIVERS
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available
This eBook published by AudioGO Ltd, Bath, 2012.
Published by arrangement with the Author
Epub ISBN 9781471310553
Copyright © 1993 by Marjorie Eccles
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
Jacket illustration © iStockphoto.com
CHAPTER 1
It wasn't until he was back in his room again, after eating in the hotel restaurant, that he opened the large envelope he'd been given when he checked in.
His first thought was that there'd been some mistake, although his name on the label, Mr F. Darbell, was spelled correctly. His second was that someone was fooling around with him: inside the envelope was a blue cardboard folder containing a sheaf of papers, apparently the manuscript of a novel, or at least part of one, entitled
The Carthage Affair.
Momentarily distracted by the title, Felix blinked and looked closer. There was no byline, but with a title like that it had to be either a thriller or a lurid romance of the sort written by women. He picked up the telephone and punched in the number of the reception desk.
He was answered by the manager. The envelope, it was reported after some inquiry, had been handed in earlier by a motorcycle messenger from a national express courier firm, and instructions given to the receptionist on duty that it had urgent priority and was to be delivered to Mr Darbell immediately he arrived.
âShe must have made a mistake. It can't have been meant for me. Someone else with the same name?'
No, said the manager after a decidedly cool pause, she hadn't got the wrong person. Hardly likely with such an unusual name, was it, sir? And besides, his staff didn't make mistakes like that.
Felix asked if he might speak to the girl concerned, but she had just this minute gone off duty. The manager was politely sorry if it had inconvenienced Mr Darbell in any way, and if he wished he would get the girl to speak to him in the morning, but the implication was that he could in no way be personally responsible for his guests' correspondence ...the question of the precise nature of the contents of the envelope hung rather delicately on the air but remained unanswered ... if Mr Darbell felt there really had been a mistake he could perhaps bring the envelope down to the desk ...?
âIf anyone inquires about it, it's here,' said Felix shortly. He was already undressed and in his Jaeger silk dressing-gown, and felt besides that the onus was on the person who'd made the slip-up. Very sure of his own rightness, he scarcely gave a second's consideration to the idea that the envelope might really have been meant for him.
He put down the receiver and shrugged the matter off. He'd done his part. If someone got to Darlington or Driffield or Drumnadrochit and found they were missing part of their novel ... too bad. He'd more important things on his mind.
He'd had a light dinner, planning to spend the rest of the evening working in his room on the contract which was to be signed the next day. He worked for about half an hour, after which he pushed the papers aside, reluctantly admitting there was really no need for anything further. Although he'd planned to go through the contract minutely, making absolutely sure everything was tight as a drum, it was only one of those self-imposed tasks that made Lorna accuse him of being obsessive. There was really no fear that his staff hadn't performed with their usual efficiency; a leading firm of quantity surveyors such as his own didn't employ top people at top salaries to make a pig's ear of such things.
But having pushed the papers aside, he found himself restless. The trouble was, the title of that damned manuscript was going round and round in his brain.
The Carthage Affair.
Felix swore, and crossed to the mini-bar, where he selected a miniature Scotch. He was careful about his alcohol consumption nowadays, and because he'd needed to keep a clear head for the meeting the next day he'd had no wine with his meal. He'd had several cups of strong black coffee afterwards though, specifically intended to keep him alert and awake while he worked. Which meant that just turning in and having an early night wasn't on. He'd never sleep if he did.
He stood at a loss in the middle of the bland, overheated, colour-coordinated room, the blue bedspread picking out the blue in the flowery curtains and the overstuffed armchair. Lorna's idea of good taste, right down to the innocuous flower prints. Feeling suddenly stifled, he tracked across the thick carpet to notch down the central heating, then turned the television on, switching from channel to channel but finding nothing that remotely interested him. The evening stretched before him, stale and profitless.
It was a long time since he'd let himself be thrown back on his inner resources and in lieu of anything better to do he flung himself down in the armchair, opened the case again and looked at the manuscript.
Felix had never been a great reader, especially not of fiction. He thought it a waste of the little free time he had to spare. He worked extremely hard and his leisure-time activities were a regular Friday night game of squash to keep himself in trim, plus weekend golf because the contacts made at the club came in useful. The last thing he wanted now was to read some trashy women's love story. On the other hand, the title was intriguing and it wasn't in him to sit twiddling his thumbs. He began leafing through it.
An hour later he looked up, rubbing his eyes. The mirror across the room showed him the same taut face with its high-bridged nose and pale blue eyes that he'd known for thirty-five years, now become the face of a stranger. Like a sleepwalker, he got himself another whisky and moved back into the armchair, where he sat staring into space. He hadn't quite finished the manuscript yet, but he didn't need to. It read like a story to which he already knew the dramatic ending: this was no piece of fiction as he'd thought at first. All the details were there, all the leading players, although the names and places had been thinly disguised.
There was also the command, right at the end. Just three terse lines.
Controlling his anger, he re-read it right through once more before he eventually climbed into bed, but he was destined not to sleep much that night. It was impossible to tell himself that it was just an uncanny coincidence. The writer had known too much, had too many of the details right. But it was equally impossible to believe that one of them, one of the group, would have acted in this way, suddenly, out of the blue, or even at all. He had known them well enough to be able to believe that. Surely, even after fourteen years, he could have counted on that?
Tossing and turning in the unfamiliar bed, he chewed over the problem. Which of them had known he was to be here tonight? Someone had. Realizing that only brought a boiling rage, knowing he'd been watched and followed for days, months, even years, the chance to play this sick joke waited for. And why? Why now, after all this time, had the sworn silence been broken?
It wasn't until dawn that he finally fell into an exhausted sleep, dreaming as he hadn't dreamed for years, nightmares of the sort he used to have when it all came back, when he saw again with terrifying clarity the prone figure at the bottom of the stairs on the sheeny flagstones of the big hall, and himself standing over it, knowing that his life, with everything in front of him a moment before, was finished.
He woke late, the aftertaste of the whisky sour in his mouth, dismissed with a shudder the idea of breakfast and showered and shaved hurriedly. He was struggling with his recalcitrant cufflinks â an expensive pair in some sort of dark, polished stone which were a present from Lorna that he wore only occasionally in the interests of domestic harmony â when the telephone rang.
It was the receptionist who'd handed him the envelope. She was sorry about the mix-up but was absolutely certain it had been intended for him. There was no way she could have confused him with any other of the hotel guests.
Swallowing his pride, Felix was forced to admit that he was the one who had made the mistake, that he had eventually realized the envelope had been intended for him all along. He apologized for jumping the gun. The receptionist, a girl with a sunny nature, told him it didn't matter a bit, no problem.
Before leaving his room, he had rung his secretary, a new acquisition who was very much aware of her own efficiency. Yes, there had been a few calls the previous day, among them one from his solicitor.
âThey wanted to get in touch with you urgently on a personal matter, so I gave them the name of your hotel. Did they contact you, Mr Darbell?'
âIn a manner of speaking.'
He resisted the impulse to shake her out of her smug complacency by telling her she'd no business to give his whereabouts to anyone before checking their right to know, not even his solicitor: in fairness to her, the lines
had
been buzzing between them lately over matters concerning the purchase of the new house. What upset him more was the fact that whoever had arranged for the envelope to be delivered had known even this.
He got through the morning somehow. The contract was eventually signed with affability all round but he declined lunch in the directors' dining-room and after snatching a hurried snack at a local pub, drove the Jag fast through intermittent driving rain towards the M6 and London. He hadn't consciously taken the decision to leave the motorway but when he reached Spaghetti Junction just after four and peeled off, he knew it had been there all along. He stopped and used the car phone. Lorna sounded mildly disappointed that he wouldn't be home that night after all, but not overly so; she never did on these occasions. He suspected she was sometimes rather relieved. Whether she was or not, however, his compulsion to revisit the place where it had happened was overwhelming.
He avoided going through the wrought-iron gates and up the drive. It was too fraught with the memory of the last time he'd walked it, in the reverse direction. Still less did he want sight of the lake, glassy dark and deep near the little island at the centre, with reeds waving at the edges, and the broken-down old boathouse at the far end. He stood instead on the knoll above the road and saw as much as he wanted to see.
The ancient house, Flowerdew it was called, had sunk even further into dilapidation, although it had always had a weatherbeaten charm â in some ways rather like old Kitty herself, though not so bizarre. The monstrous extension, being newer, was in better shape than the rest and in consequence stuck out even more incongruously than he remembered, like a garden-party hat on a tweedy country lady of uncertain age.
The light was fading fast and another downpour threatened, but the willows were bare at this time of year and even from where he stood he could see the loose shutter on the old part of the house, the missing roof tiles, a crumbling of one of the twisted chimney stacks. The now sodden garden had all but reverted to nature. Brambles and bindweed ramped lawlessly over the flowerbeds, the old roses that she had so loved â
Cuisse de Nymphe, Céleste, Souvenir de la Malmaison
â sprawled and lolled intemperately over one another. He noticed that the holly hedge he and Tommo had trimmed when it was a mere four foot high had grown into an impenetrable fifteen-foot thicket, while the splendid line of Irish yews mourned the house's past with their shaggy, dipping, untrimmed branches. It must have been empty for a long time, nobody could possibly want to buy an old white elephant like Flowerdew, but at the thought of trying to get in and stirring old ghosts, his nerve gave out and he began to scramble down to the road again. It had been a mistake to return here instead of doing straight away what he had come to Lavenstock to accomplish.
Yet so real was his image of Flowerdew as it had been that even as he turned away he almost fancied he saw a faint movement in the air, an imagined wisp of smoke issuing from one of the chimneys or the flutter of a curtain, and for a moment quite thought he had conjured up some spirit, some genie from a bottle. And for a foolish, heart-constricting space, had the illusion she must still be there, that Kitty, against all the odds, was still alive.