I sat down next to her and placed my hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Miss Armstrong?’
‘You’re very kind,’ she said, dabbing at her eyes with a shabby handkerchief that couldn’t have been her own. ‘It’s silly. I didn’t know them until a few days ago. But talking to Mrs Marston, hearing her story . . . she was already a friend. And they were destined to be together, those two. There’s a Chinese legend called Yue Lao, have you heard it? When we’re born, the gods tie an invisible thread around our little finger, which connects us to our one true love, no matter what forces try to keep us apart.’
‘That’s lovely.’ To my own ears I sounded insincere. I wasn’t immune to that sort of romance. I could believe in a thousand red threads connecting Finbarr and me. I just had a hard time applying this legend to the Marstons.
‘It’s so sad and awful,’ wept Miss Armstrong, ‘that they would die like that, right under our noses, right when their threads finally found each other. Just when they were on the brink of happiness.’
‘Not on the brink.’ I eased the handkerchief out of her grasp and handed it back to Mr Chilton, then gave her my own, which was silk and monogrammed, and far better suited to her delicate skin. A gift from Archie, specially ordered from Harrods. ‘They had some days of happiness. Perhaps more than they deserved.’
Miss Armstrong stopped crying abruptly and stared at me, eyes full of rebuke. ‘Whatever do you mean by that?’
‘You said yourself you hardly knew them,’ I pointed out. ‘They might have been wretched people.’
Chilton let out a caustic little laugh.
‘Why, Mrs Marston seemed the nicest lady in the world,’ said Miss Armstrong reproachfully.
‘Seeming is different to being,’ I said. ‘Best not to mourn people whose sins we don’t know.’
Miss Armstrong looked at me as if I were the coldest, hardest woman in the world. Which I very well may be. But I should have known better than to reveal it. Nothing is more suspicious than an unfeeling woman.
I stood and went to examine the selection of books. Miss Armstrong held my handkerchief out to me to return it, but I waved it away. ‘Keep it,’ I said, ‘I have loads.’
Chilton and Miss Armstrong busied themselves reading, though the air felt as if they absorbed nothing, just stared at the words on the page, waiting for me to leave so they could discuss my outburst. I should have been more careful but at this point I had no idea Chilton had seen me with Finbarr, let alone that he knew Agatha was hiding in the vicinity. Chilton was keen to keep it that way.
Finally, I settled on a Willy novel that had been all the rage when I was a girl, the first of the Claudine books. The edition was in its original French and the effort of translating it would make it all the more diverting. I said a curt goodbye to Chilton and Miss Armstrong.
When I emerged from the library, Mrs Leech looked up from her station behind the front desk. ‘Mrs O’Dea,’ she said, ‘a little boy just came by with a note.’
I snatched it from her fingers, perhaps a little too eagerly. I worried it would be addressed using my first name but the writing on the envelope – bold male handwriting – said Miss O’Dea. If Mrs Leech registered the ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Mrs’, her face did not betray it. I felt a flush across my neck. It was worth whatever risk I’d taken, to use my real last name, so I could open this envelope and read what it said on the coarse piece of paper, butcher’s wrapper.
Dearest Nan,
Meet me at ten tonight just outside the front door. If I am not precisely on time, trust I’ll be there and don’t go any further than just past the front door. It’s not safe for ladies after dark.
I floated upstairs and waited obediently for night to fall.
Meanwhile, inside the library, Chilton asked Miss Armstrong if he could see my handkerchief. She handed it over as if eager to be rid of it.
‘Rather a nice handkerchief,’ he mused aloud, ‘for anyone to have loads of.’
‘I don’t see how she can be so cruel,’ Miss Armstrong said fiercely. ‘I don’t know about you, Mr Chilton, but I was raised not to speak ill of the dead.’
Chilton nodded sadly, as if in agreement, though he had seen enough of the world to know some of the dead earned ill speaking of. He didn’t hold it against me. Much later he would tell me he did wonder why my handkerchief was monogrammed with a large cursive N when my name was purported to be Genevieve O’Dea.
The brave or complacent guests remaining at the Bellefort Hotel were exhausted by the hot waters, the spa treatments and the recent tragedy. By the time I came downstairs, nobody was afoot. Even Mrs Leech had left her post. The grandfather clock having finished its ten chimes, everything was quiet the way only a winter night can be, not even birds or bugs rustling. I had bundled into my lace-up boots and woollen coat, mittens and a woollen hat and scarf. I stepped outside, careful to open and close the door soundlessly. It was a well-kept hotel and the door had been recently oiled. It would remain unlocked, I knew. There was so little crime in the English countryside, back then, between the wars. No doubt that was part of the reason so many of us expected a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened to the Marstons. Not to mention one thousand men to spare searching for a missing lady novelist.
Not that I knew this, yet, about how large the search had grown. The Leeches didn’t keep newspapers at the hotel unless guests requested them. Time at the spa was meant to be time away from the troubles of the world, Mrs Leech said.
My breath gusted out in front of me. The air felt wonderful. It reminded me that Christmas was approaching. When my sisters and I were little we used to wait outside together, staring up at the sky for a glimpse of Father Christmas before our mother bustled us off to bed. ‘If you girls are awake, he’ll pass our house right by.’ We’d eat chestnuts roasted over the fire and go to sleep with sticky fingers, smiles on our faces. It had been the time of year I most looked forward to, more than anything in the world, before summers in Ireland began, and Finbarr.
Just as his name formed in my mind he emerged from the shadows, hands in his pockets. I stepped forward and threw my arms around his neck. He hugged me back, three beats.
‘Walk with me,’ he said, in his hoarse, whispery voice.
I put my arm through his and we walked away from the hotel, down the road, into the kind of darkness that scarcely exists anymore. Electric lights weren’t yet a matter of course out here in the country, and cars didn’t often rattle down the road after dark. We had gone a little way when a dog ran out to menace us. Finbarr kneeled and within seconds the giant beast – half collie, half something monstrous – was in his lap, getting his white mane ruffled, shaggy tail wagging joyfully. We continued walking and the dog followed us a while, until Finbarr commanded, ‘Go home.’ The dog lowered his ears, dejected but obedient, and trotted off in the direction from which he’d come.