Joss bit her lip. She couldn’t speak. It was Luke who turned to Paul. ‘You mean she never intended Joss to have the house?’
Paul shrugged. ‘She was a very complicated woman. I think she was trying to fool herself. If she left the house to Jocelyn she would appease some spirit of the place which would then let her go. But when she made the will she made it sufficiently complicated, no?’ He glanced at Joss again. ‘So that it was unlikely that she would inherit. It had to be Jocelyn’s free choice. If she made that choice, then,’ he lifted his hands helplessly, ‘she would have brought whatever fate brought to her upon herself. She was if you like being deliberately self deluding.’
‘She said, in the letter she left me, that it was my father’s wish that I inherit the house,’ Joss said slowly.
‘Your father?’ Paul looked shocked. ‘I find that very hard to believe. Your father hated the house, I understand. He begged and begged her to sell it, she told me.’
‘How did you make her leave, in the end?’ Luke reached for the bottle of wine and poured himself a second glass.
‘It was the will.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know who persuaded her to leave the house to you, but as soon as she had done that it was as if the locks had been unfastened and suddenly she was free.’
‘I don’t know why, but that thought leaves rather a nasty taste in my mouth,’ Luke said softly. He was watching Joss. ‘You know, the terms of her will forbid us to sell it for a set number of years.’
Paul frowned. ‘But you don’t have to live there.’
There was a silence. He sighed. ‘It is perhaps already too late. The trap has closed. That is, of course, why you are here.’
Joss sat down at last. Her face was pale and strained as she looked at him.
He found himself biting his lip. She was so like her mother – her mother as she had been when he first met her, before that last cruel illness had struck.
‘Did she tell you about the ghosts?’ she asked at last.
Paul’s face grew wary. ‘The little boys upstairs? I did not believe her. It was the imaginings of a grieving woman.’
‘They weren’t imaginings,’ Joss’s voice was very quiet. ‘We’ve all heard them too.’ She looked at Luke, then back to Paul. ‘There is something else there. The devil himself.’
Paul laughed, ‘Le bon diable? I don’t think so. She would have told me that.’
‘She never told you about the tin man?’
‘Tin man?’ Paul shook his head.
‘Or Katherine?’
He looked suddenly wary again. ‘Katherine who is buried in the little church?’
Joss nodded slowly.
‘Yes. She told me of the sorrow that still haunts the house. She told me that, like in a fairy story, there needs to be a deliverance. To break the spell.’
Joss stared at him a sudden flash of hope in her eyes. ‘Did she tell you what that deliverance would have to be?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘She did not know, Jocelyn. Otherwise she would have done it. Once, when she came to Paris for the weekend we went to Montmartre where I have many friends. That day we went to the Sacré Coeur together. There she bought in the shop a cross. She asked the priest to bless it for her, and she wore it round her neck until she died. That day we lit a candle to bring peace to the children at Belheddon, and to Katrine,’ he pronounced it the French way. ‘She was very superstitious, your mother, though she was so intelligent a woman. We quarrelled about that.’ He gave a sudden mischievous smile. ‘We often quarrelled. But there was much love between us.’
‘I’m glad she was happy here.’ Joss’s eyes strayed back to the painting.
Paul followed her gaze. ‘The pictures of her will be yours one day. To take back to Belheddon. And,’ he levered himself to his feet once more, ‘there are some things of hers here, which you should have. I will fetch them.’
They watched as he climbed the stairs to the gallery and they heard the sound of drawers being pulled in and out, then he appeared once more, negotiating the ladderlike contraption without any difficulty in spite of his age. Under his arm he had wedged a small carved box. ‘Her pieces of jewellery. They should be yours.’ He pushed it at her.
Joss took the box with shaking hands and lifted the lid. Inside was a tangle of beads and pearls, two or three brooches, some rings. She looked down into the box, shaken by the emotion which had suddenly swept over her.
Paul was watching her. ‘Do not be sad, Jocelyn. She would not have wanted that.’
‘Is the cross here? The one she had specially blessed.’
He shook his head. ‘She took that to her grave. With her wedding ring.’
‘You and she were married?’ It was Luke who asked.
He nodded. ‘I could never persuade her at the beginning. We lived in sin for years.’ He grinned. ‘You are shocked?’
Joss shook her head. ‘Of course not.’
‘I think the people of Belheddon would have been. No matter. This is Paris. We lived une vie bohème. She liked that. It was part of the escape. We married in the end just before she died.’ He hesitated. ‘I can take you to see her grave if you wish? Tomorrow, perhaps? She is buried in a village outside Paris. Our real home, where I still go to paint in the summer. She loved it there. It was there that she died.’
‘I’d like that.’ Joss smiled. ‘You’ve been very kind.’
He bent to hug her. ‘I wish she could have known you, Jocelyn. It would have given her so much pleasure. A pleasure she denied herself to save you.’ He sighed. ‘I hope the fact that you have gone to Belheddon has not made that sacrifice a vain one. It seems the fate of your family is very strong. The tie to the house is like a binding chain.’
Luke frowned. ‘It is a beautiful house.’
‘I think that is its tragedy. Katrine died for it. And so many others.’