not at all, I was only …’
‘Vera, call the police,’ said the old man. His voice was cracked with age. His wife hesitated, as if unsure about letting go of his arm to go to the phone.
I held out my hands. ‘No, please don’t do that, let me explain.’
‘Yes, I think you had better explain yourself, young lady,’ said Vera. ‘Harold dear, sit yourself down before you topple over.’ She pulled a shabby metal garden chair across the patio and gently pushed him into it.
He held his stick in front of him like a shotgun. ‘Don’t you come any closer.’
God, the embarrassment. I felt myself redden from the chest up. They looked genuinely scared of me.
‘I’m sorry. I did knock at the door but I guess you didn’t hear.’
‘There’s a perfectly serviceable bell, if you’d only pulled on the bell-rope,’ said Vera.
Bell-rope? Presumably part of an original bell system. I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t notice the rope.’
Vera shook her immaculate grey perm and folded her arms. ‘In any case, you had no answer, so why did you come around to the back?’
I gaped like a goldfish for a moment as I searched for the right words. I’d imagined meeting the current inhabitants of my ancestors’ house so many times, but I had never once thought it would happen like this. We really had got off on the wrong footing. I could see my chances of getting a look inside vanishing like smoke on the wind.
‘The thing is, I was interested in the house because’ – I broke off for a moment as they both glared at me, then the words all came out in a rush – ‘my ancestors used to live here. I’ve researched my family tree, you see, and found my four-greats grandfather William St Clair built this house, then his son Bartholomew inherited it and lived here after he got married, then hisson, another Bartholomew but known as Barty lived here right up until—’
‘1923!’ To my utter astonishment both the old people chorused the date.
‘You’re a St Clair then, are you?’ said Vera, looking less fierce but still a little suspicious.
‘I was Catherine St Clair before I got married. Plain old Katie Smith now.’
I put out my hand and thankfully she took a tentative step forward and shook it. The atmosphere instantly felt less frosty.
‘Vera Delamere. And this is my husband, Harold.’
I shook his gnarled and liver-spotted hand too, while he stayed sitting in his chair. ‘I’m so sorry to have frightened you. I shouldn’t have come around the back. I was just so desperate for a glimpse inside. And I wasn’t even sure if the house was occupied at all …’ Oops, was I implying it looked derelict? I felt myself blushing again. I thought quickly, and changed the subject. ‘You know about the St Clairs?’
‘Not all of them, but we’ve heard of Barty St Clair,’ said Harold. ‘When we moved here in 1959 a lot of people hereabouts remembered him still. He was quite a character, by all accounts.’
‘Really? What do you know about him? He was my great-great-great-uncle, I think.’ I counted off the ‘greats’ on my fingers.
Vera sat down beside Harold and gestured to me to take a seat as well. ‘I remember old Mrs Hodgkins from the Post Office telling me about him. Apparently he wouldn’t ever let anyone in the house or garden. He wasn’t a recluse – he’d go out and about in the village every day and was a regular in the pub every night. But he had this great big house and let not a soul over the threshold – no cook or cleaner, no gardener, no tradesmen. Mrs Hodgkins thought he must have had something to hide.’
‘Ooh, intriguing!’ I said. ‘Perhaps he had a mad wife in the attic or something like that.’
Vera laughed. I smiled. Thank goodness we’d broken the ice now. ‘Well, by the time we moved in there was no evidence of any secrets. Mind you, that was many years after Barty St Clair’s day. It was a probate sale when we bought it. It had been empty for a few years and was in dire need of modernising.’ She sighed, and gazed at the peeling paint on the patio doors. ‘And now it’s in dire need of modernising again, but we don’t have the energy to do it.’
She stood up, suddenly. ‘Why are we sitting out here in the damp? Come on. Let’s go inside. I’ll make us all a cup of tea, and then give you a tour, Katie.’
Harold chuckled. ‘Then you’ll see for certain we have nothing worth stealing, young lady.’
I grinned as I watched Vera help him to his feet, then followed them around to the kitchen door on the side of the house. I felt a tingle of excitement. Whatever secrets the house still held, I longed to discover them.
Kingsley House, November 1876
My dear Barty
I have rested for a day or so, filled my ink-well, replenished my paper store and summoned the courage I need to begin my confession. And begin it I must, for the date of my death grows ever nearer.
Barty, I shall write this confession as though it were a story, about some other man. I will write ‘he did this’, and ‘he said that’, rather than ‘I did’, and ‘I said’. At times I will even write as if in the heads of other characters, as though I know their thoughts and am privy to their memories of those times. It is from conversations since then, and from my own conjectures, that I am able to do this, and I believe it is the best way to tell what will undoubtedly become a long and complex tale. It is only by distancing myself in this way, and telling the tale as though it were a novel, that I will be able to tell the full truth. And you deserve the full truth, my true, best-loved son.
We shall begin on a cold, snowy evening nearly forty years ago, when I first set eyes upon the woman who was to become my wife.
Brighton, January 1838
Bartholomew St Clair leaned against a classical pillar in the ballroom of the Assembly Rooms, watching the dancers whirl around. There was a good turnout for this New Year’s ball. He ran his fingers around the inside of his collar. The room was warm, despite the freezing temperatures outside. He could feel his face flushing red with the heat, or maybe that was due to the volume of whiskey and port he’d consumed since dinner.
He scanned the room – the dancing couples twirling past him, the groups of young ladies with their chaperones at the sides of the room, the parties of men more interested in the drink than the dancing. He was looking for one person in particular. If his sources were correct, the young Holland heiress would be at this ball – her first since she came out of mourning. It could be worth his while obtaining an introduction to her. Rumour had it she was very pretty, but more than that, rich enough to get him out of
