Kitty Steals the Show

Chapter 10

I WANTED TO enjoy the trip to Sevenoaks more than I did. Under the arcing glass and steel roof of Charing Cross Station, I once again had this bubbling wonderment of being caught in a movie. I got to ride on a train, into that green English countryside. I’d only ever been on a real cross-country train once, visiting my grandmother when I was a kid. But this trip was weighted by a lingering sense of anxiety. Amelia was returning home, and none of us knew what to expect.

“I’m still worried he’s going to have the cops waiting for us,” Cormac said.

“Even if they are, we haven’t done anything wrong,” I said.

“Attempted fraud?” Ben said.

“So not helpful,” I muttered.

We occupied a booth, four seats around a plastic table by a large window, and watched the scenery pass by as the train clacked smoothly on its rails. I could have let the movement rock me to sleep.

“It’s all changed and yet it’s all the same,” Cormac observed softly. He leaned close to the window and stared out, studying the world.

The city gave way to suburbs, with bits of countryside scattered between them, distant green hills and stands of old trees, villages with square brick houses, tiny train stations with only a small length of platform. The stop Parker directed us to was one of these.

Parker was waiting for us by a nondescript sedan, a blue Renault. No police in sight.

“Thanks for doing this, Mr. Parker,” I said.

“Call me Nick, please. Are we ready?”

Nick drove us away from the village along a curving road lined with hedgerows. Several side roads took us past shops, gas stations, then farmhouses, then nothing but open pastures. Here was the postcard landscape I’d been looking for. Finally, we turned onto a drive marked by tall brick pillars that must have once held up gates, but the gates were gone. Past the pillars, we continued on a gravel drive for another quarter of a mile until we approached an honest-to-goodness manor house, three stories of pale stone, rows of sashed windows, peaked roofs and narrow clay chimneys reaching up, and wide steps leading to a porch with a pair of columns marking the front door. The car stopped at the base of the steps.

“It’s not Pemberley, but it serves,” Nick said, regarding the edifice with obvious fondness. We all climbed out, us three Americans gaping and Nick watching us gape.

“Amelia says that there used to be hedges and flower beds on that side of the house.” Cormac pointed to a stretch of pasture-like lawn that sloped to a border of thick trees.

“The grounds suffered some neglect between the wars. My great-great-grandfather—Amelia’s brother, I think—lost his eldest son in the First World War and never really recovered. It’s a common story, I think. In his case, he turned his attention from the property and put his time and money toward charities, causes and memorials and the like.”

“His eldest son—James? He was just an infant when I left,” Cormac murmured, then shook the spell away.

Nick pursed his lips, bemused, then continued. “We’ve kept up the tradition rather than reestablish the gardens. Especially since the boys in the family have taken to playing cricket on the lawn.”

Cormac turned a smile that wasn’t his. “The house looks just the same,” he said, studying the façade with a narrowed gaze.

“Shall we go inside?” Nick led us up the stairs and drew a ring of keys from his pocket.

This place had some similarities with Ned’s two houses. There were bookshelves; old-fashioned wallpaper, textured and covered with flowers; collections of antiques that looked rich to my eyes. The windows had long drapes on brass rings, and carved wood trim surrounded the doorways. Where Ned’s houses were opulent, this was homey, lived in. It didn’t feel like a museum, and no servants lurked nearby. A box of plastic toys, trucks and balls and things, sat in a corner of the foyer.

“The house is shut up most of the time,” Nick said, opening drapes in the front sitting room to let in light. “We spend most of the year in London. We come here on weekends and holidays.”

Cormac moved around Parker and headed unerringly to the back of the house; he didn’t have to ask or be shown where he was going. We followed, but couldn’t match his urgency.

The kitchen was a blend of antique and modern. A brick fireplace stood against one wall, but it seemed decorative, with copper pots and wrought-iron tools hanging around it. A gas stove had replaced the open flame. Cormac—Amelia—looked around for a moment, then went to a whitewashed closet, moved a wooden table, and forced open a door that had been painted over. He revealed a narrow staircase, which he climbed, again without hesitation.

I ducked in behind him. He’d taken his mini-Maglite out of his pocket and shined it ahead, to the darkness. The staircase went up two stories, the height of the house, curving around narrow landings, but the other doorways had been sealed off with squares of plywood. By the time we got to the top, this felt like a cave, smelling of dust and old wood.

The staircase ended in a smallish trapdoor set into the ceiling. Cormac shoved at this a couple of times, but it didn’t move.

“You’ll need a key,” Nick called up. Cormac flashed the light down past me; Ben and Nick had followed us up the stairs. The latter held his hand out, offering a small, ancient iron key, which I took from him and handed to Cormac. Light in one hand to guide him, he fitted the key into the lock and jiggled it. The mechanism must have been stiff beyond reason—he wrapped his whole hand around the key to get enough leverage to turn it. Finally, though, it clicked, and the attic door popped with a puff of dust.

He swung it open and went inside.

The attic was exactly how I imagined the attic in an old English manor house to be like. The slanted ceiling, bare wooden framework exposed and decorated with dust and cobwebs, forced us to stoop. All along the short walls, and in islands throughout the space, stood wooden crates, antique leather traveling trunks, abandoned pieces of furniture—small tables, worn-out chairs, cabinets, more trunks, some draped with graying, dust-covered drop cloths, some not. Also stored here were odds and ends—coat trees, some with coats on them; a stack of round hatboxes; a pair of saddles set one on top of the other; a weathered sign with a boar painted on it that might have come from a pub. Hazy light seeped in through a ventilation grating and gave off a ghostly, otherworldly gleam.

Nick was right, the family seemed to have kept everything. Surely we should have expected the house and anything inside it Amelia was looking for to be destroyed—nothing survived that long, did it? But here we were, in a country where a two-hundred-year-old building was on the young side.

We crowded into the attic, lingering by the door while Cormac went to one end and counted off boards in the framework, then stopped and counted again. Giving a curt nod, he hauled a large travel trunk, almost as big as he was, away from the wall. The thing must have been full of more artifacts, and my hands itched, wanting to dig through it. But he ignored it. Kneeling, he felt around the floorboards, searching by touch.

The heat closed in; the air was thick, ripe, and didn’t move at all. I wanted to pace, but there was no room. Claustrophobia threatened; Ben and Nick blocked the stairs. Nick was fidgeting, tapping fingers on the edge of the open trapdoor.

He whispered, “If this has been a mistake—”

A tiny click sounded, and a square of the floor—flush with the other boards and invisible—lifted out. From the cavity, Cormac drew out a polished wooden case the size of a shoebox and bound in brass, coated with a film of dust. He set it aside, put back the section of the floor, and pushed the trunk back in place. Tucking the treasure box under his arm, he returned to the trapdoor.

Nick looked wonderingly at the box. “I had no idea. No one did.”

“That was the point,” Cormac said and gestured down the stairs—he couldn’t exit until they did.

Nick guided us back to the kitchen and offered a place on a stainless steel prep table.

I imagined a situation where the box had a key that Cormac and Amelia would now have to hunt down, but it didn’t. It did have a trick to unlocking it, though, and Amelia remembered. It was a kind of puzzle box; he ran his fingers over it, sliding a brass knob at each of the corners until the latch at the front of the box clicked, and the lid opened. We all leaned forward.

He took out four small leather-bound journals, wrapped shut with twine; a small stack of loose pages with smudged colored drawings on them; an embroidered handkerchief; and a collection of small artifacts: tiny yellowed envelopes, metal amulets on knotted cords, a carved stick, a star woven out of grass.

“This is what you were looking for?” I said.

“Yes,” he said, and sighed. He looked at Nick. “Thank you.”

He was staring, expression slack. “You’re welcome, I think.”

Cormac returned the items to the box, business-like, focused. Mission accomplished.

Nick was still gaping. “I have so many questions—about the family, the history of it all.”

Pausing, Cormac looked at him, impatient. I couldn’t tell if the expression was his or Amelia’s. “What do you want to know?”

Faced with the question, he seemed at a loss. “What was the family really like? I’ve heard stories about my great-great-grandfather, that he could be quite the tyrant. What was the house like then? Why did Amelia leave? Where did she go? What really happened to her—how is any of this possible?”

Cormac seemed to gather himself, looking into the distance, the corners of the room, considering what to say. He wasn’t used to explaining himself. But this wasn’t about him. “Amelia left because she didn’t feel welcome. It’s a little weird for her thinking she’s got family that might be interested in her after all this time.”

“As you say, it’s been a long time. The family’s not what it was.”

As he sealed the box again, Cormac looked around at the kitchen, lips pursed and thoughtful. “She’d been expected to marry a friend of the family, but she turned him down. Her parents—and her brother, I think—never forgave her, so she left because she figured she might as well. She couldn’t do anything more scandalous than she already had. She assumed they’d be happy to get rid of her.”

Nick turned up a wry smile. “If you’d come to the parlor, there’s something I’d like to show you.”

We left the kitchen and entered a wood-paneled hallway that led past several doorways with polished molding. Through them I saw dimly lit, sparsely furnished rooms.

In the parlor, though, chairs, sofas, and tables crowded around. When the family did come to visit, this must have been where they spent their time.

Nick brought us to the far wall, decorated with faded red wallpaper in a floral pattern. A couple dozen portraits and photos hung on display—obviously of the family. The square, dark painting of a stern gentleman puffed out in his cravat might have been of Amelia’s father or grandfather. There were paintings of women in luxurious Victorian gowns, their hair perfectly curled and their faces as dainty as dolls. Most of the photographs were black-and-white, and must have been more than a hundred years old. They rested safe in wood and gold-colored frames.

Nick pointed to one of a young woman, stern and unhappy looking in the way that people always seemed in old photographs. She wore a dark, fitted dress, and her hair was coiled under a simple hat. Her face was pale, and the way she looked at something just past the camera seemed particularly sad.

“That’s her, Lady Amelia,” Nick said. “They never took her picture down, even after word came of her trouble in Colorado. The stories I heard of her—she was a black sheep, the skeleton in the closet that every family has. I’m not sure they understood her. But they never disowned her. Now—it’s old history, I think.”

Cormac studied the picture for a long time, finally reaching out to brush a finger on the bottom of the frame. He turned his gaze to the rest of the pictures, then the rest of the room, and his smile was tired. “Yeah,” he said. “Old history.”

Nick made apologies—he had an appointment in the village that afternoon and needed to shut up the house again. We made our way back to the front porch.

He said, “How much longer are you in London for? Perhaps we could meet for lunch or dinner—I’d like to introduce you to my wife and children. I’m not sure they’ll believe you any more than I did at first, but … I want to give them the chance.”

I looked at Cormac, who had insisted that Amelia didn’t need her family, just her things. He pursed his lips, his brow furrowed.

“I think we’d like that,” he said finally.

“Thanks again for bringing us out and going through this,” I said, keeping the warm feelings going.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. And do call me if you need anything during your stay in London.”

Nick drove us back to the train station—he had the timetable memorized and the next departure was scheduled in fifteen minutes.

Ben had to go and break the cheerful mood. “I don’t mean to be unfriendly, but as one lawyer to another I have to ask if you’re going to let him walk away with that box or if you’re going to claim some kind of ownership. You’d have every right to. We can’t prove any of this about Amelia in court.”

Nick smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Mr. O’Farrell, I’m a criminal prosecutor. I think my legal talents are better spent in other pursuits.”

“Great, I’m in criminal defense. We should talk.”

“Oh dear,” he said, laughing.

We said our farewells, and Nick Parker drove off to his meeting. As promised, we were on the train back to London within minutes.

Cormac put the box on the table in front of him and went through the contents again: along with the journals the box held homemade charms made of scrap metal, nails, and the like; lengths of knotted yarn; nuts, acorns, shells, pebbles with holes in them, sea glass in blue and green; dried leaves carefully preserved between folded sheets of paper. They might have been the odds and ends and found treasure that any girl would keep secretly in a box hidden from all prying eyes, especially those of a domineering older brother. But I didn’t think so, or I didn’t think that was all. It all seemed vaguely familiar—they looked like charms, amulets, talismans. Bits and scraps of magic stored away.

When he finished looking at the pieces and skimming the journals, he put them carefully back in the box, which he sealed, then went back to staring out the window. I couldn’t guess what he was thinking.

“You going to be okay?” I asked.

Glancing over, he seemed thoughtful. “Yeah. It’s weird. There’s Amelia, now her family—a lot more family than I ever thought I’d get.”

“Like acquiring in-laws,” Ben said, and feigning offense I said, “Hey!”

He backpedaled. “I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with your family, just that there’s a lot of them. Cormac and I were both only children, and our folks weren’t exactly gregarious. The screaming kids thing takes getting used to.” My sister Cheryl had two kids who were firmly into the running and screaming phase. I actually sympathized.

Cormac added, “That, and you see your father killed in front of you you start to think you don’t deserve a family.”

The train hummed along during the long pause before I ventured, “What do you think now?”

He gave an offhand shrug, glanced at the two of us before looking back out the window. “I think I’m doing okay.”

Ben had tensed beside me, watching his cousin. After his answer, he let out a sigh and relaxed again. I smiled, because I thought he was doing okay, too.

I had a sudden thought. “Hey—you should come to dinner tonight. We’re meeting Luis and his sister. Just a small group thing. It’ll be fun.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said reflexively.

I looked to Ben, pleading for help in persuading his cousin.

“It’s up to you,” Ben said. “But you have to eat sometime, might as well get a good meal out of it.”

“I just don’t think I’m up for much more togetherness right now.”

“Mr. Badass hunter guy who isn’t scared of anything is scared of dinner?” I said. He just looked at me sidelong, smirking.

“She’s got a point,” Ben said.

“You’re supposed to be on my side,” Cormac grumbled. “I just don’t see the point in trying to … domesticate me.”

Interesting choice of word. I considered for a minute and realized I would probably never stop worrying about Cormac. “I’m not trying to domesticate you. Just … don’t you think you should get out more?”

“I’m okay. I’ve always been okay.” He almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

I said, “Ask Amelia if she’d like to meet a couple of were-jaguars from Brazil.”

The train clacked on the rails as we waited for Cormac’s response. His lips were pursed, like he’d eaten something sour.

Finally he said, “Amelia thinks it would be interesting to meet a pair of were-jaguars.”

“So you’re coming?” I said, bouncing.

He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no, but he stopped trying to weasel out of the evening.