House of the Lost (54 page)

‘Please come in,’ said Theo. ‘Stay to supper if you can.’ Not giving Michael time to refuse, he took him into the sitting room. Michael stopped dead in the doorway, and his eyes widened.

Then Petra said in a slightly shaky voice, ‘Hello, Mikhail. This is unfair, isn’t it? I knew you were coming – but you didn’t know I was here. Ghosts of the past gathering.’

‘Petra,’ he said. ‘I had no idea you were here. Oh God, it’s good to see you again.’ He went forward and as his arms went round her. Theo, who had thought his mother was taking this meeting in her stride, saw she was crying. The two of them stood together, locked in a tight embrace. Theo had the sensation that he was glimpsing a tiny fragment of the past: a fragment these two had known and were remembering.

‘Sorry for the melodrama,’ said Petra when she finally stepped back, still holding Michael’s arm. ‘Oh, Mikhail, it’s been so long. I should call you Michael, shouldn’t I? Can you stay to eat with us?’

‘Well, if it wouldn’t be—’

‘It wouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘Please stay. I still haven’t heard the half of what’s been going on here and I don’t suppose you have, either.’

‘And my great-uncle makes a mean omelette,’ said Theo. ‘I’ll tell him to beat up another couple of eggs.’ He went out, wanting to give his mother and Michael some time on their own.

Later, over the omelettes, he said to Michael, ‘I understand now why you didn’t seem surprised that I knew so much about Mara and Zoia and all the other things. At the time it puzzled me quite a lot, though.’

‘I assumed Petra had told you, or that you remembered hearing some of it all those years ago,’ said Michael, ‘when Andrei and Matthew were here.’ He looked back at Petra. ‘Andrei and Matthew poured it all out to you, didn’t they? About Jilava and the Securitate. The Black House. I remember Matthew telling me how patient and understanding you were.’

‘She always is,’ said Lesley and Michael glanced at her gratefully.

‘But for a time it became part of my life as well as yours and theirs,’ said Petra. ‘Remember I was there when the rebels turned on Ceau
escu.’

‘And I was safely here in England,’ he said, with a trace of anger in his voice. ‘I should have been there when they overthrew that evil creature.’

‘You had done a lot towards it,’ said Petra.

‘And perhaps,’ put in Guff, ‘it was safer not to be there.’

‘I would have gone back,’ he said, ‘but I was still at Queens – it wasn’t easy to vanish for a month or so. And there was Mara to consider.’

It was not until they were clearing the table, carrying plates to the kitchen, that Theo, keeping his voice low, said to his mother, ‘I haven’t asked you this yet, but you did meet Mara, I suppose?’

‘I met her once, while Andrei was here. Only very briefly, though. Why?’

The others were in the kitchen – Theo could hear Lesley saying she would make coffee, and Guff asking if anyone knew where the extra cups were kept.

‘I can’t help wondering exactly what Mara might be capable of,’ he said at last, and Petra looked at him thoughtfully.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I do know, though, that I always believed Michael would do absolutely anything to protect her.’

‘From the past, d’you mean?’

‘From her own particular part of the past,’ said Petra.

Mara knew that Mikhail had always tried to protect her and that he had very particularly tried to protect her from her own past. He had brought her to England, out of reach of Zoia and the Securitate, out of reach of the men in Jilava Gaol who had finally made her see – and admit – she was a murderess. After she entered St Luke’s, she had tried to atone for the murder of Annaleise, but she had never been sure she had done enough. Even so, after a while she had felt safe in the convent until Theo Kendal came to Fenn House.

At first Mara had not seen Theo as a threat to her safety. She had assumed he had come to Fenn to arrange for its sale, but Sister Catherine, visiting him that day, had reported he was here for some time. This was deeply disturbing to Mara, because whatever else Theo Kendal might do in Melbray, he was bound to ask questions about Charmery’s murder – questions the police had not asked, but questions that might lead to Mikhail and from Mikhail to Mara herself.

So she had watched Theo as much as she could, going stealthily down the lanes at night and stealing through the gardens of Fenn House. One night, when he was in bed, she had let herself into the house with the key she had taken four months earlier, and had switched on the laptop and read what was typed there. No one knew the quiet Sister Miriam understood computers. She had watched Sister Catherine use the convent’s machine several times. There had been some library records to be transferred and she had sat next to Catherine while it was done. It did not appear difficult. Catherine had explained quite a lot of it as she went, and had later left some of her notes lying around from the computer course. Mara made her own notes from them which she studied in the privacy of her room. It was probably knowledge she would never need, but all knowledge was good, and she was even able to test it on the computer when Reverend Mother was away. No one had known about that. She had struggled a bit at first, but then realized that once you understood the basic principles, it was not so very difficult to open and type a simple document.

The laptop at Fenn House was not difficult, either, but when Mara read Theo’s current work, she was appalled. He knew so much! He knew about Matthew and about Zoia and Annaleise and Elisabeth – and about Mara herself. How could he know those things? The facts were not all absolutely accurate and clearly he had made some things up, but the whole thing was so near the truth that Mara was engulfed in panic and terror. Theo Kendal was a professional writer – what he wrote was published. But if this were to be published . . . Letting herself quietly out of the house and going back to St Luke’s, she knew it must never be published. A way must be found to prevent it.

Gradually, a plan formed – a plan that was initially intended merely to scare him away. His vulnerable point would be his dead cousin, Charmery. Could he be persuaded that the memories of Charmery were too vivid, too painful? Could he even be brought to believe that Charmery haunted Fenn House? Men did not, in general, believe in ghosts, but it was worth trying. Mara tried it. Once when Theo was absorbed in working at the computer, once when she had lured him outside by shining a torch in the boathouse. She used two different ghost scenarios: the ticking clock, so stealthily set working while he was preparing his supper, and the dried rose left by the portrait while he investigated the light in the boathouse – the light Mara herself had created.

But either Theo did not believe in ghosts or was not easily scared, because he had remained in Melbray. Mara had suddenly seen that scaring him away was not the answer: he would write the book no matter where he was. Then the only thing to stop him writing was for him to die.

For him to die . . . A second murder, so soon after Charmery’s could not be risked, but how about suicide? The suicide of a man grieving so deeply for his lost love, he could not face life without her? Mara thought it was plausible. How could it be done?

In the bathroom cabinet at Fenn House had been a pack of a mild sedative: diazepam, in a 5mg strength. Mara had noted it during one of her stealthy explorations, and mentally stored it away as something that might be made use of.

The convent had a small drugs cupboard, mostly painkillers for patients recovering from major bone traumas, but there was also a supply of sedatives to help relax any patient undergoing a minor procedure. Diazepam was one of these. Mara read the dosage instructions carefully, then took four 10mg tablets. She would have preferred to use the liquid form which came in dropper bottles, but a strict check was kept on the drugs cupboard and even one missing bottle would be noticed. But tablets could be replaced by plain paracetamol which were roughly the same size and should stand up to an inspection. She effected the substitution, and back in her own room crushed the four tablets and sealed the powder in an envelope in readiness. Now it was a question of watching and being ready to act swiftly, and of making sure to always have the Fenn House key with her. It might be a long wait, of course.

But it was not. Walking in the convent grounds two days later, ostensibly absorbed in her own thoughts, she saw Theo going past St Luke’s gates and into the lanes beyond. An afternoon walk, probably. Mara took a deep breath, and went quickly down the drive, praying not to meet anyone in the lane, but not really expecting to do so on such a cold afternoon. Out of sight of the convent she put on the thin surgical gloves taken from the dispensary. Even in a convent you were aware of such things as fingerprints.

Once inside Fenn House she had planned to stir the crushed pills into something he would eat or drink that same evening – beer or wine, perhaps – but a chicken casserole had been left on the kitchen table, clearly intended for that evening’s meal. Absolutely ideal. Mara tipped in the contents of the envelope, waited for the powder to absorb into the liquid, then went back out. Returning to Fenn later was a bit more difficult because the convent supper was served at half past six, but she managed to slip out shortly after seven thirty, trusting he would have eaten his evening meal by then.

And so he had. He was slumped in a chair in the big sitting room. When Mara bent over him to lift one eyelid, the pupils were pinpoints. It was all right. With her heart racing, she went into the dining room, and with every nerve ending sensitive to any movement from the other room, she typed onto his computer the false confession to Charmery’s murder: the confession she had so carefully composed and written out the night before.

It took barely ten minutes, and Mara stood up and pocketed the handwritten pages. On the way back to St Luke’s she would tear them into tiny pieces and scatter them across the fields. But first she would take the sharpest kitchen knife she could find, and bring the blade down on each of his wrists, straight onto the veins so near the surface. She was fairly sure that if she stood behind his chair and reached down to his hands, no blood would get onto her. He would hardly know what had happened because he would be unconscious from the diazepam. And although the sedative would be found at a post mortem, it would be explained by the reference to it in the fake suicide letter.

There were several knives in the kitchen, and she chose the one that looked sharpest. Then she went back to the sitting room. But as she stood looking down at the figure in the chair, he moved, and Mara’s heart lurched with panic. Had she misjudged the dose? Was he coming round? She stayed where she was, and to her horror, he half opened his eyes. One hand came up as if in defence or protest, and Mara stepped back at once, praying he had not seen her. She stood in the doorway, watching him, seeing with horror that he was definitely coming round. His eyes were partly open, although even from here they looked unfocused. He turned his head as if trying to see where he was. Could she still go through with it?

She knew she could not. Killing an unconscious man was one thing; killing a man who was in possession of his senses was vastly different and, in any case, even in this drugged state, he would easily overcome her. She went quickly across the hall, replaced the knife, and went out through the main door, closing it with the smallest whisper of sound.

Behind her, she left Theo Kendal’s suicide letter on the computer.

Later, listening to him give the talk to St Luke’s patients about writing books, Mara wondered what he had made of the typed confession. He seemed to have recovered from the diazepam and he appeared perfectly calm and seemed to enjoy his afternoon. But what was he really thinking? When, a few days later, he brought a cousin to see the convent’s paintings, she watched him closely and even managed to talk to the cousin, but if Lesley Kendal knew what had been going on, she did not say.

Over the next twenty-four hours, Mara had the curious feeling that the threads spun all those years ago in Romania – spun by Zoia and Annaleise – were twisting together, ready to close about her. She felt oddly light-headed, as if she had fasted. As the day wore on, the light-headedness vanished. But in its place an old fear began to surface once again – the fear that the years in the convent, the long hours of prayer and study, were not enough to atone for what she had done. God required something more of her if those mortal sins were to be forgiven.