The Love Letter (67 page)

About to go outside again, he stopped in his tracks. ‘That’s really not wise. The boilers here are playing up as usual, and you can’t risk a chill.’ He suddenly flashed that chivalric smile, as bright
as a blade of steel caught in sunlight, ‘Why don’t you spend the day in bed and read the new Lapis? It’s in my room.’

Legs didn’t need asking twice. She rushed upstairs and gathered up
Ptolemy Finch and the Raven’s Curse
into her arms like an injured bird. The copy was seriously battered from being hurled against a wall by Poppy, its spine twisted and broken, but she conveyed it to the Lavender bedroom as delightedly as a Victorian slum orphan with a new toy.

She fell on its pages hungrily, speed reading in her haste. By lunchtime, she was already almost halfway through and glutted with fictional pleasure overload.

Her head soon throbbed, but whether this was from the lingering vestiges of infection or just reading too much, she couldn’t tell, and was far too engrossed to break off and take a paracetemol. It was Ptolemy’s greatest adventure yet, flanked by lion-hearted pragmatist Purple. The plot twisted and turned from the first page, propelling her from one chapter to the next, spiralling through time and space with the little white-haired hero and his sidekick, fighting their battles alongside them, hanging from cliffs between them, sharing their wisecracks and wielding Lenore at a cornucopia of vividly described evil foes.

As the day wore on, wracked with coughs that seemed to turn her lungs inside out, she lost all sense of time. Still she read like a demon, forgetting to take her antibiotics and analgesics. She sat in a lukewarm bath with the book, then on the loo, then back in bed. While erotic canvases flaunted their sexual chemistry with shameless guile on the walls all around her, the little Freud more than any, promising untold pleasures beyond those soft furls of skin, Legs found a relationship that was far more innocent yet no less sensual within the fast-turning pages of the book.

For the first time, she saw it in absolute black and white. Ptolemy and Purple were in love.

Legs was just two chapters from the finish when Francis came in, already dressed for dinner. He was using a crutch and had one foot heavily bandaged, although she was too distracted reading to notice until he banged the crutch on a wooden bedpost and propped the injured foot up alongside her.

Even so, she remained too distracted by the Ptolemy’s quest – and the very chance that he was about to enact ‘that kiss’ with Purple at any moment – to afford his injury a second glance, very much doubting that he’d just assailed the Farcombe stalker in a manly fashion.

‘What happened?’ she asked vaguely.

‘I broke my toe on a stone pineapple some idiot left on the stairs,’ he said, in a very black mood. ‘I’m sure it was Poppy. She’s incredibly annoyed about us two getting back together again. You think she’d be pleased; after all, Dad is just waiting for her signal to move back in, but that’s Poppy for you. She thinks it’s my fault there’s a financial crisis. I’ve been too diverted by you to deal with it, she says.’

Legs would have taken issue with the ‘getting back together again’ line were it not for her desperation to get to the end of the book.

Francis heaved his foot back down, mood blackening by the second in the face of her selfishness. ‘I’ve been in a meeting with Vin all afternoon trying to put together a rescue package.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Will you put that book down? We must be on show in ten minutes. You haven’t even dressed!’

‘All my clothes are in my car,’ she reminded him, turning a page.

Limping across the room, he pulled open the wardrobe of ball gowns. ‘You’ve already taken full advantage of these. I’m no Saint Laurent, but I’d say they’re more suited to parties than running around woods, darling. Let me choose.’

Suitably chastised, she cast around for a bookmark and picked up a crumpled envelope from the bedside table, realising guiltily that it was the one the poison pen letter had come in and therefore probably an important piece of evidence.

Francis was rattling through coathangers. ‘There’s bound to be something in here that fits you.’

‘Won’t Poppy mind?’ she asked, cramming the envelope between pages.

‘That didn’t exactly stop you before,’ he pointed out. ‘She’s worn nothing but smocks for twenty years. She’ll never recognise anything. Here – try this.’ He threw something at her that was Angelina Ballerina over Angelina Jolie any day, with more stiff net petticoats than the cast of
Swan Lake.

‘Coral really isn’t my colour.’

‘You’ll look gorgeous,’ he snapped impatiently, looking at his watch again.

‘I have no shoes.’

In a flash, he’d extracted a basket of Moroccan slippers from the wardrobe – a tiny sample of Poppy’s huge collection – and selected a pair that looked baggy enough to accommodate her feet. Garish purple and green, and covered with orange beads, they were still so tiny that her toes curled inside them like springs in a mouse trap.

‘My hair’s filthy.’

‘I’ll fetch you a turban.’ He limped out of the room and along the corridor. Usually, Legs would have gone ballistic at the very thought, but she was so desperate to be able to read a few more pages of
Ptolemy Finch
that she barely noticed, even when he returned and plonked a pre-moulded green satin wrap on her head. She was far more irate that he wouldn’t let her take the novel downstairs with her.

As he hurried out of the room, she lingered behind briefly, picking up the book to read two more lines like an addict snorting up a fix. Currently in mortal peril, Ptolemy and Purple were going to
kiss any moment now, she was certain of it. Leaving them behind to face a room full of literary snobs was agony.

Francis was calling from the top of the stairs.

Surfacing reluctantly, she noticed the envelope bookmark had dropped to the floor and she stooped to pick it up.

Printed in the same font as the letter itself was
FAO Allegra North, Farcombe Hall.

She let out a whimper. It was addressed to her.

As she ran from the Lavender Room in a blind panic, she cannoned into a tall figure hurrying in and threw herself into the dress-shirted chest, clinging to Francis’s familiar broad strength in terror, desperately seeking comfort.

‘My fragile little bird!’ He gripped her back so tightly she thought she’d suffocate, cheek pressed heavily down on top of her turban. ‘I’m never going to let you down again. Tonight is our reincarnation. My beautiful, precious Poppy!’

‘Eh?’ Legs wrenched out of the embrace with some difficultly.

It was Hector, breathing champagne fumes all over her.

‘Legs! You gave me a terrible shock. Thought you were Poppy catching me red handed.’ He reeled back in alarm, hastily pressing a finger to his lips and whispering. ‘You haven’t seen me here, darling. Just popped up here to, er, see an old friend.’ He looked around at the erotic paintings on the walls.

Legs stepped aside and nodded politely before bolting downstairs, far too terrified by the name on the envelope to care what he was doing skulking around his own house.

‘That’s my dress!’ was the first thing Poppy said when she saw Legs belting into the main entrance hall. She and Francis were huddled together in what appeared to be an urgent confab, but now sprang apart as Poppy rushed forwards to air-kiss Legs. ‘Coral really isn’t your colour, but I do like the turban. How are you enjoying
Raven?
Isn’t the ending
dreadful?’

‘I haven’t got there yet.’ She slid to a halt, looking urgently at Francis who was folding something into his pocket.

‘You
are
a slow reader,’ Poppy exclaimed, hooking her arm through Legs’ and towing her towards the sound of guests gathering. ‘I was
most
disappointed, but I won’t spoil it for you. I only read it as an academic exercise, after all,’ she added with a sharp smile, aware that she was about to be surrounded by the festival faithful who hadn’t read a book with a print run longer than that its page count in their entire adult lives.

Legs looked around for Francis, but he had shot off through the baize door into the back rooms and she was forced to accompany Poppy to her pre-dinner drinks, cast as reluctant co-host.

‘I need to talk to you about the letters,’ she whispered desperately as they climbed the little-used marble staircase leading to the east wing.

‘Not a word,’ Poppy hissed back, hostess smile already in place. ‘This is an important night for the festival. We must put on a united front. Not a
word
about the letters.’

‘But they were addressed to me!’ Legs was still struggling to take this in, aghast that Francis and the rest of the Protheroes had kept it from her. She no longer even worked for the agency that represented Gordon. If this was a crackpot fan, they needed to see her P45. But she couldn’t stop a mounting fear that this was far more personal.

Poppy ignored her, beaming out largesse short-sightedly, even though there were very few people there yet.

The guests were being gathered for drinks in the hall’s long gallery which ran the length of the first floor above the cloisters, and was by far the most formal of its reception spaces, a Victorian Gothic concoction of dark wood panelling embossed with coats of arms, flamboyantly carved stone fireplaces, ornate plaster ceiling and polished elm floor which the Protheroes had typically challenged with a riot of technicolour rugs, along with modern glass chandeliers shaped like thousands of rainbow fingers that pointed down from above. Poppy’s blobby stone statues predictably outnumbered the guests. The furniture was modern, minimal and uncomfortable.

Dosed up with drugs, but still feeling weak as a marathon runner hitting ‘the wall’, Legs sank onto a lounger made from Perspex while Poppy eyed her critically from beneath her own particularly ornate, jewelled turban. ‘I’m amazed you fit into my clothes. You have lost weight. You must be thrilled. Good rest today? All better now?’ She had no sympathy for the ill.

Legs nodded wanly. With no make-up to hand, her face was a white mask. The only colour in her pallid skin was a spot sprouting between her eyebrows like a bindi. Matched with the turban, it was a very odd, cross-dressing anaemic maharajah look. She knew it as far from Merchant-Ivory flattering, although when finally Francis reappeared, discreetly slipping through the panelling door from the back stairs, he seemed happy to be cast as the devoted lover.

‘Glass of water, darling.’ He limped up with his crutch and bestowed it like a Holy draft. ‘I brought you still up from the kitchen especially because sparkling might be too much for you.’ He sat down heavily beside her, propping his walking stick against his knee.

‘Thanks.’ How she longed for a Dark and Stormy Night. But her mouth tasted like battery acid and her stomach felt far too delicate to risk drinking alcohol.

‘Poppy’s right; coral really isn’t your colour.’ He seemed to prefer her publicly unappetising. She half suspected he’d like her best in full burqa.

But then he surprised her totally by pulling a heavy velvet-covered box from his pocket. Inside was an exquisite five-string pearl choker. ‘It was my mother’s,’ his voice cracked with emotion. ‘I thought it would set off that frock rather well.’ Before Legs could say anything, he was putting it on her. Ella Protheroe must have had a neck like a swan because when Francis did up the clasp, it almost garrotted her.

‘That looks lovely.’ He leant back and admired the hundreds of pearls strangling her. ‘You’re terribly pale, darling.’

‘I’ve had a real fright,’ she whispered, worried she’d break the necklace if she spoke any louder. ‘I know Poppy says I’m not allowed to talk about the letters tonight but—’

‘That’s right, darling,’ he snapped, patting her knee and turning to watch as Poppy issued Imee with instructions about the champagne cocktails. ‘Lips
absolutely
sealed.’

Eyes narrowing, Legs wondered what else he was keeping from her for the sake of the guests. ‘That was another one you were reading when I came down, wasn’t it?’

‘Let’s not talk about it.’

‘Yes, let’s!’ She didn’t care that her voice was climbing scales. ‘It was addressed to me, after all!’

‘I can assure you, it wasn’t.’ He turned to her with a pacifying smile. ‘It was in fact a very large banker’s draft. I’ve just put it in the safe, hence I saw my mother’s necklace and thought it deserved an outing. We want to keep a lid on it for now, but let’s just say that Farcombe’s liability shortfall is no longer an issue. Not that it was ever going to stand in the way of the festival; Poppy blew it out of all proportion when she found out.’

Legs took a moment to understand what he was saying, her head still full of death threats. Then she recalled his meeting with Vin Keiller-Myles and talk of a rescue package. He must have sold him the Freud. Hector would be livid.

‘How pleasant to receive a very large draft for such a small shortfall,’ she muttered, eyeing him mistrustfully. ‘Just the mad stalker to worry about now.’ Her mind kept drifting back to
Ptolemy Finch,
who she’d left on the brink of plunging to certain doom, his wings clipped as he and Purple dangled above the Pit of Pi, edging along balance ropes that were being nibbled by fire rats at either end.

Francis was speaking again, eager to steer her to safer conversational topics: ‘The festival press launch has gone very well,’ he enunciated pointedly, as though talking to a dimwit.