The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton (2 page)

As they bumped along the road Nicholas looked at a book with pictures of steam engines while Eleanor continued to chatter intermittently, despite the noise and vibration. But Laurence found it hard to stop thinking about the little girl. He imagined every visitor to Easton Deadall had their arrival prefaced by the ritual telling of this story and he began to feel apprehensive about meeting Lydia Easton.

They were passing between banks of twisted roots and in the shade of the huge beech and oak trees of the ancient Savernake Forest before he spoke again.

‘So, what about the others?’ he asked.

‘Well, you’ll like Frances. She’s thoroughly modern and very sound. And handsome.’

He stopped himself from smiling at Eleanor’s assumptions as to his taste in women.

‘Then dear old Julian. He’s a rock. Has an absolute passion for the estate. Wanders around with his dog—tries to make the whole thing work. The widows and children adore him. I think he took it badly that he survived the fighting that killed most of the boys locally and, indeed, his brother. Anyway,’ she said more cheerfully, ‘apparently the famous Patrick is arriving at the end of the week. I’ve never met him.’

She paused to see if Laurence was with her. ‘He’s an archaeologist.’ He was about to respond when she added, ‘Sir Arthur Evans’s assistant. From Crete.’

‘Knossos,’ Laurence said, relieved that he had finally recognised the name. ‘Of course.’ He thought with slow delight what a bonus it would be to hear of the excavations of the Cretan ruins.

As Eleanor had been talking, they had turned off onto an open road through pasture into a narrow lane. Now they passed an empty barn. Beyond it he could see houses.

‘Tarantara,’ Eleanor said. ‘Behold, Easton Deadall.’

They drew closer to a cluster of cottages, two or three had canvases laid over damaged roofs. Heaps of new stone, sand and lime were piled up by a shed. A bony cow was tethered near by, cropping at the verge. On a tiny village green two white ducks swam in a pond under a huge horse chestnut tree. Children were playing. One of two women sitting on a bench beneath the tree raised a hand as they passed. It was a gentle and timeless scene.

As they left the village Laurence said quietly, ‘Mrs Easton still owns the house? Why didn’t Julian inherit on Digby’s death?’

‘The estate is entailed. You know how these ridiculous systems work? Asking for revolution.’ She tossed her head but then returned to explaining life at Easton and the home of her landed friends, as if this was something quite separate from her political battles. ‘In the case of Easton Deadall, Kitty’s the problem,’ she said. ‘She would have inherited and Lydia absolutely refuses to have her declared dead.’ She shot a knowing look at Laurence. ‘In the normal run of things, apparently, Lydia would have held the estate until Kitty reached her majority. She would be—what? Rising eighteen?—now, so not an issue for a few years yet. Julian’s next in line after Kitty.’ As she spoke, the drive led between stone gateposts, along a gently rising avenue of lime and elm and there, suddenly, was the house.

‘Hideous,’ Eleanor said, matter-of-factly. ‘But better inside.’ Whatever he had envisaged—and knowing it had been mostly rebuilt in the previous century he’d expected a solid, slightly grandiose country seat—the first glimpse of Easton Hall was startling.

The cluster of buildings and styles was extraordinary, but not because of the accretions of time: rather it was as if the Victorian architect had incorporated every architectural style into one building, with little thought of how such a building might sit in the beautiful Wiltshire landscape. Or at least Laurence presumed it was beautiful but the house blocked out the open land he thought must lie beyond it. The effect of it all was part Scottish castle, part Tudor palace, part Venetian palazzo: more operatic set than family house. Above its turrets and crenellations small clouds moved swiftly across a palest blue sky and to one side, its proportions dwarfed by the house, stood a tiny church. Even at a glance he could see that the church was ancient, just as William had said.

Eleanor led the way through a cobbled gatehouse on the eastern side of the yard. A small dog came bounding up. Nicholas looked delighted; he patted it and then knelt down and let it lick his face until Eleanor intervened.

‘Run and find Daddy,’ she said. ‘But don’t go far.’

To Laurence she said, ‘I expect William’ll be in his office.’

But Laurence had stopped dead, transfixed by the view, so different to the one he had just seen that it was as if they had emerged through the gatehouse into a different time and place. The lawn, for as far as he could see, was divided up by long gravel paths, between which lay broad beds. Spikes of new growth were pushing through the earth and bright green tendrils curled up a pergola. At the far end of one of the paths was a spreading mulberry tree and under it thousands of tiny spring flowers were in blossom. To the right the grass fell away steeply, and the distant sound of water suggested that there was a lake below, in the deep depression, out of sight. From a terrace the lawns ran to a haha which formed the boundary of the new maze: Laurence could just make out the low dark curve of spaced plants.

The terrace, broken by three sets of steps, each elaborately decorated, gave on to the garden. Laurence was fascinated by the perfectly realised small stone creatures, each different and not yet worn away by time, carved at the corner of each step of the flight nearest him. They were so exceptional that he could only wonder at who had created them. Voices behind him cut short his speculation.

Two dark-haired women came towards him. That they were sisters was obvious but their colouring was very different. Lydia, he assumed, as she looked older and carried a slender walking stick—was very slim with a pale complexion. Her long hair was streaked with silver. By contrast, Frances was darker skinned, with almost black hair and eyes. Her hair was short and she wore what looked like a man’s Norfolk jacket. Eleanor gave him a conspiratorial look, which he thought Frances caught. Both sisters were smiling warmly and Lydia took his hand in hers.

‘It’s wonderful you could come. So very good of you to spare the time.’

Frances shook his hand only briefly but seemed to watch him more closely, he thought.

He was led through the main entrance, its heavy door was already open. The floor inside was paved in red, white and grey lozenges and warmed by the sunlight coming in through large windows to both sides of the door. A console table bore a large vase of narcissi and irises.

Laurence’s first impression of the interior of the house was entirely at odds with the forbidding building he had seen as the car came down the drive. His spirits lifted in response to the light and ease around him.

At the far end broad stone stairs rose and curved round to the gallery of an upper floor with a green baize door half hidden below it. Almost immediately a young girl in a print apron appeared from behind that door. She nodded her head shyly, pushing her mousy hair out of her face.

‘Laurence, this is Maggie. Maggie Petch,’ Frances said. ‘She lives on the estate and we’re lucky enough to have her help with the house. She’ll show you to your room and David will bring your cases up. Perhaps you’d like to join us in the library when you’ve rested?’

Laurence’s bedroom, on the south side of the house, offered a fine view over the garden. Opening the window he could just see the edge of a churchyard and a few small gravestones. To his right a flash of water indicated the lake he’d guessed was there, although most of it was hidden in a dense thicket of trees. In the far distance he could make out a narrow river, presumably the Kennet. But what took his interest was the delicate pattern of the maze. From up here it looked as if it might have been painted on to the lawn but its symmetrical convolutions were quite clear.

His case was already standing at the end of his bed. He unpacked his paltry belongings in case a maid came up to do it for him while he was downstairs, exposing the limitations of his country-house wardrobe. Apart from anticipating possible surprises in the weather, packing a dinner jacket and a country tweed suit that he rarely wore and which he now noticed smelled strongly of camphor, he had brought little. He placed William’s letter in a drawer along with the other two: a note from his former lover, Mary and one he had received the day before confirming the offer of a tutor’s position with an aristocratic family in Italy. He had made no decision yet, but would use his stay at Easton Deadall to consider it.

His compass, measuring tape, batteries, torch and military field glasses, all of which he might need to assess the church, he placed on a small writing desk and he took out three books. One was a volume on Saxon and Norman church architecture; the second was Cary’s translation of Dante, the third was a present from his old school friend Charles, who had a passion for detective novels. This one was called
Murder on the Links.
A sinister-looking figure in overcoat and hat crouched in trees overlooking a bunker on a golf course. The title looked as if it had been daubed in blood. As he put it down he looked closely at a small photograph hanging above the nightstand. A handsome man and a smiling young woman stood outside the Hall. He took it down and turned it over. ‘DVGE and LTE October 1906’. The late Mr Digby and Mrs Lydia Easton, he supposed.

Leaving his room, he stopped to look around and orient himself in the comfortable, slightly old-fashioned house. Despite its charms, it was from somewhere near here that Kitty Easton had gone missing over ten years ago. How, he thought, could Lydia Easton bear to remain in a place that must once have been filled with the sounds and traces of her daughter and husband, and which was now a monument to their absence? He had left his own marital home as soon as he could after the death of his wife and child. Being there had felt suffocating, as if it had already become a museum. Yet here Lydia stayed in the company of ghosts.

Maggie appeared when he reached the bottom of the stairs. She led him across the hall in the direction of voices. He hesitated in the library doorway, but Lydia Easton saw him at once, stood up, although he noticed it was with some difficulty, and drew him in.

She didn’t look like a woman who was shut away with horrors. In fact, when she smiled as she did now, her face had beauty; more so, he guessed, when she was approaching forty, than she might have possessed as a very young woman. The fullness of her mouth, the tiny laughter lines radiating outwards from her eyes, and irises that were almost amber in colour, were combined with a fine bone structure that would keep her striking into old age. The one anomaly was that the pupil of one eye was much larger than the other but that only made her eyes seem more luminous. She seemed too thin, he thought, and her skin was almost translucent, giving her a fragility that was entirely absent in her sister.

Frances was sprawled in a battered leather armchair in stockinged feet, one leg under her, the other dangling. With her muddy hem, she had the look of a schoolgirl. She and Eleanor had broken off a conversation as he came in. A tea trolley stood between them.

‘Tea, Laurie?’ Eleanor reached for the teapot and strainer as Frances uncurled herself and waved a book at him.

‘Well done,’ she said. ‘Really interesting.’ She held it up so that he could see the jacket. ‘Eleanor gave me your book a while back. What an incredible amount of work.’

He felt ridiculously pleased. In the years after the war, the writing of his work on London churches had seemed as stagnant as his life. He had long, solitary days at his disposal, yet somehow the manuscript never moved forward. When he had finally started work as a history beak at Westminster School, it was only then, when he no longer had any free time, that he was suddenly driven to finish it and he was surprised how gratified he’d felt with the result.

‘What I love,’ Frances said, as he took the fine china cup and saucer from Eleanor, ‘is that your own passions come through too. Like the bit on Chelsea Old Church. I used to know it and I could feel you hadn’t just ticked off its architectural features to show how clever you are, but sat and got the feel of it.’

‘It’s one of my favourites. I used to escape there rather a lot.’ He caught Eleanor’s approving look and stopped, suddenly self-conscious, as she offered him a plate of sandwiches, saying innocently, ‘Cucumber or anchovy relish?’

‘And now you’re a schoolmaster?’ Lydia said.

‘Well, I have been. But I’m actually considering something new.’ He had no chance to explain because Lydia added, eagerly, as if he needed to be encouraged to stay, ‘There’s plenty of history around here for you—not just the church.’

‘That’s the sort of thing Patrick—Lydia’s brother-in-law—is awfully good on,’ Frances said. ‘He’s been out in Crete. He’s an archaeologist.’ Leaning forward, she looked animated. ‘Wouldn’t you love to be there? Making history and revealing it all at once?’

‘I’d like to see Egypt,’ Lydia said. ‘The thought of buried treasure—all that gold and lapis lazuli—chariots and statuettes and goblets. That pharaoh nobody can pronounce. I read in my newspaper that Mr Carter and Lord Carnarvon said it was the first thing that hit them when they peered in: gold as far as the eye could see.’

Eleanor responded, though with a smile that saved her from sounding critical: ‘Slaves building tombs for pharaohs then, and aristocrats disinterring them now, still ordering local peasants to do the hard work for them. I suppose that’s progress. Less flogging, anyway.’

Frances laughed. ‘She was like this at Cambridge,’ she said to her sister. ‘She’s a fiery Amazon, always fighting for the rights of man. Well, woman, actually, on the whole.’ She looked fondly at her friend. ‘She’s all of our consciences.’

‘Not really.’

‘Yes
, really.’

A large portrait of a man in uniform caught Laurence’s eye: Digby Easton almost certainly. The man was pictured sitting side-on in front of a window. The garden stretched out behind him. Easton already had a captain’s pips. His boots shone, one hand, loosely holding leather gloves, lay on his crossed leg and the other held a riding crop. He seemed the picture of confidence, privilege and good health, with high colour and a clean-cut profile, yet when it was painted, he had, Laurence guessed, no more than a year to live. He looked around to see if there was a picture of Digby and Lydia’s daughter, but could see none.