‘Yes, but it died,’ she said, dismissively. ‘Hardly anyone knew about it. It’s still here, poor little thing, somewhere in the Chet. It was years ago. But d’you know, Mara, the odd thing is that since I’ve been here by myself, I’ve sometimes thought I heard it crying. Like those things from the old stories – rusalkas.’
‘The souls of drowned infants,’ said Mara, softly.
‘Yes. My son became a rusalka,’ she said. ‘And he’s still here. His body was never found, so I can’t possibly let Fenn House go to strangers, can I? Not ever. So when I die Theo will have it. Years and years in the future, of course, but still…’
When I die… Mara felt the world snap back into focus at the words. A tremendous weight descended on her and she saw what she had to do to keep Mikhail safe for ever – and to keep him her own for ever. ‘You’re a bit young to be thinking of dying,’ she said lightly.
‘Oh, things happen to people,’ said Charmery. ‘Road accidents and so on. Perhaps I’ll die young and it’ll all be deeply tragic, but everyone will remember me as young and beautiful. And Theo will have this house.’
‘It’s a lovely house,’ said Mara conventionally.
‘It’s full of memories,’ said Charmery. ‘All the things we used to do here as children. The little rituals and traditions. The rocking chair my cousin Lesley said was a magic one – a gateway to the fantasy lands of the stories. And the old grandfather clock we used to wind up because I said it was Fenn’s heart beating. We used to do that on the first night of every holiday. We said it woke up the house and the holiday couldn’t begin until the clock was ticking.’ She blinked and sat up straighter. ‘I’m a bit drunk.’
‘I think you are, a bit,’ said Mara. ‘Why don’t we walk round the garden together – see if that clears your head.’
‘All right. A walk through an English garden with a murderess,’ said Charmery, getting clumsily to her feet. ‘Where shall we go? Would you like to see the rose garden? My mother planted Charmian roses for my tenth birthday – she was a bit of a sentimentalist. Theo used to pick a single rose and leave it on my pillow for me to find when I went to bed. Come to think of it, he was always a bit of a sentimentalist as well. In fact he was an outright romantic. I don’t know what he is now. And the rose bushes are nearly all dead. Things die, Sister Miriam. My son died – Theo’s son.’
Mara took a deep breath, and forcing a casualness she was not feeling, said, ‘Why don’t we walk down to the old boathouse?’
Afterwards it was easy to go back up the steps – pausing to snap off a couple of the Charmian roses planted all those years ago. The French windows were propped open by a large stone. She glanced back down the garden, then stepped inside the house. This was the place of all those memories. She began to walk through the rooms, touching the fold of a curtain or the back of a chair, seeing the film of dust on the tables.
The stairs were wide and uncarpeted and it was clear no one had taken polish or duster to them for a very long time. It looked as if Charmery Kendal had been a bit of a slattern. Even if Mara had allowed Mikhail to marry, she would not have let him marry such a sloven. As it was, he would remain hers, entirely and absolutely, just as he had been all their lives, until he was caught in the sticky web of this twenty-first century Messalina.
Here was the rocking chair those long-ago children had pretended would fly them to magical lands, and in the big bedroom at the front of the house was the grandfather clock they used to wind up to set Fenn’s heart beating for the holidays. Mara touched the pendulum experimentally, and instantly the mechanism sprang to life and a measured ticking filled the room. It startled her because it really did sound and feel as if something had woken. She stopped the pendulum and the ticking faded.
As she went back downstairs she noticed a bunch of keys lying on a small hall table, and she paused, then picked them up. Would one of these keys fit the main door of this house? She tried one at random. It did not fit, nor did the next one, but the third one slid home and the lock turned easily. Mara checked to see if there was an identical key on the ring – surely no house of this size would have only one key – and when she found the duplicate, she removed it and pocketed it.
She went inside St Luke’s, unnoticed, meeting no one. Once in her room, she wedged a chair against the door, then washed away the splashes of mud and river weed that had caught her hands and the edges of her cuffs when she held Charmery down in the river. The cuffs were carefully rinsed clean and put to dry on the windowsill, and new cuffs donned. The key to Fenn House was tucked at the back of a drawer. That left the roses. Mara considered, then laid them between the leaves of a book, and placed two heavier books on top. Later, she would press them properly, using layers of tissue paper. A reminder of what she had done.
The supper bell sounded, and, obedient to the convent’s day, she went downstairs to the refectory. No one would notice anything different about her, no one would suspect anything.
No one had noticed or suspected.
Charmery’s murder wiped a smeary bloodied print across the uneventful life of Melbray for a time, but little by little life settled back into its uneventful pattern. The police were not seen as frequently at Fenn House. They no longer tramped around Fenn’s gardens or crawled over the old boathouse with their cameras and forensic tests. If they found what Mara thought were called DNA samples that matched any of the nuns they would not think twice about it. The sisters did call at Fenn House occasionally – there was no reason to be secretive about it.
But they did not find anything that brought them to St Luke’s, and after a while journalists and photographers stopped haunting Melbray in the hope of finding new angles on the story.
Mara did not often see Mikhail, but when she did he seemed quieter and thinner. He would get over it, though; he would not really have loved a woman like that – a Jezebel who had conceived a child without being married, and had let it die. It had become a rusalka, Charmery had said. The odd thing was that Mara kept remembering those words. The souls of drowned infants. It was unexpected that Charmery had known the legend, but it was fitting that she had died in the river where her son had been drowned.
Later, the news filtered through that Theo Kendal had inherited Fenn House from his cousin. So she did leave it to him, thought Mara. She had some feelings after all – feelings for the cousin she must once have loved. And feelings for the child whose body lay deep within the Chet’s green mistiness.
The image of the child drowned in the Chet had remained with Mara all these months. It was with her now, as she put on her woollen cape and prepared to get out of St Luke’s without being seen. At last she knew what she must do.
She silently left her room. Sister Catherine’s room was nearby and twice she had heard Catherine come out and go down to the clinic wing. So it was important to be very quiet. She went down the back stair to the garden door, but before unbolting it peered through the little side window. No one was around. She had not expected anyone would be, not at this hour. She unbolted the door and stepped outside. Then, keeping well away from the main drive, she went towards the gates, and along the lane that led to Fenn House.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Catherine heard Sister Miriam go out because she was staying awake to check on a patient who had had an abscess drained that morning and would need the dressing changed. At first she did not take much notice of the sound, vaguely thinking Sister Miriam was going to the bathroom. But she did not go along the corridor to the bathroom at the far end, she came past Catherine’s own door and went towards the main landing. After a moment, Catherine opened her door and looked out, wondering if anything was wrong. As she listened, she heard sounds from outside. At first she could not identify them, and thought she would just go to the main hall to make sure everything was all right. She slipped into her house shoes, reached for her cardigan, closed her own door and went quietly down the stairs.