House of the Lost (39 page)

‘Spare duvet in the airing cupboard,’ said Innes. ‘The bathroom’s through there – I’ll put a clean towel out for you.’

Theo liked the house and the tiny study off the sitting room, where Innes kept his patients’ notes and medical books. As Innes checked his answerphone, Theo prowled round, looking at the bookshelves.

‘No calls that can’t wait until the morning,’ said Innes, coming back. ‘I’ve put the kettle on for a last cup of tea, or coffee if you’d rather.’

‘Tea’s fine. I see the sisters gave you one of their centenary booklets,’ said Theo, still looking along the rows of books.

‘Yes, but I daren’t admit to them that I still haven’t got round to reading it.’

‘I read it earlier,’ said Theo. ‘It’s quite an interesting story. There’s an odd thing in it though – can I open this? Thanks.’ He turned to the page with the photo of Charmery, and passed it to Innes. ‘Curious, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Did you know Charmery was ever in Romania?’

Innes studied the photograph with interest. ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said. ‘But there was a lot about her I didn’t know.’

‘Me too,’ said Theo, dryly.

‘It wouldn’t be very surprising if she did find her way out there, though. Specially if she became friendly with any of the nuns at St Luke’s.’

‘The Romanian convent’s the Founder House, of course,’ said Theo.

‘Yes, and one of the nuns at St Luke’s has a strong link to Romania. In fact— Theo, what have I said?’

Theo’s heart had begun its fast-paced rhythm. ‘Which one?’ he said. ‘Innes, which of the nuns has a link to Romania?’

There was a moment when he waited, his heart thudding, then Michael Innes said, ‘Sister Miriam.’

It was the last name Theo had been expecting to hear. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, completely. She’s originally from Romania. Her real name is Mara Ionescu, and— Are you sure you’re all right?’

Theo scarcely heard him. The name had exploded inside his head and it was continuing to explode. Mara. All the time his strange, ill-starred girl had been in St Luke’s. I talked to you, Mara, he thought, without knowing who you were. I even sat at table with you and ate lunch.

He dragged his mind back to Michael Innes. ‘How do you know that about – about Sister Miriam? Because of medical records, or something?’

‘Not medical records. Quite simple. Sister Miriam – Mara – is my sister.’

This time the mental explosion was more gentle, but once again Theo had the impression of a hand reaching from the past to clasp his. He stared at Innes, and heard himself say, ‘My God, you’re Mikhail.’

‘Yes.’

Theo’s thoughts were in a confused tumble. This is Mikhail, he thought. This is the small shadowy boy who trailed after Matthew and Mara on those walks to school, who hid in the attic when the Securitate took Mara away. It’s the brother for whom Mara would have done anything if it meant keeping him from the Securitate’s clutches.

From somewhere beneath the tumult, he became aware that Innes was not surprised at the recognition, but he could not spare any energy to wonder about this. Forcing himself to speak as normally as he could, he said, ‘Michael, later, I’ll explain what I’ve found, but I do know a bit of Mara’s story, and some of yours too, I think. I’d like to know how Mara – and you – ended up in an English village and how she came to be at an English convent.’

‘You’re seeing a link, aren’t you?’ said Innes. ‘You’ve discovered Charmery was in Romania and you think there’s a connection between the convent and her death. Perhaps even between your own attack and the convent.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite so strongly,’ said Theo. ‘But I think it’s something that would bear looking into.’ Nuns know secrets, he was thinking.
Secrets
. . .

‘If you’re focusing on Mara you’d be wrong,’ said Michael Innes. ‘She could never use violence of any kind. She couldn’t be Charmery’s killer. If I ever thought that for a moment, don’t you think I’d have warned the police?’

‘I don’t know. Would you?’

‘Yes,’ he said, angrily. ‘Yes, of course I would. But if the police were to start digging up her past life after so many years – it would cause her so much distress.’

‘All right. But, listen, I’d like to know about Mara. I’ll respect whatever confidence you give me, and I’ll explain it all properly later. But if you can bear to talk – and if it isn’t too late . . . Michael, this is like the child Charmery had: it’s something I need to know!’

For a moment Innes seemed unable to speak, but eventually he said, ‘Mara had a truly appalling time when she was a child and a teenager. And I’d have to admit it damaged her – mentally, I mean. She’s managed to distance herself from what was done to her when she was very young, but it’s been a hard fight for her.’

Theo said cautiously, ‘The damage – was that because of the Black House?’

‘So you know about that, do you? No, not so much the Black House, but what came afterwards.’

Theo, listening with every nerve-ending, thought, he knows about the Black House. He would have seen it – heard the whispers. Oh God, this really is my book coming alive.

‘I don’t know how much you do know,’ said Innes, ‘but Mara spent her most of her teenage years in a remote convent near the border between Romania and Hungary. I never knew exactly why she was sent there. I was very small when it happened. And although I never saw that convent, Mara wrote to me quite a lot while she was there. I’ve still got the letters. It sounded like such a bleak place – absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Later I thought those years created a solitude within her mind, as if the silence and the detachment of the life closed her off from the normal world.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ said Theo softly, not daring to say any more in case he broke the spell being woven.

‘When she left that convent, she could have adjusted to ordinary life again, I think. I could have helped her adjust. But it was what happened to her when she came out that damaged her so deeply.’

Romania, early 1970s

Mara had not known whether the nuns at the Debreczen convent were aware that she had killed another person. She did not know if Sister Teresa would have told them, or even if Zoia might have found a way of telling them. She could not think what she would do if they all knew what had happened to Annaleise.

But it seemed to be all right. They made her welcome in a rather gruff fashion, and folded her into the pattern of their lives. As Sister Teresa had said, it was not an easy pattern. The days were filled with work: Mara was expected to help with scrubbing the stone flags in the big scullery and in the corridors and to take her turn in the laundry which was always filled with steam and smelled of starch and lye soap, and in the refectory where there was usually a mountain of washing-up. Each day at twelve there was a small raggle-taggle queue of tramps who came up to the convent for a meal – Mara was not allowed to hand out food to them, but she was expected to help with chopping vegetables to throw into the big simmering vat of stew, and to stir the steel urn of strong tea the tramps liked.

There were lessons each day, as there had been at home, but there were only the four other girls to share them. They did arithmetic, history and geography, all of which Mara had done at home, but they also had to learn languages. Latin, which Mara found difficult, but which the nuns said firmly was the universal language of religion, and also a smattering of French and English. Mara set herself to learn these two as well as she could because by then she was allowed to send and receive letters, although she was never sure if all her letters reached Mikhail, or if she received all the ones he sent her. But in the letters she did get, Mikhail said he was learning French and English and it gave her a feeling of closeness to him. Struggling to understand the unfamiliar structuring of sentences, she was able to think of Mikhail doing exactly the same. When he wrote that he wanted to read the great writers of the world in their own language she redoubled her efforts, spending hours in the convent’s small library. Sometimes she ached with longing to see Mikhail and hear his voice. She wrote to him about her days, describing everything she did. She loved it when he wrote back saying how much he enjoyed hearing from her, and telling her about his own lessons and the village gossip, and sharing small jokes about French irregular verbs and peculiar English spellings and pronunciation of words like bough and cough and rough.

She missed the company of a big classroom and the little tests that used to be set, and the playground and the games, and she missed her own village and the cottage. But Sister Teresa visited Debreczen three times a year and always brought news. Mara’s grandmother was well, Mikhail was growing up, and working hard at his studies. Such a clever boy. Mara wondered if she would ever see Mikhail or her grandmother again. She wondered, as well, if she would ever see Matthew.

Romania, early 1980s

Matthew was seventeen when he finally accepted he was not going to see Mara again, and that he was not going to see his father either. It was not a sudden acceptance. It gradually crept over him during the years of going to school and running home each afternoon in case this was the day his father came back. He counted the months and then the years – one year, then two, then four and five. He worked hard during those years, mostly because it was what his father would have wanted, and he even tried to understand arithmetic which changed its name to mathematics when he went up to the senior school. Almost every moment of his spare time was spent drawing, painting and reading books about famous painters. At odd moments he drew the cartoon figures he and his father had talked about, trying to make up stories about them as his father had planned. He did not think the stories were very good, but he liked drawing the figures.

And now he was seventeen and it was eight years since his father had been taken away and since Mara had vanished. They’ll never come back, thought Matthew miserably. But I’ll never stop hoping or trying to think of ways to find them.

Occasionally he wondered what would have happened if he had told the Securitate about his father’s articles. He understood now that his father was regarded as a dissident, even as what was called an enemy of the state. The Securitate were still around a lot of the time, prowling the village streets, talking to people. ‘And listening at doors,’ said Wilma, who had grown stouter than ever with the years and still fussed over Matthew as if he were four years old, and queued for hours to get the ingredients to cook his favourite goulash when he was feeling lonely.

‘They’re spies and murderers, those Securitate people,’ said Mara’s brother, Mikhail, who was two or three years younger than Matthew, but far cleverer than anyone Matthew knew. Mikhail hated the Securitate because they had stolen Mara one night. Sister Teresa had told him and his grandmother that Mara had been taken to a place where she could be looked after and that she was safe and well, but Mikhail said Sister Teresa was only repeating what she had been told to say. Nuns and priests had sometimes been brave and outspoken, he said, but mostly they bowed to authority. He thought that was what Sister Teresa was doing over Mara’s disappearance. What did Matthew think?

What Matthew thought was that if Mikhail talked about the Securitate so openly and so disparagingly, he might one day find himself stolen away as well.

‘I don’t care,’ said Mikhail defiantly. ‘I read in a newspaper about Nicolae Ceau
escu. He’s wicked and greedy and selfish. He sends all our food and medicine to other countries so he can pay off Romania’s debts. If he cared about us he wouldn’t mind about a few stupid debts, he’d care more that everyone had enough food.’

‘Nobody would sell food and leave people to starve,’ said Matthew disbelievingly. ‘And you’re not supposed to read that kind of newspaper anyway.’

‘It was a good newspaper and it said Ceau
escu didn’t care about people starving,’ said Mikhail, obstinately. ‘I believe it. Newspapers don’t print things that aren’t right. Anyway, if he didn’t sell our food, where is it? It’s not in the shops. The newspaper said the next step would be rationing, like in the war between England and Germany when people only got half an egg and hardly any meat.’