The Edge of the Fall (12 page)

The reporters were still outside, but Celia ordered a taxi into Winchester. She needed a black coat to wear, something more suitable than her shabby grey thing. She came out of the back door, met the car at the side and they drove through the reporters. The driver talked, but she gazed out of the window.

At Winchester, she asked him to stop at a department store. She was about to enter when she saw a newsstand. She edged closer. Arthur was on the front of every page.
Blood in the Aristocracy!
one paper cried.
Mysterious death!
shrieked another. She bought all the papers. She told the man on the stall that she was learning to be a reporter herself. He said he could offer her some old papers.

Celia took all the papers, then bought a bag from the department store. She bundled them up into it. Then she wandered the floors for the next two hours, not really looking at the clothes. The staff probably thought she was there to steal things.

That evening, back at Stoneythorpe, she opened the bag and stared at the papers. Pages and pages about the decline of the aristocracy. Their country houses were crumbling and now their morals were disintegrating too. The fathers had led society in fighting the enemy and upholding the values of Empire – but now the sons were lost, dilettantes, spending their time at parties with cocktails and committing dreadful murders. The more recent stories were all about Germans.

One editorial said all the Germans should have been expelled after the war, that if Asquith had listened, people would be safer. Now, here they were, throwing English roses over cliffs because of their own selfish greed. Louisa's fortune was variously estimated.
The Times
said £25,000, the
Express
twice that, another declared it was nearly a million. Celia had to admit to herself that she had no idea how much it was. There was talk about the German mind – mean, cruel, murderous.

There was little real news, she supposed – politicians infighting,
more arguments about inflation. So it was hardly surprising that the papers seized on Arthur and Louisa.

Haven't they killed enough of our flower of youth?
cried the
Mercury. Now they kill young girls as well!
Celia read long descriptions of Rudolf's internment camp at Knockaloe and sentimental tableaus of Lady Deerhurst's death at the hands of the Spanish flu – even though it hadn't been the flu at all. The Deerhursts were strong, upstanding, honourable – dragged by marriage into the horror and cruelty of Germans. She read portraits of them – Rudolf, interned and criminalised, Verena the innocent, tricked into marriage by Rudolf and then unable to escape. Arthur was evil. Emmeline wayward for marrying her tutor. She read that Michael had only gone to war to undermine the effort and support the enemy and she screamed so loudly that she thought she'd woken the whole house. Under it all was Louisa, lost, alone, dead at the bottom of a cliff.

SEVEN

Stoneythorpe, September 1920

Celia

‘I want to go to Margate,' Celia said again a few days later. ‘She's on her own.'

‘You can't go alone,' said Rudolf. ‘But someone does need to identify her.'

‘I'll come with you,' said Mr Janus. ‘I'll identify her. I've seen more violence than you two. They'll only want someone who saw her recently anyway, they won't mind who.'

‘I saw her. I saw her a week ago. I could go. I was in the ambulances.' Celia said it faintly, though, for it was not the same, driving a man with injuries, seeing him being pushed into the back of her ambulance. They had been shot at, gassed, blown up – but they weren't Louisa. ‘You haven't seen her for a long time,' she tried.

‘I can remember. I think this one is my job,' Mr Janus said.

Two days later, Emmeline, Mr Janus and Celia travelled down, listened to the policeman, and then went to the morgue. Mr Janus came out, his face quite white, holding tight to the arm of the policeman. ‘You wouldn't know her,' he said faintly. ‘You really wouldn't know her.'

‘I never thought I'd see myself rely on a policeman for support,' he said that evening, in the hotel. ‘But I couldn't stop. I held him. I couldn't let go.'

Emmeline put out her hand. ‘Tell us, husband. If it would help. Tell us what you saw. We can be strong.'

He shook his head. ‘No words to describe it. They don't exist.'

Celia nodded. He was right. You might say you could be strong, you might think you could bear to see the human body mangled, torn, the soul flung out, the face blooded. You couldn't. She couldn't. Not Louisa, the pretty doll, made to decorate the world. She held her sister's hand and felt gratitude to Mr Janus surging in her heart.

Then, on the way home, she wondered – should she have gone in? Perhaps then she would have seen something. There might have been some clue that told her the truth. She imagined Arthur's handsome face reflected in Louisa's big pale blue eyes. His horror as she fell.

The police told Mr Janus they were keeping Louisa's belongings for the moment. ‘We should go to the guest house where they were staying,' Celia said. ‘We should go to look.'

Mr Janus shook his head. ‘They'll see us. What would it look like?'

‘Please.'

‘Well, perhaps we could try. Quickly.' They walked to the seafront and towards the hotel Louisa and Arthur had stayed in. The White Cliffs Hotel was a shabby-looking place, once grand, she supposed, but now with peeling paint around the windows, muggy glass in the main door. ‘We can't go in,' said Mr Janus. ‘They'll tell the police. It will look strange.'

Celia jumped forward. ‘We have to. We have to see it.'

Mr Janus shook his head. ‘Come on, Celia, don't you see it's impossible? There will probably be police in there as well. Let's go.' She nodded, followed him.

A dark-haired little man caught up with them. ‘Mr and Mrs Janus?' he said. ‘Miss Witt?' Mr Janus grasped Celia's arm. ‘I wondered if I might ask you a few questions.'

‘No!'

‘You could put forward your side of the story. Name is Pete Sanders. I'll take an exclusive from you.'

‘No!' Mr Janus hurried her forward. But Mr Sanders followed them, talking all the way.

‘Don't follow us in here!'Mr Janus shouted at the door of their hotel. Mr Sanders hung back.

Celia wished her sister and Mr Janus goodnight, then went up to her room. Next morning, at eight (Mr Janus and Emmeline weren't getting up until nine), she pulled on her gown and shawl, grabbed her shoes and hurried out of the door. Downstairs, the maids were dusting the hall. She ran out into the quiet street, hurried back to the White Cliffs Hotel. Mr Sanders wasn't there.

The hall was busy with guests coming in and out. She walked quickly up the stairs – it might be, she supposed, as if she was secretly going to the ladies' lavatory. She ran up to the second floor and cut past the rooms. Room 24 was at the end. This, according to the police report, had been where Louisa had stayed. The door was open – and a pile of brushes and dusters outside. She edged around them. There was no maid in the room. The joy of luck struck her heart and she stepped in. The room looked like all the others, clothes draped over the chairs. Emmeline and Mr Janus had been wrong. There weren't police here – and they hadn't even kept the room as it was when Louisa had died. They were offering it to other people already.

She put her hand on the bedspread. It had probably been washed five more times since Louisa had slept there. She moved to the window. It looked out on to the road, towards the cliffs. She could have seen them from here, Celia realised. Louisa must have stood there, gazed out at the cliffs – and so saw the place where she'd one day die.

‘Can I help you?' A maid was standing behind her, her face set.

‘I was just – looking for my room.'

‘What room is that?'

‘Fourteen!' Celia cried, and then made a dash for the door. She heard the woman call after her, but she picked up her skirts and ran, hurtling down the stairs, out into the road. She walked slowly back to her hotel and into breakfast with Emmeline and Mr Janus. ‘I took a sea walk,' she said. They looked at her blankly.

‘We have to go to the police station today,' said Mr Janus. ‘I
know we spoke to them at Stoneythorpe, but they want more now. In case anything jolts our memory, being here.'

They went to the police station, sat in separate rooms, talked about Arthur and Louisa. When they came out, reporters followed them to the hotel, shouting questions. Mr Sanders was there, coming up close. He slipped his card into Celia's hand. ‘Talk to me,' he whispered into her ear. ‘I'll listen.'

The stories whirled around. The detectives said they'd opened an inquest. Without Arthur, they said, they couldn't know what had happened. Celia, Mr Janus and Emmeline sat through three days of it. Celia listened to the evidence, dizzied.
Talk to me
, she heard Mr Sanders saying.
Me
.

And then finally, they were free.

‘Death by misadventure,' pronounced the coroner.

Death by misadventure
.

The newspaper men gathered at the door for a comment but Mr Janus refused. He shook his head at Mr Sanders.

‘No one implicated Arthur,' said Mr Janus, when they'd got through the men and reached their room. ‘They said he was near. But she tripped and fell. That's what they say.'

‘See,' said Emmeline. Arthur just panicked. He shouldn't have done. He should have stayed here and it would have all been sorted out.'

An accident. A terrible accident.

After the suspicion, the stories, the cruel words, here was the truth. An accident. But still the newspapers wrote long comments about how, even though Arthur didn't kill Louisa, he was unkind to her – a poor girl sacrificed to German evil. Mr Janus told Celia not to look at them, but she couldn't help it. ‘The stories will die down,' he said. ‘There's nothing to write about now. No news. They're all just annoyed that they didn't get the bloodthirsty outcome they wanted.' He snorted. ‘One in the eye for them.'

On the next day, they passed Mr Sanders walking to the police station. Mr Janus turned around and shrugged at him. ‘An accident,' he said, smiling slyly. ‘Bet you're annoyed by that.'

‘Stop it!' hissed Emmeline. She pulled him away.

Celia hurried after them. When she turned back, Mr Sanders was still watching them. He had an odd twisted smile on his face.

‘You can take the body,' the detective had told Mr Janus. ‘She's been investigated for the post mortem.'

The funeral man told them that they would put a mask over Louisa's face. Like a soldier's mask, Celia thought miserably. The body wore a blonde wig that curled over her eyes. It was how she might look had she been on stage playing a big expressive role, even pantomime. Celia thought of Louisa as she had seen her last, the thin girl who wouldn't speak to her. She put orange blossoms on the coffin lid, even though she knew they were for brides.

On the way out of the parlour, the funeral man put something into Celia's hand. ‘The family ring, madam. No other jewellery.' Celia clasped it, then pushed it on to her own finger, her right ring finger, not left. It was too small. She didn't care. She wouldn't take it off.

Two days later, Celia was sitting outside in the cold, head in her hands. Her mother was still in bed; who knew where her father was. It was late afternoon. She was hating herself, reviling her weakness. She'd gone up to Louisa's room, laid on her bed, put her head on Louisa's pillow, trying to find her. It had been washed, of course. Louisa hadn't even
slept
there for ages, but still, she couldn't help it. She found herself lying on Louisa's carpet, trying to find the spot where her feet had fallen as she climbed out of bed, trying to catch some of her soul. She'd lain there, head on the rug, until she'd come to herself, realised how ridiculous she was being and got to her feet. Then she started crying.

Later she was sitting in the garden, head in her hands, when a shadow fell over her – and she looked up to see Jennie.

‘There's someone to see you, Celia.'

She shook her head. ‘I'd rather not. Whoever it is, can you tell them to come back tomorrow?'

Jennie stood, too long. ‘I don't think so.'

Celia looked up and there was Tom, walking out through the
door and coming towards her. She stood up. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I wanted to see you.'

Jennie raised her eyebrows, walked away.

‘I suppose you read all about it in the papers.'

‘The police came to see me. Not that I had anything to say. I'm sorry, Celia. I really am. Your face – it breaks my heart.'

‘Poor Louisa.'

And then he was sitting beside her, clasping her hands, looking at her. ‘Oh, Celia, I'm so sorry.'

‘She fell off a cliff. I've been looking for some trace of her here. I can't find her anywhere.'