The Love Letter (56 page)

Hector let out a bark of derision, mercifully masking the snort of laughter that came from Legs under the desk.

‘Doomed!’ Poppy repeated, sensing her point wasn’t being taken on board.

But it was like the boy crying wolf. She had said it so many times over the years that nobody in the room, hidden or visible, took much notice of her.

Hector sounded bored. ‘I’m sure Francis has the situation under control. He knows all about these things. That boy has a mind like an accountant.’

‘He’s all wrapped up with Allegra.’

‘Ah yes, his lost asset; I heard she was staying here. That going well is it?’

You’d think she’d got bubonic plague the way he’s policing her.
I’m sure it’s just a little head-cold; she always was a hypochondriac, but Francis
loves
a gallant mission, as we know. He’s been like a dog with two tails.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t keep putting him outside to spare your asthma,’ Hector snapped tetchily.

‘I’ve hardly seen him all week. They’re bound to be at it nonstop.’

Legs sat up in horror, almost hitting ear head on the underside of the desk.

‘Always knew she’d come back to him in the end,’ Hector was saying.

‘So why did you take up with her frump of a mother?’ Poppy’s voice rose hysterically.

‘It will break Francis’s heart if Allegra leaves him again, of course,’ Hector blustered on, dodging the question. ‘The boy isn’t going about this the right way at all. I’ve told him he needs to get her straight up the aisle this time. Allegra is a sterling girl, and impulsive like her mother. He should whisk her off on a road trip across America, hire a vintage open-top Cadillac, swim naked with dolphins, marry in Vegas – or if he insists on his usual tight budget, he could do much the same in Scotland with a modest hatchback, finishing in Gretna Green. Either way, he must move fast to transform Ms North to Mrs Protheroe.’

Under the desk, Legs now found herself shaking her head so violently she went dizzy.

‘Is that what you and the Frump plan to do?’ Poppy squeaked in horror.

‘Don’t call Lucy that.’ He heaved a deep sigh laden with self-pity. ‘She and I have been on a road less travelled, our gratification a delayed pleasure and the boundaries of our egos ever-widening to let in others, but our journey together is nearing its end. She really is the most selfless of women. We’ve both agreed that I shall have to come back to you should Francis and Allegra be serious about this reconciliation.’

Legs’ headshaking sped up. Her vision was tunnelling. Poppy’s voice suddenly seemed to be coming from a distant clifftop: ‘What makes you think I’ll have you back?’

Hector’s reply was even more faint and distorted, the only words Legs could pick out being ‘your son’, ‘bloody festival’, ‘kills someone’, ‘knighthood’ and ‘wedding’.

She must have blacked out against the pedestal briefly because the next thing she heard were Poppy’s nails drumming on the leather desktop overhead. A row was raging.

‘I refuse to be bullied by bad-tempered men!’ Poppy was shrieking. ‘You’re all the same! Jamie has a quite impossibly short fuse, just like his father. You can’t dictate to me any more either, Hector.’

‘Don’t compare me to that poisonous little upstart!’

‘Jamie’s my flesh and blood.’

‘Who will draw my blood to get his pound of flesh,’ Hector muttered darkly. ‘I won’t let him hurt you, Pops, d’you hear? I’ll fight to the death for the things I love. You’re still my wife and this is still my house.’

Boxed in her shadowy lair, Legs blinked anxiously, trying hard to focus.

‘God, I miss darling Kizzy,’ Poppy lamented with a stifled sob. ‘She never once told me what to do. I’ve asked her to come back and see me, but she tells me she’s got an important new job in publishing and can’t take time off. It’s all my fault for pushing her too hard towards Francis.’

‘The muse is not amused,’ Hector barked sarcastically. ‘No doubt she’s much happier indulging her natural proclivities for women’s-only poetry salons, knocking back mojitos with Édith and Jax at the Candy Bar to get over the shock of life here.’

‘Don’t be so judgemental, Hector!’

Wiping cold sweat from her forehead, Legs craned to listen above the rush of blood in her ears. Something was still stuck to her temple from resting it against the pedestal. Panicking that it
was a spider, she reached up to swipe it away and realised that it was a loose segment of plastic electrician’s tape. Looking up she saw that it was part of a criss-cross cat’s cradle which was securing a small, leather-bound notebook to the underside of the desk.

‘Dreadful harpy,’ Hector was still ranting jealously about Kizzy. ‘She would never have the backbone to run Farcombe. Francis and Allegra will make much better guardians once they marry.’

Legs started so abruptly that she head-butted the tape-webbed notebook and the desk almost shot across the room, but Hector and Poppy were too busy arguing to notice.

‘We’ll see about that!’ Poppy thundered, sweeping towards the window. ‘We have other interested parties now.’

He let out a sarcastic scoff, ‘I suppose you’re planning for the Prodigal Son and the Mermaid Muse to team up as lord and lady of the manor?’

Legs groaned aloud, partly at the thought of Byrne and Kizzy getting together and partly because quite a lot of the electrician’s tape was now stuck in her hair.

‘That would be
quite
out of the question, Hector,’ Poppy’s deep, sombre voice more than drowned out any noises from beneath the desk. ‘By interested parties, I’m talking Vin Keiller-Myles.’

‘I’m having nothing to do with that bastard’s money!’ Hector roared.

‘Francis says Vin’s the only one who can bail us out. He can get us out of this impasse, don’t you see? We both know the festival can’t go on, and what’s the point of keeping Farcombe if we can’t host the festival? It costs so much to run the estate these days. If we sell the whole shooting match to him, he’ll take on all the liability. He can easily afford to cover the work needed.’

‘I’ll never sell to him!’

‘He offered us twice the market value last year with that consortium he put together.’

Legs was grappling with the tape, which was now wrapped
around her wrist as well as being matted through her hair, the little book coming loose from its hiding place and flapping about like a giant moth.

‘Are you really prepared to leave this house?’ Hector asked Poppy in disbelief.

‘If I must, and I really think this situation means we must.’ She let out a throaty sob. ‘As if these dreadful death threats weren’t enough, now this …’

‘What “death threats”?’ thundered Hector.

Legs stopped grappling with the tape, stayed stock still and listened, her skin icy.

There was a rustling of paper as Poppy drew something from her pocket.

Heavy footsteps crossed the room. Another paper rustle and Hector let out a gasp. ‘Abominable prose style. Compelling stuff, though. You say there are others?’

‘This is the second. We dismissed the first as a one-off, but now …’

‘Who else knows about them?’

‘Just Francis. He now thinks we should go to the police, but we can’t risk any adverse publicity, particularly now the insurance fiasco means we’re looking disaster in the face. Oh Hector, can’t you see? We might lose the festival for good!’ She started to sob in deep, mournful cries, like a howling collie.

‘There, there my little one.’ There was genuine tenderness in Hector’s voice. ‘It won’t come to that. Let me talk to Francis. I’m sure we can get the Friends of the Festival to collectively underwrite the risk. This Gordon Lapis appearance is worth a fortune to us all. If we can just get through the next few weeks, we’ll be able to afford to make the changes for next year.’

Poppy gave a doubtful sniff. ‘What if Gordon Lapis trips over one of the “serious dangers”, breaks his writing fingers and then sues us for millions? Or, worse still, gets murdered by the mad person behind these letters?’

‘I will personally follow him around like a bodyguard, my darling little one, and catch him if he falls, just as I will shoot anybody who tries to do any harm to him, to you or to our family. And I’ll make it my mission to get my hands on whoever is writing these damned pieces of filth, as if I can’t guess. This time the safety catch is staying off.’

He thinks it’s Byrne, Legs realised in alarm.

But Poppy remained baffled. ‘Who do we know who is this cruel … and uneducated?’

‘Leave it all with me.’

‘My hero,’ she growled in her deep voice, then giggled teasingly. ‘Actually, Gordon would do the reading public a favour if he broke his bloody writing fingers. His latest book has the most infuriating end. I still can’t quite believe he’s done it.’

They had started walking towards the hallway, much to Legs’ relief because she still had one wrist taped to her head, was developing severe cramp in one calf and feeling increasingly faint again.

‘We will get through this, Pops.’ Hector’s voice was weighted with such affection that there was a catch of tears at the back if his throat, cutting through his soothing bass like a split bassoon reed.

Hearing it too, Poppy was full of her old vigour. ‘Why don’t we have a lovely big fundraising dinner after the press launch this week to save the festival? It can mark your homecoming, Sir Hector!’

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ he muttered, but he sounded terribly pleased. ‘I think a dinner is a fine idea. By then, we may even be celebrating the news that we’ll be hosting a wedding here after all.’

‘Maybe I’ll invite Jamie as guest of honour so that we can all make peace.’

‘One thing at a time, my darling. I’m not sure we have enough long-handled spoons as it is.’

‘Don’t be cruel, Hector.’

As they left the room, squabbling yet again, Legs finally pulled
her wrist free, wincing as clumps of hair were ripped from her head. The notepad was still attached to the tape around her wrist, so that she was wearing it like a dance card now.

Too uncomfortable to care, she rubbed her cramping leg muscle and hoped her mother would survive the fall out if the summer romance was coming to a close. But Lucy’s temporary diversion from the road less travelled was the least of her worries in the light of what she’d just heard about death threats and impending financial disaster at Farcombe.

Crawling out of her hiding place, she tugged at the bracelet of sticky tape only to find it tightening like a tourniquet.

She could hear urgent voices in the main hall. Francis had discovered her disappearance.

‘She’s still terribly ill and delirious at times. She’s a danger to herself.’

Now Legs thought about it, she did feel distinctly ill. She was incredibly dizzy and chilled to her bones.

Footsteps were running all over the house now, voices shouting her name.

She hastily crept back through the service door, holding onto the walls for support. It took all her energy to retrace her steps through to the back lobby and up the rear stairs. The search party hadn’t started looking beyond the green baize yet, but Legs was feeling so rough now that she no longer cared if she was found as long as they gave her an arm to lean on and promised to catch her if she fainted. She crawled the last flight of back stairs on her hands and knees.

Nobody was on the landing when she crossed it and returned to her room, peeling off the hunt coat and balldress with arms as weak as string before kicking them under the bed, which she clambered into just as Francis charged back into the room.

‘Where have you
been
?’

‘Here,’ she said faintly, mustering a smile. She was drenched in icy sweat again. She was acutely aware that she still had a small,
leather-bound notebook and a large amount of her own hair taped to her wrist, which she kept firmly under the covers.

‘You went missing.’

‘Perhaps you’re getting what I’ve had? I hope you’re not delirious and a danger to yourself.’ She closed her eyes, grateful for the blanket of exhausted darkness that immediately enfolded her.

After her gruelling excursion, she slept for a couple of hours. Waking to hear a tray clanking its way towards her along the landing, she managed to wrestle the electrical tape from her wrist and hide the notepad under her pillow before Francis appeared with more clear soup. She ate it hungrily, although she was secretly dying for some of Imee’s cake that she’d smelled earlier. But Francis was insistent that she must follow his prescription for recovery, and she could hardly reveal that she’d been on the loose that day after all, sniffing the baking and eavesdropping on calamitous family secrets.

‘I think I could manage something sweet,’ she suggested.

‘No need to get into bad habits,’ Francis teased, having already wolfed his way through the huge steak baguette he’d brought up to keep her company. ‘You’ve lost so much weight, after all. You look fantastic.’

He picked up her hand and examined her reddened wrist. ‘Darling what have you been doing to yourself?’

It did look pretty horrific, the tight tape having left deep creases which were stained with the leather’s oxblood dye. It must have run while she’d sweated her way back upstairs after her break for freedom.