The Triumph of Katie Byrne (15 page)

Katie stood at the end of the avenue of trees, looking towards the front of the house, admiring its imposing beauty on this cold Friday morning. Although she was not an expert on architecture like her father was, she could easily recognize that Burton Leyburn Hall was an extraordinary example of the late-Elizabethan style.

It was built of the pale-grey stone that seemed to be prevalent in Yorkshire, and which worked so well with the surrounding landscape. The roofline was crenellated, and the house was a lovely combination of bays and recesses, gables and battlements, tall chimneys, and many mullioned windows, all of them soaring and elegant, glinting in the bright sunlight.

When she had arrived yesterday afternoon, the house had looked mysterious in the fading light. But on this early morning it seemed to be just the opposite. Steadfast, stalwart, made to last, were the words which instantly sprang into Katie’s mind. And it
was
built to last, she thought; obviously it hasn’t flinched for four hundred years.

Walking back up to the house and around to the south side, she came to a wide terrace with a balustrade which ran the entire length of the house. The rail and row of balusters beneath it were broken in the middle, to permit a flight of wide stone steps to flow down to the parterre, the beds and paths of this ornamental flower garden arranged to form an intricate pattern of elegance.

About fourteen feet beyond the parterre, the lawns began and these swards of green stretched all the way to the ornamental lake, which was just visible in the distance. On either side of the lawns were stands of huge trees, and with their broad, gnarled trunks and great spreading branches they added shelter to the gardens and offered shade in summer.

Once again Katie experienced that sense of timelessness which she had felt when arriving here. History abounded in this ancient house and on these lavish lands, gifted to the Leyburn family by the great Tudor queen. She couldn’t help wondering what it was that Robert Leyburn had done for Elizabeth to make her favour him with such an extravagant gift. She made a mental note to ask Verity.

Since it was still not yet eight, which was when breakfast was put out, Katie decided to walk down to the ornamental lake. As she walked she thought about Xenia and their revealing conversation last night. She was pleased they had shared confidences; she felt, in her heart, that it had brought them closer. Although
they hadn’t known it before, they had both endured a traumatic experience earlier in their lives. Now that they had recounted their experiences to each other, they understood each other better than before. At least, that’s what Katie felt. She considered it a bond of sorts.

Katie had not gone very far when she heard her name being called. Turning, shading her eyes with her hand, she looked up the path, saw Xenia sprinting towards her.

Xenia was dressed in a grey track suit and running shoes, her chestnut hair tied back. When she came to a standstill next to Katie she was perspiring and out of breath. Taking the towel from around her neck, she wiped her face and tried to say something without success.

‘Hey, take it easy, don’t try to talk for a minute,’ Katie exclaimed, noting her exertion.

After a few seconds, when she was finally breathing more evenly, Xenia said, ‘I decided to go for a quick jog down the front avenue, but I’d forgotten how long it is.’ She leaned against a tree, exhaled several times. ‘Either that or I’m out of condition. I was coming back up to the house when I ran into Pell, the gardener. He told me he’d seen you setting off down here, going to the lake, he assumed.’

Katie was surprised. ‘I never saw anyone.’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t.’ Xenia smiled knowingly. ‘Pell lurks around the garden doing his various jobs, but
he’s invisible, when he wants to be. Do you mind if I walk with you for a bit, Katie? Then we can go in and have breakfast together at eight.’ She laughed, shook her head. ‘I have a feeling Anya and Jarvis are putting on quite a spread for you. The works, a real Yorkshire breakfast, country style.’

‘Well, I must admit I’m a bit hungry, and I’d like to try some of the local dishes. I was up early myself and so I got dressed and came downstairs. I wanted to see the front of the house.’

‘It’s beautiful, don’t you think?’

‘Fantastic, Xenia, and I love this grey stone. It’s local, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. I doubt you’ll ever see a red-brick stately home in Yorkshire, God forbid.’

The two young women walked on for a while in a companionable silence, but just before they arrived at the ornamental lake, Xenia said, ‘You know, Katie, I’ve been wondering if I’m doing the right thing…taking you to Haworth tomorrow, force-feeding the Brontës to you.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘It struck me in the middle of the night that I’m pushing you to take the part of Emily in the play, and in the process I’m probably pushing you into danger. ’

Coming to an abrupt stop, Katie turned to stare at
her friend. Her bright-blue eyes swept over Xenia’s face, and after a split second, she said, ‘I know what you’re getting at, but no, you’re not propelling me into any danger. Nothing of the kind. The attack on Carly and Denise was ten years ago. That’s a long time. And for the last four years, after I left the academy, and before I came to England, I was appearing in plays. Admittedly, off-Broadway, rather than on Broadway, but I was on a stage and visible. And nobody’s taken a pot shot at me. Yet. I go along with Mac MacDonald’s theory that the murderer left the East Coast soon after he attacked Carly and killed Denise.’

‘Why does the policeman think that?’ Xenia asked.

‘According to Dad, Mac has always believed that the murderer would have been afraid of giving himself away to family and friends, if he had stayed in Malvern, or in the general area, in one of the local towns, such as Kent or Cornwall Bridge.’

‘He may well have gone to New York,’ Xenia pointed out.

‘Only too true. He could be anywhere. Listen, once I’d decided to go back to acting, I knew that I’d be earning my living on a stage one day, and that I’d be very much on view, so to speak. So I took a deep breath and got on with my life. I’ve tried very hard to stop being paranoid, forever looking over my shoulder. I’ve also tried to put my fear to one side.’

‘I think you’ve done awfully well under the circumstances. ’ Xenia eyed her friend carefully, her expression thoughtful and caring.

Katie suddenly began to laugh. ‘I know just what you’re thinking. That I still have a terrible compulsion to lock doors.’

Xenia laughed with her, slipped her arm through Katie’s as they walked on at a steady pace. ‘Old habits die hard perhaps,’ Xenia murmured. ‘You know, Katie, I’m so happy we’re friends. It’s comforting to have a girlfriend like you.’

‘I feel the same, Xenia.’

‘After I married Tim when I was eighteen, I was wrapped up in him and in this house, which was such a big part of his life, the running of it, you know, with his father. Then I became wrapped up in my child when Justin was born. It was inevitable that I would lose touch with my girlfriends from school. Then one day I found myself entirely alone…’ Xenia’s voice trailed off.

Katie chose not to say anything, having heard the note of sadness creeping into Xenia’s voice.

But after only a brief moment, Xenia went on, ‘My reasons for being, for living, were gone, snatched away from me just like that.’ She snapped her thumb and finger together. ‘Death is so final.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Well, there I was, all alone. The only person I had was Verity. I shut myself up here for years, licking my wounds like a sick dog. And trying to keep myself
from going entirely mad. But it was five rather long years, now that I look back.’

‘I understand,’ Katie replied quietly, her voice sympathetic. ‘The circumstances of my grief are very different from yours, but for two years I became pretty reclusive myself.’ Stealing a glance at Xenia, Katie now said, ‘What made you finally leave here and go to London?’

‘It was Verity, actually. She’d come back to live here after her divorce from Geoffrey, almost fifteen years ago now. Stephen, her son, was away at boarding school, and anyway she had nowhere else to go. And this
was
her childhood home. Her father, the Earl, invited her to live with us all, and I was happy to have her companionship, and so was Tim. And she adored the baby. Anyway, after Tim and Justin were gone, I sort of clung to Verity. She was all I had. The Earl was devastated by Tim’s death, and it was at that time that he started to spend months on end in the south of France. He has a lady friend with a beautiful château, and he’s mostly there these days. But getting back to Verity…One day she decided to shove me out. For my own sake.’

Xenia paused, shook her head, and chuckled as if laughing at herself. ‘I was so reluctant to leave here. But I was helping her with her catalogues, and she said I had to go to London to attend the gift shows, do her buying for her. It was a good ruse really. She believed I had to get away from Burton Leyburn and the memories, especially the sorrowful ones. Just as my father-in-law
had. Poor Uncle Thomas, losing Tim and Justin aged him considerably.’

‘Is the Earl really your uncle?’

‘Not actually, no. He’s my father-in-law. But my mother and he were always very close, all their lives, and so I’d called him Uncle Thomas from being a child.’

‘Doesn’t he ever come back to Yorkshire? Visit the estate?’

‘Yes, in the summer. He’s not a well man, and the climate in the south of France is milder in winter, it suits him better. And Veronique, that’s his friend, looks after him well.’

‘So you went to London and started to buy for Verity’s catalogues. But when did you get the idea for the business you started yourself?’ Katie ventured.

Xenia came to a standstill and turned to face Katie. ‘When Verity wanted me to leave, I was a bit hurt at first, but I’m not a stupid person and I suddenly understood her reasons. So I did as she suggested. I had the house in Farm Street, and that became my base. And hers too, since she had to come up to town on business quite frequently. The house had belonged to Tim for years, he’d inherited it from his mother when she died, and I inherited from him. Anyway, I worked on the catalogues and came up here for weekends occasionally. Then one day I had a brainstorm…the idea for Celebrations. I contacted Alan Pearson, who was living in New York, and had a similar business, planning conventions. The
idea of planning fancy parties instead appealed to him no end. We were old family friends, Alan had been at school with Tim, and so we became partners. We’d been in business for a year when I met you at Bridget’s dinner party for Alan’s birthday.’

Xenia started walking again, and Katie hurried to keep pace with her. She said, ‘You’ve mentioned Verity’s catalogues before, but you’ve never gone into details. What does she sell?’

‘All sorts of things. Verity created the mail-order catalogues about ten years ago, but it’s only been in the last few years that they’ve become a big success. Real moneymakers, thank goodness. You see, she’s been clever about the items she’s chosen to sell, and how she presents them. That’s what did the trick.’

Again Katie asked, ‘But what does she
sell
?’

‘Well, let’s see, she has a catalogue called
Home Comforts from Burton Leyburn Hall
, which offers all kinds of scented candles, beeswax candles, cushions, flowerpots, linens, sheepskin slippers, and things for the home. Then there’s another,
Lady Verity’s Bath
, and that’s a line of shampoos and bath gels, potpourri, scented sachets, body lotions, soaps. The third is
Lady Verity’s Kitchen.
That offers honey, jams, jellies, pickles, dried herbs that are bottled here. Basically she sells items that won’t spoil, that have shelf life.’

‘That’s quite an undertaking,’ Katie exclaimed, sounding impressed.

‘Yes it is. Everyone works for the catalogues, including me. I still do some of the buying for Verity. I enjoy it. It’s a local business.’

‘Do you mean everyone in the house works for the catalogues? Or everyone in the village?’

‘Both. Verity’s a bit of a tycoon in her own quiet way. She employs quite a few of the local women, who are only too happy to make a few extra quid for themselves, and she also employs Lavinia, Anya, Barry Thwaites, who’s married to Anya and runs the Home Farm, Pell, and Jarvis, of course.’

‘I thought Jarvis was the butler.’

‘He is, although Verity calls him her general factotum these days. I suppose because he has his fingers in everything here. Jarvis is her good right hand. Anyway, he’s been at Burton Leyburn for donkey’s years, and he loves the estate as much as she does. You see, Katie, all of the money which is made from the catalogues is used for the upkeep of this place. That’s why Verity and I open the house and gardens to the public in summer. The admission fees help to pay for the gardens. And there’s the shop, which is another moneymaker, where we sell all of the products in the catalogues.’

Katie didn’t say anything for a moment or two. Then she nodded. ‘It hadn’t occurred to me, but I guess a great house like this, these vast grounds and gardens, cost a lot of money to maintain.’

‘The upkeep is crippling, ducks,’ Xenia answered.
‘And there’s not a lot of inherited family money. Which is why everyone is thrilled about Verity’s success. I don’t know what we’d do without the three catalogues. I suppose the Earl would have to give the place to the National Trust, or do something like that, which none of us would really be happy about, since we couldn’t live here then. The house would become a museum.’

‘I understand,’ Katie said softly, thinking that nothing was ever the way it seemed.

‘We call it a lake, but actually it’s a pond really,’ Xenia said and, pointing to the centre of the water, she added, ‘There’s a fountain in the middle, but it’s only turned on in the spring and summer.’

‘It’s a lovely spot, and the lake is so perfectly positioned it appears to float into the horizon, into the sky.’ Katie squinted against the sunlight, shaded her eyes with her hand, and continued, ‘I guess it’s also a haven for wildlife. I see quite a lot of water fowl on the other side of the water.’