I opened the envelope and pulled out another newspaper clipping, this one much newer. Local school teacher dead in M6 crash. Local teacher, Robert Marks… I stopped reading and looked up at Edward. “He’s dead? Mum’s husband?”
“Three years ago,” Edward confirmed. “I thought she’d want to know the truth about what happened to him. Thought it might help her stop being afraid.”
“It will.” I held it close to my heart. He’d gone to find this – not just for the memoirs, I was sure. For my family. For me. “Thank you.”
He gave a brief nod of acknowledgment. “Someone knows the truth about what happened that night here at Rosewood, too,” Edward said, softly. “And I think finding it, asking those difficult questions, is exactly why Nathaniel wanted you to work on his memoirs, once he was gone. And I think you know that too. Talk to Isabelle, Kia. It’s time for the truth. Not another story.”
Then he walked out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him, and leaving me alone.
It was almost ten o’clock by the time I’d crawled out of the mental fog Edward’s departure had left me in. I knew he was right; I needed to talk to Isabelle. But first, I needed some more information. Ammunition, perhaps. Truths I could use to discover more truths. Because, just as one lie tended to lead to another, it seemed that truths did the same. I picked up the envelope with the newspaper clippings from where Edward had left it on the dressing table, and paused for a moment to look at the envelope from Ellie again, but in the end I left it where it was. One crisis at a time.
“Have you seen Edward?” Ellie called to me from the kitchen, as I passed. “Only, his car’s gone. Did he tell you where he was going?”
“No.” The word came out as a croak, and I swallowed to try and find my voice again. “I don’t know where he’s gone.” Except for far away from me. And really, that couldn’t be much of a surprise.
I’d worry about Edward, and the future, later. First I had to deal with the past.
I stepped into the kitchen. “He gave me this before he left.” I handed her the newspaper clipping about Robert Marks’s death, and her face lightened as she read it.
“Oh, thank God.” She paused. “I shouldn’t say that about someone being dead, should I?”
“I think, under the circumstances, people would understand,” I assured her. “Will you tell Mum?”
“Don’t you want to?” Ellie asked, curiously.
I shook my head. “I’ve got something else I need to do first.”
Therese had taken to breakfasting alone in her cottage, since the funeral, and I found her taking tea and toast when I arrived.
“How are the memoirs coming?” Therese asked, as she grabbed an extra teacup and saucer for me.
It was the perfect opening, even if I felt a little guilty about shanghaiing her at breakfast. I couldn’t let it pass. “There was some amazing stuff in the box files Nathaniel left, as well as his journals.”
“Really?” Therese raised her eyebrows. “I never really took my brother for the sentimental keepsake type, I must admit.”
I shrugged. “Maybe not, but he’d obviously put some time and effort into gathering things together for the memoirs. Photos, letters, newspaper clippings – the works.” I looked her in the eye, and prayed she’d finally get the hint. “All the way back to when he first met Isabelle. And when they moved in to Rosewood.”
Therese’s body went still, her cup raised slightly off its saucer, and I knew I’d got my point across.
“Everything?” she asked, eventually. “You think he really has notes and photos of everything that happened?”
“Everything important. The problem, of course, is that it’s all just from his point of view.” And some of them were entirely fictional.
“Well, they were his memoirs.” Therese had regained some of her composure by then, and placed her teacup and saucer on the table, turning her attention to the toast and jam.
“Of course. But, in the same way that you, quite naturally, want to read the parts he’d written about your childhoods, I’m sure others will want to read the sections about them. See if the stories fit with their memories.” I, too, was studying the toast plate, mostly so that Therese couldn’t look in my eyes and realise I had no idea what I was fishing for.
“You mean Isabelle,” Therese said, bluntly.
“I mean that I want to make sure that what we have is accurate, and to do that we need to ask other people who were there at the time.” I figured that was about as vague as it could be without eschewing words altogether.
But Therese wasn’t holding with vague. “You want me to confirm what’s in Nathaniel’s notes, so that Isabelle can’t claim it isn’t true.”
Which was absolutely the case, except for the fact that Nathaniel hadn’t given me the truth to work with in the first place. “I just don’t want to upset Isabelle any more than we have to.”
Therese sighed. “Kia, are you absolutely sure you want to do this? You know that some boxes, once opened, can’t be closed again.”
“I know,” I said. “But I think I have to. I have to know the truth before I can decide whether to publish.” I pulled the envelope from my pocket and took out the two newspaper clippings. Therese took them with shaking fingers, touching the photo of her and Isabelle with Matthew. Then she saw the second clipping about the inquest and stilled.
“You want to know how Matthew died.”
“I want to know everything. Who was he? Matthew Robertson, I mean? Nathaniel’s journals said…he was your, well, suitor, I guess? Before Uncle George?”
My great-aunt sighed again. “Suitor. I suppose he was. But back then… He was…everything to me. Until Isabelle stole him away.”
“They had an affair?” I felt cold just saying the words. Perhaps I walked in on them: Therese’s beau and my wife, kissing.
“Isabelle…she hated that I was younger, prettier, than she was, then. That all the men who’d been dancing attendance on her in London were suddenly lining up to talk to me once I arrived at Rosewood. And that even Nathaniel wanted to talk to me, his sister, about things that mattered.”
“She was jealous?”
“She was Isabelle. Same as always. The world had to be about her. So she stole him away.”
“Just like in On A Summer’s Night,” I murmured, and Therese gave me an amused smile.
“You noticed that too, then? When that book came out…that was when Isabelle started getting nervous. And when Nathaniel announced that he was publishing his memoirs, well. I think it pushed her over the edge.”
“But at the end of the book… Ursula. She pushes Sebastian over the edge of the cliff after they fight. Do you think…” I couldn’t say the words. I could hardly think them.
“Do I think Isabelle pushed Matthew?” Therese shook her head. “I think Nathaniel was just telling a good story. As far as I know, the coroner’s verdict is correct. He was drunk and he fell. As simple – and as horrible – as that.”
“You weren’t there?” I’d hoped that Therese might have seen something – even if it was just my grandparents a safe distance away when they heard Matthew’s scream.
Therese looked away. “I was young. And there was a lot of champagne at that party. I remember Nathaniel and Isabelle arguing about Matthew, and realising what was going on – that the man I loved had fallen for my sister-in-law. I walked out, grabbed the nearest glass, and got very, very drunk. The next thing I remember is waking up in bed the next morning with a splitting headache. I never even heard him scream.” She sniffed at that, and I realised that, for Therese, this wasn’t just history. It was her life – her loves, her losses.
Still. My best shot at a witness, and she’d been passed out drunk.
Which only left me with Isabelle.
“Tell your father I don’t think I’ll join you all for meals today,” Therese said, getting shakily to her feet. “I don’t feel quite right.”
Now I felt really guilty. “Do you want me to
bring you something? Soup or sandwiches at lunchtime?”
Therese shook her head. “I’ll be fine. I have a fully stocked kitchen here, you know. I just… I just feel old, today. A day in bed and I’ll be back to myself.”
I nodded and watched her make her way slowly to the bedroom, past a mishmash of outfits and accessories from the past hundred years. I thought I knew which decade Therese would be dwelling in today.