The Dead of Winter (2 page)

‘Stay here a bit longer,' Bridie Duggan, Joy's mother, had urged. Rina had been tempted. She and Tim had enjoyed a wonderful few days with Bridie in Manchester, the first real break from responsibility Rina had experienced in a very long time. She had shopped and lunched and gone to the theatre, and the thought of extending her freedom was a tempting one. She had finally declined, knowing that those she had left behind at home would be missing her; that she, in fact, was missing them. If she came with Tim, they could drive home as promised on the Monday.

‘Ring this Aikensthorpe place,' Bridie had instructed. ‘Chances are there won't be another room available and the decision will be made for you.'

It had seemed like a sensible plan.

It turned out, however, that there'd been a cancellation. Yes, there was room for ‘another delegate'. She would be very welcome.

And so here they all were, Rina thought. In the middle of nowhere in the middle of a rainstorm, as Joy had said.

‘Ready?' Joy asked. ‘Right, let's make a run for it.'

Three car doors opened, three people ran up the granite steps and through the double doors at the top. Rina glanced back towards the car, which was barely visible now as the rain began to fall even more heavily.

They stood dripping collectively on the wooden floor, surprised by the sudden quiet as the heavy doors swung closed and shut out the noise of violent weather.

‘Oh,' Joy gasped, and Rina silently agreed. This was positively baronial. Set before them was a wide entrance-way with a centrepiece of sweeping staircase. Off to the left was a massive fireplace of carved blue-grey stone; on the right, what appeared to be an improvised reception desk, currently unmanned. They were in the correct place then, Rina thought.

The trestle-table reception desk was strewn with leaflets and programmes and various books and magazines pertaining to the magical and spiritual arts. A handbell, which reminded Rina of her school days, had been set on the corner of the table with a sign next to it that exhorted them to ‘please ring for attention'.

Squelching her way across the polished wooden boards, Joy rang the bell loudly. They waited, wondering how anyone could ignore that insistent clang, which must have echoed through the entire house.

About a minute later, though it had felt longer to those dripping in the hallway, a young woman scurried through a door to the right of the reception area.

‘Sorry, sorry, oh my goodness you're soaked! I'm Melissa, let's find out who you are and get you to your rooms there's tea and coffee making facilities and I can get you sandwiches if you're hungry.' She paused for breath and looked them up and down. ‘Oh,' she said. ‘You must be Mr Timothy Brandon and his guest, and you must be Mrs Martin. Our last-minute replacement.' She looked very pleased with herself, and Rina was possessed by a sudden desire to tell her she was wrong.

‘I left the car at the bottom of the steps,' Tim said. ‘Should I move it?'

‘Oh, no, leave it until the rain stops, there's plenty of space for anyone else arriving. There's a car-parking bit round the back if you want to get it out of the way. There'll be the buses arriving tomorrow from the other convention, and we're not exactly easy to get to.' She beamed. ‘Luggage?'

‘Oh, yes.' Tim looked expectantly at the two women.

‘You don't mind, do you, Tim?' Rina said. ‘I think Joy and I will go up and find our rooms.' She returned Melissa's beaming, but now faintly puzzled, smile.

‘Oh, er, yes. OK.' Tim looked a little put out.

Rina and Joy watched him go.

‘
I
had to open all the gates,' Joy said. ‘It's his turn to get soaked. Tell me, does it do anything else round here but rain?'

‘Oh, yes,' Melissa assured them. ‘Apparently, they're forecasting snow for the weekend.'

Rina sat beside the window in her allocated room, drinking a very welcome cup of tea and trying to understand the lie of the land beyond. The rain had slowed, just a little, but the wind had increased in strength and alternately slammed great waves of water against the window or blew it swirling away. In the brief gaps between these alternatives, Rina had been able to make out a sweep of what she assumed was lawn and a line of trees beyond. Her room was at the rear of the house and on the second floor. It had been, she was told, part of the nursery wing, as they used to call it. Her room had been the nanny's bedroom, and the bathroom now occupied what had been the adjoining bedroom where her small charges would have slept. It was almost stubbornly quiet, here at the top and rear of the house, and Rina decided that the previous owners of Aikensthorpe must have been of the ‘children should be neither seen
nor
heard' school of thought.

A gentle knock on the door announced Joy's arrival. She had changed out of her sodden jeans and was now dressed in what she called her ‘softies'. Tracksuit bottoms, T-shirt and a zippered, hooded top. Thick, stripy socks with separate toes completed the ensemble, and her long red hair had been towel dried and then left loose. Rina, used to the younger woman's mature attitude, sometimes forgot that Joy was ten years younger than Rina's beloved Tim, but dressed like this, and with her cheeks slightly flushed from the hot shower, she looked like a teenager, not a young woman of twenty-one.

Joy held a plastic carrier bag in her hands. ‘Jeans,' she said. ‘Caked in mud. Melissa said I could stick them in the washing machine. I just wanted to see if you had anything that needed to go in.'

‘No, I think I survived relatively unscathed,' Rina told her. ‘Has Tim dried himself off?'

‘Oh, yes, and found the guidebook and gone exploring. Some place, isn't it?'

‘It certainly is.'

Joy flopped down on the edge of Rina's bed and tucked her feet under her. ‘Am I the only one wishing I'd told Tim to come on his own?'

‘No, there are at least two of us. This really isn't my thing, but now we're here, I think we should view the whole weekend as life experience and remember that it's only a couple of days.' Rina smiled. ‘Think what leverage you'll have next time you want him to go shopping with you.'

Joy giggled. ‘Trouble with that, Rina, is I'd much rather take you or Mum or even the Peters sisters. But I'm sure I'll find some other way of spending my brownie points.' She leaned over and touched Rina's short grey hair. ‘You're going wavy. Must be the rain.'

‘It always has that effect. I didn't mind when I was younger, but I think I'm getting on a bit for the frizzy look to be a good one. I've got a hair appointment booked for when I get back to Frantham.'

‘Ah, at Miss Prince's salon?' Joy giggled.

Rina smiled back. ‘Miss Prince knows how to deal with us ladies of a certain age.'

‘Rina, darling, you will never be a “Lady of a Certain Age”. You are far too special for that. Have you phoned home, by the way?'

‘Yes, and spoken to everyone. Bethany and Eliza send their best love as always and want to know when they'll see you again, and the Montmorencys said to tell you they've found a new chocolate cake recipe you just have to try.'

‘Oh my God, not more chocolate cake.' Joy's eyes softened with affection as she thought of the Peters sisters and the Montmorency twins, who comprised Rina's eccentric household. Ex-performers all, as was Rina, Joy had come to know and love them well since she had entered their lives so precipitously the year before. Her brother had been killed, and Rina and her cohort had helped track down his killers. Joy had come to regard them all as part of her extended family. Tim, the youngest member of the household by a good thirty years, had rapidly become something more than that.

‘Mac was there, with Miriam,' Rina added, referring to DI Sebastian McGregor and his partner. They had promised to keep an eye on everyone in Rina's absence.

‘Oh, how are they?'

‘A little tense. Mac's hearing is on Monday; they'll be driving up to Pinsent this weekend. By Tuesday I expect he'll know if he still has a job.' She smiled. ‘He offered to make a detour and pick us both up on Sunday morning if we find we can't last the weekend. Tim could collect us from Pinsent on Monday, and you could come down for a few days.'

‘Rina, that sounds like a plan. Let's see how desperate we get. I've been looking at my schedule for the weekend. I'm attending a talk on the Universalist Church, whatever that may be, followed by a lecture and practical demonstration of various circa nineteenth-century mediumistic practices, and in the afternoon something to do with the design and construction of a Davenport cabinet, which I'm assuming is some sort of magic box. I'll tell you now, anyone asks for a volunteer and I am out of here.'

‘It's a long walk home.'

‘True. You're right, though. Tim loves this stuff, and we love Tim – and it should be interesting, at least. His Christmas show was a massive hit. I think he's hoping to get more inspiration.'

Rina nodded. She'd been to the Palisades twice to see Tim perform over the Christmas period. The owners of the art-deco hotel had recently renovated the little theatre and removed a partition wall that had been erected sometime in the seventies, so the main dining room and theatre space again became one. It was now wonderful for cabaret, live music and table-to-table close-up magic, which Tim loved to perform. For Christmas, though, they had really set out to produce something spectacular, and Tim had reconstructed a version of Pepper's Ghost, a Victorian illusion that set mystical beings dancing across the stage; and, in his version of an old set-piece called The Artist's Dream, he'd co-opted one of the cabaret dancers to play the part of the ghostlike artist's muse, visiting him while he slept. It had been a beautiful, charmingly old-fashioned interlude, and Rina had seen several of the audience dabbing their eyes.

It had all been rather wonderful, Rina thought, and a fantastic contrast to the intimate close-up magic and mentalism that formed the remainder of his act. It was partly because of those performances that Tim had been invited here, to Aikensthorpe, for this event. Whatever this event actually was. Rina found she was still a little hazy about the details.

‘OK, I'd better get these into the washing machine,' Joy said.

‘I'll come down with you. We should talk to that Melissa woman, find out what exactly we've let ourselves in for this weekend. Is it my imagination, or has Tim been just a bit evasive about it all?'

‘You know, I was thinking the exact same thing,' Joy agreed. ‘It's not like Tim. Usually, he's blinding us with science or explaining everything in minutest detail.'

‘Maybe he's been sworn to secrecy,' Rina joked. ‘Not giving away the magic secrets or something.'

‘Hmm, more likely there's something going on he thinks we won't approve of,' Joy said. ‘Or that would have made us both say no to him.'

Rina looked at the younger woman in mild surprise. ‘You think it was really important to him that we both came, then?'

‘You know, I think it was. I got the distinct impression he'd have cried off if we'd said no. Tim is one of the bravest people I have ever met, but for some reason he had reservations about coming here alone.'

They found Melissa in the hallway arranging pamphlets and ticking things off on a very long list. She was only too pleased to break off and explain how the weekend would proceed.

‘Right, well, first there are the full weekend guests – that's you and Mr Brandon and about a dozen of the others – and then there are the people just coming over for the talks and lectures tomorrow, and then you full weekend guests will all be involved in the main event tomorrow evening. Then, of course, there'll be the debriefing and film show on the Sunday. We're likely to have a full house again for that, I'd have thought.'

She had emphasized the words ‘main event' and waved her hands, jazz style, just in case they might have missed the point, but had moved on to Sunday's itinerary before Rina had the chance to ask her what the ‘main event' actually was.

‘What main event?' Rina asked when Melissa paused for breath.

Melissa didn't seem to have heard. ‘We're expecting two coaches tomorrow: about one hundred and thirty people, I believe. They'll be arriving for breakfast and staying for all the talks and so on and then leaving just after dinner when, of course, we hand over to the re-enactors and you, few,
special
people.' She giggled.

Rina and Joy exchanged baffled glances.

‘Special people?' Joy asked.

‘Who are staying for the seance, of course. That starts at ten and ends, well, whenever. Then there'll be the debrief on Sunday and—'

‘
Seance
?' Rina interrupted.

Melissa was now the puzzled one. ‘But of course. Isn't that what you've come for?' She glanced from one to the other.

‘Where's Tim?' Rina demanded.

Melissa pointed towards a door at the opposite end of the reception area.

‘Thanks, Melissa,' Joy managed as she fled after Rina, still clutching the plastic bag containing her muddy jeans. She was giggling by the time she caught the older woman. ‘Your face, Rina. You looked . . .'

‘I
am
,' Rina confirmed, and Joy stopped laughing. ‘Look, sweetheart, you know I adore Tim, I'd help him out with anything, but he should have told us what he was getting us into.'

‘Well, we don't really know as yet,' Joy said. ‘I mean, do you actually trust a woman who does jazz hands every five minutes, not to exaggerate? Wow, will you look at this place?'