“You know better,” she says. It’s true, she would never have done. Evidence. A defence lawyer’s daughter then and now and always.
“Here, come closer.” She puts her hand in mine and feels me stiffen, ignores it. We approach him again together.
She’s right. The cold spirals off him, chilling the air, as if he’d been dead for days instead of moments.
“Do you know him?” she asks me again, enunciating each word.
I can’t answer. My eyes keep bouncing off his face, registering only the smallest of details, refusing to assemble them into a coherent picture. It doesn’t make sense, this hollowness, my resistance, that feeling of warning in the air, pushing back against me.
“I’m not sure,” I say. There’s something familiar about him—he feels like someone I should know, though that doesn’t make any sense.
Mara’s head turns to the side. “People will come,” she says.
They should be coming already. Had it not been for the commotion—the horses, the coffin, everything—they might’ve even seen it happen.
That’s what he wanted. He wanted to be seen.
I step backward, away from him, away from Mara, my feet carrying me through arches and passages I didn’t know I remembered. Mara calls after me, but I’m drawn forward anyway, trying to hear his last thoughts instead of her voice. My footsteps echo against the stone until I stand before an iron gate.
It’s open. It shouldn’t be. I know this gate, stood before it as a boy, had to steal the key to get past it to the steps. But now it’s open, creaking with rust as I push through and climb the stairs. Moss and lichen grow on the damp stones, but I don’t slip—I remember this place, and when the staircase ends I know exactly what I’ll see.
I step out onto the ledge. If I look down, I’ll see the knot where the boy tied the rope his broken body now swings from.
But that isn’t what I see when I look down. I see Mara’s face. And fear upon it.
5
THE DESPERATE COUNTRY
YOU SCARED THE SHIT OUT of me,” she says once I’ve climbed back down. I take her hand too tightly and begin snaking our way out of the ruins.
“Did I?”
“My ‘Stop! Don’t! Come down!’ shouts didn’t give it away?”
“Wasn’t listening.” I’m still not, quite. There’s a gated exit that should bring us closer to the house without being seen. I’m sure my absence hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed, but I’d rather my presence with Mara, here, remain so.
“I was screaming,” Mara says. Her voice sounds distant behind me.
“Sorry.” I duck under a low hedge archway that opens up to the old stone stable and falcon mews.
She frees her hand from mine. “Sorry?”
“You seem rather put out.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“I am rather good at it.”
Mara stops, forcing me to turn back. She shifts on one foot; a branch snaps beneath her pointed Oxfords. “Why did you go up there?”
“Where?”
Her expression transitions from annoyance to worry. “Noah. The bell tower. The one you just climbed down from. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “I just wanted to see . . . what he saw. More than I could when he was dying.”
“You could’ve fallen.” Her face is as hard as the stones around us.
“Didn’t though. And wouldn’t have.” I reach out to touch her cheek, expecting her to shy away, but she lets me. “I know this place, Mara. I wanted to find out what I could, while I could.”
“Did you?”
“Not yet,” I say, sliding my hand down her arm before I take her hand again.
The snorting and stamping and screeching of horses and birds follows Mara as we move through as quickly as we can to the service entrance (previously known as the servants’ entrance). The door is locked.
I remember going through as a child, exploring “Below Stairs”—the old kitchen, servants’ quarters, all of it as separate and unequal from the manor above as though it were part of a different world entirely. Which it was. Is.
“We have to go in through the hall,” I say, arcing my head around. It’ll mean the grand staircase, the great hall, the centre of the house, the centre of attention.
“The great hall,” she says.
“That would be the one.”
“Where literally everyone else at the funeral will be?”
“Indeed.”
“No other way?”
“Lots, but we need to get there now. That’s the fastest, so.”
Mara squeezes my hand. Knows I’ve been wounded, somehow. She’ll ask later, but for now, silence.
Until there isn’t.
The house vibrates with noise. Everyone at the funeral has been corralled inside, and more cars are arriving by the moment, emptying old moneyed couples onto the gravel drive with rather alarming precision. We enter the house with one of them, me wishfully expecting to hear a stern, sombre Thank you for your condolences, but the wake has been postponed. Except we don’t hear it. Instead, the fire’s roaring, and a table has been placed in the centre, tyrannised by flowers and condolence cards. Servants are carting the Fortnum & Mason towers back to the sitting rooms, closed to visitors but today open for guests.
As we walk through the hall past the growing crowd, my grandmother walks among them, talking loudly about the weather, the tea, anything of absolutely no consequence she can grasp at, anything to avoid the unpleasantness of a suicide spoiling her son’s funeral.
Because she must know of it by now—Grandmother is omniscient when it comes to the family, and this is her domain. She could have postponed this display, but instead she’s probably called in favours to either postpone the arrival of the police or keep them out of view. If there’s one thing she will never tolerate, it’s scandal.
And whatever ears she’s whispered in, whatever words she whispered—they’re causing the desired effect. There’s a surge of sounds hammering inside my head—quickening heartbeats, forced laughs—but I can’t discern anyone talking about the boy, what happened to him, who he was, anything. People know something’s wrong, but they don’t know what it is yet—and likely won’t, until they’re able to whisper and gossip about it from the comfort and anonymity of their homes. How very English.
As soon as I think it, my grandmother appears. “Noah Elliot,” she says with a clenched smile. “Darling,” she adds for good measure, “we’ve been looking for you.”
“I apologise,” I say, matching her forced politeness with insincere regret.
My grandmother pauses, obviously debating whether to accept it or demand an explanation for missing the funeral. But that would mean causing a scene in front of Mara. My grandmother turns her steel blue eyes on her. “I must steal my grandson from you now. But please”—she gestures ever so graciously—“have some tea, a bite to eat—rest for a bit. I can have Allegra make up a bed for you in one of the downstairs rooms.”
Mara opens her mouth to respond—to refuse, surely, if for no other reason than it being the middle of the bloody day—but I intervene. “I agree, sweetheart.” Mara’s expression is filled with such obvious incredulity at my use of that expression, it’s nearly impossible to bite back my laugh. “Have a lie-down. It’s been a trying day. I’ll find you in a bit, just . . . make yourself at home.”
A tiny smile at my extremely awkward code for “Go forth and find out what in fresh hell is going on.” She nods and manages to feign a yawn. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m . . . overwhelmed?” She looks at me for approval, and gets it.
“Of course,” my grandmother says, a lift in her voice whilst she takes my arm. And then I’m steered away, flicking a winner’s grin over my shoulder at my girl. It takes a moment to register that I’ve been shuttled into a side corridor cordoned off from the public, filled with some of the many marble busts of past generations of Shaws, casting long shadows that slice the marble floor.
The staccato rhythm of my grandmother’s heels halts once we’re alone. “Noah,” she says, casually brushing something from the shoulder of my suit. “It’s time to discuss your inheritance.”
6
SILVER FETTERS