Part 4
“Don’t.”
He lowered his head.
Julian turned toward him. “How long?”
Marcus did not answer.
“How long has she been in this house?”
“Since October.”
The letter had arrived in September.
Julian’s voice remained even. “Where?”
“The east staff floor at first. Then the old nursery rooms.”
“Who knew?”
“I don’t know everyone.”
“Who did you see?”
“Mrs. Vale. Mr. Crane. Dr. Pritchard. Mrs. Dane from housekeeping. Two temporary staff who were dismissed before Christmas.”
“Dismissed or paid to leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know more than you are saying.”
Marcus looked toward Clara. “Yes.”
Julian waited.
The attendant rubbed his thumb against the seam of his trousers. “I was told Miss Hart had suffered a severe breakdown abroad. That bringing her here would keep the matter private until she stabilized.”
“Did that explanation survive the first locked door?”
Marcus closed his eyes.
“No, sir.”
“Then why did you stay?”
“My daughter is at university. My wife has multiple sclerosis. The accommodation is tied to my position. Mrs. Vale said if I resigned, she would report that I had stolen from the household accounts.”
“Had you?”
“No.”
“Could she make it appear that you had?”
Marcus looked at Evelyn through the open doorway.
“Yes.”
His answer carried no accusation, only exhaustion.
Evelyn stood in the hall, listening.
“Marcus has always been susceptible to melodrama,” she said.
Clara moved backward until her legs touched the sofa. She sat abruptly.
Julian walked to the door. “Mother, go to the library.”
“I will not be ordered from my own morning room.”
“Then I’ll close the door.”
“You are making a catastrophic mistake.”
“Possibly.”
He shut it between them.
Evelyn did not attempt to reopen it.
Julian returned to the window. Outside, a cyclist passed the idling sedan and shouted something at Owen for blocking part of the street. The ordinary irritation of it seemed indecent.
Clara stared at the unopened water.
“Is Lucy still at the same address?” Julian asked.
“I think so.”
“Anika is checking.”
“Anika.”
“Our investigator.”
“Our?”
“The one I hired to find you.”
Her eyes lifted. “Your mother said you stopped after three weeks.”
“I didn’t.”
“She showed me the letter.”
“What letter?”
“The one where you said you were relieved.”
Julian’s mouth went dry.
Clara looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“She said you wrote that my leaving saved you from having to end it.”
“I didn’t write that.”
“She had your signature.”
“I didn’t write it.”
“She had the card from the hotel in Florence.”
Julian remembered the hotel. He and Clara had spent four days there after becoming engaged. On the final morning, she had stolen a blank sheet of stationery because she liked the embossed blue border. It had remained in the top drawer of his desk.
His mother knew where he kept everything.
“What else did she show you?”
Clara gave a small, humorless laugh. “Enough.”
Julian looked down at his phone.
There were hundreds of messages he had sent after Clara disappeared. At first angry, then frightened, then pleading. All had shown as delivered. None had been answered.
He opened the message history and placed the phone on the table, turned toward her.
“I’m going to leave it there. You can read them or not.”
She did not reach for it.
Marcus spoke from the doorway. “Mrs. Vale took Miss Hart’s phone the first night.”
Clara’s hand tightened in the wool coat.
“What happened to it?” Julian asked.
“I saw Mr. Crane put it in the study safe.”
Julian looked at Clara. “Do you want me to retrieve it?”
Fear passed over her face.
“Not alone,” she said.
It was the first request she had made of him.
“All right.”
His phone rang.
Anika.
Julian answered on speaker only after Clara nodded.
“Lucy Hart is alive,” Anika said. “She’s at her address. My colleague saw her through the front window and spoke to a neighbor who says she worked a night shift yesterday. There’s no obvious sign of anyone watching the property.”
Clara covered her mouth.
Anika’s voice softened. “Do you want me to ask her to call?”
Clara shook her head, then seemed to reconsider. “No. I need to speak to her. But not yet.”
“Understood,” Anika said. “Julian, I’m ten minutes away. I’ve contacted your solicitor, Helen Ward. She’s coming with a colleague.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s something else. The travel traces we followed all originated through a document management company. I found the connection twenty minutes before you called. Vale Foundation has paid that company for five years.”
Julian stared through the glass door at his mother.
Evelyn had moved to the side table. She was holding the champagne glass again, though she had not taken a drink.
“Bring everything,” he said.
He ended the call.
Clara was crying silently now. No sobs, no collapse. Tears simply moved down her face while she sat beneath his coat, staring at the black phone containing six months of messages she had never seen.
Julian wanted to kneel beside her. He wanted to tell her he had not stopped loving her, had not believed the letter, had spent nights walking unfamiliar streets because an investigator thought a woman in a railway station might have been her.
He said none of it.
He sat in the armchair farthest from her and waited.
After several minutes, Clara reached for the phone.
She scrolled.
Julian watched her face change as she moved through the dates. September. October. November. Christmas morning. The night before her birthday. The day he had received a photograph from Prague and flown there without packing a bag.
Her breathing became unsteady.
She stopped on one message.
Julian remembered writing it from a hotel near Charles Bridge at three in the morning.
I am angry, but not at you. I am afraid something has happened and everyone keeps telling me to respect your choice. I will respect any choice you tell me yourself. Until then, I am looking.
May you like
Clara read it twice.
Then she set the phone down.
