Walking in Darkness

Emily Sanderson looked down at the pad she held. ‘Two messages, sir, I think you should know about. First, the governor called to say he would be a little late for luncheon, he was sorry, something urgent had come up and not to wait for him, he would skip the first course. Secondly, the British prime minister’s private secretary rang to warn that he had a touch of flu and might not make the Thursday evening dinner but was sure he would be well enough to see you at lunch on Saturday at Chequers.’

Don swivelled in his chair, his face sharply thoughtful. ‘That will give me an extra day with Cathy.’ A free day, he thought; that could be very useful.

‘Yes, sir,’ she murmured unrevealingly. ‘Oh, and this report just arrived.’ She handed a sealed envelope to him and he slit it open, flicked his eyes down over the couple of typed pages inside. Emily Sanderson watched his face tighten, his mouth turn into a thin white line.

‘Anything wrong, sir?’

He looked up, his face shuttered again, no expression visible at all.

‘No. Is there a précis of these notes on the British opposition?’

‘Of course – shall I get it for you?’

‘Please.’

The secretary walked away without looking at him. Slim, with cropped dark hair, horn-rimmed spectacles over hazel eyes, broad cheekbones, a wide mouth, she gave an impression of cool efficiency. Her clothes emphasized that; today she wore a crisply ironed man’s white shirt, with a dark blue silk tie, and a dark grey pinstripe tailored suit; a straight skirt and a fitted jacket which she wore open. She would be forty next birthday. She had been twenty-four when she came to work for Don Gowrie; he had come to trust her over the years since then so that now she knew most of his secrets. Not all of them. But it had been folly to let her know so much, he thought, frowning. It wasn’t safe.

He picked up the typed report he had just received from his most trusted security man and skimmed his eye over it again. Sophie Narodni was staying here, in this hotel? That was a development he hadn’t expected. What should he do about it?

Maybe he had better do nothing. Let her make her move. Once he knew what she meant to do he could decide how to silence her, and it would have to be final. He wasn’t going to go on being blackmailed all his life. And even when he had dealt with her, there would still be another threat hanging over his head. Sophie was not the only one who knew his secret. How was he going to silence the other woman?

But you could always do what you had to do – all you needed was the will to do it. Ways and means were easy.

He slid the report into his inside jacket pocket. He didn’t want to leave it lying around for Emily Sanderson to see. He was going to have to be even more careful from now on.

Maybe it was time he had Jack Beverley update Emily Sanderson’s security clearance. She was given a routine check once a year, along with everyone else who worked for him – but he decided to have Jack take a closer look at her. You couldn’t be too careful, he was being forced to realize. He had been foolish once, had taken a stupid risk, let emotion rule his head and acted before he had thought about the possible future consequences; well, from now on he wasn’t taking any more risks.

From the front steps of the great house, Cathy Brougham watched her husband’s black Rolls head down the drive at the regulation five miles an hour that he, himself, had decreed for vehicles which visited the house. Any faster and the wheels churned up the gravel, depositing it on the cherished turf of his parkland.

Paul left at the same hour every morning, summer and winter alike, as regular as clockwork, after the same breakfast: prunes, orange juice and wholemeal toast with marmalade, followed by black coffee. He ate the meal in precisely ten minutes while skim-reading some of the newspapers folded beside his plate. He would finish reading the papers on his way to London and would be at his desk in his riverside offices by eight.

Cathy had a lot to do today herself, but she, too, had a routine which she was not going to vary. She hurried upstairs to change out of her ivory satin nightdress and matching dressing-gown, which she had worn for breakfast with Paul, into her smooth-fitting pale biscuit jodhpurs and a lemon polo shirt, over which she slid a warm yellow cashmere sweater. Sitting down on the bed, she pulled on her boots, then wen

t downstairs to the back hall, where she found her riding hat on a table covered with riding accessories; she clipped the elastic under her chin, picked up her tan leather crop and went out to the stables, where Mr Tiffany was contemplating the early morning sky over the top of his half-open stable door. As he heard her footsteps on the cobbled yard, he deliberately yawned, his head back and his great yellowing piano-teeth on full display.

‘No, you aren’t tired, you lazy great oaf,’ she told him firmly, walking past into the tack room to collect his saddle and bridle. So, it was going to be one of those mornings, was it? Every so often Mr Tiffany got up in a mood to make an issue of having to do anything other than stand in his stall and eat his beautiful, glossy head off.

As she walked back, her arms full of polished leather and jingling metal, the big chestnut backed, shaking his head, his long mane over his eyes, determined to make a fight of it, but Cathy could be just as stubborn.

‘Don’t even think about arguing – we are going for a ride!’ she said as she approached him with his bridle. His head shot forward. He took the bridle out of her hand with his big teeth and threw it into a corner.

‘You awkward bastard,’ Cathy said, going to get it, and felt him lunge for her behind. His teeth grazed her jodhpurs as she jumped away. Picking up the bridle, Cathy turned round and smacked Mr Tiffany on the rump. ‘Do that again and you’ll be sorry!’

He laughed and she couldn’t help laughing back. Paul always made fun of Cathy when she said Mr Tiffany could laugh. Horses can’t laugh, Paul teased. You’re sentimental where that horse is concerned! But Cathy knew she was right; when Mr Tiffany put his head back and bared his great teeth, making a low whinnying noise, he was laughing at her. He just didn’t do it when anyone else was around. It was purely private – between him and her.

‘You love that animal more than you love me!’ Paul often said in mock grief, not believing it, and of course it wasn’t true. Cathy did love Mr Tiffany and knew he loved her; it was a different sort of love, that was all. Paul was more than her love, he was her whole life.

As they rode out into the parkland around Arbory House the sun broke through low cloud, illumining the landscape: the great bare oaks, a few remaining elms, a cluster of green holly bearing glistening red berries, and, rolling away towards the iron fencing, the flat turf cropped by sheep which could be seen here and there, grazing slowly as they moved. Beyond that the green fields and woods of rural Buckinghamshire. Pied wagtails flickered among the trees; a robin was singing defiantly from a fence post; high above a hawk hung on the air, focusing downwards, watching for a movement among the grass. Cathy watched it – a sparrow-hawk? she wondered. Was that a little speck of white at the tail?

Mr Tiffany blew through his nostrils with sudden excitement at the smell of the countryside and the great, open expanse before him, then he began to canter and Cathy stroked his powerful, gleaming neck with an adoring hand.

For November, it was a beautiful morning. When Paul left it had only just been light, but now the sun was up, a fresh wind had blown the clouds away, and Cathy’s heart lifted, even though the landscape was faintly elegiac, with that mournful colouring left over from autumn, before winter arrived to lay a dead hand on everything.

Her father was coming; would be here, soon, at Arbory. She wished Grandee could have come too, but the flight would be too much for him. He was so frail now. Thinking about him disturbed her. She would have to go home soon, to Easton, to see him while she still could.

She sighed with a premonition of grief to come. Oh, why did people have to get old and die? She wanted to keep them all, just as they were now, the three men she loved – her grandfather, her father, and Paul. Her life was perfect now, at this moment. She did not want anything to change. If only you could order time to stop.

She paused to look back at the house, elegant, white, a Palladian echo from the Georgian era, but designed by an eccentric architect who had let his fancy roam. As always Sophie felt a jolt of déjà vu, staring at the dome above the great library which was the centre of the house. The first time she saw it she had felt that jolt – had known she had seen it before, although she could not remember where. The memory was impossible to pin down; it came and went so fleetingly that she never had time to work out where she could have seen the dome before. Paul said it wasn’t Arbory’s dome she remembered – it was the domes of Brighton Pavilion, which she must have seen illustrated in a book sometime. He had driven her down to Brighton to see the Pavilion, but when she saw the Prince Regent’s domed palace she did not get that immediate sense of déjà vu she got at Arbory. The mystery still nagged away at her.