Page 116 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘Who else, since it was her clues that revealed where it was?’
‘I wonder what was so private that she felt the need to hide it at all – an important letter, perhaps?’ he suggested, and I could see he was dying to find out, just like I was. But we had the Ella situation to resolve first. Just then, Clem rang back.
‘He hasn’t found her,’ Carey reported. ‘There was no sign of her in the woods or by the lake, and he and Vicky have checked the stable block. Now they want to go over the old wing again, even though I told them I’d searched it.’
‘Well, I suppose she might have left once she’d shoved me in the hole, but then slipped back in again?’
‘Very true. I’ll go and let them in, but you’d better stay here, Angel.’
‘Not on your life! I’m coming with you!’ I said firmly.
Clem and Vicky were standing in the doorway of the old wing, but were hardly recognizable as their former selves. Clem’s usually ruddy face was pale and drawn, while Vicky looked totally distraught. I’d never suspected her of being capable of any deep human emotion, so I’d obviously badly misjudged her.
‘Mummustbe in there. There’s nowhere else she could be,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t have left Mossby unless she was in the car.’
‘I think she might have come back here – perhaps when she realized what she’d done, so she could let you out, Angel,’ Clem said, which was a tacit admission of her guilt. ‘She’s not responsible for her actions.’
‘We’d already figured that one out,’ Carey said, unlocking the door, then standing back to let us in.
‘Have you hurt your ankle, Vicky?’ I asked. ‘You’re limping.’
‘I broke the heel of my shoe off – got it stuck down a grating in the stable yard,’ she said, stopping and removing both shoes.
Without the stilettos, she was suddenly not much taller than I was, though still leggier.
Carey clicked on all the lights in the Great Hall. ‘We’d better search in pairs,’ he’d begun, when I suddenly shushed him.
‘Listen!’ I hissed. ‘Can you hear that?’
Into the silence fell a sort of faint, faraway babbling that rose and fell, rose and fell … but never ceased.
With a sudden exclamation, Carey strode over and opened the priest-hole in the opposite wall – and there, in the furthest corner, sat the hunched-up figure of Ella, with her face hidden on her knees. She was rocking and muttering very, very fast, the words running together so that it was hard to make sense of them – if there was any sense to be found.
‘It wasn’t there it wasn’t there all these years mine my jewel mine mine all these years my jewel mine …’
‘Oh God!’ Carey said blankly.
It was some considerable time later.
A doctor had been out and given Ella some kind of injection and then rung around to find an emergency psychiatric bed. Then she’dbeen gently removed in an ambulance and Clem and Vicky were about to go down to the Lodge to get a few things for her and then follow on.
‘Poor Mum – this isn’t the first time this has happened,’ Vicky said, ‘though she’s never beenthisbad. Usually we know when she’s about to have another episode, because she talks faster and faster … and then Dad rings me and I come up if I’m not working.’
‘You should have let us know she’d had previous problems when Carey told you he was getting worried about her mental state, Clem,’ I said. ‘We knew something was wrong.’
‘But she seemed all right, not like she’s been in the past when she’s been ill. Iwasa bit worried about her increasing fixation with the old wing; she was never quite so obsessed until your uncle died, Carey.’
‘Yes, it was when your uncle told her about the will and that he was leaving Mossby to you that it started,’ Vicky said accusingly, as if it was all Carey’s fault. ‘She hadn’t even realized you existed before that and she was so distraught she got in her car and drove straight down to my flat in London. I don’t know how she got there safely. I was gobsmacked when I realized it was you who’d inherited, Carey. I mean, anybody might be called Revell so I’d never connected you with Mossby.’
‘I had no idea about the connection until after my uncle died, either,’ he said, then added, grimly, ‘but I’ve finally remembered where I’ve seen you before – and itwasn’tat Gino’s Café, though it was in Dulwich. You were looking out of the side window of the car that hit me: a big silver four-wheel drive. Ella’s?’
She sighed. ‘Yes … but we hoped you wouldn’t remember.’
‘But, Carey, we know the car that knocked you off your bike was turning sharp left in front of you,’ I began, puzzling it out. ‘So if you could see her looking at you through the side window, Vicky must have been—’
‘In the passenger seat,’ Vicky finished. ‘Yes, I was. Mum was driving.’
‘Oh God!’ Clem cried, covering his face with his hands.
