Your great friend Emelie Tibbs x
Lionel. Why Lionel. About us? Who is us? She was no more enlightened and felt the crush of disappointment deep in her chest.
‘Emelie was a very wealthy woman, Marnie,’ said Mr Wemyss. ‘Her family might have arrived from Austria with nothing but the clothes on their backs, but her father was a shrewd investor and taught his daughter how to play the markets well.’
Mr Wemyss handed a sheet of paper to Marnie.
‘The bulk of the money is bequeathed to the Wychwell estate to help with the rebuilding and upkeep. The sums earned from Emelie’s literary works are to be for your personal consumption. I will prepare a breakdown for you in due course.’
Emelie’s literary works. So, she was Penelope Black, Marnie had been right all along.
She read the figures on the paper and the numbers started to swim around. They could rebuild London with that amount, never mind a piddly little village in the middle of the Dales.
‘Why . . . I don’t . . . why did Emelie live in a tiny damp cottage then if she . . . she had this?’
‘I think you should let Lionel Temple explain everything to you,’ said Mr Wemyss, reaching down for his briefcase. ‘I shall be in touch re the transfers of money and various other paperworks of which there are many.’ He stood and held out his hand and Marnie lifted hers to meet it.
‘Lilian and Emelie spoke very highly of you, Miss Salt. Enjoy your good fortune. It is a unique one and I hope a tide-turner.’
Marnie sat on the chair in front of the beautiful desk and she thought, I own that desk now. She owned the carpet it was sitting on, the room it featured in, the manor in which it was housed. And the lake, the lands, the farm, even Titus Salt’s house. Everything. She owned the beautiful Japanese Kintsugi pieces mended with gold. All of it. She would need to absorb this in bite-sized pieces. She knew how lottery winners must feel now. She’d nearly had an aneurysm the day she won a hundred pounds on a scratch card so she had no chance of taking all this in in one gulp.
She heard a soft knock on the door and then it cracked open. Lionel.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked. Marnie nodded. He put his hand on her shoulder and she raised her eyes to his.
Emelie’s voice whispered from the page: . . . but let dearest Lionel tell you, in his own words . . .
‘Are you my father, Lionel?’ Marnie asked.
‘My lovely girl,’ he smiled, sitting beside her, taking her trembling hands in his. ‘I only wish I were.’
Chapter 47
‘Lilian thought that you managing the estate would allow you to get used to the idea of one day owning it,’ said Lionel. ‘Looking at you now, I’m not so sure that’s true. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as white with shock.’
‘I don’t think I could ever get used to the idea,’ said Marnie, beyond stupefied. ‘This . . . this doesn’t happen in real life.’
‘But it does and it has,’ said Lionel. ‘I’d like you to take a walk with me.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Marnie.
‘To Emelie’s House. To Little Apples,’ said Lionel.
Marnie followed Lionel out of the room, out of the manor, along the drive that joined Kytson Hill to where Emelie’s stone cottage stood. They walked down the path, past the apple tree. Lionel reached up and pulled off one of the larger fruits, polishing it on his sleeve before pushing it into his pocket and exchanging it for a key.
‘Come on, Marnie, let’s go inside.’
Lionel unlocked the door and they stepped into the cottage. The fusty smell rushed at them.
Marnie grimaced. ‘I wanted Emelie to move out of here.’
‘She wouldn’t have,’ said Lionel. ‘Do you have a phone with you? Is it one with a torch on it?’
Marnie foraged in her handbag and brought out her iPhone.
Lionel went into the kitchen and then into the pantry. Inside it, there was a door that opened onto a flight of stone steps leading down. Lionel flicked on the light switch.
‘Emelie said she didn’t have a cellar,’ said Marnie, with a gasp of surprise.
‘She lied,’ said Lionel. ‘Dear me.’ The further down they ventured, the more the walls were saturated. ‘I’ve never seen it this bad before. The water falls down from the hill and it collects at the back of the cottage,’ he explained.
‘I know. Emelie took me strawberry picking. It was a quagmire.’
When she reached the bottom of the steps, Marnie found they were at the beginning of a tunnel with a low arched ceiling.
‘You’ll need that torch now,’ said Lionel. Marnie switched it on.
‘Wow.’ This is like something Manfred Masters might have constructed, was Marnie’s first thought.
‘We don’t know why the tunnel was built in the first place, but presumably it was intended to lead into the woods. Very handy for the Shanke family to help their priest escape, but of course it was built years before Henry the Eighth turned Protestant. Maybe the builder had second sight of what was to come.’
‘What’s at the other end of it?’
‘You’ll see soon enough.’
The tunnel curved to the left and they came to another door with an iron hoop for a handle. Lionel twisted it then pushed and it opened into the manor’s cellar where Marnie and Herv had gone exploring. The door had a wine rack on the other side and when Lionel shut it again, it was undetectable.
‘Imagine being here in the dead of night,’ said Lionel as they walked up the steps, through the boot room, the scullery, then into the kitchen. ‘You can’t risk being seen because you’re here in secret. Don’t switch your torch off yet, Marnie.’
‘Ok-ay,’ said Marnie, still puzzled. She followed him into the body of the manor, up the main staircase and along the windowed gallery where Lionel sat down on one of the seats and took the apple out of his pocket. He turned it around so that she could see that it had started to redden on one side.
‘Do you know what type of apples grow on Emelie’s tree, Marnie?’
‘I have no idea,’ she replied.
‘It does better in warmer climates, but it survives here in Wychwell for some reason. It’s a Pink Lady.’
A Pink Lady, Marnie repeated to herself. Then Lionel watched the expression on her face change as the realisation dawned.
‘A . . . the Pink Lady. The ghost?’
‘Lilian’s little joke,’ chuckled Lionel. ‘When Emelie used to come here at night, she walked with a lantern, or her torch, rather than switch on a light and alert the whole village to her presence.
‘Emelie was the Pink Lady?’
‘The chemical compounds in the glass here make any light behind it appear pink. Someone saw a strange glow, presumed it was a ghost. Lilian knew it wasn’t, of course, but she nevertheless encouraged the misconception.’
Marnie laughed. ‘The little monkey,’ she said. ‘But why would—’
‘She was so full of fun,’ said Lionel, cutting her off, the sun fading from his smile. ‘At least she was after Jago died. Turn off your torchlight, Marnie. There’s more to tell.’
Marnie did as he asked and they made their way back down the gallery. They passed the portrait of the Irish lady on the stairs and Marnie shivered as if they shared a secret, or maybe something implanted in their genes. Lionel led her into the library.