The Midnight Rose (61 page)

“Thank God,” she breathed in relief, and stopped for a few seconds to catch her breath and garner the energy to run the final few hundred yards across the open moor.

There was a sudden rustle behind her. Rebecca began to turn, but before she could see who it was, a cloth was placed tightly across her mouth and nose. As she struggled to breathe, a strong smell permeated her nostrils and she immediately felt dizzy.

A few seconds later, Rebecca lost consciousness.

I
t took some hunting to find the staircase that led up to the Astbury Hall attics, but eventually, Ari emerged into a dark, narrow corridor. Walking past the labyrinth of doors, he wondered in which room Anahita had spent her first summer here.

The sound of a television alerted Ari to the area of the attic that was currently occupied and he tapped on the door. A few seconds later, it was opened by a woman in a nurse’s uniform.

“May I help you?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes, I was wondering if I could speak to Mrs. Trevathan’s mother. I believe she lives up here.”

“She does, but may I inquire what it’s about?”

“I’m currently staying here at the hall and doing some research on the Astbury family history. I know she used to work here and I was wondering if she could help me with a couple of things.”

“I see.” The nurse hesitated.

“Who is it, Vicky dear?” said a voice with a thick Devon accent from inside the room.

“A gentleman who wants to speak to you about when you worked here, Mabel,” the nurse called to her.

“Then ask him in,” said the voice.

The nurse made room for Ari to pass. He entered a cozy, overheated sitting room and saw an old lady in a chair in front of a television with the sound turned up to maximum. Her white hair was fastened in a coil at the nape of her neck and Ari noticed she had the same inquisitive green eyes as her daughter.

“Hello,” she said, “and who might you be?”

“My name is Ari Malik. Your daughter told me you lived up here. I’ve been staying as a guest of Lord Astbury here at the hall.”

“Oh yes, I think Brenda, my daughter, mentioned you to me, although she didn’t tell me to expect a visitor,” the old woman said. “Never mind. I’ve seen you in the garden from my window. Turn that
off, Vicky, I can’t hear myself think,” she ordered the nurse. “So, dear, what is it you want to ask me?”

“May I sit down?” Ari asked.

“Of course. And my name is Mabel Smerden, by the way.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Smerden, and thank you for letting me talk to you. I’ve come to Astbury because I’ve discovered that an ancestor of my family spent the first three years of his life here on the estate. His name was Moh Prasad and I believe that Anahita, his mother, was a close friend of Tilly, who was your mother. And that you actually played with Moh as a young child yourself.”

As he spoke, Mabel’s smile abruptly disappeared and she sank back into her chair. “My mother is dead, and I don’t remember anything.”

“Probably not, no,” Ari replied gently, sensing her unease, “but anything you could remember, even if it’s just a tiny detail, might help me in my search for what happened to him. I was wondering, for example, whether there was ever a photo taken of Moh. I know he spent time with you at your cottage when your mother minded him.”

The woman sniffed. “There might be a photo, perhaps,” she said, “somewhere in my mother’s box of bits and pieces.”

“I’d love to see it,” Ari replied.

“Vicky!” she ordered the nurse imperiously. “Get that old cardboard box out from under my bed.”

The nurse did as she was told and arrived back in the room carrying the box.

“Give it to Mr. Malik, Vicky. You might find one or two in there of your great-uncle. There’s a few of me when I was a baby, anyway.”

“Thank you.” Ari opened the box and saw the black-and-white remnants of another era. The more recent ones, showing many images of Mrs. Trevathan as a child, were on the top. Sifting carefully through, Ari murmured in fascination as the quality and content of the photos went back in time. He felt he was viewing a potted version of the huge changes that had taken place over the past hundred years. And there, near the bottom, was a photo of a woman who was unmistakably his great-grandmother Anahita, alongside a woman who must have been Tilly. They sat stiffly on chairs arranged outside a stone cottage, each bouncing a baby—Mabel and Moh—on their knees. Ari stared at his great-uncle, Donald and Anahita’s son. He was cherubic, as all young babies are, his dark hair and huge eyes showing a strong resemblance
to his mother. There were other photographs too, of Anahita with Moh at a Christmas gathering. Studying her, he saw she’d been a real beauty.

“You’ve found one, then?” asked Mabel.

“Yes. They look so happy,” Ari said as he reached over to show her.

“They do. You can keep that, if you’d like. I’ve no need of it.”

“Thank you,” he said, “this means more to me than you can possibly imagine.”

“Would you like a drink, my love? I normally have a cocoa at around this time. It’s not often I have visitors these days.”

“A cup of tea would be very welcome.”

“Righto, Vicky’ll put the kettle on, won’t you, dear?”

When the nurse had left the room, Ari said, “I know you were a baby when all this happened, Mabel, but did your mother ever discuss the details of how Moh died? I know he took a fall from a horse near the cottage on the moor where he lived with his mother.”

“You know about that?” Mabel eyed him with amazement. “How?”

“Just before she died, Anahita entrusted me with the story of her life. Anahita was told by Lady Selina Astbury that Donald had come to collect Moh from the cottage just after she was arrested, and that the two of them died together after Donald’s horse bucked them off. Moh drowned in the brook, apparently.”

“I . . . oh dear . . .” Mabel’s eyes filled with sudden tears. “Mr. Malik, you do realize you’re opening up a whole can of worms, don’t you?” she said as the nurse returned with the drinks. “Thank you.” Mabel pulled herself together as she took her cocoa from Vicky. “Why don’t you take yourself off to your room while I speak with Mr. Malik?” she said to the nurse.

“Call me if you need me,” Vicky said, and left the room.

“Mabel, you do know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“Yes, sadly I do,” she replied after a pause. “They had to tell his poor mum something, didn’t they? Otherwise she wouldn’t have rested until she found him. No mother would have.”

“The sad truth is, Mabel, that Anahita never did rest. Even though she was handed Moh’s death certificate before she arrived back in India, she refused to believe he’d died with Donald that day.”

Mabel stared off into the distance, then sighed heavily. “That woman,” she breathed eventually, “would stop at nothing to get what she wanted.”

“You mean Lady Maud?”

“I do, dear, I do. For all her time spent in that chapel, she had precious little of the Lord inside her, that is the truth,” muttered Mabel. “I saw it with my own eyes when I was taken on by Daisy to care for poor Anthony when he was a baby. We all suffered at her hands.”

“Yes, it would seem so, from what I’m discovering,” Ari agreed grimly. “Anahita’s story gives me a very clear picture of who Maud Astbury was.”

“Well, I can tell you she didn’t mellow with age,” Mabel said. “With Donald and Violet gone, Lady Maud had free rein to bring up their child however she chose. That poor little girl, growing up all alone in this great big house. Daisy was forced to pray in that chapel three or four times a day, and was told by her grandmother that all men were evil. No wonder Daisy made such a mess of bringing up her own son—Lord Anthony, that is,” Mabel said. “I was taken on as his nursemaid and then had to stand by and watch it all without being able to say a word. That poor boy”—she sighed—“he really didn’t know whether he was coming or going the way Daisy treated him. And all this trouble goes back to one evil woman, who managed to destroy her own family and excused her behavior by saying it was what her God would have wanted. The devil would have been more like it,” she muttered darkly.

“Mabel,” said Ari, knowing he had to tread carefully, “you didn’t seem surprised when I mentioned Moh had died with Donald by the brook that day. If the village and servants were told Moh had left with Anahita when she was arrested, how did you know the truth?”

“I don’t,” Mabel said, shrugging uncomfortably, “it was just gossip and hearsay as I grew up. You know what servants are like.”

“Well, I’m here to tell you that Moh was
not
taken with Anahita that morning. She wasn’t allowed to take him with her when the police came to get her, and she never saw him again after that. But I think you know this already,” he said quietly.

“I said I don’t know anything for certain,” she repeated.

“Mabel”—Ari tried a last throw of the dice—“I leave for India in just a few days. I’m never going to return to Astbury Hall. It was my great-grandmother’s last wish for me to find out the truth about her lost son. I’ve come up against a brick wall time and again. Anthony doesn’t want to talk, even if he
does
know anything, and—”

“His lordship knows nothing!” she interrupted vehemently. “Of
course he doesn’t, and don’t you go upsetting him, Mr. Malik. He’s delicate, he is, and my daughter has enough of a time with him already, as it is.”

“I won’t, of course, but you’re my last hope. Please, Mabel, if you do know what really happened to Moh that day, I beg you to tell me. I swear I won’t breathe a word, but I think after what Anahita suffered at the Astbury family’s hands, it’s only right if you do. Mabel, did Moh meet his death by the brook that day? Or was Anahita right for all those years and he lived on?”

The old lady sat, her eyes flickering nervously, and Ari knew she was remembering.

“No, little Moh didn’t die that day,” she said eventually, sighing, “but God strike you down if you breathe a word to another soul. Brenda knows nothing of this, nor his lordship, you understand?”

“I do,” said Ari, feeling suddenly choked with emotion that finally he knew Anahita’s instinct had been right for all those years. “Thank you, Mabel,” he said quietly.

“There, there, my love,” Mabel said, trying to comfort him, “you have to understand that it was only on my mum’s—Tilly’s—deathbed that I heard any of this. She wanted to confess to someone, you see. She’d been keeping the secret for all of her life and felt she’d betrayed her friend Anahita. But what else could she have done? If she’d breathed a word of what my dad had seen, they’d have been out of the cottage and a livelihood without so much as a by-your-leave.”

“What your father saw?” Ari asked, now completely confused.

“Yes. And maybe it’s fate my old mum
did
tell me, and now you’ve come looking for Moh. So, my heart says I should tell you what my dad saw that day at the brook. He was the assistant postman, you see . . .”

J
im Fenton cycled across the moors, enjoying the warmth of the midday sun on his back. On days like this he felt his job delivering the post was the best in the world, but in winter, when the snow came, it was a different kettle of fish. He especially liked it on the rare occasions he had to deliver to Miss Anni, who would sometimes come to the front door when he arrived and they’d have a chat over a brew. He didn’t normally take up offers of hospitality, but her cottage was so isolated that no one was likely to find him slacking for fifteen minutes or so.

And besides, Jim felt sorry for her, living out here with only her little boy for company. Tilly often said she thought Anni should move into the village for a bit more society, but Anni seemed perfectly content to stay exactly where she was.

He heard the unusual sound of a car engine humming behind him and looked back along the rough track. Motors were a rare sight crossing the moors and as it passed him he saw that it was a police car. He wondered where it was headed. There was only one cottage around here and that was Miss Anni’s. Sure enough, when he arrived a few minutes later, he saw the car was parked in front of the cottage.

Then he heard the sound of raised voices from inside. Just as he was leaning his bicycle against the fence, the front door opened and he watched in shock as two men manhandled a screaming Miss Anni out of the cottage.

“I can’t leave my boy! Please let me take him with me! He’ll be so frightened—I can’t leave him by himself,
please
 . . .”

Instinctively, Jim ducked out of sight behind the high fence as Anni was bundled into the back of the car, screaming hysterically. He heard the engine turn over and the car reversed, then drove off at top speed back toward the village. He didn’t really understand what he had just seen and heard, but the one thing he did know was that little Moh was apparently in the cottage alone.

Peering out from behind the fence, Jim saw the car disappearing
over the horizon in a cloud of dust. He spotted the back door to the cottage and ran toward it, then pushed it open. He saw something simmering on the range and a basket of wet laundry on the kitchen table. Whatever had just taken place, Miss Anni definitely had not been expecting to leave in a hurry. Removing the pan from the range and turning off the heat, he walked through the kitchen door and along the narrow hallway beyond to check the sitting room for Moh. It was empty, so he climbed the stairs and poked his head into a small room. There in the cot lay Moh, still sleeping peacefully, undisturbed by the rumpus that had occurred below.