war wound like the scar below his ear. Katya just wished that whoever had inflicted those injuries had had a truer aim and put an end to Franz Claes once and for all.
Franz was gone, but what about her uncle? Carefully she reached past the coats, pushed the closet door open a little further and peered out into the hall. Her uncle was standing with his back to her, stroking his beard as if lost in thought. It was unbearable. He’d told Franz he was going to search for her, so why didn’t he? Instead, after a moment he turned and went back into the drawing room. Katya swayed from side to side. She needed air desperately. It was stuffy in the closet and the narrowness of the hiding place had started to make her claustrophobic. And she needed to know what her uncle was saying to this woman he’d invited over. Throwing caution to the winds, she went out into the hall and stood in a recess to the right of the drawing room door, listening. She was taking a terrible risk. She was in plain view from across the hall, and Franz or Jana would have seen her straightaway if they’d come down the stairs, but instinctively she knew that it was now or never if she was going to make her move. The sedative had taken hold, and she only had a little time left.
‘I’m sorry, Vanessa. Something has come up and Franz needs my help for a few minutes. It can’t be avoided, I’m afraid. Will you be all right?’ It was her uncle’s voice, and Vanessa answered.
‘Of course I will,’ she said. ‘But would you prefer me to go? We can always rearrange.’
No, thought Katya desperately, clasping her hands together in silent prayer. No, please don’t go. But she needn’t have worried — her uncle came instantly to her rescue.
‘Absolutely not, my dear,’ he said. ‘You would be breaking my heart if you were to go now. I’ve been looking forward to this evening all week.’ Always the elaborate courtesy, Katya thought. He never changed.
‘And so have I,’ said Vanessa, sounding pleased. ‘I’ll be fine. How could I not be with this wonderful view to look at?’
‘Thank you for being so understanding. I won’t be long. Help yourself to another drink if you want one. Everything’s over there on the sideboard.’
Katya couldn’t believe how relaxed her uncle sounded. There was not a hint of panic in his voice. But he was a different person once he was outside in the hall. He glanced quickly from side to side, but not behind him, where Katya was standing, and then headed purposefully toward his study and the rooms at the back of the house. She had no time to lose. She went into the drawing room and closed the door softly behind her.
Vanessa had moved away from the mantelpiece and was now standing in front of the far window looking out into the twilight with a glass of wine in her hand. She turned around, putting her glass down when she heard the door open, and looked shocked when she saw Katya. The girl’s haggard appearance was certainly alarming. White as a sheet, Katya stood swaying from side to side with a half-crazed, desperate look in her eye, and then suddenly leant forward, gripping the back of a sofa in order to stay upright.
Vanessa was frightened and her first instinct was to shout for help, but Katya saw this coming. Desperately she put her right forefinger up to her mouth, fastening onto Vanessa’s eyes with her own, and the cry died in Vanessa’s throat.
‘Who are you?’ Vanessa asked instead. And then, just as she’d finished the question, she realized she knew the answer. The girl was Titus’s niece. She’d been at the dinner party here at Blackwater Hall that Bill had taken her to after David Swain’s conviction — the first night she’d met Titus. She remembered being struck then by how pretty the girl was with her luminous blue eyes and her long blond hair arranged in an elaborate chignon. And her cheeks had been brightly flushed, perhaps from drinking too much champagne but also because she was excited at the outcome of the trial. There was nothing wrong with that. It was the reason for the gathering after all. But Vanessa remembered how it had seemed so personal for the girl. Swain, her previous lover, had killed Katya’s new boyfriend in a fit of jealousy, and she clearly hated him for it. She’d almost been saying that life imprisonment wasn’t enough, that the man deserved to hang. Perhaps she had actually said that. Vanessa couldn’t remember. Well, the girl had certainly changed since then. Vanessa thought she would never have recognized this wraithlike apparition as Katya Osman if the girl’s presence in Titus’s house hadn’t provided her with the connection.
Katya opened her mouth to speak but the words stuck in her throat. She felt sick and faint, and the room had started to revolve. Two great tears sliding slowly down her sunken cheeks bore silent witness to her inner distress.
Recovering from her initial shock, Vanessa crossed the room and put her arm around Katya, helping to hold her up.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘What can I get you?’
‘Water,’ Katya whispered. ‘Water.’
Vanessa couldn’t hear her the first time and had to listen hard before she understood what Katya was saying.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, getting up and going over to the drinks tray on the sideboard, but as soon as her back was turned Katya collapsed to the floor, taking a small ornamental table with her. Vanessa couldn’t see any water and so she instinctively seized hold of a soda fountain, pulled down on the mother of pearl handle, and sprayed a jet of foaming water in the general direction of the girl’s mouth. After a moment Katya coughed and opened her eyes, but she hardly seemed to know where she was. Vanessa knelt down beside Katya, supporting the girl’s head in her hands. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, repeating her earlier question.
Katya could hear Vanessa’s voice, but it was very far away. She was sinking to the bottom of a deep, dark pool and knew that talking would soon be beyond her, and so, with one last superhuman effort, she launched herself upward through the thick black darkness and into the light of her uncle’s drawing room. She had come too far to stop now.
‘They’re…’
‘Yes?’ said Vanessa, putting her ear close to Katya’s mouth so that her cheek brushed the wet soda water on the girl’s upturned face.
‘They’re trying to kill me,’ said Katya in a rush. But the struggle to get out the words was too much. The sedative that Jana Claes had half-injected into her vein upstairs finally did its work, and Katya collapsed back into Vanessa’s arms, dead to the world.
CHAPTER 2
Vanessa reached up and took a cushion off the sofa and placed it under the girl’s head, and then, letting go of Katya, she sat back on her haunches, wondering what the hell to do next. She’d come out for a pleasant romantic evening and had ended up within ten minutes of her arrival holding her lover’s niece in her arms while the girl accused nameless assailants of trying to kill her. Vanessa closed her eyes, trying to think. It was all just so crazy. She knew Titus — he was a good man. She couldn’t conceive of him as a murderer. And yet the girl had seemed so insistent, as if she would have done anything to tell Vanessa her message. ‘They’re trying to kill me,’ she had said. But who was they? Perhaps it wasn’t Titus at all, but his brother-in-law, Franz, whom the girl had been talking about. Franz and someone else. Certainly there was no blood relationship between Katya and Franz. Titus had told Vanessa very little of his family history, but she knew that Katya was the daughter of Titus’s sister, whereas Franz was the brother of Titus’s dead wife, about whom he never spoke.
Vanessa had met Franz Claes quite a few times during the last year and she had never warmed to the man. Titus didn’t like to drive, and sometimes Franz would act as chauffeur, driving him and Vanessa to restaurants in the back of Titus’s Bentley. She could make no criticism of his behaviour — Franz was always polite, and yet he never failed to make her feel uneasy when she was in his company. It wasn’t his wounds, or at least she hoped it wasn’t. Rather it was the way he avoided her eye and yet always seemed to be watching her. She’d noticed how he always kept everything razor sharp: his too short slicked-down, jet-black hair; the crease in his trousers; the polish on his shoes. Everything was defiantly masculine, except that he felt feminine somehow underneath. He gave Vanessa the creeps when she thought about him. Not that she had very much. Franz Claes had been at the periphery of her life up until now.
She needed to talk to Titus. That was what she needed to do. He’d make sense of all this for her. She thought about going to look for him, but she didn’t want to leave the girl on her own. Getting up, she went over to the door, opened it, and called out Titus’s name several times. But there was no response. It felt awkward shouting in someone else’s house, and she was just about to give up when she heard Titus’s voice on the stairs, although
