‘It’s all right.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll get the tea – or did you want coffee?’
They both murmured agreement to tea and she went back to the kitchen.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ hissed Fran. ‘The poor woman’s in no state to be harried.’
‘I’m surprised at you,’ said Libby. ‘It’s usually you who spots these things. She wouldn’t be in that state just because of Ian’s visit. She was in a state before he arrived.’
‘How-?’ began Fran, but Rosie reappeared with the tray and cut her off. She sat down and handed out thick mugs, quite unlike the previous dainty china.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘can’t be bothered today.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Libby. ‘More what we’re used to.’ She waggled her eyebrows furiously at Fran.
‘How are you, Rosie?’ Fran’s voice was soothing. ‘I suppose this shock on top of the others is all a bit much.’
Rosie shook her head. ‘It’s not that.’ She looked up at them, her eyes tragic. ‘Look, I don’t go in for confidences and I don’t have any real close friends here any more.’
‘What about Andrew?’ said Libby.
Rosie suddenly leant forward and put her head in her hands. ‘That’s the trouble,’ she muttered.
Libby and Fran exchanged glances.
‘Andrew is?’ Fran prompted, after the silence had stretched into at least a minute.
Rosie sat up. ‘Yes.’ She cleared her throat and picked up her mug. ‘I’ve made a fool of myself.’
Libby was forced to clamp her jaw shut to stop it falling open.
‘We all do that sometimes,’ said Fran. ‘We get over it.’
‘I know we do.’ Rosie put her mug down. ‘But this is different.’
‘If you want to talk about it we’re fairly safe,’ said Libby.
‘I’m sure you are.’ Rosie smiled at her, a little shakily. ‘That’s why I started by saying I don’t normally share confidences, but this time I might. I was brought up not to talk about – well – private things, and I don’t. But -’ She stopped.
‘Shall we talk about what Ian came to tell you, instead?’ asked Fran, after a moment.
‘Yes.’ Rosie turned to her gratefully.
‘After finding you were Findon’s niece this must have been a double whammy,’ said Libby.
‘Not as much as you’d think,’ said Rosie, leaning back in her chair and beginning to recover her composure. ‘I suppose getting used to the whole Paul Findon thing had made me realise that my mother must have kept it from me for some reason. It almost came as a relief. At least I know why I remember the house and why Debussy has always been a favourite.’ She sighed. ‘But I don’t want to keep it. I shall have to get in touch with the agents, although I think I need to put it in the hands of someone else. They haven’t exactly done well with it, have they? And I suppose I’ll have to find out who’s trying to sell it.’ She smiled at the other two. ‘And thank you for helping. I never would have found out without you.’
‘It wasn’t us,’ said Libby, ‘it was Andrew.’
Rosie closed her eyes briefly. ‘Yes, it was, but we wouldn’t have called him in if you hadn’t suggested it.’
There was a short, uncomfortable silence.
‘Well, anyway,’ said Libby eventually, ‘we’ve found out that the barn at the back of the estate was the isolation unit.’
‘Barn? What barn?’
‘Oh, you don’t know, do you?’ Libby shook her head. ‘My fault. Well, here’s what happened.’
She proceeded to tell Rosie everything that had happened since the last weekend, including her meal at the Golden Spice and this morning’s visit to the Dover Records Office.
‘There still wasn’t much there,’ she finished, ‘but at least we know now that the barn is part of the estate and what it was years ago.’
‘And did you say cellar?’ Rosie shivered. ‘I hate cellars. I have a real phobia about them.’
‘I don’t think even Ian’s found a cellar in the building,’ said Fran soothingly.
‘So what’s your theory now?’ Rosie asked.
‘I think they were experimenting on the patients,’ said Libby. ‘The post-mortem report on one of the patients in the newspaper was that she had been poisoned.’
‘Poisoned?’ gasped Rosie. ‘No! When was that?’
‘1948 wasn’t it?’ Libby looked across at Fran. ‘Near the end of its life as a sanatorium.’
‘Perhaps that’s why.’ Rosie stared down at her mug. ‘And then Paul bought it. Do you think he knew?’
‘We don’t know that there was anything to know,’ said Fran. ‘This is just speculation.’
‘It’s plausible.’ Rosie looked up. ‘And would explain the graves. I’m still puzzled as to why they’re there rather than in a churchyard. It looks as though someone was trying to cover those deaths up.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Libby enthusiastically. ‘I think Ian should dig the lot up and find out if they’ve been poisoned. That sort of evidence sticks around in the bones, doesn’t it?’
‘But why would he need to do that?’ Rosie frowned.
‘To find out why someone’s been trying to scare you off,’ said Libby.
Chapter Twenty
‘IT’S OBVIOUS NOW THAT’S what the music has all been about. But there’s some connection with the estate agents, too,’ Libby went on.
‘Yes, that’s why I need to find out who’s trying to sell it. Your Ian told me.’ Rosie gave a shaky laugh. ‘I don’t know what to call him, now. You always say Ian, and I have to say Inspector. He’s a bit scary, isn’t he?’
Fran smiled. ‘He can be. But he’s a real charmer underneath that dark exterior.’
‘Oh, I can see that,’ said Rosie, with an answering smile. ‘All pent-up passion underneath his saturnine mien.’
‘Gosh, that’s the novelist in you,’ said Libby.
‘If I wrote like that I’d be dropped like a hot potato,’ said Rosie with another, more natural, laugh.
‘So does he still want to get to the bottom of the music?’ said Libby. ‘He hasn’t told us much.’
‘I expect he will,’ said Rosie. ‘He seems to keep you informed.’
‘Not always, but I suppose we put him on to this, so he might,’ said Fran.
‘You said you had a phobia about cellars,’ Libby mused, her eyes on a corner of the ceiling.
‘Yes?’ Rosie looked surprised.
‘Do you suppose the cellar at White Lodge had anything to do with it?’
Fran and Rosie looked at each other. Fran raised her eyebrows and shook her head.
‘You said Ian hadn’t found a cellar,’ said Rosie slowly.
‘That doesn’t mean it isn’t there to be found,’ said Libby. ‘It’s in the records.’
With another quick look at Rosie, Fran said, ‘I should think it’s been blocked up by now.’
‘Was there anything in those records to say there had been an earlier building on the site?’ asked Rosie after a moment.
‘Yes, there was, wasn’t there Libby? Didn’t it say fourteenth century?’
‘Yes, it was burnt down, or something. Didn’t we already know that?’
‘Yes,’ said Rosie, ‘but I don’t think we knew what period it had been.’
‘Oh, and we know the sixteenth-century building was timber-framed, and then tile-hung in the seventeenth, and then Lutyens had a go in the early twentieth, so that must have been when it turned into the Princess Beatrice,’ said Libby. ‘The Poor Board, or whoever they were, wouldn’t have paid out for a Lutyens re-design.’
‘So it’s had a very chequered history,’ said Rosie. ‘No wonder there are stories of hauntings.’
‘We still don’t really know anything about that,’ said Fran. ‘It’s all hearsay. And it must have been around the time you were visiting.’
Rosie frowned. ‘I know. It’s so frustrating. I still feel that the house is friendly and warm, so I must have got on well with my uncle, yet the minute I try and get further than that I get this feeling of dread and my stomach turns to water.’
