Winchester railway station was smaller than he envisaged, made up of two platforms under painted wooden canopies supported by painted iron pillars. One of the lucky stations to have escaped Beeching’s cuts way back when, he thought. The platforms themselves were relatively busy, given the inclement weather; there was a cold wind driving sheets of fine rain into the sour faces of travellers.
He watched the train snake out of the station and looked at his watch. It had taken over three hours and two changes to get here from Cardiff. He shared the platform with a few groups of sullen-faced people and the odd-person with their head down in a book or newspaper awaiting the next train. A group of Chinese tourists, in lively good humour and clutching cameras and guidebooks, chatted amiably amongst themselves in spite of the freezing British weather. Nothing would stop them enjoying their Jane Austen tour, he mused. He followed them out of the station and into the car park. They hitched a ride in a taxi and he was left pretty much all alone in the rain.
Gareth had made the call. He was put through to a Randall Tremain. He was told he was invited to Gattenby House in Hampshire to meet personally with David Lambert-Chide, who was most eager to thank him in for the recovery of the family heirloom. The man, he was told, would also be delighted if he could stay the night and have dinner with him, taking advantage of everything the house had to offer in the way of swimming pools, saunas and so on. Call it a mini-break, Randall Tremain had said lightly.
He was taken aback by the throwing open of Gattenby House doors to him so readily; Lambert-Chide was a notoriously private man, so the brooch must have meant a great deal to him, Gareth surmised, to go to all this trouble for a nobody, a jobbing photographer. He was also quite surprised at how insistent Lambert-Chide was. They arranged that a car would pick him up from Winchester station and he was sent first class train tickets the next day.
Presently a sleek black Bentley cruised incongruously into the car park and it was only when the door opened and the driver came across that he realised it was meant for him.
‘This is rather plush,’ Gareth said as the driver held open the door and he settled himself down on the luxurious cream leather seat. ‘I expected something a little less stately.’ The driver smiled politely and took Gareth’s overnight bag. The door shut with a solid thud. The driver took the wheel and didn’t say another word for the next fifty minutes or so.
The car passed silently through the chalk uplands and rolling hills of the South Downs National park, looking bedraggled and brown in the winter drizzle, but, Gareth thought, quintessentially English with its hedgerows, trees, patchwork of fields and open grassland. He turned on the radio and half-dozed to the scraping of a violin on Classic FM.
He couldn’t care less about any reward that had been offered. He had refused to take it. But he was still curious as to what the connection was between Erica and the theft of a Cartier brooch some seventy years ago. And anyhow, he thought, if anything the time away from Deller’s End would do him good, he convinced himself. Being shut away from everyone for so long can’t be good for the body and soul. So even if his search for Erica came to a dead end and there wasn’t anything to be gleaned in that direction from the visit, a mini-break at the expense of one of the country’s richest men might be just the tonic, he thought.
They turned off a quiet country road marked as private. It went on for about a mile or so, naked grey elm trees lining the route on either side like sombre sentinels; beyond these stretched open fields, not a house or cottage to be seen. The car eventually pulled up in front of a large set of black wrought iron gates supported by twin redbrick pillars. A CCTV camera looked down on them from the top of a metal box-like pole. Almost as soon as the car drew to a halt the gates began to swing slowly open and the car headed sedately along the long road that stretched beyond them.
The landscape had Capability Brown written all over it, or that of one of his closest disciples; acres of sculpted hills, rolling lawns and carefully crafted gardens, glimpses of statues and follies through the trees, a huge lake fed by a river that was spanned by an ancient-looking stone bridge over which they drove. A pair of swans sitting serenely on the river completed the picture-postcard view.
The final approach to Gattenby House had been purposely designed to impress, and Gareth admitted it worked on him, as it must have done on numerous visitors over the last two hundred years or so. Reading something on a website was one thing, but to see it in reality really brings it home, he thought. He had prepared for Gattenby House to be a grand affair, as befitted a billionaire, but still the place took his breath away.
The name Gattenby House was misleading; it was more a mansion or a stately home than a house. Working in real estate Gareth would have drooled over selling something like this. It was mostly Georgian in origin, partly Victorian in its later additions, and a smattering of other styles in between, yet they all worked very well together, he thought, unlike some he’d seen which had their fair share of bits taken away and bits added leaving muddled architectural monstrosities.
The gravel drive swept up to a set of magnificent stone steps, as expected, and the car came to a halt beneath these. The driver came round and held open the door for Gareth and as he emerged from the Bentley a man headed down the stone steps to greet him.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Davies. Good to meet you,’ he said, holding out a hand to shake. ‘We spoke on the phone. I’m Randall Tremain.’ Something that might have been a smile twitched briefly on his lips.
He was much older than he’d envisaged, but tall, well built, his hair cropped short. Must be in his sixties, Gareth thought, but he looked good for his age, and his grip was hard and decisive; together it suggested a man who looked after himself, worked out maybe. He signalled for the driver to collect the bag.
‘It’s a pleasure,’ said Gareth, glancing up at the towering stone edifice that was Gattenby House; it was even more impressive up close.
‘I’m so glad you agreed to come,’ said Tremain. ‘I know this must seem a little unusual, but Sir Lambert-Chide is not your usual kind of man. He is thrilled you are here and can’t wait to meet the man who reunited him with a most sentimental piece of jewellery.’
‘I can’t take too much credit,’ Gareth said, but Tremain cut him off.
‘First we shall show you to your room so you can freshen up after your journey. Then I will introduce you to Sir Lambert-Chide.
Two monolithic pillars in Bath stone flanked and dwarfed them. The place was awe-inspiring. ‘How the other half live,’ said Gareth as the walked up the stone steps.
‘Quite,’ said Tremain, guiding Gareth through the open doors into an impressively spacious entrance hallway laid out with shining black and white marble tiles, marble pillars shooting up to ornately painted ceilings from which dripped fabulous crystal chandeliers. The marble walls were lined with formal portraits and a number of finely carved Romanesque statues looked down on them from their lofty plinths.
This wasn’t how the other half lived, Gareth thought; this was how the other half of the other half lived. Gattenby House positively screamed enormous wealth, power and privilege.
‘As I mentioned on the phone, you will be able to avail yourself of the many facilities we have here during your stay with us,’ said Tremain, his hand indicating for Gareth to take a staircase that seemed to have come straight from a movie set. ‘We have three swimming pools, two gymnasiums, a number of tennis courts and two state-of-the-art digital cinemas. Sir Lambert-Chide has made them all available to you.’ He turned to his rather dumbstruck guest. ‘This is a special honour, Mr Davies. This is not a hotel,’ he said, driving the fact home. ‘Few people get to see inside Gattenby House.’
‘I’m sure I shall be eternally grateful,’ said Gareth. ‘I do so dislike hotels.’ He found he had taken an instant dislike to the man. There was something in Tremain’s eyes that said the feeling was mutual.
Gareth’s room was equally elegant. Oak-lined walls, antique furniture smelling sweetly of beeswax, ultra-thick carpets that muffled the sound of his footsteps, landscape paintings on the walls, and a slab of a bed that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Palace of Versailles. The view from the large window was a fabulous sweeping vista of ornate gardens held together by finely trimmed hedges, a large circular stone fountain with a statue in its centre, and beyond these the manicured curves, rises and gentle valleys of a vast estate disappearing into the winter fug of distance as night began to pull its blanket over the landscape.
He felt he could have stepped out of a time machine and into another era altogether. It felt totally removed from the modern world, unnerving and fascinating at the same time.
His overnight bag was already on a chair by the bed. How it had gotten there before him he never worked out. Perhaps he had deliberately been taken the longer, more scenic route to hammer home Lambert-Chide’s importance.
‘Dinner will be seven o’clock prompt,’ said Tremain as he stood at the door. ‘Sir Lambert-Chide expects punctuality, but don’t worry, I will arrange for someone to come and collect you. Don’t want you getting lost, do we?’ he added.
‘Heaven forbid,’ said Gareth.
He took a shower and sat down to watch TV — one of two concessions to modern technology, the other being a telephone. The six o’clock news was on and he instantly recognised DCI Stafford and turned up the volume. He was still asking for witnesses and a photo flashed up on screen, the same he’d shown Gareth of the Polish woman. They named her this time. He noticed there were details of the murder deliberately being kept back. No mention again of the strange symbol. Mention again of the dismemberment but no mention of the arrangement of the body parts. It was shocking enough, even for six o’clock.
He dressed for dinner and was standing ready when there was a knock at the door. What he wasn’t expecting to see was a beautiful young woman, long blonde hair reaching down to settle on her upper chest, a great deal of it revealed by the low-cut neckline of a stunning blue dress. She smiled sweetly at him. A kid really, he thought, no more than twenty-four, twenty-five max; even the heavy makeup couldn’t hide her youth.
‘Mr Davies,’ she said, her voice chiming with culture and confidence, ‘I have been sent to collect you.’ She gave a light chuckle. ‘That rather makes you sound like a parcel, I do apologise!’
‘Please call me Gareth,’ he said. Her perfume wasn’t your off-the-shelf Boots brands, he thought idly, and he guessed the bangle studded through with shining white stones was not costume jewellery.
‘Gareth,’ she echoed. ‘Gareth it is. Forgive me, I have not introduced myself. I am Helen Lambert-Chide.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you. Daughter? Granddaughter?’
‘Neither. I am David Lambert-Chide’s wife,’ she said, smiling at his discomfort.