The Keeper of Lost Things(59)
“Well, you’re not staying up here,” she promised him.
The suitcase was thick with dust, but not locked, and a quick peek inside told Laura that it was probably her best hope of finding something useful or interesting. She clipped its rust-freckled fasteners shut and dragged it over to the hatch. How on earth was she going to get it down? It was heavy, and she doubted if she could manage its weight and the ladder at the same time. The answer, of course, was to wait for Freddy, but if she did that, she might just as well have waited for him before going up there. Perhaps she could just let it slide down the ladder on its own. It looked pretty robust, and from what she had seen, it didn’t appear to contain anything breakable. The “slide down the ladder” turned out to be more of a sheer drop. As Laura let it go, it crashed onto the landing with an almighty thump and an explosion of dust. Laura went back for the horse, which was light enough for her to carry down the ladder. Having given him a softer landing than the suitcase, she went back up and fetched the box from the London dressmaker.
By the time Freddy returned, the ladder was back in the shed, Sunshine was in the garden brushing the dust out of the horse, and Laura had the suitcase open on the table in the study and was going through the contents. There were several old photograph albums, with thick pages the color of dark chocolate and interleaved with crispy embossed tissue papers, a couple of typed manuscripts, and some letters and assorted paperwork. The albums contained the first years of Anthony’s life, long before Therese. A curly-haired toddler sat, legs splayed, on a tartan rug in a summer garden. A sturdy little boy rode astride a push-along horse on a neatly clipped lawn. A gangling youth with a shy grin wore oversized shin pads and wielded a cricket bat. It was all there; a parade of seaside holidays, country picnics, birthdays, christenings, weddings, and Christmases. At first they were three; but then only two. The tall, dark man, so often in uniform, disappeared from their pictures as he did from their lives. Laura carefully unhooked one of the photographs from the brown paper corners that fixed it into the album. The man stood straight-backed and proud; so very handsome in his dress uniform. His arm was wrapped fondly round the shoulder of the woman; soignée in a Schiaparelli evening gown. And between them was a little boy wearing his pajamas. A picture-perfect happy family.
“The Very Thought of You.”
Laura could hear the music playing in her head, or perhaps it was in the garden room. She wasn’t always sure these days that she could tell the difference. This was the photograph; the evening that Robert Quinlan had described when he had come to read the will. This was the last time that Anthony had seen his father. The last dance, the last kiss, the last photograph. She would put it in a silver frame beside the photograph of Therese in the garden room.
“Found anything interesting yet?”
Freddy had brought her a cup of coffee and a sandwich. He rummaged around in the suitcase beneath the papers and took out a small, velvet-covered box.
“Aha! What’s this? Hidden treasure?”
He flipped open the lid to reveal a white gold ring set with an exquisite star sapphire and sparkling diamonds. He set it down in front of Laura, who took it out of the box and held it up to the light. The star across the cabochon of cornflower blue was clearly visible.
“It was hers. Her engagement ring.”
“How do you know?” Freddy took it from her to inspect it more closely. “It could have been Anthony’s mother’s.”
“No. It was hers, I’m sure. Therese wasn’t a humdrum diamond solitaire type of woman,” she said, smiling ruefully at the thought of her own half carat set in nine-karat gold. “She was, by all accounts, extraordinary, like this ring.”
Freddy slipped it back into the velvet box and handed it to Laura.
“Well, it’s yours now.”
Laura shook her head.
“It will never be mine.”
Freddy went outside to help Sunshine. He had promised to give the horse’s wooden hooves a fresh coat of varnish. Laura continued emptying the contents of the suitcase onto the table. She found a bill of sale for fifty rosebushes; “Albertine” x 4, “Grand Prix” x 6, “Marcia Stanhope,” “Mrs. Henry Morse,” “étoile de Hollande,” “Lady Gay”—the list went on—and a pamphlet on how to plant and care for them. The manuscripts were collections of Anthony’s short stories that Laura had typed. As she flicked through the pages, she recognized them. Attached to the front was a harsh rejection letter from Bruce, the publisher.
“. . . entirely inappropriate for our readership . . . unnecessarily complex and self-indulgently ambiguous . . . dark and depressing subject matter . . .”
Someone had scribbled across the insulting comments with a red pen, and written “Arse!” over Bruce’s extravagant signature. It was Anthony’s handwriting. “Quite right too,” Laura agreed. She would reread the manuscripts thoroughly later, but somehow she didn’t think they would contain the answer she was looking for.
There was a rattle of metal wheels across the hall floor and Sunshine entered the study pushing the horse, followed by Freddy and a curious Carrot.
“He looks like a different horse!” Laura exclaimed, and Sunshine grinned proudly.
“He’s called Sue.”
Laura looked at Freddy to see if he could provide an explanation, but he simply shrugged his shoulders. “Sue” it was, then. Sunshine was eager to examine the contents of the suitcase and was spellbound by the ring. As she slipped it onto her middle finger, turning it this way and that to “catch the sparkles,” Laura had an idea.