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  His agent’s thumbnail sketch of Eloise Ingram had been wickedly accurate: she was pale-haired and slightly languid and Dan had seen her twin in a dozen illustrations of Morte d’Arthur or Lambs’ Tales From Shakespeare. She was the mad dead Ophelia, bizarrely transported from weed-covered, weeping willow-fringed rivers into a fashionable London suburb. For a moment this image was so vivid that it came as a shock to see that she was drinking what looked like a large gin and tonic, and wearing a designer suit.

  Thalia Caudle was dark and thin, with huge hungry eyes like burned-out lamps. The Wicked Fairy of the tribe, thought Dan. She had not quite reached the age where she could be described as ravaged, but she was not far off. She looked as if she might very well possess carnivorous leanings towards young and attractive men. Dan finished his wine and reminded himself that Thalia had just lost her only son in a motorway pile-up.

  He was just heading back into the room for a refill – the Traminer was very good indeed – when he saw Imogen Ingram.

  Chapter Two

  It was a most remarkable moment, and it would teach cynical writers to jibe at Hampstead and to call houses complacent and make up absurd allegories about wicked aunts and pale, languishing ladies.

  In a minute – maybe after another glass of wine, maybe after the entire bottle – Dan thought he might be able to analyse Imogen’s extraordinary looks. But in this first crowded moment, he was aware only of dark cloudy hair and a pale, translucent skin with arched eyebrows, and of slender ankles and wrists. All the gifts, thought Dan, watching her. Beauty and charm and, from the look of her, intelligence and humour as well. She moves like a nymph or a faun. Yes, and if she’s the heir to Royston Ingram’s publishing empire, which she probably is, she’ll have his money one day.

  Money had nothing to do with it; this was a face to sack cities for and to burn the topless towers of Ilium for. A face you would not necessarily want to take to bed with you but that you might very well want to take into dreams with you. And she’s probably no more than sixteen!

  There was an appalled moment when he wondered with horror if he had reached the grim stage of finding nymphs – all right, nymphets – desirable, but surely to goodness you didn’t start that at twenty-seven? And this did not seem to have anything to do with physical desire. This was nearer to the pure, glowing passions of the Renaissance: Dante seeing the unattainable Beatrice when she was nine and loving her for ever; Petrarch burning with cerebral and celibate ardour for Laura. It was the emotion that dreams were made of and that luminous essays and bright-flame poems were written about, and it was the very last thing Dan had expected to succumb to at a wake in Hampstead. I’d better concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing here, thought Dan. Spying. No, that sounds dreadful. A chield, takin’ notes.

  He looked around the room again, and it was only now that he became aware that most people were watching Imogen. There ought not to have been anything very remarkable in that, she was worth watching, but Dan began to feel uneasy. There was something wrong here; there were currents and cross-currents filling up the too-warm room, like a vortex struggling to be born. Plain, straightforward grief at the sudden death of an eighteen-year-old boy? No, it’s something more than that. It’s something centring on the girl. But surely Imogen was only doing what thousands of sixteen-year-olds did at family gatherings? In Dan’s experience it was something most of them enjoyed in a slightly egocentric way; unless they belonged to the shaven-headed, safety-pin-in-the-nose brigade, most of them liked showing how grown-up they were in front of indulgent aunts and uncles. But there was nothing indulgent here; there was no my-how-you’ve-grown-my-dear mien in anyone in the room. This was more like a roomful of people being extremely wary of an unpredictable child.

  He scanned the room. There were mourners and friends and family. Assorted aunts and the occasional uncle – the Ingrams appeared to breed more women than men, or maybe the women possessed a stronger survival instinct. Eloise Ingram was holding languid court to a couple of admirers, one of whom had been pointed out to Dan as Dr Shilling. He was fiftyish, with a well-scrubbed look and an air of low-voiced reassurance. Trust the Lily Maid of Astolat to provide herself with a doctor as part of the frame for her decorative invalidism.

  Dan looked across at Thalia Caudle. Thalia was standing against the curtains of the deep bay window, momentarily alone. The red velvet cast a dark shadow over her, pulling a mask down over the upper half of her face and giving her eyes glinting pinpoints of crimson. It was a trick of the light, no more than that, but for an unpleasant second Dan received the strong impression of something malevolent peering out. He blinked, and the odd, disturbing image vanished. But wasn’t Thalia entitled to feel aggrieved towards the girl who had come unscathed out of the crash that had mangled Edmund? Wasn’t she due a bit of angry jealousy?

  As Imogen moved away, one of the aunts murmured that there should always be just one hot dish at a funeral and she believed Imogen had gone to fetch it now. The plump aunt said with guilty relish, ‘It’s a Westphalia ham baked with cloves and honey, I heard.’

  ‘Trust Dilys to hear that,’ said a third with affectionate reproval, and this was so ordinary and so mundane an interchange that Dan felt normality trickle back for a moment.

  Then Imogen returned and the tension came back into the room. As if she’s dragging some kind of dark force field with her, thought Dan. As if we’ve all moved over the centre of the vortex and it’s starting up, ready to suck us all up into its greedy centre . . . Don’t be absurd, Daniel. Yes, but there’s something very odd here.

  Imogen was carrying a large oval dish with a domed silver cover over its contents. She set it down on the long table that had held the canapés and the ice-cooler, and then glanced across to her father with a cautious smile. She’s looking at him for approval, thought Dan. She’s half proud of having had a hand in whatever’s in the dish – Aunt Dilys’s baked ham? – but half guilty at being pleased about anything on an occasion like this. An absolutely normal emotion.

  And then Imogen lifted the did of the dish.

  Dan felt at first as if he had received a sharp blow across his eyes, and he could not make sense of what he was seeing. He felt as if every one of his senses had been dislocated, and there was a rushing sound in his ears – the vortex again? – and then everything clicked back into place and his mind ran properly on its tracks once more.

  At first he thought that what he was seeing was simply an insufficiently cooked piece of meat, but in the next heartbeat he knew it was nothing of the kind. He forced his mind to pin down the skittering fragments of thoughts. You’re a writer, a recorder of emotions and events. Kick your mind back on course and bloody record, then.

  At the centre of the dish carried in with guilty pride by Imogen Ingram, its ragged neck jammed hard down on to the spikes, its dead, staring eyes glazed and hoar-rimmed, was the head of a young man with golden hair.

  Dan stared at it in horrified disbelief, his mind seething and his stomach churning. The head of Edmund Caudle, served up at his own funeral. It’s the funeral baked meats, set before the king, he thought wildly. But the king’s going to reject them; in fact from the look of him he’s not only going to reject them, he’s going to consign the cook to the dungeons and bellow ‘Off with her head’ into the bargain – oh God, no, not that. It sounds as if somebody’s being sick in the corner by the window; I’m not surprised. I hope whoever it is managed to miss the Sheraton desk.

  People were getting to their feet, overturning chairs, and someone was screaming, and someone else was saying crossly, ‘For the love of God, one of you take Eloise out. And bring a bucket and mop.’ Even at such a moment Dan registered that the Lily Maid was swooning decoratively, thus abrogating all responsibility for the terrible thing on the table. Dan finally managed to look at it again. It was still where Imogen had placed it. Well, did you expect it to move? demanded his inner voice. Maybe you thought the poor dead thing might start shuffling itself to the table’s
edge—If I start thinking like that I shall join whoever’s throwing up on the Sheraton.

  Two of the aunts – Dilys again and a thin, pointy-faced one with her – had gone to Thalia Caudle’s side, but she shook them off. She was staring at Imogen, her eyes like black, fathomless pits, and the two aunts exchanged hesitant looks. Thalia looked like someone who had just taken a skewer in the heart. But she was still on her feet. Dan registered this with a refocusing of attention. This one’s taking it on the chin.

  A terrible silence had fallen, and every head had turned to Imogen. She was still standing by the table, her face white with shock, and even from where he stood Dan could see how her eyes had dilated with fear and bewilderment. Dan glanced quickly around the room. Everyone was looking at Imogen and on every face was shock. On most was accusation. They all think she’s done it, thought Dan, and now his writer’s mind was engaging top gear, recording everything. They think she somehow got into the mortuary or the Chapel of Rest and stole the head. They think she’s mad – oh, hell’s teeth, yes, of course! They think she’s mad in the way those other women in the family were mad, the one who was supposed to have murdered her lover, and Lucienne, who chopped off her brother’s prick. Only this one’s chopped off her cousin’s head. For God’s sake, aren’t any of them going to help her? He looked across to Royston Ingram; Ingram’s face was an unhealthy grey colour and the flesh seemed to have fallen away from his bones. One hand was pressed to the left side of his chest, and he was breathing with a struggle. Heart, thought Dan, his own sinking. The princess raving mad, the queen retiring to bed with the vapours, and the king having a coronary.

  It was then that he discovered in panic that he had crossed the room, and that he had actually picked up the domed lid. Its underside was faintly smeared with a thick, colourless dampness. Brain juices leaking? Don’t be absurd, it’s probably condensation from the baked ham! There was a teeth-wincing scrape of metal against metal as the lid clanged over the dreadful thing on the dish, and a sigh of relief went through the room.

  Dan put one hand on Imogen’s arm. ‘I think you should go and lie down, Miss Ingram,’ he said, and then realised that he was about to look round and say, is there a doctor in the house? He heard with disbelief that he did say it, and almost at once a voice at his side responded. ‘I’ll get John Shilling,’ said the voice, ‘he took Eloise out.’ And Dan recognised with thankfulness the same capable, slightly-sharp tones that had ordered somebody to fetch a bucket and mop.

  Imogen looked at him with an unfocused stare. She was smaller than she had seemed from across the room and more fragile-boned. Her head was level with Dan’s shoulder and she had to look up at him, and this added to her air of helpless vulnerability. She was like someone suddenly rocketed into a deep trance; it was impossible to know if she had heard him, or if she had heard anything, or even if she was aware of what was happening.

  He realised with relief that Dr Shilling had come back into the room, and that he was putting an arm about Imogen and guiding her to the door. As she went with him Dan felt something unfamiliar and painful tear at his heart. He wanted to put his arms around her and say, listen, it’s all right, Imogen. You didn’t do this and nobody really thinks you did. It could not be done. One of the aunts went with them, murmuring something about sedatives and hot water bottles. Dan bit down a sudden wish to go with them, to make sure that Imogen really was all right. As the door closed behind them he turned back to Thalia, and sensed every other person in the room doing the same.

  Edmund’s mother had not moved. She was standing stock-still, but there was no doubt about the malevolence and the black, bitter hatred. And if we’re still talking about force fields, thought Dan, this one’s the champion magnet.

  When Thalia finally spoke, she did so softly, but every single person heard her.

  ‘It looks as if it’s happened again,’ said Thalia. ‘The thing we’ve all dreaded. The Ingram madness. Lucienne’s madness. Sybilla’s.’

  Her voice was ordinary and down-to-earth. If she had lifted one hand and pointed like some pantomimic Tragic Muse, if she had cried, ‘The mark! She’s got it! The mark!’ the horror would have plummeted into melodrama and Dan would probably have washed his hands of the whole affair and made a disgusted exit. But Clytemnestras do not stalk twentieth-century drawing rooms in Hampstead, and tragediennes are trapped and held for ever in the timeless lime-lit oblongs of Victorian stages. Thalia left it at that. When she spoke again, it was to Royston, as directly and as intimately as if they were alone in the room. ‘You know, I did warn you,’ she said. ‘When she was born, I did warn you.’

  Dan thought Royston tried to speak and saw him fail, and in the same moment someone on the other side of the room began to cry, and someone else said in a whisper, ‘After all their care, after the way they guarded her – it’s too cruel.’

  And then Aunt Dilys’s voice, ‘Does it mean . . .?’

  ‘I’m afraid it means,’ said Thalia, her voice as bleak as a January dawn, ‘that she’ll have to be put away. For ever.’

  It had served the whey-faced bitch right to have everyone in the room staring at her with that horrified disgust.

  There had, in fact, almost been a moment when Thalia could have felt sorry for Imogen, but it had vanished instantly, and she had been suddenly and violently glad of the creature’s humiliation. The spark of hatred that had flared up when Imogen survived in the car crash and Edmund died, was already blazing up into a consuming passion.

  Hatred. Vengeance. Who would have thought it would be such a fiercely satisfying emotion? Thalia, her mind splintered with agony, her world in tattered fragments, had looked at Imogen after Edmund’s death, and thought: you smug cat, why didn’t you die instead? It had been then that the cold vicious hatred had ignited, and it had been then that the idea of punishing Imogen – of making sure that Imogen could never enjoy her own heritage – had taken root. There had been a deep and fierce delight in laying plans and weaving toils. Imogen must be punished.

  Put away for ever . . . The words had had a satisfying ring, even though she had spoken them so softly. This was something Thalia had learned from the tedious committees and the boring charity groups: that it was not the table-thumpers people took notice of, it was the softly-spoken, the unemphatic. The more laid back people were, the more impact they made. There had been impact in what she had said about Imogen, and there would be impact in what she was going to say to the family in the small room Royston called his study, where everybody was gathering to discuss what must be done.

  Royston would not be there, but this did not matter. He had been useless and ineffective when they were both children, and he had been useless and ineffective today. He had seen his cherished daughter publicly exposed as a mad thing and he had not been able to face it, which was why John Shilling had had to give him a shot of something or other. Thalia had pretended to be concerned, but she would not have minded if Royston had been left to die of heart pains there on the floor. Royston and Eloise should be dealt their share of punishment. The strong, satisfying hatred welled up in Thalia again. Neither of them would be able to prevent it.

  Eloise would certainly not be at the family discussion. She had taken refuge in one of her ridiculous swoons, with that besotted fool Shilling in attendance. It would be nice to think that Eloise was cheating on Royston with John Shilling, but it was not very likely; she was a cold, frigid bitch. The wonder was that she had ever got into bed with Royston; the pity was that she had stayed there long enough for Imogen to be conceived. Dr Shilling pampered her invalid whims, of course, which was about all he was good for. He had painstakingly administered sedatives to various people today and he had sent for a mix of soda bicarbonate for Cousin Elspeth who was always sick at the least provocation but who might at least have opened the window and done it on the shrubbery.

  And Imogen was going to be shut away. Thalia licked the idea greedily in her mind. It was a good thought; it was a satisfying thought. It served R
oyston and Eloise right for wrapping up the wide-eyed little shrew in cotton wool so that no breath of harm should ever reach her – and so that the Ingram madness should be kept at bay. It served them right for wanting to keep Edmund out of Ingram’s Books, and for being patronising about his intelligence. Edmund had been as intelligent as any of the family; in fact he had been more intelligent than most of them put together. It was true that he had not bothered with tedious exams and A levels for university, but this had only been because there were more interesting things for him to do.

  Thalia came softly down the back stairway, pausing for a moment on the half-landing. Everything dealt with? Yes. She went quietly through the big kitchen, deserted now. All well in here? Yes again. Now for the family. She took a deep breath and paused before crossing the hall with the black and white chequered floor that some mid-Victorian Ingram had put down, and the Benares brass table that Colonel Ralph Ingram of the India Army had brought back. The family were about to go into conclave, exactly as Ralph and his lady had done over Lucienne, and exactly as Sybilla’s parents had done. The motto of Ralph’s regiment had been something about protecting your own, which was what the Ingrams had always done anyway. Thalia was not in the least interested in protecting Imogen, but she was very interested indeed in avenging Edmund’s death.