Jack Higgins - A Darker Place

Way beyond, half glimpsed through the mist and rain, ships moved out to sea. Katya said, “Look, way over there on the horizon is something you seldom see these days. A lightship, permanently moored on chains.”

“So strange, this place, and so close to the city,” Dillon said. There were reeds now higher than a man, the road a raised causeway, and they came to a village of a dozen old-fashioned seaside wood bungalows, mostly painted green, with corrugated iron roofs. It looked totally desolate, not a soul in sight.

“Who on earth lives here?” Monica asked.

“No one, my dear,” Svetlana told her. “They are holiday homes for rent. People get their supplies from Gravesend or perhaps Rochester.”

“And you must remember to fill up with petrol there, too,” Katya said.

“But who on earth would want to holiday here?” Monica laughed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dillon said. “It takes all sorts. Dickens wrote about Gravesend and Rochester, as I recall.”

“Bird-watchers come here all the time,” Katya said. “For people who like that sort of thing, it’s a paradise. In the old days, very ancient times, there were Saxons here, then outlaws of one kind and another hiding in the marshes. Closer to our own times, certainly in the time Dickens knew it, there were smugglers.”

They came to a track on the right, turned along it, and arrived at a five-barred gate bearing a painted sign: “Holly End.” They entered a large farmyard, surfaced with shingle, fronting a barn and a two-story farmhouse that was surprisingly large. It had a slate roof and shuttered windows.

Katya turned off the engine, got out, found a key, and opened the blue painted front door. “I’m only here to check the place,” she said. “But come in, by all means. There’s a pub at All Hallows, quarter of a mile away. We’ll lunch there.”

Dillon helped Svetlana out, gave her his arm, and they went inside. The hall was dark, and there was a smell of damp. “Four bedrooms upstairs,” Katya said. “Sitting room to the left, kitchen to the right, and bathroom directly ahead. It’s an ugly bitch of a place during the winter, and everything’s covered, so there’s not much to see.”

She went upstairs, and Dillon and Svetlana went into the sitting room. The furniture had all been covered by old-fashioned gray drapes. “Like shrouds, aren’t they? One could imagine a corpse on each chair,” Svetlana said.

Dillon laughed. “It’s being so cheerful keeps you going, I can see that.” He helped her across to the kitchen, which was normal enough, though old-fashioned, and she sat at one of four chairs at a large wooden table. “And Kurbsky loved this place?”

“Always, even in weather like this. It was the marsh he liked, plowing through the reeds, he and Kelly with shotguns looking for wildfowl.”

They could hear Katya’s steps upstairs through the ceiling. Monica said, “A dead world. It makes me uneasy. Those people who came here in the past must have had little choice in the matter. Refugees, outlaws.”

“I think that’s what Alexander adored about it. Perhaps the feeling that he resembled in some way all those people who had gone before,” Svetlana said.

“But nothing lives here. It’s a place of shadows, quietly passing, only an illusion,” said Monica.

Katya had heard her as she came down the stairs and entered the kitchen. “There is life here and everywhere, believe me, fish in those creeks in the marsh, crabs, shellfish, geese in the winter from Siberia, wildfowl in plenty.”

“But not to Monica’s taste, I think,” Svetlana told her. “Is all well?”

“It would seem so.”

“Then load up and we shall visit the inn at All Hallows.”

TYPICALLY FOR SUCH a place, the inn, called Smugglers, was a relic of the early eighteenth century. Crouched on the edge of the estuary, it had a weather-beaten look to it, but the bar was friendly enough, with a beamed ceiling and a wide-open hearth and a log fire. The woman behind the bar was named Betty and greeted Svetlana warmly; both women seemed to be about the same age.

Katya said, “No visitors around, then?”

“A few bird-watchers as usual, the crazy type who go out in all weathers. Now, what’ll it be? You know me, ladies, one dish a day is my limit, and being Monday, it’s stew and dumplings.”

“Which will suit us,” Svetlana said. “And a glass of red wine for me. I don’t know what the rest of you want.”

“That’s fine,” Monica said. “His lordship here will undoubtedly hope for Irish whiskey.”

“And I’ll stick to one glass of sherry, as I’m driving,” Katya said.

They sat there, enjoying the warmth, waiting for the food, and Svetlana said, “Do you think your visit here tells you something more about my nephew?”

“I’m not sure,” Monica said. “The man I met in New York was a handsome devil with a swagger to him, someone who seemed to face the world and say ‘I don’t give a damn what you think of me. Take me or leave me, I couldn’t care less.’ ”

Svetlana nodded. “You must realize, I have to see this for myself.”

Dillon said, “What did you think of the boy from Moscow who joined you in London but loved to come down here to this desolate world?”

She opened her large handbag, rummaged in it, and produced a pack of cards. “Tarot,” she said to Monica. “I discovered I had a gift for these things many years ago. As I said, I am a sensitive. I won’t ask you if you believe. Shuffle the pack and give it back to me with your left hand.” Monica did as she was told, and Svetlana spread the pack in a half-circle facedown. “Three cards, that is all you need.” Monica eased them out, still facedown. They looked antique and were green and gold.

Svetlana took Monica’s left hand in hers. “You thought you knew yourself, but something has happened of late to you that has changed your life irrevocably. You are no longer the person that you thought you were. Now choose one card and turn it over.”

Monica did as she was told, her stomach hollow with excitement. The picture was a pool guarded by a wolf and a dog. Beyond it were two towers, and in the sky above, the moon.

“This is good, my dear, for it is upright. It indicates a crisis in your life. All is changed utterly. Reason and intellect have no part in resolving your new situation. Only your own instincts will bring you through. You must at all times flow with the feeling. Your own feeling. This alone will present you with the true solution.”

Monica felt drained and weak. “Good God,” she said faintly, and, reaching, found Dillon’s left hand and held it tight.

“You wouldn’t be giving me any answers, would you?” he asked as Svetlana picked up the cards and dropped them back in her handbag.

“One at a time is all I am capable of, my dear, it is so draining, but I can speak of the past. Almost twenty years ago, I sat here with Kelly and my nephew, and Alexander asked me, and not for the first time, to do the cards. I had always refused, I always had a bad feeling.”

“But this time you agreed?” Monica asked.

“Yes, but he asked for the double, one card on another. He insisted.”

There was a long pause. Dillon said gently, “What was the result?”

“The first card was a knight on horseback, a baton in his hand, a sign of someone who chooses the path of conflict for its own sake.”

“And the second card?” Monica felt a strange chill.

“Death. A skeleton with a scythe mowing not corn, but corpses.”

“But that’s terrible, horrible.” Monica was truly upset.

Katya said, “Even worse, when they returned to Chamber Court that evening, it was to receive the news from Moscow about Tania.”

“You mean the false report that she was only wounded?” Dillon asked.