The Staircase: A haunting romantic thriller Read online

  He was embarrassingly earnest and Helena looked away. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then I’ll say it for you. We’ll go to France for five days and celebrate my birthday. When we come back I will give you twenty-four hours to make up your mind and that is all. Then it’s marriage or goodbye. After all,” he added wearily, “you’ve been messing me around for twenty-five years. A few days isn’t much to ask.”

  “No it isn’t,” she said impulsively, “of course I’ll come. I’ve been unsure too long. It is high time I had an ultimatum.”

  “Well,” said Hal, kissing her swiftly, “you’ve finally got one.”

  *

  The staircase was packed, hot, stifling, and tonight the silent walkers, pressed so closely together, had a sinister air about them as they ascended the marble sweep. From the moment Helena set foot on the bottom step she felt a thrill of fearful excitement, terrified at being amongst them, yet longing to reach the top and see the man standing there, waiting for her.

  Yet on this occasion she was to be disappointed for as Helena mounted to the second landing she realised that the face she expected to see, the handsome face surmounted by that blue-black nimbus of curls, had been replaced by another.

  A woman stood there — a woman with dark, secretive features and brown eyes that, as she turned to look at Helena, seemed to glow black. Behind her hovered a man, a tall cloaked figure, and as Helena approached they whispered together. She strained to hear their conversation and as the press of people took her nearer, she managed to pick out the words.

  “You’ve summoned her?” said the woman.

  “There’s the proof, Madam,” replied the man, pointing at Helena.

  “And will she do my bidding?”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  The woman smiled at Helena, said, “Come, little one,” and put out her hand, just as if she were the man whose place she had usurped.

  “No,” shrieked Helena, “I don’t want you,” and then she fell again, down and down into a sweating wakefulness, gasping and panting herself conscious.

  It was daybreak and the radio alarm showed ten minutes past five. For a moment Helena lay quite still, her night terror still with her, and then she gradually returned to reality.

  It was Thursday, the day that she and Hal were leaving for France and rather than having woken too early she was late. They were to be gone by six if they were to catch the midday hovercraft from Dover to Boulogne.

  An enormous and inexplicable excitement swept over Helena. “In September when the grapes are purple, Marguerita drinking wine with me,” she sang as she jumped out of bed and headed for the shower.

  And she was still humming when at six o’clock sharp Hal pressed the door bell and they bundled into the car, heading for Dover before the traffic built up.

  “Hey, this is going to be good,” she said as they clicked into their seatbelts. “I’ll buy you a bottle of champagne.”

  Hal winked. “I love being indulged. Get me a crate.”

  And with that he turned the ignition and they were off, singing as the sun came up, and chattering all the way to France.

  Helena thought, as they drove off at Boulogne and followed the signs to Paris, that she had not felt so at ease with him since they were children and then, for no reason at all, she remembered the dream and sighed.

  “What is it?” asked Hal, finely attuned to her swings of mood.

  Helena hesitated. “Nothing really. I had rather a bad night.”

  “Me too. I was terrified I would miss the alarm!”

  Helena nodded sympathetically, but said nothing and Hal looked at her sharply. “What happened? Did you have a nightmare?”

  “Not really. More a recurring dream.”

  “Oh? You’ve never mentioned it before.”

  “Concentrate on the road,” said Helena as they swerved. “Remember we’re on the wrong side.”

  Hal grinned. “Your job is to map read, remember? What do you dream?”

  “About a staircase.”

  “A what?” Hal asked, amazed.

  *

  “I know that it sounds ridiculous, but it’s always the same. I dream that I’m climbing a great marble staircase with two different lots of people. One group wear old-fashioned clothes and the others seem to be sightseers.” Her voice trailed away. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” said Hal. “I think it sounds fascinating. Is it a staircase you know?”

  “No, it’s nowhere I’ve ever been. The weird thing is that I dream about it in differing conditions. Sometimes it’s sunny, sometimes cold. It’s never the same twice.”

  “It’s probably something you’ve seen as a child and forgotten about. At a conscious level I mean.”

  Helena shook her head. “I don’t think so somehow.” She realised then that she had omitted to tell Hal of the man who waited for her at the second landing and at the same moment decided that she would rather not.

  “But why?” she murmured to herself — and could come up with no logical explanation.

  Helena was not disappointed by her first sight of Paris. The great city rose like a pearl in the early evening sunshine, the mighty Seine alive with light and sparkle, the bateaux-mouches chugging up and down its surface full of tourists, the gothic outline of Notre-Dame looming majestically in the distance, the Eiffel Tower huge yet somehow not quite believable.

  “Oh, how marvellous!” breathed Helena, and Hal smiled.

  He had booked them into a small hotel near the Place de la Republique, a family run establishment with no lift, which left them breathless as they panted up to a room at the top of the building. From the window Helena could see a view of eaves and roofs, washing and crooked chimneys.

  “It’s like a theatre set,” she said, turning to Hal and laughing.

  “I could have taken you somewhere better,” he answered, “but I wanted you to see the real Paris on your first visit. So hurry up and get ready, I formally invite you out to dinner.”

  In the bathroom mirror a puzzled face looked back at Helena.

  “Why this sense of elation?” it seemed to ask. “What are you so cheerful about when Hal has given you an ultimatum?”

  A curious sensation gripped her: a sensation that whatever she did, whatever she said, a destiny lay in wait that she could not escape.

  “What’s going to happen?” she wondered. Then realised she must have spoken aloud as Hal called, “What?” from the bedroom.

  With a last look in the mirror, Helena crossed to where he sat in front of the old-fashioned dressing table, rather uselessly running a comb through the lion’s mane hair. Standing behind him she put her hands on his shoulders.

  “I said I wonder what is going to happen.”

  He turned round to look at her and asked “You mean about us?”

  “Partly. But there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t really explain. I just have a momentous feeling. Here somewhere.” She pointed vaguely in the direction of her stomach.

  “It’s hunger,” answered Hal firmly. “Come on, I’ve starved you long enough.” And so saying he resolutely took her by the hand and led her out to explore.

  *

  They dined in a small intimate restaurant where the Muscadet was chilled to perfection and nobody else spoke English. They ate fruits de mere followed by dream-like soufflé, and afterwards wandered in the darkness down an exciting avenue where all the shops were open and people swarmed and chattered as they would have done at midday in England. Helena bought exotic earrings that hung to her shoulders and Hal insisted on giving her a pair shaped like glittering fish. Then, both exhausted, they returned through quiet streets to their hotel room where Helena threw back the shutters to look at the roofs of Paris lit by stars.

  “Hal,” she said into the dusk.

  “Yes?”

  “I will make up my mind more easily about the future if we don’t force th
ings this weekend.”

  “I suppose that’s your way of saying that you want me to sleep in the chair.”

  Helena turned to him, large-eyed with seriousness. “Of course it isn’t. It’s just that I don’t want you to take me for granted.”

  Hal held her at arm’s length. “I don’t, my darling. Nobody could do so less. In fact sometimes I think I’m too patient. So be assured, I won’t force myself upon you.”

  Whenever he spoke like that Helena felt guilty and now she hid her face from him, snuggling against his chest.

  “I do love you, Hal,” she muttered, “but for some reason I can’t sort myself out.”

  “You’ve got till the end of next week,” he an-swered firmly and put her away from him.

  Although it was September, Paris nights were warm and at first Helena found it difficult to sleep, though Hal breathed steadily beside her. Then the walls of the room slowly began to recede further and further away. There was a buzzing sound which grew intolerably loud and as Helena clapped her hands over her ears to protect them, she felt other fingers close over her own.

  “I’m waiting, little one,” said a familiar voice. “You must come to me soon.”

  With a scream Helena woke up, sitting bolt upright in the darkness and immediately Hal woke too, his arms going round her protectively. “Was it the dream again?”

  “Yes. Oh, Hal,”

  It was easy, then, to let him love her as he wanted, gently at first and then with restraint forgotten, and afterwards, when he slept again, Helena stared at the sloping ceiling and wondered whether it was solely family pressure that had driven her away from him or whether the feeling she had of a destiny unfulfilled also played its part.

  They both woke early the next morning to see a Paris bathed in sunshine, the streets still wet from the cleansing carts, the waiters sweeping the pavements outside the cafes and setting out the chairs.

  Open mouthed at the sheer excitement and beauty of the city, Helena walked like one entranced up the Champs Elysées, past the elegant shops and cafés, outside which Parisians sat reading their papers and sipping coffee in the morning sunlight, to where the Arc de Triomphe reared into the sky.

  “I wish we’d come for a month,” she exclaimed without thinking. And when Hal answered, “So do I,” his meaning obvious, realised that she would have to watch what she said if she were to be fair to him.

  They lunched outside a smart restaurant overlooking the Paris Opéra and then, at Helena’s insistence, walked across the Pont d’Abcole to the Ile de la Cité, the island in the Seine which had been the ancient birthplace of modern Pars. But it was not just for its early connections that Helena had wanted to go there; the island housed the Conciergerie, the prison to which Marie Antoinette had been brought seven months after her royal husband had gone bravely to meet his death, and from which she herself had left for the guillotine.

  Joining the tour and smiling very slightly at an earnest English woman and her companion, obviously ardent supporters of the ill-fated French Queen, Hal and Helena bought their tickets and entered the prison.

  In a strange manner none of the Revolution seemed quite real to Helena, not even the original guillotine blade in the prison chapel. In fact nothing registered until they left the Conciergerie and began to walk, following the route of the condemned from the prison to oblivion. Crossing the bridge again they made their way down the rue St Honoré, past the Palais Royal towards the Place de la Concorde, where once had stood the dreadful guillotine.

  They turned sharp left into Concorde and Helena drew breath at what she saw. She had always imagined that the square in which Louis XVI and his glamorous wife, and so many others had met their ends would be small. But now Helena gazed on a vast traffic-filled concourse as large if not even larger than Trafalgar Square.

  “How terrible!” she exclaimed.

  “What?” said Hal.

  “That the place is so huge. As they turned the corner and saw all those thousands of people staring at them, the condemned must have been terrified.”

  “Even worse,” answered Hal thoughtfully, “for those coming in alone, like the King and Queen.”

  “Oh don’t.” Helena shivered.

  “French history wasn’t always so grim,” he said, changing the mood. “They must have had a wonderful time earlier, when Diane de Poitiers was mistress to both the King and Dauphin, and Francois I said that a court without women was like a spring without roses.”

  “But roses don’t bloom in the spring,” objected Helena.

  “Perhaps that’s what the old fox meant!” answered Hal, and once again they were laughing.

  They were sipping lemon tea in a pavement cafe, when it suddenly started to rain and everyone hastily moved inside.

  “Well,” said Hal, “there’s only one thing for it. The Louvre.”

  “Indeed.”

  Hal and Helena rushed through the Tuileries Gardens in the showers, then the Carousel Gardens to where the museum, once a palace of the French Kings, rose enormously before them.

  “It’s literally miles long,” said Hal as they bought their tickets. “It’s best to concentrate on one thing and then come back another day. So what shall it be?”

  “The Mona Lisa,” answered Helena without hesitation. “Let’s look at that famous smile.”

  But Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was difficult to see, smaller than she had thought and surrounded by tourists. When they did get close enough, though, the enigma of the Florentine woman’s expression struck her afresh.

  “Have you ever heard the theory,” Helena asked, “that that is actually a self-portrait? That Leonardo painted himself in drag?”

  “No,” answered Hal, “I haven’t. And I don’t believe it.”

  But he was chuckling as he turned away to look at da Vinci’s sketches for aeroplanes, parachutes, tanks; over forty machines of the future visualised by a fifteenth century artist.

  “Do you think he was a time lord?” said Helena coming to stand by Hal and gazing in wonderment.

  “They don’t exist outside fiction,” he answered slowly. “But none the less it does make you think.”

  He left Helena gazing and wandered off on his own and she had almost forgotten his presence, so that it was a shock when she suddenly heard him exclaim, “Good God!”

  Looking over her shoulder, Helena saw that Hal had stopped before one of the sketches and was staring at it in awed astonishment.

  “What is it?” she said, and crossed over to him.

  It was herself, of course, Helena could see that at a glance, wearing what appeared to be one of her more flimsy nightdresses. The room span as the full impact of what she was looking at came to her and Helena put her hand to her forehead, though Hal didn’t even look up, so absorbed in the drawing that, for once, he had not noticed her. “I don’t believe it,” she whispered.

  He stared at her, his eyes bright with consternation. “It’s just like you. I would swear it is you.”

  “Of course it’s not,” she said, her voice harsh. “Look in the catalogue and see who it really is.”

  Hal thumbed through and Helena could not help but notice that his hands were shaking. “Number three hundred and forty,” he repeated several times, then gave a sigh of relief as he found the reference.

  “What does it say,” she asked.

  “Mystery,” he read aloud. “This drawing by Leonardo, known as Mystery, is supposedly a sketch for a portrait that he never executed. It is from the late period and can be dated circa 1518, the time when the artist was living in France under the protection of the French King, Francois I.” “Does it give the model’s name?”

  “No, that’s all it says.”

  Helena drew nearer and stared closely at the sketch. It was the most extraordinary coincidence she had ever seen, for a pattern of rosebuds round the neck, sleeves and hem of the garment worn by Leonardo’s sitter were identical to those on a nightdress of Helena’s.

  Over her shoulder, H
al said, “They say that everyone has a double and this woman certainly was yours.”

  Helena turned to him, a strange expression on her face. “Hal, I know it’s foolish but I’ve simply got to find out who she was.”

  His eyes lit up. “That’s fine by me. I’ll help you in any way I can.” His voice changed. “Helena, you’re not being silly, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not going to let this upset you. I mean, it’s just a strange co-incidence.”

  “It doesn’t upset me,” Helena answered slowly, “that isn’t the right word.”

  “Then what is?”

  “Intrigue. That woman from the past intrigues me. I won’t rest until I’ve found out all about her.” Helena turned back to the picture.

  “Watch out, little one, I’m coming to get you”, she said, then froze in horror at the words that had just come from her lips.

  Chapter Two

  The chateau was bathed in moonlight. It glittered on the diamond ring, and as Helena watched, transfixed, a hand reached out for the diamond . . .

  *

  The two women working in the tourist office were a contrast in types: one pure Parisienne, dark haired, brown eyed, very chic; the other a sultry international blonde, pretty and pouting. Both wore smart uniforms reminiscent of air hostesses and one was as helpful as the other was offhand.

  “You want to trace the origin of one of da Vinci’s sketches?” said the blonde in perfect English, every syllable affirming that she considered Hal’s request quite the most idiotic thing it had ever been her misfortune to hear.

  “Yes,” he said, his neck colouring very slightly. “It really caught our attention and we wondered if there was any way of finding out who the model was.”

  The blonde looked down her nose. “You have consulted the Louvre, I suppose.”

  Hal looked uncomfortable. “Yes, they were very helpful. They spent several hours looking things up, but could throw no light on the matter, I’m afraid.”