To my astonishment, Mum blushed. “Thanks. I could say the same of you, Falk.”
“I’ve gone gray.” The man made a dismissive gesture.
“I’d say it suits you,” said Mum.
Hello? Was she by any chance flirting with this guy?
His smile broadened a little and then his amber gaze moved from Mum to me. Once again, I felt I was being inspected uncomfortably closely.
Those eyes were really strange. They could have been the eyes of a wolf, or one of the big cats. He held out his hand. “I’m Falk de Villiers. And you must be Grace’s daughter Gwyneth.” His handshake was firm and warm. “The first Montrose girl I’ve ever known not to have red hair.”
“I get my hair from my father,” I said shyly.
“Could we perhaps come to the point?” asked the man in black by the mantelpiece.
Mr. de Villiers let go of my hand and looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes. “Go ahead.”
“My sister’s come up with an absolutely monstrous story,” said Aunt Glenda. You could tell what an effort it cost her not to shout. “And Mr. George wouldn’t listen to me! She claims that Gwyneth—Gwyneth!—has already traveled back in time. And not just once, three times already. Of course, as she knows perfectly well, she can’t prove it, so she’s thought up another fairy tale to explain the fact that the girl’s date of birth is wrong. I’d like to remind you what happened seventeen years ago. Grace did not play a very admirable part in those events. Now that we’re so close to success, I’m not surprised to see her turning up here to sabotage our plans.”
Leaving her place by the window, Lady Arista had come closer. “Is this true, Grace?” Her expression, as always, was stern and unyielding. Sometimes I wondered whether her hair, combed back so severely from her face, was the reason her features were so rigid. Maybe the muscles were simply held in one place and stuck there. At the very most, a slight widening of her eyes showed when she was upset. Like now.
“Mrs. Shepherd says she and her husband paid the midwife to enter the wrong date on the birth certificate,” Mr. George interjected. “So that no one would find out that Gwyneth was a potential gene carrier.”
“But why would she have done such a thing?” asked Lady Arista.
“She says she wanted to protect the child, and anyway she hoped that Charlotte had inherited the gene.”
“Hoped! You must be joking!” cried Aunt Glenda.
“I think it sounds perfectly logical,” said Mr. George.
I glanced at Charlotte, who was sitting on the sofa looking pale, her eyes moving from one to another of us. When they met mine, she quickly turned her head away.
“I simply can’t see any logic in it,” said Lady Arista.
“We’re having the story checked,” said Mr. George. “Mrs. Jenkins will track down the midwife.”
“Just out of interest, Grace, how much did you pay her?” asked Falk de Villiers. His eyes had narrowed more and more over the last minute, and now, as he turned to Mum, there was something very wolflike about him.
“I … I can’t remember,” said Mum.
Mr. de Villiers raised his eyebrows. “Well, it can’t have been a large sum. As far as I recall, your husband’s income was rather … modest.”
“How true!” said Aunt Glenda venomously.
“If you all say so, then it can’t have been much,” replied Mum. The uncertainty that had suddenly come over her disappeared just as suddenly. So had the tinge of pink in her face.
“Then why did the midwife do as you wanted?” asked Mr. de Villiers. “After all, she was falsifying an official document. That’s not a small offense.”
Mum tilted her chin. “We told her our family belonged to a satanic cult with a pathological belief in horoscopes. We said a child born on the seventh of October would be subject to severe reprisals and we’d have to give her up to the cult for use in satanic rituals. She believed us. And as she had a soft heart, and what you might call a prejudice against Satanists, she entered the wrong birth date on the certificate.”
“Satanic rituals! What impertinence!” The man by the mantelpiece hissed the words like a snake, and the little boy clung even closer to him.
Mr. de Villiers smiled appreciatively. “Not a bad story. We’ll see if the midwife tells the same tale.”
“I see little point in wasting our time checking such details,” Lady Arista remarked.
“Quite right,” said Aunt Glenda. “Charlotte could travel back in time any moment now. Then we’ll know that Grace’s story is a pack of lies devised to hold us up.”
“Why couldn’t they both have inherited the gene?” asked Mr. George. “That happened once before.”
“Ah, but Timothy and Jonathan de Villiers were identical twins,” pointed out Mr. de Villiers. “And they’d been foretold in the prophesies.”
“Yes, the chronograph contains two carnelians for them, two pipettes of blood, duplicate compartments for the twelve elements, and two cogwheels going around,” said the man by the mantelpiece. “The Ruby stands alone.”
“True,” said Mr. George. His round face suddenly became anxious.
“I should have thought it more important to look into the reason why my sister is telling these lies.” Aunt Glenda was glaring at Mum with positive hatred. “If your idea is to get Gwyneth’s blood read into the chronograph so that the device will never be of any use again, you’re more naive than I thought.”
“How can she expect us to believe a word of what she says anyway?” asked the man by the mantelpiece. I thought his way of acting as if Mum and I weren’t even in the room was very arrogant. “I have the clearest recollections of the lies Grace told to protect Lucy and Paul at that time. It was her fault they got away from us. If it hadn’t been for her, we might have been able to avert the disaster.”
“Jake!” said Mr. de Villiers.
“What disaster?” I asked. And who was Paul?
“I consider that even the presence of this person in the room with us is monstrous,” said the man by the mantelpiece.
“And who may you be?” Mum’s voice and the look she gave him were decidedly chilly. I was impressed to see she wasn’t going to be intimidated.
“That’s nothing to do with the case.” The man didn’t even deign to look at her. The little fair-haired boy peered cautiously out from behind his back and looked at me. With the freckles on his nose, he reminded me a bit of Nick when he was younger, so I smiled at him. Poor little thing—he probably had to put up with this creep for a grandfather. His eyes widening in surprise, he returned my smile and then went back into cover behind the man’s black jacket.
“This is Dr. Jacob White,” said Falk de Villiers, with an unmistakable tone of amusement in his voice. “A genius in the fields of medicine and biochemistry. He’s usually a bit more civil.”
Jacob Gray would have suited him better. Even his face was the color of dishwater.
Mr. de Villiers looked at me and then his eyes went back to Mum. “Well, one way or another, we have to come to a decision. Are we to believe you, Grace, or do you really have some ulterior motive?”
For a few seconds Mum stared at him angrily. Then she looked down and said quietly, “I’m not here to prevent you all from carrying out your wonderful, mysterious mission. I’m here to keep my daughter out of harm’s way. With the help of the chronograph, she can travel in time without danger while still leading a reasonably normal life. That’s all I want.”
“Oh, yes, of course!” said Aunt Glenda. She went over to the sofa and sat down beside Charlotte. I’d have liked to sit too. My legs were beginning to feel tired. But no one offered me a chair, so there was nothing for it but to stay on my feet.
“What I did at that time had nothing to do with your … mission,” Mum went on. “To be honest, I hardly know anything about it, and I understand only about half of what I’ve picked up over the years.”
“I can’t imagine,” said the gloomy Dr. White, “what gave you the audacity to interfere in such a way with matters of which you know nothing.”
“I only wanted to help Lucy,” said Mum. “She was my darling little niece. I’d looked after her since she was a baby, and she asked for my help. What would you have done in my place? For goodness’ sake, the pair of them were so young, so much in love, and … I simply didn’t want anything to happen to them.”
“Well, a fine way you chose to go about it!”
“I loved Lucy like a sister.” Mum glanced at Aunt Glenda. “More than a sister,” she added.
Aunt Glenda took Charlotte’s hand and patted it. Charlotte stared at the floor.
“We all loved Lucy dearly,” said Lady Arista. “That made it all the more important to keep her away from that boy and his outlandish opinions, rather than encouraging her to indulge her feelings.”
“Outlandish opinions, indeed! It was that red-haired little wretch who put those silly conspiracy theories into Paul’s head!” said Dr. White. “She persuaded him to commit the theft!”
“That’s not true!” protested Lady Arista. “Lucy would never have done such a thing. It was Paul who took advantage of her youthful naivety and led her astray.”
“Naivety! You must be joking!” snapped Dr. White.
Falk de Villiers raised his hand. “We’ve had this discussion often enough already, and it never gets us anywhere. I think we all know one another’s views.” He looked at the time. “Gideon will be back any moment now, and before that we ought to decide what to do next. Charlotte, how are you feeling?”
“I still have a headache,” said Charlotte, without looking up from the floor.
“There, you see?” Aunt Glenda gave a venomous smile.
“I have a headache too,” said Mum. “But that doesn’t mean I’m about to start traveling in time.”
“You’re … you’re just so horrible!” said Aunt Glenda.
“I think we should simply assume that Mrs. Shepherd and Gwyneth are telling the truth,” said Mr. George, mopping his bald patch with a handkerchief. “Otherwise we’ll be losing yet more valuable time.”
“You can’t be serious, Thomas!” Dr. White struck the mantelpiece with his fist so hard that the silver cup standing on it fell over.
Mr. George jumped, but he went on calmly. “According to what they say, the last time Gwyneth traveled back in time was an hour and a half to two hours ago. We could prepare her for her next journey and record it as closely as possible.”
“My own opinion exactly,” said Falk de Villiers. “Any objections?”
“I might as well be talking to a brick wall,” said Dr. White.
“How true,” Aunt Glenda agreed.
“I’d suggest the documents room,” said Mr. George. “Gwyneth would be safe there, and then on her return, we could read her straight into the chronograph.”
