Page 148 of Original Sin

She looked up and saw Meredith standing there.

‘Meredith,’ said Tess, a little flustered, wondering how long she had been there. It was a company joke that Meredith was so thin and dainty she could enter the room like a ghost.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked, her eyes searching Tess’s.

‘Of course,’ said Tess, thinking that, when her son was involved, nothing was ever all right.

‘In which case,’ said Meredith smoothly, ‘can we talk?’ She closed the door and moved across to sit elegantly on the chair opposite Tess’s desk. She opened her handbag and pulled out a blue letter.

‘Because I’ve just received another one of these.’

r /> CHAPTER FORTY–EIGHT

The Sundowner Hotel in Charleston was the sort of plantation house that was once exceptionally grand, a proud symbol of the wealth and power generated by cotton in the eighteenth century before the Civil War. Now the Sundowner seemed to live up to its name, having become part of a big mid–market corporate hotel chain, and seemed to have lost a little of its charisma and charm in doing so. But the location of the hotel, in the historic district of the city, more than made up for it, thought Tess. The pastel–coloured town houses, gas–lamp streetlights, and grand clapboard houses with Juliet balconies and shutters – they all had a romance and a certain faux–English grace that was somehow appropriate for a city named after King Charles II.

The air–con hit Tess as she walked into the Sundowner’s grand but slightly peeling lobby and she was glad of the cool. The weather was beginning to turn towards the fall in New York, so the balmy warmth of South Carolina had been most welcome, but a Southern lady never perspires, she thought with an inward smile. In these surroundings, Tess could actually imagine herself as a character in Gone with the Wind, especially when the concierge with a thick Deep South accent directed her to the Mistral Bar; this was the fictitious home town of Rhett Butler, after all.

Her good mood evaporated as she spotted the man she was meeting. Ted Kressler was in his late fifties, with a grey moustache. He was dressed in dark trousers and an open–necked blue shirt. A crumpled jacket hung over the back of his chair. He didn’t rise when he saw her, simply put down his paper, and nodded.

‘I thought I’d get a table by the window,’ he said. ‘Don’t suppose you’ll be in town long, but you can see everything worth seeing from this spot right here.’

‘How kind,’ said Tess thinly, taking a seat opposite him and holding his gaze.

‘What do you want, Mr Kressler?’

When Meredith had given her the blue letter three days earlier, Tess had been surprised that the anonymous sender had decided to reveal himself, signing off his simple message with a scrawled telephone number. Tess had wasted no time in arranging a meeting; there were only six weeks to go until the wedding and she wanted nothing and no one to spoil her clean slate and jeopardize her bonus. Ted Kressler had to be dealt with as swiftly and ruthlessly as possible.

‘Can’t we start with a little old–fashioned Southern hospitality?’ He called over a white–coated waiter and ordered two bourbons.

‘I wish I had the time,’ said Tess coolly, shaking her head at the waiter. ‘As I said, what do you want? I feel certain you do want something.’

She pulled out the first letter Ted had sent and put it on the table.

Your family has a secret, it had said. Which secret, exactly? wondered Tess. They’ve got plenty.

The bourbon arrived on a silver platter and Ted took it, settling back in his chair, a smug expression on his face.

‘How about I tell you a little story?’ he smiled.

Tess rested her hands in her lap and tilted her head. ‘Please do.’

‘I’m from North Carolina and for five years I was with a marvellous woman. She died recently.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Tess, not feeling too much sympathy for this obvious opportunist.

‘The lady’s name was Marion Quinn,’ said Kressler, leaning forward and handing Tess a photograph. In it a smiling lady of about forty was flanked by a little boy and a very young girl aged about four who was in a wheelchair. The girl in the wheelchair was obviously severely disabled. Her long hair was shiny and golden as corn, but her head flopped to one side of her body, her small shoulders were hunched. It was the sort of photograph that made you instantly sad.

‘The lady in the picture, that’s Marion,’ continued Kressler. ‘She was as sweet as she was pretty. She lived hereabouts and she used to take in foster kids – all the ones no one else wanted. Sick kids, handicapped kids. She had the patience of a saint.’

Tess pointed at the handicapped girl in the picture. ‘Was this little girl one of her foster children?’

Her words had a shot of both curiosity and wonder. Professionally she was trying to work out the connection to the Asgills, but privately she was marvelling at this remarkable woman who would take on a child who was not her own flesh and blood, a child that must take enormous time and personal strength to look after. Most of all, she wondered what a woman like Marion Quinn was doing with Ted Kressler, a man clearly on the make.

‘That’s an old photo,’ said Kressler, sipping his whiskey. ‘Marion took in those kids nearly ten years ago, before I was with her. A few months after this photo was taken she got sick, Crohn’s disease. It was pretty bad and she couldn’t do the foster thing no more. Those two kids went back to their natural parents.’

Tess looked at him, wondering where this was leading, but suspecting this was just the beginning of the story.

‘The little girl was called Violet,’ he said, pointing to the young child in the wheelchair. ‘Marion heard rumours that Violet’s mother didn’t want her no more and, well, you can imagine how that made Marion feel; made her feel as if she let poor little Violet down. Then she heard the child had been put up for adoption. As it happened, Marion had met Violet’s mother a few times before and she tried to get back in touch with her, maybe persuade her to keep Violet, but it was too late, the mother had moved out of town. She didn’t care nothing for the kid. Anyways, before she knew it, child had gone to new parents.’