It often seemed to Eric that he was trapped and that he had been from the moment of his birth. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been attached to his mother, not as part of her family but as a sort of appendage, tied to her apron strings. His father had been a captain in the army and he had actually been excited when the Great War kicked off, dreaming of medals and glory and putting one over on the Boche. In fact, all he’d got was a bullet in the head in some faraway place that Eric couldn’t even spell. He had been seven years old when the telegram came and he still remembered his feelings . . . or lack of them. He had been unable to mourn a man he hardly knew.
He and his mother were already living in Tawleigh-on-the-Water, in a cottage so small they were always having to step aside to allow one another to pass. Eric hadn’t done well at school and did odd jobs in the village, working at the pub, the butcher’s shop, the harbour . . . but never for long. Although he was the right age for conscription when the Second World War began, there was never any chance of that. He had been born with a club foot. When he was growing up, the boys had called him Lumpy and the girls had ignored him, sniggering when they saw him limping up the street. He had joined the Local Defence Volunteers, but even they had been reluctant to have him in their company.
The war had ended. Melissa James had come to Tawleigh and Phyllis had gone into service. Given no real choice in the matter, Eric had gone with her. She was the housekeeper and cook. He was the butler, the chauffeur, the gardener, the general handyman. But not the washer-up. That had never been part of the deal.
He was forty-three years old now and he was beginning to see that this was his life. These were the cards that he had been dealt. He would clean the car and polish the silver and ‘Yes, Miss James’ and ‘No, Miss James,’ and even in the best suit that she had bought him and which she insisted he must wear when he drove her into town, he was still Lumpy. He always would be.
He took a bite out of the florentine, which had cooled a little, and tasted the butter as it oozed over his tongue. That was also part of the trap. She cooked. He got fat.
‘If you’re hungry, there are coconut biscuits in the tin,’ Phyllis said, adopting a kinder tone of voice.
‘They’re stale.’
‘I can put them in the oven for a few minutes and they’ll be fine.’
Even when she was being nice to him, she managed to humiliate him. Was he supposed to be grateful to her because she was offering him the leftovers that Melissa James and her friends didn’t want? Sitting at the table, Eric felt the anger rise up inside him. He had noticed that recently it had become darker and much more difficult to control; not just the anger but other emotions too. He wondered if he should talk to Dr Collins, who had treated him on several occasions for minor infections and calluses. Dr Collins always seemed friendly enough.
But he knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell anyone what he was feeling because at the end of the day it wasn’t his fault and there was nothing he could do about it. It was better kept locked up inside him, his secret.
Unless Phyllis knew. Sometimes, the way she looked at him, he wondered.
There was a movement at the door. Melissa James appeared, walking into the kitchen wearing high-waisted trousers, a silk shirt and a page-boy jacket with gold-coloured buttons. Eric got quickly to his feet, leaving the half-eaten florentine on the table. Phyllis turned round, wiping her hands on her apron as if to signal how busy she had been.
‘No need to get up, Eric,’ Melissa said. She had been born in England but had spent so long working in Hollywood that some of her words had a distinct American twang. ‘I’m just going into Tawleigh . . .’
‘Can I drive you, Miss James?’
‘No. I’ll take the Bentley.’
‘I’ve just finished cleaning it.’
‘Thank you. That’s great!’
‘What time would you like dinner this evening?’ Phyllis asked.
‘That’s what I came in to say. Francis is going into Barnstaple tonight. I’ve got a slight headache so I’m going to take an early night.’
There it was again, Eric thought. An Englishwoman would have ‘had’ an early night, not ‘taken’ it. Melissa wore her Americanisms like cheap jewellery.
‘I can warm up some soup if you like.’ Phyllis sounded concerned. To her way of thinking, soup was the equivalent of medicine, only more effective.
‘Actually, I thought you might like to see your sister. Eric can drive you over in the Bentley.’
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Miss James.’
Phyllis’s sister – Eric’s aunt – lived in Bude, further down the coast. She hadn’t been well recently and it was possible she might have to have an operation.
‘I’ll be back by six. Once I’m in, you two head off and have a nice evening.’
Eric had fallen silent. It was always the same when Melissa James came into the room. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. It wasn’t just that she was a remarkably attractive woman. She was also a film star. There was hardly anyone in England who wouldn’t recognise her blonde hair with its almost boyish cut, her brilliant blue eyes, the smile made somehow more appealing by the faintest scar at the corner of her mouth. Even after all these years working for her, Eric couldn’t quite believe that she was actually in the room with him. When he looked at her, it was as if he was in the cinema and she was five times bigger than him, on the screen.
‘I’ll see you later then.’ Melissa turned on her heel and walked out of the room.
‘You’d better take an umbrella, miss! It looks like rain,’ Phyllis called after her.
Melissa answered with a single raised hand. And then she had gone.
Phyllis waited a few seconds before she turned on Eric. ‘What do you think you were doing?’ she demanded, angrily.
‘What do you mean?’ Eric braced himself.
‘You were staring at her.’
‘I was doing no such thing!’
‘Eyes like saucers!’ Phyllis rested her hands on her hips in true Mrs Tiggy-Winkle mode. ‘You’re going to get us both thrown out of here if you behave like that.’
‘Mum . . .’ Eric felt the violence, rising in waves.
‘Sometimes I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Eric. Sitting here all the time, on your own. It’s not healthy.’
Eric closed his eyes. Here it comes again, he thought.
‘You should have found yourself a young lady by now, someone to walk out with. I know you’re not much to look at and you’ve got that foot of yours – but even so! There’s that girl at the Moonflower. Nancy. I know her mother. They’re a perfectly nice family. Why don’t you invite her over to tea?’
He allowed her to prattle on, her voice fading into the distance. One day, he knew, he would have had enough. He wouldn’t be able to control himself any more. And what then?
He had no idea.
* * *
Melissa James came out of the kitchen and crossed the hall on her way to the front door. The floor was uncarpeted and almost automatically, not thinking what she was doing, she walked as quietly as possible, her feet making no sound on the wooden floor. It would be so nice to leave the house without another confrontation. Didn’t she have enough on her mind already?
Phyllis had been right. It did look as if more rain was on its way – it had barely stopped all week – but she had no intention of taking an umbrella. Melissa had always thought of umbrellas as ridiculous inventions. Either the rain swept in underneath them or the wind tried to tug them out of your hand. She would only use one if someone else was holding it for her, when she was on set or when she got out of a car at a movie premiere. But that was different. That was what was expected of her. Right now, she reached out for the raincoat on the hatstand by the door and draped it over her shoulders.
She had bought Clarence Keep in a moment of madness – at a time when she could buy almost anything without giving the cost any thought. It was an odd name for a house. A keep was the stron
gest part of a castle, a last resort. But that wasn’t at all what she had intended it to be. And although she had fallen in love with it the moment she saw it, it looked nothing like a castle.
Clarence Keep was a Regency folly built by a military commander, Sir James Clarence, who had fought in the American War of Independence and who had gone on to become governor of Jamaica. Perhaps that was where he had found his inspiration as the house he had built was largely made of wood, painted a dazzling white, with elegant windows looking out onto wide, empty lawns that dropped down towards the sea. A wide veranda ran either side of the front door and there was a balcony coming off the main bedroom, which was directly above. The lawns were perfectly flat and an intense, almost tropical green. Only the palm trees were missing. The house could have belonged on a plantation.
It was said that Queen Victoria had once stayed there. It had briefly belonged to William Railton, the architect who had designed Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. When Melissa had found it, Clarence Keep had long been abandoned and she had taken it on in the full knowledge that it would cost a lot of money to restore it to its Regency prime. Just how much money, though, had come as an unpleasant surprise. She had no sooner dealt with the dry rot than the damp presented itself as the next challenge. Flood damage, foundation failure, subsidence and a dozen other problems had queued up for her autograph, in each case on the front of a cheque. Had it finally been worth it? The house was beautiful. She loved living there, waking up with the sea views and the sound of the breaking waves, strolling in the garden (when the weather allowed), hosting weekend parties. But sometimes she thought that the fight had exhausted her in more ways than one.
Financially, certainly.
How had she allowed things to get so out of hand? It had been five years since she had made a film in Hollywood, three years since she had done any acting work at all. She had completely thrown herself into life in Tawleigh-on-the-Water, finishing the house, extending her business interests, playing tennis and bridge, horse riding, making friends . . . getting married. It was as if she had decided to turn her life into the greatest part she had ever played. Of course, her bank manager had warned her. Her accountants had written to her. She still remembered her agents screaming down the phone at her from New York. But Melissa had been enjoying herself too much to listen to them. She had made a string of successful films in England and in America. Her face had been on the front covers of Woman’s Weekly, Life and even (after she had played opposite James Cagney) True Detective. She would work when she needed to work. She was Melissa James. When she chose to make her comeback, she would be even bigger than she had been before.
It had to be soon. Somehow, she had allowed the bills to mount up to such an extent that they almost took her breath away. She was paying five salaries. She was supporting a boat and two horses. The business she had bought – the Moonflower Hotel – was full for at least half the year and should have been making her a handsome profit. Instead, it was running at a loss. She had been assured that her investments were doing well but so far they hadn’t actually returned any profit. Worse still, as both her British and her American agents had explained, there might not be quite as many film parts for her as she had expected. It seemed that, having turned forty, she had moved into a new marketplace. There were younger actresses – Jayne Mansfield, Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor – who had inherited her mantle. Suddenly she was being asked to play their mother! And the worst of it was that being the mother didn’t pay.
Still, Melissa refused to worry. When she had started out years ago, as a bit-part actress in the cheap ‘quota quickies’ that British producers had made simply because they were forced to, she had dreamed of the day when she would be an international star. She had known with absolute certainty that it would happen. She was the sort of person who always got what she wanted. And that was exactly how she felt now. Only that morning she had received a wonderful script, a thriller in which she would play the lead part, a woman whose husband tried to murder her and who then framed her when the attempt went wrong. It was going to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which meant that it would certainly be a box-office hit. It was true that the part hadn’t actually been offered to her. She was going to have to meet Mr Hitchcock in London when he arrived in a couple of weeks. But Melissa was confident. The part could have been written for her and, she reflected, as soon as she got into a room with the screenwriters, she would make sure that it was.
All these thoughts had gone through her mind as she walked to the door, but before she could open it she heard footsteps behind her and knew at once that it was Francis Pendleton, her husband, coming down the stairs. For a brief moment she thought about continuing on her way, leaving the house as if she hadn’t heard him. But that would never work. Better not to make a thing of it.
She turned and smiled. ‘I’m just going out,’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘The hotel. I want to talk to the Gardners.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No! No need! I’ll only be half an hour.’
It was funny how much more difficult it was to act when you weren’t facing cameras, lights and a crowd of about fifty people, when the lines hadn’t been written for you, when you had effectively to be yourself. Melissa was trying to look relaxed, to pretend that everything was all right. But her co-performer wasn’t playing the game. In fact he was looking at her with deep suspicion.
She had met Francis on the set of the last film she had made in England, the reason she had come back to her country of birth. Hostage to Fortune had been a disappointing thriller based on a novel by John Buchan in which Melissa had played a young mother searching for her kidnapped daughter. Some of the scenes had been shot in Devon, on Saunton Sands, and Francis had been assigned to her as a personal assistant. Although he was ten years younger than her, there had been an immediate chemistry between them that had warned her exactly where things might lead. Not that a romance during filming was anything new. In fact, Melissa couldn’t remember a film she had made where she hadn’t found herself romantically involved with either another actor or a member of the crew. But this time it had been different. Somehow, when the final scene had wrapped and everyone had gone their separate ways, Francis had still been there and she had realised that he had come to the conclusion that their relationship should be a permanent one.
And why not? Francis was good-looking, with his curly hair, his tanned skin and his excellent physique, the latter two gained on their sailing boat, the Sundowner. He was intelligent and, most important of all, utterly devoted to her. Nor was the match as unbalanced as it might seem. His parents were wealthy, his father a viscount with a twenty-thousand-acre estate in Cornwall. He was actually the Honourable Francis Pendleton and although he would inherit neither the land nor the title and had chosen never to use the honorific, he was still highly eligible. When the engagement had been announced, they had appeared in every single gossip column in the London newspapers and it had occurred to Melissa that when she did finally return to Hollywood and walked into the Polo Lounge or the Chateau Marmont with an extremely handsome, sophisticated British aristocrat on her arm, she would be sending exactly the right message about herself.
Francis had been the only person to support Melissa in the purchase of Clarence Keep. More than that, he had encouraged her and now she understood why. First of all, it was close to his home territory. The family estate was in the next county and although his parents no longer spoke to him – they had been unimpressed by what they had read in the gossip columns – this was exactly the lifestyle he had always wanted. He didn’t help with the hotel or the horses or anything, really. He didn’t even get out of bed before ten. He had become the lord of his own manor with his tropaeum uxor, or trophy wife.
She looked at him now, standing at the foot of the stairs wearing a blue blazer and white trousers, as if he was about to go out sailing on the yacht they could no longer afford, clenching and unclench
ing his fists as he struggled to find the right words to say. It seemed to her that he had become more and more ineffectual. Sometimes, quite often in fact, she blamed him for the decisions she had made as if it had always been his plan to fold her into his world.
‘I think we need to talk,’ he said.
‘Not now, Francis. The ghastly Gardners are waiting for me.’
‘Well, when you get back, then . . .’
‘I thought you were going out tonight.’
He frowned. ‘We both are.’
‘No.’ She pouted. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I’ve got a headache. You will forgive me, won’t you? I’m going to take an early night.’
‘Well, if you’re not coming, I won’t go either.’
Melissa sighed. This was the last thing she wanted. She’d already worked out what she was going to do with an evening on her own. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘You’ve been looking forward to the opera for weeks and you know you enjoy it more on your own. You always say I fall asleep in the second act.’
‘That’s because you do.’
‘I don’t like it. I don’t understand the stories. They never make any sense.’ This wasn’t going to work if it became a confrontation. She went over to him and laid a hand on his arm. ‘You enjoy yourself, Francis. I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment with the hotel and the new script and everything else. We can talk tomorrow or the day after.’ She tried to make light of it. ‘I’m not going anywhere!’
But Francis took her last words quite seriously. Before she could move her hand he took hold of it, pressing it tightly against his arm. ‘You are going to stay with me, Melissa. You know I still love you. I’d do anything for you.’
‘I know. You don’t need to tell me that.’
‘I’d die if you left me. I couldn’t live without you.’
‘Stop being silly, Francis.’ She tried to break free but he was still holding her. ‘I can’t talk now,’ she insisted. ‘Anyway . . .’ she lowered her voice ‘ . . . Eric and his mother are in the kitchen.’
Moonflower Murders Page 19