“Help others?” Kate echoed. “How can I think of helping others when I don’t even know if I have a home anymore?”
Or a living, I thought as I sat in the front seat of the car with Sir Marcus. Since the reading of the will would take place sometime after the funeral at Somner, I sympathized with Kate. Her nerves grew increasingly raw as her future hung in the balance.
Angela had already suspected the worst for Kate.
“That Fernald…he’s threatened her. She told me. He’ll blackmail her, too.” Her voice faded into silence and I joined her as she sat brooding on the edge of her bed.
“Oh, curse the weather! Fernald shouldn’t be in control. He’s enjoying the power. Power over poor Kate.”
“But you know he can’t arrest her while Roderick speaks for her.”
“He can.” Angela’s mouth set into a grim line. “He’s a little weed and he’s after some sport. Sir Marcus agrees with me. Ask him, if you like. You seem to respect his opinion more than mine.”
I was too tired to think upon it further and in no mood to humor Angela. The events of the day, compounded by the arrival of the Major waltzing his way into my world again, left me with a nasty headache. I wanted to do nothing but lie in the bath and read a book and hastened to the sanctuary of the next room.
“Oh, I was going in there just now.”
Arabella waylaid me, a towel draped over her arm.
“But you can go first, Daphne,” she added upon spying the book tucked under my arm.
Without her glasses, I thought her quite attractive, particularly with the tinge of color in her cheeks.
Astonished by her graciousness, I said I’d go second since she only intended to have a shower. She nodded and marched in, shutting the door promptly behind her.
Returning to the bedroom, I discovered Angela furtively shaking out her purse in the corner. She jerked when I entered, nervous, afraid, obviously not expecting my early return.
I noted her preoccupation with the bag.
“Lost my powder pack,” she sighed.
“Oh,” I said, but did not believe her. For a long time I had suspected Angela dabbled in the occasional use of a drug, opium or cocaine, I didn’t know which, and I didn’t want to know. No wonder she often spent weekends away, turning her nose up at our home performance nights. The racy crowd appealed to her sensibilities and I decided I should catch her out and report it to our parents for her own good. But not just yet.
The Major and his senior officers attended the funeral.
I was not unduly surprised by this, having prior experience of the Major’s aptitude for involving himself in affairs that seemed to be none of his concern. But perhaps they were, after all. I had to acknowledge the Major’s importance in the Padthaway case. However, he certainly could not have been sent here by officials when news of the murder had not yet reached the mainland. Or had it?
I dismissed the idea as soon as it came into my head. The news had shocked Kate too much to think of telephoning friends and relatives. Could Roderick have done it for her? As far as I knew, there weren’t many relations to be informed of Max’s demise. There was a Trevalyan aunt and a few cousins in America, but Lady Kate, as an adopted child, claimed no living relations. No doubt, there were hundreds of friends and acquaintances Kate could have notified, but I suspected she desired little attention.
The priest’s gloomy closing words and prayer at the funeral brought a stiffness to an already cold and emotionless atmosphere. Devoid of flowers, candles, and entirely lacking sorrowful adulations of grieving family members, it was the strangest funeral I’d ever attended. It was filled with nothing but silence.
There would be no graveside burial, considering the body’s state and nature of death.
Few locals occupied the empty seats, but I noticed one family, that of Jackson the gardener, sitting near Hugo on the last row.
“What d’you make of it?” Sir Marcus’s curious whisper tickled my ear. “Father, mother, daughter Rachael, and little grandson Connor.”
Our curiosity heightened when directly after the service, Roderick turned to receive and acknowledge the family. Kate’s face blanched at the sight of the clan.
“Spark of anger there,” Sir Marcus noted.
We watched their slow progression toward Jackson’s family. My interest remained on Jackson’s daughter and Max’s lover, Rachael: slim, wearing a tailored black suit and a pointed little black hat; her dark hair swept high off a strong brow where sloping eyebrows framed long-lashed dark eyes; a short nose and a reddened mouth. Yes, she was beautiful in an unearthly, unusual way.
“My word,” Sir Marcus whistled, “a fine-looking filly, if ever I saw one.”
Every man in the room noticed her. The Major and his attendants were in the pleasant process of forming her acquaintance when Roderick and Kate approached. Having strangers present probably helped Kate in formally acknowledging her late husband’s lover and his child. Entertained by Jackson, Connor, unquestionably Max’s son with the same wispy curls and wild good looks, merely stared up at the great lady staring down at him. Oblivious to her interest in him, he wrinkled his nose and clutched his mother’s hand.
Rod, Kate, and Jackson shared an exchange while Rachael maintained a dignified silence. She intrigued me, for she didn’t seem the kind of flighty girl Max Trevalyan fancied. Maybe having the child had changed her, and I assumed Max had paid handsomely for the mishap.
“Poor Katie girl,” Sir Marcus sympathized. “She did so want a baby awhile back…went to countless doctors, but nothing ever came of it.”
“This child was obviously born during the marriage. That must have been hard for Kate. But no matter how hard I try, I just can’t picture someone with such a serene face working as a maid, can you?”
“No,” Sir Marcus agreed, “but I have a tantalizing vision of her pulling out weeds…”
I rolled my eyes. To my detriment, the Major caught my expression. His brow lifting, he casually left the others to join us.
I hunted round for Angela. Strangely, she seemed deep in conversation with Arabella.
Blessedly, Sir Marcus stepped in to talk to the Major while I stood pale and still. I wished he would go away. I wished he’d not come to embroil himself in Somner House affairs.
“I have just met the charming Mrs. Eastley,” he began. “Jackson’s daughter.”
“Ah.” Sir Marcus looked significantly at me. “Do you know her?”
“Yes, she’s a widow. Her husband drowned five years ago.”
The widow romanced by the dissolute lord of the manor. Annoyed by the Major’s obtaining facts quicker than Sir Marcus and I, who were actually in residence at Somner, I lifted a haughty brow. “I suppose you know Mr. Fernald, too, and since you are so remarkably clever, why don’t you just tell us who killed Max Trevalyan and why?”
Sir Marcus whistled, disbelief clouding his good-natured face. “I, er, shall go and rescue your sister.”
He darted off quicker than I could say “I suppose you know Miss Woodford, too, Major.”
He continued to smirk. “The venomous tone doesn’t suit you, Daphne.”
“It is Miss du Maurier to you, thank you.”
“Miss du Maurier,” he obliged. “I have missed you these past months, as you have evidently missed me. Why else would you use the acid tongue on me?”
I stared at him in dismay.
He touched his ear. “What was that? I didn’t quite hear you?”
Aware that we were attracting attention, or rather, I’d solicited the unwanted attention by raising my voice, I endeavored to resurrect some sense of decorum. It was hard to be friendly and well-mannered when faced with such adversity. Yet it was better for me to retain a cool distance than to exhibit emotion where Major Browning was concerned, for he was a man whose arrogance mistook feeling for infatuation.
Yes, he thought every woman was in love with him.
Yes, that was his problem.
“Sorry,” Ang
ela said later as we hung our coats in the parlor of Somner House. “I got stuck talking to Bella Woodford. Thankfully, you had Sir Marcus with you. What’s the Major doing here? Don’t believe a gibbet about this stranded by bad weather business.”
“Oh, it’s not unusual at this time of year.” Kate had overheard us. “The coastal winds drive many island-bound.”
Angela asked how she knew the Major.
“He came to the club once or twice during the war,” she replied, a fondness softening her eyes. “He’s a kind man.”
Kind! My guffaw produced a warning glare from Angela.
“I’m not feeling well,” Kate admitted, swaying a little to the left.
“Then go and rest,” Angela advised, taking the weight of her coat from her and readjusting it on the hook. “I’ll check on you later.”
Nodding, Kate left.
“I’m for a lie-down, too,” Angela yawned, starting up the stairs.
“All for lie-downs, are we?” Complaining, Sir. Marcus waylaid me. “Daphne, I do hope I can persuade you to accompany me in a dash of arty asylum.”
Grinning, we made arrangements for a painting caper. I said I’d go and change first, dashing upstairs ahead of a silent-footed Bella. Feeling uncharitable for not including her, I asked if she wanted to join Sir Marcus and I, but she refused, resuming her usual sullen outlook. “No, thank you,” replied she, “my cousin and I have other plans.”
Oh, do you? I thought, hunting for my cardigan and catching Angela extracting a small packet out of her handbag. Slipping the item into her skirt pocket, she flopped onto her bed and rolled over to have a nap. Disturbed by the sight, I tried to banish it from my mind.
“My, my, you’re a ferocious painter,” Sir Marcus commented over my shoulder. “Striking up a literal storm. What represents the clouds today? MB or some unknown womanly complaint?”
“Not Major Browning.” I determined to be clear on that score. “My sister, actually.” I relayed what had happened in the room. “She behaves oddly sometimes. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Oh, I do.” Sir Marcus smiled.
I asked him to elaborate, but he didn’t seem to want to comply, uttering low, moaning sounds as I persisted. “Very well…but compose yourself for a shock.”
I nodded.
His brow arched. “I’m not convinced. In some ways, you are too innocent, Daphne. Charming trait, but not precisely worldly wise. You’ll have to wizen up if you’re to transcribe life to paper.”
My paintbrush wavered.
“All right.” Laying down his paintbrush, he faced me with a sigh. “Your sister, Angela, favors the female kind. There. I’ve said it.”
I stared at him, too shocked to speak. “No…she’s engaged to—”
“She won’t marry him. She won’t marry any man, if I am a correct reader of character, and I’d wager my best thorough-bred on that.”
“But…”
My voice faded into a tiny whisper and I found myself on a spiral of memories, each twisting and turning, and blindly, I followed the paths in my mind. “You may be right,” I eventually acquiesced, but it didn’t lessen the shock, and I wondered how my parents would take the news, if ever they learned of it.
“Oh.” I turned from him to hide my scarlet face. Angela…and Kate. The two faces in profile blurred before me, Kate’s unsure and tentative and Angela’s nurturing and devoted. No…surely it couldn’t be…
Yet had Sir Marcus stumbled upon something I didn’t want to acknowledge? Was it a secret kept so clandestine as to have played a hand in the murder of Max Trevalyan?
Chapter Eleven
The room was vacant when I returned.
I suspected Angela had gone to check on Kate. I also suspected she’d taken opium or laudanum, as a tonic for Kate.
A modest review of character suggested Kate may have dabbled occasionally in the usage of such dependents, but thinking back to the fear reflected in her eyes whilst enduring the horrors of her husband’s addiction, perhaps she rejected all forms, indignantly righteous and hating what it’d done to the man she once loved. I still believed she had loved Max when she married him. How soon afterward that changed, who could say?
The shades of love, I scribbled down in my journal, chewing on the edge of my pencil. I felt enormously inspired by the events at Somner and the reappearance of the Major, along with the jealousies he provoked in me.
I penned a short story about friends meeting at a party: suspicion, old feelings, and a romantic resolution. I thought of the general populace and how most readers preferred happy endings. But all endings weren’t happy, were they?
“Kate is beside herself.” Sweeping into the room, Angela threw herself into a chair. “I don’t know what to do. I tried to give her something to calm her, but she flatly refuses.”
“The package in your handbag?” I queried. “What is it?”
She looked away. “Oh, don’t go preachy on me. It’s relatively harmless…a friend passed it to me.”
“What news of Josh Lissot?”
Angela shook her head. “She’s upset over Josh. She wants to see him but Roderick said it wouldn’t be wise.”
I thought this was interesting, for if Roderick wanted to neatly involve Kate in the murder of her husband, he’d have encouraged, even taken, her to see the man suspected of killing her husband.
Angela chattered on about Josh, rolling her eyes at Kate’s anguish for the man she dubbed “as good as dead.” I dared to reply I believed Kate’s attachment to Mr. Lissot greater than the average affair d’amour, but my sister talked off this assessment and I had to accept her truth. She did care for Kate Trevalyan, passionately. Whether or not Kate returned her affections remained to be seen.
To divert my mind from the possibility of a romance between my sister and Kate, I raised the subject of the funeral. We discussed the attendance and I received sisterly advice once again regarding the Major.
“Oh, but I forgot to tell you about Bella.” Wrinkling her nose, a tiny smirk appeared at her lips. “I spoke to her at great length and, well, emotions are always unveiled at funerals and she positively hates Kate. Not that she said it, but I saw it in her dark little eyes, watching Rod fix up Kate’s shawl and that kind of thing. And she loathes that Eastley woman. Not that she said anything particular on that score either, but it appears Jackson’s been blackmailing Max for some time about the child and now that Max is dead, poor Rod’s been hampered with the burden.”
I thought of Roderick: the good man, keeper of his brother’s commitments. Of course, he’d honor any existing arrangement between Jackson and his daughter. “What does Mrs. Eastley do for work?”
“She works at the local tavern, I believe,” Angela said in a caustic tone.
I pictured Rachael Eastley catching Max’s eye and becoming pregnant, forced to confess the news to Max and her father. Kate, the wife who’d wanted a baby, must have been devastated to learn the truth and the possibility of a scandal, thus leaving the door open to blackmail. It was a story in and of itself.
“Oh,” Angela said offhandedly, “I thought you’d want to know. Rod has invited the Major and his officers to dinner tomorrow night. Apparently, Kate wished it.”
Despite my resolve, I felt an excitable apprehension upon hearing this news. The Major…here at Somner. It reminded me of the first time I met him, when he pretended to be a common fisherman for days before appearing at Ewe Sinclaire’s door, shining and respectable. Our spars then were no different from now. In fact, I think they’d worsened. I could not deny my attraction to the charismatic Major, yet I did not admit it at the time. And I never would, I vowed silently.
I knew why Kate had invited him and so did Angela. She wanted to enlist the Major’s support in helping her jailed lover. But did the Major carry any influence here, on the remote Isles of Scilly?
I doubted it.
I also doubted the respectableness of Mr. Fernald. He was too young to be investigating a murder. Did
anybody know anything about him? His family? Background? Connections? Friends?
Oh, for an Ewe Sinclaire! I missed her frank aptness for village gossip, always reliable and for the most part, accurate in her colorful reportage. What does one do without essential village gossip?
I posed this sad dilemma to Sir Marcus when next we met.
“We could try the hunchback…yes, I’m in for a spot of culinary endeavors. To the kitchen and Hugo we fare.”
It was the hour before dinner.
“I don’t think Hugo will like us interfering in his domain,” I tried to warn, but Sir Marcus marched on ahead.
Everything appeared orderly when we arrived. A simple meal, roasted chicken, lay warm in its oven and we found Hugo crouched over stirring some kind of sauce mixed with tomatoes, potatoes, and carrots.
His daunting, lopsided brow struck up at our noisy interruption. Wiping his hands across his apron, he grunted. “What d’you want? Sir? Miss?”
No pleasantries there. Recognizing his fault, he colored a little and repeated the question with the appropriate softening tones, his watchful eyes intent on Sir Marcus jovially inspecting the kitchen.
Embarrassed, I shrugged my shoulders while Sir Marcus blithely dithered around, proclaiming the excellence of several archaic utensils, saying, “Yes, yes, we can use that.”
“Use what, milord?” Abandoning his sauce, the hunchback followed Sir Marcus about the room.
“I am certain Lord Trevalyan would have said we have special guests tomorrow night? Well, Hugo, this is your lucky day. Miss Daphne and I are here to help. We’ll provide three of the dishes.”
Hugo looked dumbfounded. “Three?”
“Yes, three.”
“Did, er, his lordship—”
“Indeed, he has,” Sir Marcus affirmed, shepherding me around the kitchen to share his vision for our three dishes.
I lifted an incredulous brow. He hadn’t asked Roderick at all. It was a complete falsehood that Sir Marcus made up for during dinner later that day.
“You wish to cook for us?” Rod was astounded.
Peril at Somner House Page 9