Peril at Somner House

by Joanna Challis

  “No. I prefer the darker Brontës. The Tenant of Wildfell or Wuthering Heights.”

  “You’re a pessimist,” he mused. “A romantic pessimist.”

  “I beg to differ. I am not in the least romantic.”

  “All writers are romantics.”

  His keen gaze drifted over my person. I colored under the intensity. The man possessed a magnetism and he knew how to use it.

  “Mrs. Eastley is charming, is she not?”

  “Charming?” the Major goaded, sitting down, cupping his chin in his hands as he studied me in languid repose. “Yes, she is a charming mother…a mother protecting the interests of her child.”

  My eyes met his candid expression. “Perhaps…perhaps she’s afraid…afraid her son might fall with a sudden accident like his father if she contests the will. I thought her merely noble but it’s sense directing her…sense and fear.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” said the Major as I drew in a quick breath. He grinned. “What else have you deduced, Inspector du Maurier?”

  His playful voice failed to lure me out of my silent reflections.

  “I see you and Sir Marcus have become very friendly.”

  “Very,” I agreed.

  He cleared his voice and did I imagine it, or did momentary distaste flicker in those dark eyes? “You intend to marry him?”

  Now I was the one to suffer shock. Marry Sir Marcus!

  “The notion hasn’t occurred to you? You astonish me.”

  I replied at length. “I feel as if you’re making a running commentary on my love life. I would appreciate if you would desist.”

  He bowed, his lips tugging in amusement. “Your sister, on the other hand—”

  “Oh, please, don’t speak of her,” I implored, and perhaps the desperate note appealed to his sense of honor. He did not press me on the subject, but instead made move to return.

  When we rejoined the party, they were in the process of packing up the equipment. I went back to my easel. Mr. Davis had started to attend to my brushes, washing and drying them and laying them back in the container.

  “Forgive me, Miss du Maurier,” he said, “but I thought you’d finished.”

  “Yes, I have. Thank you…it was kind of you.”

  He smiled. “The last thing anybody wants to do is clean up. Painting’s such a messy business.” He half grinned at the blue streak running down his sleeve. “And what’s worse, I’m a dismal failure!”

  “Can’t be as bad as Bella’s,” Angela laughed as she and Kate led the others back to the house. She certainly had assumed an aristocratic and haughty confidence.

  Mr. Davis offered to carry my easel, and together we crossed the green. “Your sister’s an actress? Is she a very good friend of Kate’s?”

  “Yes, very. They’ve known each other since the war. When did you first meet Max, Mr. Davis?”

  “At school.” He chuckled at some distant memory. “We were inseparable, much to our detriment and our parent’s distress.”

  Having learned something of Max Trevalyan’s character, I well understood this inference. Two boys, embarking on adventures, often led to trouble. I pictured the school expellings, lectures, times of enforced distance, and unauthorized reconciliations.

  “My father and Max’s parents both passed away during the war,” Mr. Davis went on. “They were vastly relieved we both had an occupation by then.”

  A shadow crossed his face, transporting him to a faraway place. Perhaps to the good old times, those school summer days, training and relaxing at the club between missions, and now…his best friend dead under highly suspicious circumstances.

  He did not, I found out over a subsequent pot of tea, attribute any blame to Kate, as he casually referred to Max’s less than desirable qualities. And she, in turn, regarded Mr. Davis as something of a savior.

  “Dear Peter,” I overheard her sighing to the Major, her hand resting over her heart, “he’s shielded me from so many bad moments. The three of us had many laughs, too,” she added gaily.

  But the gaiety rang false. Her feelings seemed to remain with Josh Lissot, no longer in residence at Somner playing the charlatan. Did she feel love or guilt? Guilt because he suffered the crime of protecting her? Or love beyond the playful affair?

  Time would prove the decider. For now, she appeared concerned only with helping Josh escape the hangman’s noose.

  Angela, for one, rejoiced in their separation. “It’s just what Kate needs,” she told me. “Time and distance from all men.”

  After tea, the Major and his lieutenants took their leave, and I strolled out to the front of the house to bid them farewell. His fingers lingered over mine in parting and I shook them free. He’d return. All too soon for my liking.

  “You won’t believe it,” Sir Marcus relayed to me later. “The Major’s agreed to assist our Katie girl.”

  I feigned a tepid interest, though I was desperate to learn more.

  “He’s off to see Fernald now, I wager. Let’s see what becomes of it, shall we?”

  I went to the library that afternoon.

  So lost in my loving exploration of the upper shelves, I failed to note the presence of someone else in the room.

  “Are you interested in history books, Daphne?”

  Roderick adorned the armchair by the window, his sleeve cuff emerging from the large book he held.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you.” I swallowed and hastened to the door.

  “Why leave?”

  Words failed and the question floated above us unanswered, like a swirling summer’s leaf.

  “Don’t go,” he urged, this time leaving the security of his chair.

  I faltered as hearing those resonant tones from Roderick seemed as out of place as I felt.

  “We have many books at Somner…I trust one of them tempts you?”

  I raised my eyes upward, along his tall, masculine frame. I realized a smile tempered his lips.

  “The tower tempts me, in fact…I should like to see it again,” I blurted, searching for something to say.

  After I quickly took my leave, I called myself a complete idiot. I was no blubbering female. What uneased me about him? He was not a dashing, heroic lord, but a mystery I couldn’t quite decipher. Could his mystery conceal a murderer?

  Chapter Fifteen

  I saw Kate before dinner.

  The events of the day had left me bone weary. Time for a cavelike retreat, a warm meal in bed, and a good book. However, I considered it my duty to seek out Kate first. She was seated at the dressing table of her room looking pensive, blankly staring at the mirror, reflecting in some private thought that troubled her. I hadn’t properly seen her room, this room on the lower level down the hall from the breakfast parlor where I’d caught her and Josh Lissot. The room, a former sunroom of a curious L-shaped design where rows of arched mullioned windows spanned around the corner, possessed the best light in the house and I could see why she’d chosen it. The windows alone were the finest in Somner, one wrought-iron latch left open on the window facing full west to allow in the light and the fresh, salty sea breeze.

  Unlike her retreat room abovestairs, the decorations in her lower quarters followed the African theme of the house. From the giant old-world four-poster bed dominating the end corner with its sweeping white silken drapes and spiraling towers, to the multicolored weave rugs lining the faded carpet, it was a room for artists and lovers. Filled with warmth, vibrancy, paintings, chaos, mess, order, it was a room to indulge every whim.

  A faint smile touched Kate’s lips. “Oh, it’s you, Daphne. I thought it might be Angela.”

  Putting aside her grim thoughts, she resumed a cavalier attitude, remarking on the day and its endeavors, how nice it was that Angela arranged the painting outdoors, and adding the odd tease or two with reference to Major Browning. She also mentioned Peter, her brows lifting quizzically regarding him. “You’ve quite a few beaus to choose from at present. Who’s the current favorite?”

 
; “I saw Mr. Lissott this morning,” I said, avoiding the subject.

  Face drawn and eyes downcast, she listened gravely to everything I had to say.

  “I feel dreadful,” she confessed, rising from her chair. “Josh and I…”

  “You don’t have to explain,” I murmured. “If the Major presents this information—”

  “Yes!” Her eyes glowed new hope. “That is the answer. He’s the only one who can talk sense to Fernald.” She shivered. “I don’t like Fernald…there’s something about him.”

  Yes, I felt that way, too.

  “Oh, Daphne.” She embraced me. “I’m so glad you and Angela came to Somner…what do you think of her portrait?”

  I stopped to critically appraise the painting by the open window Kate promptly shut. She’d captured Angela’s facial expression perfectly, her languid pose a trifle daringly sensual. My parents wouldn’t approve, but of course I said no such thing to Kate. I gave a polite response, seasoned with the appropriate praise and admiration, and asked what she intended to do with it.

  “Showcase it in a new exhibition,” she divulged. “I’ve been working on a few pieces for a while.” The hope suddenly vanished from her eyes. “Josh and I were going to do one together, with Sir Marcus’s backing.”

  “Will you still go ahead?”

  “I don’t know. How could I when he…when he—”

  “May swing for the murder of your husband?” I summed up dispassionately. I didn’t mean to sound so brutal. Perhaps it was the writer within me, painting the plain facts as they stood. “I’m sure the Major will point Mr. Fernald—”

  “Yes, yes,” she cut in, her voice becoming a distant echo, “but if Josh didn’t do it, then who did?”

  The same question haunted me into the next day as I ate my breakfast.

  It could be anyone, any resident at Somner or nearby on the night of the murder.

  One fact remained glaringly clear. Whoever had disfigured Max’s face had a propensity for violence. Jackson appeared to be the mostly likely candidate. Perhaps he’d consulted legal advice and learned that two witnesses were required on the will and had come to Somner that night with the intention of rectifying the problem? On his pursuit for the master of the house, he’d found him lying on the path leading to the beach. He’d seen him there so vulnerable, and anger coiled inside of him when he thought of his cheated daughter and grandson and then—

  “Miss du Maurier, does a visit to the tower suit you now?”

  Roderick Trevalyan loomed out of his chair at the head of the breakfast table.

  I smiled and replied that visits to towers always suited me, noting on my quick ascent to fetch a shawl that he’d dressed in his overalls. Did he intend to work in the boatshed? Intrigued by this prospect, and keen to get away before Bella heard of our plan and invited herself along, I met him outside.

  “You are a very contrary man,” I began upon reaching the beach track.

  “Contrary?”

  I decided to see whether it was possible to tease Roderick Trevalyan. “Why, yes. You are born to be lord of the manor, and still you favor the man of the land archetype. Or are you,” I paused to reflect, “Hermit of the Tower?”

  He laughed. A pleasant sound, musical, alert, alive.

  “Well,” I prompted, “which is it?”

  “All and none,” came the eventual rejoinder.

  “No girlfriends or wives to change your ways?”

  “None,” he laughed again.

  “All the better for it, perhaps,” I went on. Did he truly feel comfortable with me? “Some are unhappy unions.”

  He nodded in silent agreement.

  Then he said, “If you were thinking of my brother and Kate…theirs was a dismal fate. I shall not speak ill of the dead, but my brother was not a good man. He wasn’t a kind man. Partly because of the war and partly because he’d always been that way.”

  I nodded. “Erratic. Unpredictable. Cruel.”

  His brows drew together at “cruel.”

  “He couldn’t help it. He destroyed everything closest to him. Even his friends turned away from him, except Davis and Kate. She’s been a good wife to him and tried to keep up the pretense.”

  “Of the happily married couple,” I finished, noting the sudden pallor of his face. Following his gaze to the cordoned-off section of the track, I led him past it. “I’ve spoken a little to Mr. Davis,” I admitted, putting on my shoes as we reached the end of the strip to climb up the hill. “Friends at school. Friends during the war…what happened over there probably preserved the friendship for all time.”

  Roderick nodded. “Yes. Davis saved him. Has done so on many occasions.”

  Mercifully, the wind had lessened its assault and I enjoyed the trudge up the hill. “Kate said the same thing.” We reached the tower door and I paused to appreciate its Baltic beauty. “I am so envious. I should love to live in a tower like this.” Or a lighthouse. Or a castle. I wasn’t fussy. My wild ramblings managed to extract another low chuckle from Roderick.

  Drawn first to the bookcase in the tower’s library, my fingers soon located a book hidden at the back.

  “Oh, not that one!”

  Roderick Trevalyan seemed most insistent to the point of desperation.

  I held the book from him. “I’m no missish prude. Can’t I at least read the title?”

  Holding the book out of his grasp, I gave him a beguiling smile. “Aha! I see you are a romantic soul at heart.” Lord Byron’s verses. It was an entire book devoted to romantic love, its pitfalls, its euphoric allurement. The subject interested me vastly, and I asked if I might borrow it.

  His secret passion for poetry thus detected, my companion retained a decidedly darkened expression.

  As he began a monotone tour of his beloved tower, I noted that the tribal decorations alluded to Kate’s strong influence in his life.

  “She’s my sister-in-law!” He became stricken at the suggestion.

  “Yet she’s a…femme fatale,” I crossed the line cautiously.

  Roderick sat down with a sigh. He hung his head in his hands. “Once, she came here, once,” he reiterated. “It was over Max again. She came here to escape. She wanted to stay for a time.”

  “Did you let her?” I asked.

  “Yes, but not as you imagine it. I’d not touch my brother’s wife. I’m not that sort of man.”

  I was impressed.

  “I do care for her,” he went on, guarded, yet eager to unload the burden he’d been carrying for far too long. “I did care for her”—he paused, perhaps wondering how much to confess—“in a wrong sense, for a time. She was my brother’s wife and all I wanted to do was to protect her…from him.”

  It appeared many men were in the business of protecting Kate Trevalyan. She had three chivalrous knights: Josh Lissot, Roderick Trevalyan, and now, I daresay, Major Browning.

  “She stayed at the tower a few times,” he continued, looking around his chamber for the fleeting memory of her. “I slept in the boatshed.”

  “But most of the time they remained in London?”

  “Yes. Max was only interested in weekend parties and the like, never the land.”

  I caught a glimpse of righteous indignation underlying the thin layers of his guarded tone. The biblical passage suddenly blazed through my mind, “you have been weighed in the balances and have been found deficient.”

  A chill scalded me. If a family’s honor and survival depended on the removal of one member, was Roderick Trevalyan the kind of man to murder and disfigure his own brother?

  No, I couldn’t believe it of him. I’d sooner suspect Arabella of a private vendetta than Roderick.

  Yet the fact remained. He had a strong motive for removing his brother, permanently.

  Roderick and I deepened our friendship that day. For some unknown reason, this man of intense privacy and few words liked me. Perhaps he’d thought me a dowd when I’d first entered Somner House. Winter forbid extravagant dressing, but under Ka
te’s skillful élan I had emerged, I am daring enough to say, a beauty.

  I had enjoyed the attention, especially from the Major.

  Sir Marcus remarked upon the attraction. “Have you settled your differences then, Daphne girl?”

  He’d taken a liking to calling me Daphne girl, after the fashion of Katie girl, which I despised. I reminded Sir Marcus he lacked the appropriate Irish heritage to behave in this glib fashion, but it amused him.

  “The Irish hide nothing.” He grinned, marching smartly into Hugo’s forbidden domain. “Unlike you and the Major, and all members of this house for that matter,” he added, his purpose clear as we descended upon the kitchen.

  Hugo scurried away.

  “Never thought I’d live to see the day a hunchback turns into a frightened rabbit,” mused Sir Marcus, swinging a kitchen hand towel Hugo had left on the cutting table. “I daresay he is troubled, for dinner was not au fait last night.”

  Unequivocally, I accepted his assessment.

  “The meat was half cooked and those carrots! They tasted like bricks!”

  “So you’re claiming the apron tonight?” I asked.

  He nodded, gaily inspecting the supplies. I shook my head with a gentle laugh, declining to participate and deciding on a walk instead.

  Rachael Eastley lived in a ramshackle cottage on the outskirts of the main town. It was a two-story cottage resembling a townhouse divided by a thick hedge of overgrown shrubbery. Up above a balcony looking out to sea, strands of wisteria and ivy scaled down the dark gray stone brick walls.

  Opening the tall, thin, rusty gate, I dodged a jagged ensemble of mismatched cobbles up to the front door, hoping I’d find her at home. I knew she worked at the local pub, but three o’clock in the afternoon seemed a safe time to visit.

  A moment’s hesitation gripped me before I knocked on the painted red door. I knew nothing of this woman or how she’d take to me showing up in my Sunday best. I don’t know why I chose to dress thus, even snatching one of Angela’s hats to wear at the last moment. Perhaps I felt the need to present myself in a professional sense, like one of my mother’s important social calls.