Valley of the Ravens

by Nancy Buckingham

  So at least I knew now who had sent that note. But what about the porringer? For that Nadine would have needed help, a willing accomplice to hide it in my bedroom. Was it her maid, I wondered, or Thirza? Or Oscar, perhaps? Or even Ginny?

  I felt an urge to fling accusations at Nadine, to tell her how wretched she had made me by her mean and childish attempts to drive me away from Farracombe. But my compassion was too great. Instead, I said in a quiet voice, “You’ve been trying to turn Ginny against me, haven’t you?”

  There was a pause, then she nodded again.

  “I have been selfish about Ginny, poor child,” she said in a whisper. “When you came, I saw signs of her slipping away from me, and I wanted to cling to her. It was only too easy for you to steal her affection, Sarah—and so difficult for me to hold on to it.”

  “How could you have thought that I wanted to steal Ginny’s affection?” I asked reproachfully. “My only wish has been to help her. Ginny desperately needs help, Nadine. She is such a lonely child, and beset by irrational fears. She has merely to catch sight of a raven to be plunged into a state of terror.”

  Nadine sighed. “I have tried—heaven knows I have tried to cure her of such foolishness. But all to no avail.” Impulsively, she leaned forward and held out both hands to me. “Let us make a pact, you and I, Sarah. Let us determine that from now on we shall work together to make Ginny a normal, happy child again.”

  “Willingly,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

  But could it possibly work? I wondered. In spite of this newly found understanding between us, the barriers of distrust still lingered. Was it Nadine who had been responsible for sending Finchy away, for example, and for the subsequent interception of the letters between her and Ginny? I considered challenging Nadine on these points, forcing everything into the open. But perhaps for Ginny’s sake the questions were best left unput, and unanswered.

  There was yet another question, however. A question it was no business of mine to ask, according to Oscar.

  “What is the matter, Sarah?” inquired Nadine. “You look—distressed.”

  In the silence, I heard the kettle begin to simmer above the little blue flame of the spirit lamp.

  “There is something I don’t understand,” I said at last. “How can you love a man, as you say you love Jerome, and yet deceive him? Last night at dinner, he was clearly very shocked that you had concealed your stay in Monte Carlo from him. What made you do it, Nadine? What did it matter if Jerome knew you had been there?”

  I expected her to react with swift anger, but instead she turned her head away and began to cry. She fumbled in the sleeve of her peignoir, then said, “Please, Sarah, would you fetch me a handkerchief from the chest over there. The second drawer down.”

  I got up at once to do as she asked. By the time I returned to the sofa, Nadine had calmed herself.

  “It’s an unhappy story, Sarah,” she began, wiping away her tears. “And even now, even though Jerome is so angry with me, I still cannot bring myself to tell him all of it. But I will tell you. It will be a relief to confide in another woman, someone who can understand.” She paused, hanging back on the very brink of confession, and I thought that she had changed her mind. But then she went on, falteringly, “As I expect you know, Aunt Thirza brought us up, Oscar and me. Her income was only modest, so when we went to live with her after both our parents had died, it meant a considerable sacrifice to her. But she never once complained or showed any sign of resentment. I used to hope that we would be able to make it up to her when we grew up, but alas my wretched brother repaid her kindness by running wild when he grew up. He developed a mania for gambling, and sometimes he would go off for days or weeks at a time, always coming home heavily in debt, and relying on poor Aunt Thirza to find the money….”

  Nadine broke off, staring somberly into the flames of the fire, as though she were seeing into the past.

  “Oh, what do the sordid details matter?” she continued with a sigh. “Suffice it to say that Oscar got himself into serious trouble in Monte Carlo, and cabled home for help. We both went out there at once, and Aunt Thirza again paid his gambling debts. Then immediately he went off once more, and when we next heard from him he was in trouble in Baden-Baden. That time, Aunt Thirza had to sell her last remaining jewelry, but at least it had the result of making Oscar feel ashamed. He gave us his solemn oath that he would never gamble again, and he has kept his word to this day.” She looked at me in a plea for understanding. “My brother is not entirely bad, Sarah.”

  I remembered what Jerome had once said about Oscar’s saving grace.

  “He is deeply devoted to you, Nadine,” I murmured in reply. “Anyone can see that.”

  “Yes, our closeness had always meant a great deal to me—especially now, in my present situation.” She smiled sadly to herself. “It was at Baden-Baden that I met Jerome. I fell in love with him instantly—I’m sure you can believe that, Sarah. But how could I possibly tell him the shameful truth about my brother? So I fear I let him believe a lie. I said nothing of Monte Carlo, and instead, I allowed him to infer that we had gone to Baden-Baden directly from England, in order that Aunt Thirza could take the cure there. Oh, Sarah, was I so very wrong? I only did it for love of Jerome—because I couldn’t bear to lose him.”

  I felt my eyelids pricking. “I do understand, Nadine—really I do.”

  Her hand sought mine again, and squeezed it in silent gratitude. Then suddenly, she exclaimed, “Goodness me, the kettle has been steaming its head off, and we haven’t noticed. No, Sarah dear, I can manage perfectly well, thank you. Everything is within easy reach.”

  While we waited for the tea to draw, Nadine chatted in a more relaxed manner, suggesting ways in which the two of us could cooperate for Ginny’s benefit.

  “We must think of some young people we can invite here,” she declared. “And you and I shall take Ginny shopping in Barnstaple for some dress materials—it will be fun for us, too.”

  “Oh yes, Nadine,” I said, rejoicing at the thought of how different things would be in the future. “I am sure Ginny will respond. She is a sweet child, and she deserves to be happy.”

  Nadine poured tea into the delicately fluted cups which carried the Lefevre insignia in gold. “There, I hope that’s how you like it. I forget, Sarah dear—do you take sugar?”

  I nodded. “Two spoonfuls, please. I’m afraid I have a sweet tooth.”

  “So have I,” she smiled, adding sugar to my cup. “I always like plenty, though the doctor say I shouldn’t, and Jerome frowns whenever he notices. But I have so few little pleasures left to me that I cannot easily give one up.”

  We sipped our tea with a sense of warm companionship. The knowledge that my love for Jerome must somehow be suppressed was a tight knot of grief in my heart, but a grief I could bear with, knowing I was doing the right thing. Perhaps I could even find happiness in helping Jerome and Nadine toward a new and closer relationship. At least I would try.

  Absorbed in my thoughts, I suddenly became aware that Nadine’s face was distorted in a grimace of pain. She swallowed, with difficulty.

  “I have such a burning feeling in my throat,” she said. “Would you pour a little milk into my cup, please—it might help.”

  I stood up at once, but before I could do what Nadine asked she suddenly fell sideways against the little ebony table upon which the tea things stood, sending everything crashing to the floor. The dog gave a yelp of fear, jumped down, and scuttled across the room.

  “What is it, Nadine?” I cried in alarm. “Are you ill?”

  “Such dreadful pain,” she gasped, as I lifted her limp body back onto the sofa. “Ring for Phelps, Sarah—tell her to fetch Jerome. I think I shall have to have the doctor.”

  I tugged the bellrope urgently, and when the maid appeared I sent her at once for Jerome. He arrived within a minute or two, saying he had dispatched a groom galloping for Dr. Bates.

  “He will be here soon, Nadine,” Jerome said reassurin
gly, kneeling down beside his wife amid the broken tea things. “Is the pain very bad?”

  “I fear so.” She made a desperate effort to smile at him.

  “When the doctor comes he will know what to do,” said Jerome. He glanced up at me. “Sarah, there is no need for you to stay.”

  “But I must.”

  He took from me the moistened handkerchief with which I had been dabbing Nadine’s brow.

  “I am here now, and it will do no good for you to remain and be distressed. If you’re needed, I will send word.”

  I could not argue with him. Unhappily, I left the room and went along the corridor to my own room, where I stood at the window looking down into the courtyard, willing the doctor’s brougham to appear.

  Then, as I waited, I became conscious of a burning sensation in my throat. Rapidly, it grew worse. Feeling suddenly dreadfully ill, I stumbled across the room to drop onto my bed. The pain in my stomach made me double up, and I almost fainted.

  I scarcely had the presence of mind to ring the bell for help.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  I still felt weak and exhausted. The memory of those dreadful hours of cramping pain and sickness was still vivid in my mind. My temples throbbed and my throat felt parched, despite the copious drafts of milk which Dr. Bates had prescribed for me.

  I lay back on my pillows and watched Mrs. Bardock moving quietly about the room, tidying up. She and Mary between them had been with me constantly, while Aunt Thirza and Phelps had sat with Nadine, tending us and assisting the doctor to eliminate the effects of poisoning.

  Arsenic, Dr. Bates had said. A terrifying word— and a terrifying thought. It must have been the tea, of course—that was the only thing which Nadine and I had both taken, and no one else.

  During my talk with Nadine, I had become convinced that it was she who’d been trying to drive me away from Farracombe; she who’d had the porringer concealed in my room and had sent me the threatening note. Now, however, I knew that some other person in the house was my enemy—and a more ruthless enemy than I had ever conceived. It was one thing to want me gone from here, but quite another thing to want me dead! Not only me, but Nadine, too! It was a dark mystery, making no sense at all.

  I tossed restlessly, gradually throwing back the bedcovers because I felt so hot. When Mrs. Bardock noticed this, she hastened to tuck me up again, tutting reprovingly.

  “The doctor insisted that you must be kept warm, Miss Sarah. I’ll change the hot water jars for you in a minute.”

  There was a knock on the door, and the housekeeper went to open it. I heard a low murmur of conversation, then she came back to me.

  “Mr. Jerome is asking if you feel well enough to see him for a few minutes, Miss Sarah.”

  “Yes, tell him to come in,” I said eagerly, my voice hoarse and cracked.

  Jerome crossed swiftly to my bedside while Mrs. Bardock discreetly withdrew from the room. He stood looking down on me, his face tense with emotion.

  “Sarah, my dear—how are you feeling now? Dr. Bates assures me that you are past the worst of it, thank God!”

  I smiled at him. “I feel very weak still, but the sickness has gone. How is Nadine?”

  “Greatly better now. Fortunately she has a strong constitution, despite her infirmity. And she was by no means so seriously ill as you have been.”

  He perched on the edge of the bed and took my hand in both of his, looking into my eyes.

  “Sarah, my dearest Sarah, you might have died— do you realize that? For a time, Dr. Bates feared it was touch and go. I shall never forgive myself for allowing such a terrible thing to happen to you.”

  “But you were not at fault, Jerome.”

  His eyes clouded. “How can I not blame myself when a member of my household, a person I love dearly, receives a dose of poison that nearly proves fatal. To think that I might have lost you, my darling one.”

  Limply, I withdrew my hand from his. “Please don’t, Jerome. It is wrong of you to speak to me like that.” He was about to say something further, and I went on hastily, “Have you been able to establish how the arsenic got into the tea?”

  He shook his head. “But I shall do everything possible to find out. Unluckily, Dr. Bates was not able to make tests. When Nadine collapsed, the tea things were all scattered on the floor, and the maid had cleared up the mess before the doctor arrived.”

  “Jerome,” I faltered, “it must have been—deliberate! Someone wanted to kill us, Nadine and me.”

  “Nonsense.” He spoke vehemently, rising to his feet and striding away across the room. He stood with his back to the lamp which burned on the mantelshelf, so that I could not see the expression on his face. “Who on earth would want to kill you, Sarah? Or Nadine? It was an accident—it must have been. A gross piece of carelessness on someone’s part.”

  It seemed incredible to me that Jerome could seriously believe it possible for arsenic to have been introduced into tea—or milk or sugar—simply out of carelessness. If any arsenical preparation was ever used in the kitchen regions (as a rat poison, perhaps) then everybody concerned would be fully aware of the danger of allowing it to contaminate foodstuffs.

  I summoned all my strength to put urgency into my voice. “I think you are mistaken, Jerome. Terribly mistaken! Somebody deliberately poisoned us.”

  He came to my bedside again with quick strides.

  “Sarah, my dear, I can understand how you feel. But I beg you to put such dreadful thoughts out of your mind. Do not speak of them to anyone else, for it can do no good. Only harm will result. Believe me ...”

  “But Jerome, this must be properly investigated.”

  “I will carry out what investigation is necessary,” he assured me. “Quietly, without making a fuss. Though I fear we may never discover the person responsible. Whoever it is will be at great pains to conceal their negligence in view of the appalling consequences of it. However, there is no danger of another accident. I immediately ordered the destruction of all tea and sugar stocks in the house, and a thorough scouring of every container. And now, Sarah, my dearest, I want you to rest with an easy mind. You must concentrate on getting well again.”

  Jerome bent and kissed me on the forehead before leaving the room. Even while I could still feel the sweet imprint of his lips, a new chain of thought struck me with blinding clarity, and I shuddered beneath the warm, fleecy blankets. The poisoner had not wished me dead. The arsenic had been intended for Nadine alone, and my taking tea with her had been a chance happening that was unforeseen.

  Who would want Nadine dead, and me alive? There was only one answer. Only one possible answer.

  Jerome!

  By now Mrs. Bardock had returned to the room, and was busily replacing the stone hot water jars. But all the warmth in the world would not help remove the dreadful chill that had invaded my body. I lay still and tense, staring up at the flickering shadows on the ceiling.

  Jerome had attempted to murder his wife! I thrust the horrifying thought away, but it returned relentlessly. Jerome had the necessary motive—-Nadine, the invalid Nadine, was a millstone around his neck. I am a normal man, Sarah, with a normal man’s needs. But these past four years my wife has not been a normal woman. Besides ...

  Besides what? If I had not interrupted him, would Jerome have gone on to tell me what I knew already—that he did not love Nadine? Would he have claimed that he had never really loved her, and bitterly regretted ever having married her? That he wished he could be free of Nadine in order to marry me?

  Oh God, how could I bear such misery?

  It was a long time later, in the silent, sleepless hours of the night that I suddenly sat upright with a sharp cry of anguish. Another horrifying realization had dropped into place in my mind.

  “Miss Sarah, what’s the matter?” Mrs. Bardock had been nodding off in her armchair beside my bed, but now she jerked to full wakefulness, her plump face anxious in the dim light from the shaded porcelain lamp on the mantelsh
elf.

  “Nothing,” I told her. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs. Bardock.”

  “Are you sure? Is there something I can get you? A drink of warm milk, perhaps. Or I can make you some tea, if you wish.”

  “No, thank you. I was just dreaming.”

  But it had been no dream, the thought had entered my mind in full consciousness. Was Oscar correct in guessing that Felicity had been pregnant? Not by Ned Tassell, of course—I couldn’t believe that. But by some other man? Jerome?

  Frantically, I tried to marshal facts which would prove the absurdity of such an idea. But everything seemed to add up with dreadful logic.

  If, as I now firmly believed, Jerome had never been happy with Nadine, he might easily have become attracted to the bright, vivacious girl my sister had been. And it was only too easy for me to imagine Felicity falling in love with him. Wildly, passionately in love, heedless of the consequences.

  Undeniably, Felicity had been in love with someone. I had been convinced of that all along, and Cynthia Westbrook had confirmed it. Furthermore, Cynthia had concluded at the time that Felicity must be indulging in an affair with a married man.

  With yet another sickening thrust of pain, I remembered Cynthia speaking about the hunting lodge in Ravens’ Valley. Was it there that Felicity had met her lover secretly, as Cynthia believed? That would explain Jerome’s changing the subject when she had suggested as much to him. And it would also explain his present attitude toward the hunting lodge—the way he left it abandoned, unused, as though he hated the very thought of the place. As if he were afraid of the memories it evoked.

  If all this were true, as surely it must be true, then what had happened to my sister? What had been Jerome’s answer to the embarrassing problem of the girl who carried his child? He had not shrunk from attempting to murder his wife when she became a hindrance to him, an obstacle to his plans.

  So, had murder been my sister’s fate?

  Lying there, still weak and dizzy from the effects of the poison and the purges and emetics that had been necessary to drive it from my body, my thoughts twisted and reshaped, taking strange and terrifying forms. It was no wonder that I slept little that night.