“You never know”—he winked—“might even find something to use in a play.”
My father, an actor and stage manager, and a large bear of a man, eccentric and lovable, understood art in all of its forms and wasn’t afraid to take risks.
He waved me off with a jovial hand, my mother, still disapproving, by his side, having consented only on the basis of my staying with Ewe Sinclaire— an old nanny of hers who lived in a village not far from the abbey.
“She’s a dreadful old gossip, that Ewe,” my mother warned. “But I know you’ll be safe with her and do promise to write, won’t you? Your father and I will worry.”
“I will, Mama,” I promised, looking forward to meeting this “dreadful old gossip.”
As I arrived, Ewe Sinclaire, a large robust woman bearing an enormous bust and bustling similarities to the character of Mrs. Jennings in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, huffed at the white picket fence gate.
“Well, there you are, dearie!” She paused to catch her breath and fan herself. “I’ve been waiting all day. What took you so long?”
I blushed, not wanting to confide I’d been drinking a cider at the local pub to absorb the atmosphere. “Oh, the train took longer than I thought.”
I lowered my gaze. I didn’t lie very well, did I? I’d have to work on correcting this failing, for the shrewd little sharp dagger eyes of Ewe Sinclaire devoured and conquered everything in sight. Wiry charcoal hair framed the merry rolls of her white fleshy face where a squat nose dwelt amongst twitching lips that seemed forever amused.
I liked her at once.
“Welcome to My Little House, Miss Daphne. My! How like your mother you look, though she were real pretty, Muriel Beaumont. Not saying that you’re not, but you’re different in your own little way.” Appraising me again with those shrewd eyes, she nodded, as though silently satisfied with my appearance, and grabbing my bag with a large brusque arm, she bounded down the path.
The tiny stone path was lined with all kinds of florid overgrown flowers, shrubs, and midsized fruit trees. I paused a moment to savor the wild abandon, lingering in the wake of Ewe’s windstorm, wanting to appreciate the gentle afternoon light enchanting the little whitewashed cottage with its signature thatched roof. A peaceful place, warm and inviting, even if it did appear, upon first entering, to be full of defects.
Stepping over a partially broken wooden floorboard inside the front door, I heard a tap dripping somewhere and a clanging pot sound in the distance.
“Oh, that stupid kettle!”
Waddling into the first room on her left, Ewe pushed open the door with an almighty shove. “Here’s your room. There’s the lounge and kitchen over there. I’ve got a small parlor, too,” she said, and nodded, proud, dumping my bag on the tiny framed bed. “Not much room in here, but you’re no snob- nose from what I’ve heard, are ye?” Her keen eye interrogated me. “Bookish type by the looks of it and you’re pretty, which is a good thing, for it’s not nice for a girl to be ugly or plain, as they used to say. Or was it unhandsome? Handsome! Why ever did they use that word for a woman when it belongs so obviously to men?”
I smiled. I could see the days ahead . . . no escape from the ram-blings of Ewe Sinclaire’s mouth until she fell asleep. Did she wake talking, too, I wondered?
Hovering at the door after instructing me to wash and change for tea before dinner, she asked me how long I intended to stay.
“Well, you can stay as long as you want or as short, if you fancy. I don’t mind. I don’t really do anything. I used to do things, useful things in the community, but now I’m practically a . . .” she considered at length, “busybody. Yes, that’s what I am. I just go around and drink tea all day. Busy myself in other’s affairs because they’re a great deal more interestin’ than my humdrum old life.”
“Did you ever marry?” I thought to ask as we sipped tea in her tiny parlor laden with everything lace: lace curtains sweeping back from the murky panes of the two cottage windows, lace borders sewn around photograph frames, lace doilies on the coffee table and skinny mantelpiece, and lace- edged cushions on the three- setting burgundy couch she confessed had been a splendid buy from the proceeds of Treelorn Manor. “Did you ever marry, Mrs. Sinclaire?” I repeated the question, since she seemed to have drifted off into a world of her own.
“Oh, bless ye, dearie,” she squawked. “Me? Marry? Who’d marry a silly duck like me? Tho’ there was one or two fishes . . . but they slipped away into the moonlight. Married other girls. I got left on the shelf. Not that I mind— I’ve seen too many disastrous marriages to care— if a man weren’t man enough to take on Ewe Perdita Sin-claire, then that was his fault. Not mine.”
I set down my tea, examining the faces of the children in her photographs.
“Oh,” she beamed, “they’re my sister’s. Angels, aren’t they? They’re like my own and they come to visit from time to time. My sister married a good fellow of Dorset— he works in a men’s store, a manager really— and my sister and he have a charming little place of their own in town with their two angels.”
“Any other family?”
She reflected, an unusual serious shade pulling over her merry eyes. “Yes. Always. I’ve been a nanny since I were eigh teen years old. Every house I’ve served . . . every child I’ve reared . . . they’ve been my family. That’s what we nannies are like. We become part of the family. It’s just how it is.”
“But you’re retired now?”
“A retired busybody,” she chortled, staring into the cracks of her ceiling. “But what interests me, Miss Daphne du Maurier, is why are you really here? You can’t expect me to believe a young gel as pretty and as connected as you would bury herself down here for the holiday unless you intended to meet a young man?”
The question hung in the air, her incessant winking compelling me to snort. “No! You’ll find I’m not like the others. I’m different. My parents can’t believe I want to be here, rummaging through old abbey records instead of ensnaring a husband. Husband! Who’d want a man? They all expect servitude and I have too much to accomplish to be trapped in a prison.”
“Ha!” Ewe exploded. “When love takes ye, dearie, it will take you with a big fall. Mark my words now, but you enjoy yourself while you’re here, under my roof, delving into these abbey records of so much interest to you. But beware, you never know what lies around the corner within these silent parts.”
I should have heeded her words.
However, the following day I blindly set out, early, before she rose, in search of the first glimpse of the ancient abbey.
I walked through the village green and into the woods, a luxuriant forest bearing new green leaves heralding the spring, the bark smelling of fresh rain, rejuvenating and tantalizing to the nose.
Discovering an ancient path by a gigantic cypress, I trudged my way through the thick shrubbery and out toward the sea.
I hadn’t expected Ewe’s home to be so close to the sea. Hidden on the borders, resting beside the village green, the cottage reminded me of the one in the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. It possessed a quaint aura about it and I knew I’d love living here for a time.
No signpost existed for the abbey. I half hoped an old piece of timber nailed to a tree would guide my way, but the roaring ocean invited, and grinning, I abandoned my search for the abbey and headed toward the spiraling cliffs. Down and down I went, the windswept long grass tickling my legs, and eventually, I made it to the beach.
There was something very soothing about a stroll on the beach, the rush of the water about my ankles. I’d just jumped at a sudden wave when I heard the scream.
It was the scream that led me to Padthaway.
Though I’d accompanied Lianne to that great house and delivered the bad news on my meander back to Ewe’s, I still questioned whether the event had actually transpired. They say shock takes hold of you, and dazed, I stumbled into the village, shivering at the remembrance of that beautiful face resting in the silent repose of d
eath.
“Looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ewe remarked, asking me if I preferred cucumber to ham or egg for noonday sandwiches.
I sat down on the stool inside her kitchen.
“What? Find a dead body?”
“Actually, I did,” I heard myself say.
Chuckling, merry, she shook her head. “Ye mother said you were a dreamer. Dear girl. There’s not been a dead body found here in Windemere since 1892, when Ralph Fullerton, a sailor, was found washed up in the cove. ’Twas a horrid sight by all accounts. Bloated up like a puffer fish!”
“Ewe, I did really see a body today.”
“And you know,” Ewe went on in her blithe fashion, “he stunk out the church for a whole week ’cause that’s where they carted him before burial. There’s an account of it in the abbey. You should look it up if you’re interested in bodies.”
“I daresay I will,” I sighed like a heroine in a melodrama before sliding out of my seat and placing my hands firmly on her shoulders. “Ewe, please listen to me. This is no fabrication. A young girl and I found a body out there . . . the body of a woman, washed up on the beach.” I paused, my face no doubt a visible white.
Comprehension slowly dawned upon Ewe. “A body? Who? What? Where?”
“By the cove.” Shuddering, I summarized what had happened and my brief visit to the great house, sinking into the welcome support of the kitchen bench.
“My goodness gracious me.”
Slinging a tea towel over her ample neck, Ewe shepherded us both to the parlor. “My, my, this requires more than a cup of tea, I reckon. Glass of sherry?”
Without waiting for my answer, she saw that I was settled, reminiscent of a doting grandmother, and raided the tiny glass cabinet on the opposite wall where she displayed her finest few precious pieces of china. Taking out the crystal decanter and two matching, highly polished glasses, she poured the drink and we sipped in silence.
“Victoria Bastion . . .” Ewe murmured, meditative. “Drowned, do you think?”
I tried to recall the details of the body. “She seemed intact. . . .She might have fallen from the cliff and broken her neck.”
“Were there bruises about her neck?”
“Not that I saw. She just looked beautiful, even in death. And it can’t be suicide for why would she give up,” I blushed, “a handsome fiancé, a magnificent estate soon to be hers, and—”
“And?” prompted Ewe.
“Well, great prospects. Imagine being mistress of such an estate. She had at her fingertips what most girls only dream of; it doesn’t make sense.”
“How did they react at the house? Glean anything there?”
I shook my head with a faint laugh. “We are not detectives, but shock, I suppose.”
“Genuine or nongenuine?”
“Genuine,” I surmised, thinking of David’s collapse onto the steps and his wretched emotions raw along with his mother and sister.
“Lady Hartley? Don’t trust her. She’d be happy the gel’s dead. She won’t have to give up her place now, will she?”
That was true. But it didn’t prove her ladyship’s guilt.
Somewhere in the house a cuckoo clock chimed. Listening to its chirp in the aftermath of this news felt morbid.
“Well, you’re invited back there, aren’t you? You’re a witness; they’ll have to question you. You ought to call there in the morning. Sir Edward, hmmm, yes, he’ll be summoned there, he’s our inspector, half retired . . . oooh! A real murder mystery! Who’d have thought it’d ever happen here in quiet little old Windemere Lane.”
CHAPTER THREE
Led to a wrought- iron chaise lounge, propped up with faded green tasseled cushions, a middle- aged woman cloaked in the deepest and severest navy commanded, “Wait here, Miss du Maurier. I will inform her ladyship.”
My entry into the great house of Padthaway this time exuded all the polite correctness one associated with the aristocracy. Last time, Lianne and I had stumbled in, our shoes still bearing sand from the beach, our hair unkempt and our mouths unsure of what to speak. The ill news thus having been dispensed and absorbed over the course of a night, I had felt a little more comfortable following the stern, slim figure in navy to the open- aired courtyard down and off to the right of the main hall parlor.
The grim- faced house keeper left, and I sat back to appreciate the beauty of the courtyard. It was quite a large area, and I rested upon the recliner beneath one of the many arched trellises bursting with jasmine and wisteria. All around, water trickled from a series of white Greek mythological fountains, the dark stone cobbled flooring winding itself through a maze of massive potted plants placed at strategic points for circular harmony. The effect created its own internal garden circuit, charmingly Roman and unlike anything I’d seen before.
The rattle of a tray heralded the return of the house keeper.
“They will not be long, madam.”
Madam! Did I look so old? Helping myself to the tea tray, I had just finished pouring when the rustle of a blue dress appeared from behind an anguished statue of Apollo.
“Sir Edward, Trehearn?” Her ladyship addressed the house keeper, her quick eye detecting me.
Mrs. Trehearn inclined her head. “He has arrived.”
“And my son?”
“Has been called, my lady. Miss Lianne, as well.”
“Very well, Trehearn. Thank you. That will be all.”
Though I’d witnessed this mistress- housekeeper relationship countless times, here it differed. I couldn’t isolate the reason for the impression, but I wondered if Mrs. Trehearn regarded the house as her territory beyond the standard occupation.
“Thank you for calling,” her ladyship addressed me, choosing the head armchair facing me. “It must have been quite a shock. My daughter is not coping with the horror of it all. You see, we saw her alive last night and now she is . . .”
“Dead.” Making her appearance from behind another statue, Miss Lianne Hartley chose to sit by me, snuggling a little into my shoulder and pleading with her huge eyes. “Oh, Daphne. I couldn’t sleep! Did you? How can anyone sleep after seeing something so dreadful.”
I held her tighter, wanting to protect her from the memory of our traumatic discovery. “We must do our best. Is Sir Edward . . . ?”
“He’s the local magistrate, if you will.” Sighing, Lady Hartley waved her hand to my offer to pour tea. “He should have joined us by now. . . . ”
Restless, she began pulling at a lone thread on her expertly cut blue silk dress. Upon closer inspection, it seemed more of a peignoir. Fitting, perhaps, considering it was the morning after— how did anyone recover and resume normal events when tragedy struck? I remembered the ones we lost to the war and how we’d moped through the house in mourning clothes. “It’s a difficult time; I don’t know what to say.”
And I didn’t. What did one say? Was it suicide or murder, do you think?
“Sir Edward will need his questions answered, if you are well enough to oblige him. I did send him a note for Lianne—”
“Oh, I’m fine if Daphne’s here.”
Drawing her blue eyes up to search mine, I interpreted her silent plea. She’d found the body first but she didn’t want to speak, perhaps for fear of being blamed. Talking about it terrified her. Not surprising for a young girl of fifteen.
“I don’t think the questions will be extensive today,” Lady Hartley served to reassure us both.
Lianne looked at me again and I realized I had a decision to make. For some reason, she didn’t want them to know she had found the body first. Should I tell the truth or should I protect Lianne from censure? Sir Edward, a short, rotund man with wiry gray sideburns, arrived and claimed the chair nearest Lady Hartley. I settled on a compromise when he began his questioning, saying I’d met Lianne on my search for the abbey, and we’d discovered the body at the cove. I described the event in detail, and as I rambled on, I sensed another was hearing my story, told under Sir Edward’s intense gaze.
I was right. David Hartley loomed in the shadows.
I swallowed my tea, uneasy. There was something hanging in David’s demeanor, like an unfinished thought. Did he believe me? Or did a shade of doubt exist behind those cynical gray eyes?
“Du Maurier,” Sir Edward mused, flicking out his little notebook and pen. “I’ve heard of the name. You’re not related to Sir Gerald, are you?”
“Yes, Sir Edward.”
“And he coproduced Peter Pan?”
“Yes.”
“How extraordinary.” Lady Hartley beamed. “We’ve a little celebrity in our midst.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” I colored.
“But you are, my dear. Sir Gerald du Maurier of Peter Pan! We’ve all heard of him. Oh, my dear, you simply must call me Lady Flo—”
“Mother!” David marched across the courtyard. “It hardly matters. Victoria is dead!”
The lukewarm tea stuck in my throat. He had seemed so cool and composed only a moment ago. We sat stiff in our seats, glancing surreptitiously at one another.
“I’m going down there,” David announced, snatching his coat. “Down to where they found her. Miss du Maurier, will you show me where?”
Sir Edward’s brows shot up. “We’ll all go. I’ve got my car in the drive.”
David’s jaw clenched. “No, I’d prefer to walk.”
Half- standing to my feet, I glanced at Lady Hartley before hastening toward the front door.
The door stood open and Mrs. Trehearn’s hand rested on the latch, as though she’d been listening to the courtyard conversation and had rushed ahead to open the door for Lord David.
“It’s absurd.” Lady Hartley’s cry echoed outside. “The rain’s coming . . . and there’s nothing left to see.”
Lianne joined my stride behind David, her mother’s attempts to call her back unheeded.
I thought David might have sent her back but he didn’t, striding ahead, the man who suffered the most. He’d just lost his fi -ancé, the woman he planned to marry, to terrible circumstances. No reasoning or logic worked in such times.
Murder on the Cliffs Page 2