“When did you last have your eyes tested?” Trina asked, aware that Janet was suddenly more alert to her surroundings.
“Our Lord Saviour doesn’t approve of adornment,” she replied and was tempted to give them back — but only for a second.
The newspaper cutting from Amelia Drinkwater’s photo album has finally drawn Daphne Lovelace back to Dewminster and she sits in a corner booth of a High Street tearoom rereading the headline.
“Suspicious death at Creston Hall,” it states, but she knows that the line is a small-town editor’s attention-gaining trick.
“What at first appeared to be the suspicious death of 6-month-old Johannes Creston, heir to the Creston Empire,” the article continues contradictorily, “has been ruled natural causes by Dewminster police and the Coroner.”
That tells me a lot, thinks Daphne as she skims ahead.
“The child’s father was in Zurich at the time…”
That rules him out then.
“The mother, Janet Creston, (22 yrs. née Thurgood), put the baby into his cot as usual…”
Fair enough.
“Doctor Symmonds of Dewminster, the family’s physician, reports that cot deaths are not uncommon and suggests parents regularly check on their young during the night.”
I wonder if he’s still alive, Daphne is questioning as she orders a pot of Earl Grey from the waitress, then she inquires.
“Oh yeah, luv,” replies the women cheerily. “He comes in here some days. He only lives ’round the corner.”
“Actually,” says Daphne quickly getting up and slipping on her hat. “I think I’ve changed my mind.”
“Dr. Symmonds?” Daphne asks ten minutes later, having located his Victorian townhouse by the rectangle of wood that used to hold his brass nameplate on the wall adjacent to the black lacquered door.
“Yes?” he acknowledges and invites her in.
The aroma of cigar smoke commingled with mentholated liniment momentarily takes Daphne back to her youth and her father slouched in his Sunday evening chair after a day in the garden, and she hesitates while she imbibes the atmosphere.
“I guess this was your surgery,” she says, taking stock of the room with its old leather couch and wheeled fabric screen and recalling the days when she undressed and shivered in similar rooms.
“Before they opened the new clinic and replaced stethoscopes with a million quids’ worth of gadgets that can’t tell a tumour from a pimple on your ass,” he says sourly as he ushers her to his living quarters.
“In here,” he carries on, holding a door open, and she joins him in a high-ceilinged day room where he has been playing chess. “Do you?” he asks hopefully, but she shakes her head.
“Not for years. Although I used to.”
“Never mind. What can I do for you?”
Peter Symmonds screws up his face in thought and spends half a minute relighting a cigar when Daphne inquires about the Creston family’s loss of baby Johannes. “Sounds like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,” he says as he vigorously shakes out his match. “Though to be frank, I don’t remember the case.”
“It was a long time ago,” agrees Daphne.
“Quite.”
“Apparently they lost three.”
“Did they?” he asks while casually continuing with his game.
“You don’t recall?”
“Three… no… as I say, it was a long time ago.”
“True,” admits Daphne, but can’t avoid noticing that he’s made an illegal move. “Should that go there?” she asks, pointing to the misplaced pawn.
Symmonds looks confused for a second as if trying to straighten his mind. “Oh, silly me; no wonder I never win,” he says, forcing a laugh as he rearranges the piece.
“So you don’t remember then?” Daphne pushes one more time.
“Sorry,” he says and rises to let her out.
chapter nine
The sun has returned to Bliss’s Mediterranean world, but he cannot stop himself checking and rechecking the figure in his bed, fearful that the beautiful mirage will vanish with the dawn.
If this be a dream
Wake me never
That I may not suffer
the pain of disillusionment.
He scribbles in the margin of his manuscript, telling himself that this is how his novel should end, realizing that it hasn’t been only historical facts that have prevented him from finishing his book about the lovestruck man who incarcerated himself on an arid island to prove his love. He has been held back knowing that, in a way, he was that man; since Yolanda’s apparent death, he has been wearing a mask. He has been hiding himself away, protecting his heart in the forlorn hope that one day she might somehow be resurrected. And now she is here, in his apartment, in his bed.
“David,” calls Yolanda softly from the pillow.
“I thought you were still asleep,” he whispers, lying beside her and stroking her face.
“I could you feel you watching me.”
“I can’t take my eyes off you.”
“Are you real?” she asks, opening her eyes and peering deeply into his. “Are you real?”
“Of course.”
“I still can’t believe it; I still can’t believe they lied to us.”
“I know,” he says, slipping out of his dressing gown and sliding under the bedclothes, “but we’re together now and no one’s ever going to separate us again.”
“Promise, David,” she says exploring his body with her hands.
“I promise, Yolanda.”
“Will you marry me?”
“Of course. Today if I could.”
Instant marriage may not be in the air, but love is, as the happy couple stroll the promenade hand in hand. However, Angeline at L’Escale has heard Daisy’s side and is less than welcoming as Bliss and Yolanda stop for a coffee and croissant.
“Hah! So now I suppose you stop zhe writing,” the waitress accuses acerbically without acknowledging Yolanda, and Bliss is forced to defend himself.
“Just for a few weeks, Angeline.”
But Yolanda picks up on the slight and barely waits till Angeline is out of hearing before asking, “What is the problem?”
“Nothing,” says Bliss and changes the topic. “So, why did you come here to St-Juan?”
“I have an apartment,” she replies, waving vaguely towards several harbour-side blocks. “I didn’t lose everything after the crash.” But she makes no attempt to be more specific. He would like to see the place, but fears that, in a way, Klaus is still there, unlike Daisy, who was never more than a visitor in his bedroom.
The distant look in Yolanda’s eyes warn him that her mind is somewhere else — still with Klaus, he assumes — as she peers across the harbour. Time is suspended as memories hold her gaze, and Bliss wants to break the link, but he knows it will take time for her to adjust to the fact that she has been abandoned by one lover even if she has discovered another.
“Yolanda,” he calls softly after a minute, and she comes back slowly.
“Sorry,” she says, as her blue eyes gradually find his, but there is no focus. “I was thinking of the time we were in Istanbul together.”
“OK,” he says, with no intent to challenge her.
“Coffee,” says Angeline slamming down the cup and breaking the tension.
“Tell me about Klaus,” suggests Bliss once Angeline has gone, and Yolanda’s eyes wander again.
“I thought he loved me. He obviously doesn’t.”
“But he took care of you?”
“Let’s not talk about it,” she replies picking up her coffee cup and using it to block him out.
The following two weeks in the warmth of the Mediterranean tinges their world pink. Satchmo plays “La Vie en Rose” more than once on the stereo, and, as in everything else, the lovers find harmony in music, natural and composed: waves on the sand; breakers on the rocks; the gentle breaths of a contentedly sleeping partner; the timbre of each others’ voices and the sl
ight exoticism of their respective accents.
They may have been conceived in different countries and different cultures but they conjoin physically and mentally with such perfection that they could be womb-mates.
“I adore the earthy scent of rain on parched ground,” Bliss admits one night as the sky darkens from the north.
Yolanda laughs. “It is my favourite smell.”
With Christmas coming fast, the days and nights pass in complete unison: music, art, movies, books, food, sex — almost daring to find something on which they disagree, anything at all — cooking and sharing meals, walking sandy beaches, watching sunrise, sunset, and moonrise one day, then sleeping through all three the next.
Nothing has been heard of Klaus. “He will not come,” Yolanda assures Bliss on several occasions. “He will never accept what I have done.”
Daisy, on the other hand, has been more persistent, and when a Christmas parcel arrives, Yolanda is by Bliss’s side as he walks from the past into the future by sending it back unopened.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but neither blames Daisy.
“I think she loved you,” Yolanda says, and Bliss nods agreement before explaining that, although he tried, he was never able to love her completely in return.
“I even took her to Las Vegas,” he admits. “Even flew her family there. They all thought I was going to marry her.”
“Were you?”
That’s a good question, he thinks and digs deeply for an answer. “Possibly. But I lost the engagement ring and realized that it was an omen.”
“Omens are important, David.”
“I know,” he says, amazed at his admission, but since his encounter with the Man in the Iron Mask and the numerous ghosts of the Château Roger he’s dropped his skepticism of all things metaphysical. “It was like you being here without Klaus,” he tells her. “It was planned that way to stop you making a huge mistake.”
“He is a good man,” she says again, and Bliss doesn’t argue.
“I know. But where is he? Two weeks ago you told him about us. Did he phone, send flowers, email, write, beg, plead? Did he show up to beat my brains out and drag you back?”
“No,” she admits sheepishly.
“I would have.”
“Really?”
“Of course. I would have done anything to get you back.”
“Anything?”
“Absolutely anything,” he replies looking firmly into her eyes. “I would have done anything to get you back.”
It’s also been more than two weeks since Trina’s abortive attempt to infiltrate Beautiful.
“You’re damn lucky Browning let you go,” Mike Phillips lectured her when she tried to lodge a formal complaint.
“What are you going to do about him?” she wanted to know, but Phillips was at a loss.
“Asking someone to take off their clothes isn’t a crime, Trina.”
“But he’s screwing schoolgirls in the name of God.”
“George Bush bombed Iraq in the name of God and we can’t nail him either,” Phillips reminded her, then seized a chance to catch her off guard. “I suppose that if we spoke to your friend Janet, or Daena, or whatever her name is, we might be able to do something.”
Trina spotted the ploy and shied off. “Sorry, Mike, can’t help.”
Daphne Lovelace, on the other hand, has been more fruitful with her search for answers thanks to her persistence with Superintendent Donaldson.
“You’ll get me shot,” he said as they pored over sepia-edged folders in a damp corner of the basement of Westchester Police Station. “It’s lucky that this is the Divisional HQ, otherwise they wouldn’t be stored here.”
But they were not in luck. “Nothing,” he said, once he went through every year’s incident files from 1955 to 1965. “Nothing at all in the name of Creston.”
“Is that odd?” inquired Daphne, peering over his shoulder.
Donaldson weighed one of the folders in his hand meditatively. “Yes, Daphne. I mean, three sudden deaths with the same name. I’d expect some record…” then he paused with an idea. “Central Records. I bet the files were forwarded there.”
A phone call later they had an answer. “No records there either.”
“What does that mean?” Daphne wanted to know.
Ted Donaldson gave her a sideways glance. “I guess that we were never involved. The doctor must have been satisfied.”
Daphne still had the newspaper clipping in her handbag. She knew the police were called. “Doctors can do that?” she queried.
“Yeah,” nodded Donaldson. “Two qualified, competent doctors are all that’s required.”
A trip to the public records’ office in London has netted Daphne copies of the Creston children’s death certificates, but the information is sparse: name, date of birth, date of death, cause of death. Three deceased siblings within as many years — the eldest only six months — may have rung alarm bells in Daphne’s mind, but the registrar of births, deaths, and marriages seemingly had no problem accepting that each succumbed to prolonged bouts of pulmonary infirmity.
Maybe it was natural causes, Daphne is thinking, until she finally uncovers the names of the certifying doctors from the local registrar in Westchester: Dr. Symmonds in every case. Not just Peter Symmonds the chess player, but also Dr. Roger Symmonds.
“His father, I presume,” she is telling Ted Donaldson by phone a few minutes later, and the superintendent agrees.
“It’s quite common, Daphne. Especially in country practices. Just like the police.”
The late December days on the Côte d’Azur still hold a memory of the autumn warmth, and a few hardy bathers still take to the crystal waters each morning. Avid sun worshippers, as brown and wrinkled as ripe passion fruit, still raise their faces to squeeze every last ray from the low-hanging sun.
The ardour between Yolanda and David Bliss has grown stronger each day, and they need nothing to keep them warm as they saunter hand in hand along the shore. All Bliss sees in their future is sunshine.
“We could go to Hawaii after Christmas,” he suggests, determined to make up for all the time they have missed in romantic places.
“Maybe,” she replies, just a little less enthusiastically than he anticipated.
“We don’t have to…” he starts then feels the chill of a cloud on the horizon. “What is it now?” he asks, easing her to a stop and trying to look into her eyes.
She hesitates for a long moment as she looks over his shoulder at the sea then turns to look northward beyond the Alps.
“It is Klaus,” she says eventually.
“What?”
“David, I don’t know…”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s just…”
“What? What?”
“David. Today is the day that Klaus was going to come here to me.”
“But he didn’t come.”
“Because I told him not to.”
“That’s all right then,” says Bliss with a sigh of relief as he takes her hand and tries to move on. But she stands rigid — everything is not all right.
“David. I have to go.”
“What?”
“I am sorry, but I can’t do this to Klaus. He has been so good to me.”
The beach crumbles beneath Bliss’s feet; hammers beat into his brain; sweat pours from his forehead. “We’ve been through this. He doesn’t love you.”
“David…”
“No. You can’t do this again. This isn’t fair. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“I know, but —”
“You said you loved me.”
“I have to go right now.”
Bliss reaches out desperately. “No…Yolanda… please don’t. Please don’t leave me again.”
“I’m sorry, David. I should never have followed you into the château. I should have let you go on thinking I was dead.”
“Then tell me you don’t love me.”
“I can�
��t.”
Bliss’s heartbeats crash against his ribs as he watches her walk away. “He doesn’t love you, Yolanda,” he yells after her. “He doesn’t love you or he would have come.” Then he slumps to the sand and buries his head in his hands. “Call me. Please call me,” he pleads, but she doesn’t hear.
The sun has sunk into the sea by the time Bliss pulls himself to his feet. He stands for a while seriously considering whether anyone would really care if he walked into the darkening ocean with his pockets filled with rocks, but he slouches back to his apartment.
“I should have known,” he tells Samantha as soon as he gets through.
“Oh, Dad. Why? I thought she loved you.”
“She does. She just feels guilty because this guy has done so much for her.”
“But that’s not fair. You love her.”
“I know.”
“Anyway, why did you say you should have known?”
“Because of the Man in the Iron Mask,” he explains. “He lost the only woman he ever really loved. That’s what’s been holding me back, stopping me from finishing my novel. I wanted a happy ending. But there isn’t one.”
“Dad. You are not the man in the mask.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh wake up, Dad. She’ll come to her senses. True love always wins out. Don’t you read books and watch movies?”
“She says she loves him.”
“She pities him, Dad. She just feels sorry for him.”
“And she doesn’t pity me?”
“She won’t sacrifice herself and her future if she has any intelligence.”
“She might.”
“Then they’ll both be miserable for the rest of their lives. Look at it from his point of view: imagine living with someone who you always know, deep down, would rather be with someone else.”
“Maybe she lied to me. Maybe she really does love him.”
“In which case, she could never have made love to you, not the way she did.”
The apartment is empty. Not only has Yolanda gone, she has taken her spirit with her. Bliss wanders dejectedly picking at bits of clothing she’s left behind. A dozen red roses, just one day old, bring back memories that are suddenly torturous and he’s tempted to fling them over the balcony. The fallen lemon is still on the grass — if that was an omen, it was an ill one.
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