Janet was in tears too. She had dabbed iodine on her scratches, which rather emphasized their appearance, and Father had needed to comfort her for a while before he came to deal with me. He found me sullen and uncooperative. I wanted Jumby back. No other solution was possible. Also I discovered that Janet’s account of all that had happened, including her own part in it, took certain liberties with the truth. Liberties that were, of course, in her favor. I did not know how to fight her methods.
During the next few days a falsely contrite Janet brought me a huge new teddy bear, far handsomer than Jumby had ever been. He was a lie too. I put him head down in my wastebasket every day for two weeks, and came home from school each afternoon to find him waiting on my bed in Jumby’s place, with an idiot grin on his disgustingly clean face. I behaved so badly over this that Father often ended up comforting Janet for my behavior, and condemning me. Finally I took that white plush beast to the beach with me one day, buried him carefully in the sand where the rising tide would find him, and returned home empty-handed, to announce that he had been washed out to sea.
Janet had to be comforted again. Father spanked me, and I hated them both.
My grandmother, whom I dearly loved, was almost helpless with arthritis by this time, and could not come to my rescue by taking me herself. In the end the only solution was to send me away to school. I went gladly enough. I had lost my father, and Janet was not to be endured, so school could not possibly be worse.
It was really much better in a number of ways. There was always someone in school to whom I could give an all-enveloping love. It might be some teacher who was kind to me, or even some older girl who looked upon me as a little sister. These in turn became the object of my smothering affection. I tried to absorb each new object with my love, demanding of them an equally blotterlike affection in return. When each abandoned me, it confirmed my secret conviction that no one could really love me because I was, underneath, a kicking, screaming monster who did not deserve to be loved.
Of course I grew up eventually—more or less. I learned to see Janet as she was and I looked back with greater understanding of my own behavior. I learned that I must stop blaming myself and stop making such strenuous demands for reassurance upon those I happened to love. Boys did not care for that sort of thing, I found out quickly, and I managed to work out a near-convincing act for myself. I found I could fling myself emotionally into the pursuit of various causes and occupations. I was bright and busy and my interests were real enough and rather earthshaking—or so it seemed to me. It began to appear that I had stopped falling into hopeless crushes. I carried my bluff along on dates and watched myself sternly.
Then I came to England. I met Justin North—and everything that had gone before paled by contrast. My well-practiced bluff convinced Justin of an Eve who existed only partially, and he had his own self-delusions as well. Once, in the months that followed, I asked Maggie desperately why he had married me, what he could possibly see in me, and she had said something strange: “Perhaps he sees what is really there, Eve, if you’d just give yourself a chance.” That had shaken me.
But before then we went on our honeymoon in Greece. Among the moonlit ruins of Delphi I began to realize for the first time that I was truly loved and valued. The small monster seemed lost in the past, and I began to seem a real person, even to myself. A young woman possessed of dignity and self-confidence—all those lovely things I had bluffed about.
Then we came home to Athmore and I discovered that my husband was also in love with a good many things outside myself. Against the competition of his devotion to his work, my new self-confidence began to falter. There was Alicia, besides, whose existence I could not cope with. And there was Marc with his clever little tricks. Since I had a genius for doing the wrong thing under stress, I managed to destroy my chance for happiness much more expertly than anyone else could have done for me. That Marc helped this along was incidental.
The chain of events which had started at Athmore had never stopped moving in the wrong direction. Now that I had returned, they simply picked up their old momentum. But now my conduct must be different. As a young bride I had defended a pride that must be preserved at all costs—even if everything else was shattered. Without pride I was nothing. Or so I had always thought. Now, however late, I was beginning to see how stupid it was to demand that I be loved for myself, exactly as I was, and without any disturbing changes. Of course everyone wanted that. It was always more comfortable to insist on a love that demanded little effort. Being lovable seldom entered into it because that took a great deal of hard work. Besides, I could always point out that Justin was not particularly lovable and that he had no intention of changing.
But I could do nothing about Justin—except love him. I could only manage me.
Deirdre, who had returned to doze on the hearth, yawned widely and opened her eyes, waiting for my summons. I held out my hand and she came at once to nuzzle her long nose against my palm.
“There are things to be done,” I said, and tossed back the covers.
Deirdre waited by the fire until I was bathed and dressed. I did not want to be trapped inside by the rain, so I picked up my trench coat, folded a plastic hood into the pocket, and carried the coat with me when I left my room. Deirdre trotted beside me down the long corridor in the pale light of a rainy morning.
We walked through the long gallery and I had only a slight nod for Mr. Dunscombe, who had done no better than I in solving his problems. I went down the stairs, my hand on Deirdre’s neck, like some Athmore lady of old walking out of a portrait with her hand on the neck of an Irish wolfhound. The incongruous picture this evoked made me smile and I began to relax a little. I was anything but a proper Athmore lady, and such dramatizing was better left to Alicia Daven. Any changes I managed need not take so theatrical a direction.
One truth which I must face was simple. I was undeniably jealous of Alicia. This was a human enough failing, for which I must forgive myself. But at the same time I had to learn to keep that very jealousy under control. The one primary truth that mattered was that I loved Justin, though whether he wanted anything I had to offer was still doubtful.
What else was true?
Marc had some reason to want me dead. It was a frightening truth that last night he had tried to kill me. Could this be because of Old Daniel? What if it was Marc in the snapshot I had taken? Marc, who had once destroyed the key figure in Daniel’s topiary garden and whom Daniel would ever after connect with the rook, no matter how often Justin “confessed.”
But this was only speculation. It was not necessarily the truth. Last night had been real and I knew what had happened to me then. Now I must learn why.
There was still one person who might help me. Nigel, too, had been on the roof last night, and while Nigel was an uncertain quantity, what he could tell me might count for more than Marc’s lies, Maggie’s blind devotion, or Justin’s scorn.
I let Deirdre out the back way, and hung my green coat on the rack near the door—a portentous gesture, though I did not know it at the time. Then I went into the Wedgwood dining room to eat a sketchy breakfast, so preoccupied that not even the coffee disturbed me. When I had eaten I stood for a time looking out the long windows which overlooked the garage area. Through the beeches I could see Justin moving about, wearing a wet gray mac. I moved to the rear windows that looked out upon the topiary garden.
That fateful phrase kept running through my mind: Rook’s play. Last night the rook had moved again—though not to place the king in check. Not even to attack the opposing queen. Whatever the game, I was no more than a hunted pawn, with more powerful pieces moving about me, ready for the kill. Pawns were easily dispensed with when they got in the way—the least useful man on the board. That is, unless a pawn could steal its way to the opposing line and emerge as a stronger piece—perhaps even as a queen. There was little hope that it would last the game, if pursued by another piece.
The chessboard imagery was too apt fo
r comfort and I found the view more depressing than ever. Even the pervading color of everything outdoors depressed me. There is nothing more green than country England during a springtime rain. Trees and lawns and shrubbery blurred into an enveloping green aura that was too insistent for comfort. One longed for a flash of strident color to relieve the green intensity.
Abruptly I had my wish. Dacia’s orange coat added a neon note as she ran among the topiary chessmen and bounced up the rear terrace in her high boots. She saw me at the dining-room window and waved to me as she ran. A moment later she bounced into the room, slicking down rain-streaked hair, divesting herself of the wet orange coat.
“Are you all right?” she demanded at once.
There was no need for evasion with Dacia. Direct attack might startle her into response.
“As right as I can be, considering that Marc tried to push me over the roof parapet last night,” I said.
Dacia’s eyes could seem as round and as brown as Deirdre’s—and more unblinking in their stare. “So that’s your story! You know what Marc claims, don’t you?”
“Why does he claim it? Isn’t that the point? If I knew why, then perhaps I’d have a clue to go on.”
“Perhaps he’s claiming the truth. After all, you were off your noggin last night when he found you. So it could be you didn’t know what was really going on. Anyway, I have to stand by what he says, don’t I? I have to help him, however I can.”
“To the extent of searching my room last night?” I said. “It was you, of course. Or Marc.”
Dacia stared at me for a moment longer, then whirled to the sideboard and helped herself to a piece of dry toast which she piled with marmalade.
“I didn’t need to search,” she said. “I would have, but it was already too late. Whoever it was made a bloody mess of your room, didn’t he?”
“Then it was Marc,” I said flatly.
“He claims not.” Dacia seemed uncertain for a moment before she brightened. “But we did work out a lovely scheme, didn’t we? At least I thought so, since most of it was my idea. The way poor Mr. Dunscombe is supposed to rap on your tower door at night made me think of it. So Marc got a long lance from the armor collection and then he reached down the stairs in the tower to bang on your door with the heavy end of it. We wanted you to skip out of your room in fright. Only you fooled us and came up to the roof, so that he barely got out of your way. What a carry-on, wasn’t it? And after all that, we were too late to do your room because somebody else had beat us to it.”
“Who?” I said.
Dacia shrugged. “I’m wondering about that myself. Maybe you’d better figure out who that picture might hurt the worst—and why.”
As if I had not been wondering. The why was Old Daniel’s death, of course. The old man had been frightened, and because of what had happened to him someone was desperate to hide his identity—or hers. Whoever I’d caught in my picture must have been waiting there, hidden. And Old Daniel knew he waited—and had tried to warn me with a cryptic message that I had not understood at all.
I left Dacia to her nibbling and went upstairs. It was Nigel I must talk to now.
I found him in the library, deep in a red leather armchair beside a fire that burned in a vast stone fireplace. Stretching upward above his head long window panes gave upon green daylight, and rain clattered incessantly against the glass. He saw me coming toward him down the room and closed his book, his expression guarded. He too would know what was being said about me, so perhaps it was hopeless to talk to him. But I had to try.
I dropped into an opposite chair and leaned toward him earnestly. I did not want to be put off.
“You were on the roof last night?” I began without preliminaries.
He set his book aside and nodded gravely.
“Do you believe that I tried to kill myself?”
He continued to study me with that grave, faintly guarded look, not answering.
“Did you see what happened?” I prodded him.
“I saw some of what seemed to be happening,” he said.
I took a deep breath. Nigel, at least, was leaving room for doubt.
“Will you tell me about it, please? Tell me, starting with the first out-of-the-ordinary thing you noticed last night.”
He considered this for a moment. “The first unusual occurrence was a racket on the roof diagonally opposite from the tower where I was posted,” he said. “I believe this happened shortly after Maggie went downstairs.”
“Maggie!” I echoed. “Was she up there last night?”
“Only for a short time,” he said. “We walked up and down together for a while. It was a spectacular night with the wind blowing clouds across the moon. But Maggie got bored and chilled after an hour or so, and went downstairs.”
“Through the tower in your room?” I asked.
He seemed surprised. “No. I suppose she went down through the tower that opens into the green-velvet room—the entrance nearest her part of the house. It was dark and I didn’t really note the way she went.”
“Go on,” I said. “Tell me the rest.” Maggie’s earlier presence on the roof was surely of no consequence to later events, since she was already downstairs by then.
He went on to tell me how he had heard the clattering sound which I had made the first time I had kicked the lance Marc had left on the roof. But there had been no answer to his shouted challenge. Marc, who was supposed to be on guard in that section of the roof seemed to have disappeared. Nigel had seen off-and-on lights from Dacia’s tower, probably due to a door opening below, and had supposed that Marc had gone down there. For a time everything was quiet. Then the clattering sound was repeated, followed a few moments later by the impact of someone falling. Almost at once Marc had shouted for help, Justin had come running up from the green-velvet room to call out in turn, and Nigel had left his tower to join him, running across the rooftop to where Marc was struggling with me at the parapet. They had both helped Marc in pulling me to safety and Justin had carried me downstairs, while Nigel stayed on to guard the roof. The rest of the night had been uneventful, and there had been no trouble on the ground either.
“Tell me what you thought when you saw Marc struggling with me,” I said when he finished. “Did you really believe I was trying to fling myself off the roof?”
“You were putting up a fight, let’s say.”
“A fight for my life! Couldn’t you tell it was that?”
He answered me carefully. “Do I know you well enough to judge? Mustn’t I take the word of those who know you better?”
I leaned back in my chair. It would be no use to accuse Marc again. Nigel would believe me no more than did the others. Only Marc knew the truth, and he would not even tell Dacia. Why should he want me dead? We might dislike each other, but I was no threat to Marc. What he had attempted seemed too violently extreme for any cause I could guess.
Rain continued to strike the windows of the library with an endless rattling. Nigel and I sat together in the glow of the fire, listening to the sound. Once he reached tentatively toward his book and I roused myself to ask another question.
“Did you know that someone searched my room last night while I was on the roof? This is the second time. A snapshot I took the other day was stolen first. This time the search must have been for the negative of that picture. But I hid it well enough so it wasn’t found. Nigel, have you heard anything? Have you any idea what is going on?”
Again there was hesitation, in which I sensed uneasiness. “Only what I’ve heard from Maggie,” he said at last. “She seems upset about the existence of this picture because someone has hinted that she might be in it. Though why that should matter I can’t see.”
“That’s nonsense, of course,” I assured him. “I have a better idea about who my camera may have caught. Nigel, was Old Daniel afraid of someone? Have you any idea why he went to see Alicia Daven the day before he died?”
“Aren’t you striking out a bit wildly in all directions
?” Nigel asked. “Alicia has always been clever about making friends with Athmore help, and Old Daniel was no exception. There’s no reason why he might not go to see her.”
“This was more than that,” I said. “I really believe it was more. I think she was trying to use him in some way. And of course she’s been using Marc too.”
“You’re beginning to see ghosts around every turn,” Nigel told me dryly.
I paid no attention. It wasn’t Alicia in the snapshot, I thought. It was not Maggie either—but Marc. Speculation or not, I kept returning to this as the answer.
“Was there a good deal of antagonism between Old Daniel and whoever cut the rook out of the topiary chessboard that time when Marc and Justin were young?” I asked.
Nigel was clearly surprised by this new turn I had taken. “Do you mean Justin? No, of course the old man felt no antagonism toward him. He was devoted to him and forgave him completely.”
“But everyone seems to think that no matter what Justin said, Marc was the guilty one. So Old Daniel must have thought that too and disliked him all the more for it.”
“Isn’t this more wild guesswork?” Nigel said.
It was clear that I would get no more help from him than from anyone else. My speculation was only an effort to throw out different trails in the hope that one of them would lead to real answers. But if the answer to the puzzle was to be found, it was growing increasingly clear that I must find it myself. And until I saw the blow-up of the negative I had entrusted to Nellie, I had nothing to go on. Waiting made me edgy. All of a sudden there seemed to be so little time.
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