Entering the house via the side door, shaking off the uneasy feeling that his expression had given her, she found the kitchen and the cook, an older woman at work by the enormous range that took up a large portion of the far wall.
“May I have some tea now, Mrs Fennell?” she asked, unwilling to interrupt their routine, but now very thirsty. She was pleased to have remembered the cook’s name.
The woman looked around in surprise. She gave a last stir to a pan of kidneys, then covered it and turned back.
“Of course, Mrs Creed. I’ll have some brought up to you right away. Where will you be?”
Juliana looked hopefully at the enormous brown pot on the table.
“Can’t I just have some here? It’ll be less work.”
She gestured to the far end of the table, which was the only space free from activity. The cook’s eyebrows rose, then she gave a smile that lit up her plain square face.
“Much cosier here, too,” she said, moving over to pour Juliana a cup of steaming amber tea. “The morning room will warm up quickly, but it’s cool at the moment. Here, Florence just made fresh. Milk? Sugar?”
“Just milk, please,” Juliana replied, wondering why she didn’t already know this, then realised that at some point in the last three years, the position of cook had changed hands.
She took the cup and savoured the warmth on her chilled fingers as she sipped.
“Delicious.”
Mrs Fennell took a bunch of parsley from a damp tea towel on the table and inspected it carefully before beginning to chop it on a large wooden board. The knife flew across the green fronds with the certainty borne of years of practice. Juliana looked around as she drank her tea. It was a large, pleasant room, with plenty of light from a wall of windows. The centre was taken up with the enormous pine table at which she currently sat. Ranged along one wall were an enormous deep sideboard, covered on the top with a variety of serving dishes, and a Welsh dresser, displaying the cheerful tones of a modern service. Everything spoke of hard scrubbing and polishing. The range gleamed to one side, and next to it Juliana saw a more modern gas cooker, the cream enamel smooth and clean.
As she finished the last of her cup, a red-haired girl—Ada, Juliana remembered—arrived from the scullery with a number of silver dishes and looked over at Juliana with wide eyes. She opened her mouth, but before she could blurt anything out, the cook kicked her gently on the shin and sent her off to warm the serving dishes.
“Ada’ll be taking this last lot up to the dining room in five minutes, Mrs Creed,” said the cook as she added the finely minced parsley to the kidneys. Juliana realised that she had been given her cue to leave, and jumped to her feet.
“Thank you for the tea,” she said. “It was very welcome.”
Running upstairs to wash her hands, she took a moment to tidy her hair and then went back to the hall and stood for a moment by the table, absently fiddling with the vase of red blossoms. No one had shown her the dining room, but it couldn’t be hard to find. The study she remembered from this morning. Those double doors over there to the left of the front door led to the library, where they had taken tea yesterday. That left two other possibilities, as she was certain that the dining room would not be far from the kitchen. She tried the first door next to the staircase, and discovered she was correct. At the table was her husband, alone.
Adrien looked up from the newspaper he had folded in front of him. He raised his eyebrows and gave her a brief smile as she came in.
“I saw you outside,” he said, getting up to wander over to the sideboard, where he poured out a cup of coffee, adding warm milk and setting it down in front of her. “There, just how you like it. Did you go far?”
Juliana had the oddest feeling that he had been unhappy about something, but was trying to cover it up. His manner was cordial, but behind it she sensed unease.
“I went into the garden. I wanted some fresh air,” she replied, sipping the coffee. “I went up onto the cliff afterwards—the view was wonderful. It felt heavenly up there.”
She watched his face as she spoke. The strained look in his eye returned when she mentioned the cliff, but eased as she talked, and she did not mention the odd look he had worn as he watched her from the window. With a nod and another smile, he seemed more natural now.
“I’m hungry,” she added. “Something smells wonderful.”
“Go and help yourself,” he replied, indicating the long black oak buffet on the wall. “All your favourites. No good waiting for Fancy, she has a tray most mornings.”
Juliana heaped her plate with the kidneys she had watched Mrs Fennell prepare, adding scrambled eggs and some crisp bacon. Fancy’s non-appearance was a bonus rather than not. She did not relish being watched by those peculiar cold eyes. She speared a chunk of kidney and chewed in appreciation.
“I was up on the cliff, looking at the sea, but mainly I walked in the garden with the fountain,” she said. “I saw it from my window and couldn’t resist. Your gardener is wonderful.”
“Sylvia works very hard out there. Not that she doesn’t enjoy it. Generally you can’t tear her away from the place.”
“Sylvia? Margaret’s mother?” she asked, trying to remember what she had been told about the family tree.
“That’s right. Gardening is her passion.” He nodded, reaching for the marmalade. “She took it over during the War, after they moved onto the Island. We were short-handed, so many men from the town had joined up. Sylvia said she wanted to do something to help out. Geoffrey had a full-time nurse, and I think Sylvia found time hanging heavy on her hands.”
“What was wrong with her husband?” she asked.
“He was very badly injured at the Somme. Phosgene. It still affects him. His face and arm were badly burned too, in the same attack. He’ll be here tonight, they are coming for dinner. We usually see them at least a couple of times during the week. He’s a good man, Geoffrey. Knows more about Cornwall than anyone else I know. If you have any questions, he’s the one you should ask.”
“You said ‘girls’,” said Juliana, buttering some toast. “I know about Mags; who else is there?”
“Her older sister, Helena. You’ll meet her soon. She has been housekeeping and teaching for a family in Shropshire.”
He grinned suddenly.
“What is so funny?” she asked.
“Well, you met Mags yesterday, in her natural habitat,” he answered, a mischievous light in his eyes. “Just don’t expect Helena to be the same. You couldn’t get two more different girls.”
Juliana pressed him for more details, but he refused.
“You’ll meet her soon enough. Now, it’s going to be a lovely morning. When we’ve finished here, why don’t we go out and I’ll show you around the estate? Better go out early. I reckon there’ll be rain this afternoon.”
After wrapping up, they went back into the fountain garden. The empty bed she had noticed earlier had been surrounded with a waist-high fence of chicken wire by two young men in shirtsleeves and breeches. They were pounding in the last of the posts at the corners. Nearby was a woman in similar garb, standing directing the work, a large buff-coloured hen under either arm. There were wheelbarrows and buckets and an assortment of garden implements nearby, resting under an enormous fig tree, as well as a crate from whence more clucking was coming. Three dogs of various sizes and breeds lazed in the sunshine on the grass; they turned their heads towards the newcomers, but neglected to get up.
“Busy, Sylvia?” asked Adrien. “I have someone to meet you here.”
The woman turned around and gave a cordial smile as she saw the pair of them.
“Juliana, my dear! How good to see you again.”
Stepping over to the fence, Sylvia leaned over and gently threw the hens onto the soil, where they immediately began to scratch and peck. She leaped onto the grass, carefully brushing off her fingers before shaking Juliana’s hand. They were strong and calloused, and she had a hearty grip. Juliana was surprised a
t her strength. Sylvia didn’t look strong, but she was wiry under her work-worn corduroys and pullover. Her hair was pushed under a knitted cap, stray curls of greying blond escaping round the sides, and her face was rosy and lined from being outside.
Juliana was aware of the keen gaze of a pair of pale blue eyes, and felt shy again, meeting someone else who knew her but whom she could not recognise. Despite the cordial greeting, Juliana sensed a caution in the other woman. There was a touch of reserve in her eyes, and Juliana understood that she was on inspection. Then the moment passed as Adrien started talking about the garden and Sylvia turned her attention to him.
“What happened here? This bed was lovely last year. You had all those marvellous blue things in there.”
He indicated the digging. Sylvia shrugged.
“They were agapanthus, Adrien. Blue things indeed!” She snorted. “We had ground elder. Had to take the whole wretched thing up.”
“Really? All of it? Was that necessary?”
Adrien sounded a little disbelieving. Not a gardener, then, thought Juliana, seeing the look in Sylvia’s eyes at his words.
“No other way. It’s insidious,” replied Sylvia with finality. “Never mind, we’ve finished digging it out now and I’ve some lovely ideas for new plantings.”
She picked up her spade, ready to start work again. Adrien was clearly used to her; he just grinned.
“Right, we will leave you, you are clearly busy. See you at seven-thirty.”
Sylvia turned back to Juliana and smiled again, an action that lit up her entire face this time, creasing lines around her mouth and eyes in a very human way that Fancy’s small tight smiles the previous evening had completely failed to do. Whatever she thought privately, she seemed prepared to be friendly.
“We are all looking forward to dinner tonight. Enjoy your walk.”
“See you then,” Adrien said, and Juliana smiled her goodbyes, rather breathless at Sylvia’s briskness.
As they walked away, Juliana could hear Sylvia start to talk, realising that the chatter was not aimed at the gardeners but at the chickens, and she looked startled. Adrien smiled again.
“Sylvia greatly prefers animals to humans, I’ll warn you now. She is a delightful person, but not keen on wasting time on anything she considers unnecessary.”
They left the main garden and walked first through the kitchen garden, and an orchard, and out onto the flat thyme-ridden turf of the ridge leading over to what Juliana knew from her earlier jaunt were the cliffs. Putting his hands on her shoulders, Adrien turned her around and pointed up at the house.
“Such a good view of the house from here, don’t you think?”
She agreed. In the sunshine, the house gleamed like it was cut from fondant icing. The fact that it had been built in bits and pieces over a period of several centuries did not show—the whitewash on the walls and the steep black-tiled roof that covered it blended the disparate elements into a harmonious whole. From here she could see the fat swell of a tower with its tall pointed cap, the weather vane on the topmost ridge pointing almost due north. The rounded walls were trellised, with the bare bones of a wisteria winding and twining about it. She could make out the windows on each floor, remembering Adrien’s tale about a candle being left burning at night to alert the sailors coming home.
Turning south, Adrien pointed out as much of the estate as he could. It was clearly large, encompassing a long stretch of the coast, plus ample farmland, moor and woods. They walked slowly around the boundary wall that stretched and curled around the estate, before cutting back along a narrow, rutted track and past what he told her was the Home Farm. There was work going on, a plough patiently turning over fat rolls of nut-brown earth in straight lines. From further fields came the occasional lowing of cattle, the sharp cry of a lamb searching for its mother, and the shrieking of a goose from far off, but they met no one in person, and for this Juliana was thankful. She had realised that people were going to be curious about her, and her return from the grave, but it was not an easy thing to face. There had been enough scepticism in the townsfolk’s gaze yesterday to make a guess at what they were thinking.
The track past the farm led through a dell, and then back to the expanse of high stone wall that protected the gardens. Adrien was about to turn back towards the house when Juliana remembered they had not been to the cliffs yet. She pointed to the west, where she had noticed earlier the ground rose up, culminating in a copse of trees.
“What about up there? The view must be wonderful.”
Adrien said nothing. She looked up at him, but his head was turned away from the sea and his smile had gone.
“That’s the Roscarrock. That is where you… vanished.”
Adrien paused, and she saw a shiver run through him.
“I would rather not go up there today,” he said finally. “Too soon, Jules. I’ve just got you back.”
He turned around and she saw from the set of his face that he was not going to change his mind. Juliana took the elbow he offered, and instead they walked to the stables, where he introduced her to the groom, and then to a row of horses. They fed them chunks of carrot and stroked their smooth silken necks, listening to the quiet whickering of contented equines, and the regular sound of a broom being swept over cobbles. Juliana breathed in the thick scent of the animals, warm and comforting, cut by the thin, green smell of carrots. She leant her shoulder against a whitewashed wall and looked at Adrien. There were questions she had been pondering for a while. This seemed like as good time as any to start asking.
“How did you know? Where I disappeared?” she asked.
Adrien frowned, then handed over the last of the carrots to a beautiful grey mare he had called Hester. He turned to his wife, avoiding her eyes, and she was surprised by the look on his face. He seemed truly pained by her question. Giving a strained smile in her direction, he sat down on the mounting block.
“I feel as though I am asking the wrong questions,” she continued. “But you haven’t told me much about what happened. It isn’t making things easier. I feel like everyone knows the facts except me.”
He shook his head at her explanation, finally meeting her eyes.
“I know how confusing all this must be to you, Jules,” he replied. “Of course you want to know what happened. Forgive me. It is still extremely difficult for me to think about.”
He pulled his cigarette case from his pocket and gazed up at the sky. The well-cut mouth was tight, his brows like a slashed line across his forehead.
“We didn’t know at first,” he said finally. “It was like you had vanished into thin air. Then I went to the Roscarrock. I didn’t think you would have gone up there in a storm, but there seemed to be nowhere else left to check.”
He choked, and Juliana realised that this might be why he had been so peculiar that morning, watching her come back from the cliffs. The thought of her up there, so soon after her arrival, had distressed him.
“There was no one there, but there were marks on the cliff edge, as if someone had scrabbled at it, trying to stop a fall,” he said quietly. “Broken fingernails caught in a clump of grass. Your coat was caught between two rocks at the bottom of the cliff, and your shoes were there too. I picked them out of the water myself.”
He looked down at his hands, as if surprised that they were steady, then lit up and gulped down the smoke, his eyes blank.
“There was no body there either, but we found your rings in a rock pool nearby. You had complained before of them being loose. It was thought that you had died in the fall. Your rings and clothing had been washed off by the waves, and with the rising tide your body had been washed out to sea. Then…”
With this he broke off, leapt to his feet and walked swiftly to the gate. He was breathing hard, she could see the shudder of his shoulders. For a moment, Juliana wished she had kept quiet, although she wondered what he had been about to say. She had seen the wave of revulsion passing through him. It had really shaken him. She paused
for a moment, her fingers combing through Hester’s mane, then gave the mare a final pat and followed him over.
She was sorry that he was upset, but the longer she was here, the more she wanted to know what had happened. However, she had not anticipated such an extreme reaction, and was content to leave the matter for the moment. There was more here, she knew it, but for the first time she understood that what had happened to her had affected others too. Those left here had been forced to deal with it.
The faint sound of a gong rang out.
“Let’s not talk about this any more, not at the moment,” she said. “Listen, isn’t that the house gong? Surely it can’t be lunch already.”
Adrien checked his wristwatch, looking rather relieved.
“It most certainly is,” he replied with an attempt at a grin. He finished his cigarette and ground it out under his boot.
The gong sounded again.
“Race you back?” he asked suddenly.
Pleased that some answers had been forthcoming, and that the entire morning had not been spoiled, as up until then she had been enjoying his company, Juliana was happy to join in. He grabbed her hand as they ran, pulling her along the outside of the garden wall, until they were panting and laughing like children as they tore up through the rose arbour to spill out onto the gravel driveway by the front door.
“Not bad for a city girl!” he teased.
She stuck her tongue out at him and felt light-hearted, but it did not last. Luncheon was a strangely formal affair with just the two of them and Fancy, and very little conversation that lasted beyond a sentence or two. Adrien excused himself afterwards, and left to do some estate work, promising to try to be finished by teatime. He had been correct about the weather; it had started to rain. Not a light spring rain, but a heavy, soaking rain that would do wonders for the garden but would render any outdoor activity unpleasant in the extreme. Juliana pondered what to do and, after flirting with the idea of reading, decided to explore the house.
The Dead Woman Who Lived Page 6