“Interesting is good,” she said, gazing up at his face across the room as his breath tickled her ear. “I’m know I’m not beautiful like Mags, but interesting might be better.”
He gave a laugh, shaking his head.
“You really have no idea how lovely you are,” he replied softly, pushing her damp hair behind her ears. “Jules, I…”
He stopped talking and pulled her round and into his arms, and she realised with pleasure that he was going to kiss her. She leant up to meet him, and her hands grasped at the lapels of his coat. The tweed was thick, the wool beaded with moisture from the mist, and just as his lips met hers, in a single moment her mind went blank. Her knees buckled, and she could hear someone screaming, again and again. Only as she hit the floor and the noise stopped suddenly did she realise that the sound was coming from her own mouth.
An hour later she lay in her bed, the blankets tucked closely around her. Adrien sat in the armchair, close by, but silent, watching over her. Bob Cundy had arrived shortly before and given her a glass of something milky with a bitter under-taste. She had been too weak to resist, and had choked it down, although she could taste it still, acrid on her tongue. She had felt Bob’s warm fingers on her wrist, wondered as he pressed the stethoscope against her chest if he could hear the blood roaring through her body the way she could. It seemed to thunder in her ears, and hurt her veins as it passed through. Everything screamed to her that something was wrong.
She knew she was in shock. She had read about it, heard it described by various people. Cold through and through, her mind whirled, catching upon each rotation at one single point. Every time she tried to push it away, foremost in her mind came the realisation that her fall from the cliff had not been a natural accident. Someone had come up behind her and pushed her off. Her nightmare had not been a simple dream. It had been a real memory and was now the only thing that she could focus upon. Slowly the drug took hold and she drifted into sleep. But the thought remained in her mind until the last moment. Someone had tried to kill her. And she was terrified now that it might happen again.
Chapter 11
Alistair Carr stood in the library at Trevennen, pleased to find a good blaze in the hearth after driving all day. The red-haired maid who had opened to the door to him had ushered him here, and as he waited, he warmed his hands and felt a little apprehensive.
He had listened to Adrien on the telephone this morning and at his friend’s entreaties had driven straight here. Along the way he had wondered at what Adrien had said. That his wife had recovered her memory in disturbing fashion, and now claimed to have been pushed from the cliff. Was it not more likely that his wife had imagined the whole thing, a bad dream brought on by a shocking accident? Trauma might well induce such a reaction, he had known it before.
Alistair wondered how the couple had been faring before Juliana’s shocking revelations of the previous evening. Even before her claim of attempted murder, it could not have been easy for either party to cope with. Adrien had lost and mourned a wife, buried her and learned to live without her. Juliana had been forced to forge a life for herself in completely alien territory. Her discovery had meant that she had been torn from an independent life in the capital and brought back to be a wife in a tiny town almost as far west as it was possible to go. And now she was claiming that someone had tried to kill her.
“Alistair!”
Adrien shot through the doorway, looking disturbed and pallid. His tie was askew, and he had missed a patch on his jaw when he had shaved earlier.
“Ada just told me you had arrived,” Adrien said. “Thank you for coming!”
Alistair noted the strain in his friend’s eyes, although Adrien was trying to hide it with a forced jocularity.
“You don’t need to thank me. Not yet, anyway! I only hope that I can help.”
“Frankly, nothing could be worse,” Adrien said. “Anything you can do will be an improvement.”
Alistair looked at him closely. The man was under considerable strain. He was actually shaking. Alistair wondered at the force of emotion that was running in him. This man had seen active service in the worst conditions and held himself together. Why would what was most probably a hallucination on the part of a sick woman turn him to jelly like this? Given his extreme distress, it seemed that Adrien truly believed his wife. More than that; if her story was true, did Adrien know who had tried to kill her? Was that why he was so shaken?
“You look like you need to talk. Why don’t you start with last night?” said Alistair. “Tell me exactly what happened. Take your time.”
Adrien took a moment, his face still hidden in his hands, then he sat up. He took a couple of deep breaths, but his fingers tapped at the chair arms despite his attempts at calm.
“We dined out last night. Bob and Daphne are always excellent company, and both Jules and I enjoyed ourselves. It was misty out, so we stood for a while in front of the fire in the hall, to dry off, before we went upstairs. We were talking. Laughing.”
He stopped and blinked slowly, as if the moment was being replayed on the inside of his eyelids.
“I went to kiss her,” said Adrien slowly. “One moment she was there in my arms, the next she was screaming, in a heap on the floor. I tried to lift her to her feet, but she shoved me away. She was absolutely terrified of something. It appeared to be me.”
“Anyone else there?” Alistair asked.
Such an intense and instantaneous reaction must have been inspired by something very concrete, after such a long time. If, he told himself, she had been telling the truth about any of it at all. And of that he was not convinced. It all seemed very pat. Found one week, memory recovered the next?
“Not until they heard her scream. My cousin came, and the maids. They must have thought someone was being murdered.”
Alistair mused.
“What did they see?”
“Enough,” replied Adrien with some bitterness. “Juliana pushing me away, crying, ‘Don’t push,’ over and over. I backed off and I went to call Bob and get him to come over. He’s our doctor too. It was clear that something terrible had happened to Jules.”
He was fidgeting as he spoke; he could not settle.
“Our cook sat with her until Bob arrived and gave Juliana a sedative. She wasn’t making any sense, and he was worried about her being so incoherent. Thought that sleep was the best thing for her.”
“She had a shock, and it seems a very great one. Was there an obvious trigger that you noticed? Something that happened during the evening?” Alistair asked.
“I have no idea, Alistair,” replied his friend, shaking his head. “She went from day to night in a matter of seconds. One moment she was laughing, the next she was curled up on the floor, screaming.”
The fire fizzed and popped in the grate as a log shifted and settled; the warmth was welcome to both men. Alistair looked into its depths, then back to his friend. Adrien was looking at him with a pathetic combination of eagerness and fear.
“Has she said anything at all that might explain what happened?” Alistair asked, aware that he had little experience with amnesia, either real or assumed.
“Not really,” said Adrien. “Once Bob had given her the sedative last night, she calmed down and went to sleep. I was able to sit with her then.”
Alistair suspected from the shadows under his friend’s eyes that he had spent a sleepless night watching over his wife. Adrien confirmed this with his next words.
“I stayed there all night. Every time I fell asleep, I woke up again thinking that I could hear her scream, that she was awake and calling out. And every time I realised that it was all in my head. She was still asleep. I looked at her and wanted her to wake up, and at the same time I was terrified of what might happen when she did.”
“That is understandable. When she awoke this morning, did she say anything to you to shed light on why she reacted as she did?”
Adrien looked up.
“When she woke up this mor
ning, she was groggy still. But when she was able, she told me that her memory had returned. Something stirred it last night. And she was terrified. Alistair, all she would tell me was that she didn’t fall from the cliff, like we thought, but that someone deliberately pushed her. She insists that someone tried to kill her.”
Alistair sat in silence. Not a strange disappearance, but an attempted murder. If Juliana Creed was to be believed. Adrien continued.
“I think memories are trickling back, but it’s been hard on her.”
“What do you want me to do?” Alistair asked. “If you believe what your wife is saying, then you need to call the police.”
“I did consider it. I am not sure just how much credence the local police will give to what Juliana thinks she remembers.”
“Do you believe her?” Alistair was blunt.
“It all seems so dramatic and unbelievable,” Adrien replied. “But I believe that Juliana thinks it true. I’ve seen panic and fear before. What she went through last night was not an act, I swear it.”
If Juliana Creed had lied about memory loss over the course of three long years, she would most probably have the acting ability to stage a recovery, Alistair thought. It was hard to judge accurately when love was involved. And he thought that Adrien was in love with his wife. There was a wounded edge to him when he described the scene last night that interested Alistair. He was not panic-stricken, as he might be if he had had anything to do with her fall, but hurt that she had rejected him.
“Before this happened, I had already called Jamie and Damaris, my cousin Fancy’s children. I invited them to come home for a week or so. Helena Clevedon is due back in a day or so too. Everyone who was at Trevennen the day that Juliana disappeared will be here again.” He paused, and looked hopeful. “You can do some quiet investigation. See what you think. I need to know what happened. For Juliana’s sake. For the sake of my marriage.”
They sat opposite each other in silence. Adrien’s hands still shook occasionally, as though the revelations of the past day had unsettled him to the core. Alistair wondered if he could help. The thought of getting mixed up in such an investigation, among friends and family, was sobering. He knew how devastating the outcome might be to all concerned. Then he sighed. He had known Adrien for years. They had been friends since their first terrifying nights away from home in a cold school dormitory. He could not abandon Adrien now, when any help he might give was truly needed.
“You said that your wife was feeling better now?” he asked finally. “I would like to speak with her myself, if I may.”
“Actually, she insisted upon getting out of bed. She wants to meet you this afternoon. I think you should talk to her,” replied Adrien, looking at him eagerly. “It’s all too close to me, Alistair. I feel like I’ve had my feet knocked out from under me.”
He settled back, relaxing now he had shared his burden.
“Juliana has retreated into herself,” he continued. “I think she doesn’t know who to trust. All of us, all the people she has been getting to know again, were here the day she was… she disappeared. I’ll tell you myself that we had been going through a rough patch in our marriage. Until this all happened, she didn’t remember just how awful it was, but she does now.”
Alistair nodded. This anxiety in his friend worried him. He had seen the man in worse and more dangerous situations and not crumble. The man was petrified of something.
“Before I meet her,” he asked, “I have another question. What is scaring you so badly? What else do you know?”
He pulled a case from his pocket and took out a cigarette, offering the case to Adrien, who looked at him blankly, then reached out and took one himself. Alistair lit them both and threw the match into the flames of the fire.
“The body that was recovered three years ago,” said Adrien finally. “It… she was wearing a slip, a pale silk thing. Nothing extraordinary. But there was a mark on it, mid-thigh, as if something had caused the silk to tear and pucker. I remember it exactly.”
“There was nothing to suggest from where it had come?”
“Nothing. No laundry mark, no maker’s tag, markings, nothing. Just a woman’s undergarment, ripped, and stained from prolonged immersion in the sea. Juliana had a dozen of them. I’m sure most women do.”
Alistair looked closely at him. “And? What happened to remind you of that?” he asked.
Adrien blew out a thin trail of smoke and looked over at his friend.
“Yesterday morning, Juliana was sitting at her dressing table. She caught her leg on a splinter of wood underneath the table. After we had cleaned her up, I saw the slip she was wearing. It had a tear on it, a jagged hole, puckered where the wood had caught at it. I swear, the tear on it was identical in place and marking to the one on the slip on that corpse. Alistair, the original slip came from this house, I am sure of it. Whoever the dead girl was, I do not know. But I think she was wearing one of Juliana’s slips. And in that case…”
His voice tailed off. He did not want to finish his statement.
“You think someone with access to the house gave her that slip, or dressed her in it?” finished Alistair, picking up immediately on what Adrien was thinking.
Adrien nodded.
“Was this behind your determination to get everyone back here who was originally involved?”
“I wasn’t really thinking straight. It just seemed a good thing to do.”
Alistair looked at him in some surprise. Had Adrien really not thought this through? If someone from the house had been responsible for trying to kill his wife three years ago, had he really thought it a good idea to bring them all back to the same place, now that Juliana remembered what had happened? He gave a sigh. He had known and liked Adrien for a long time, but the man had a curiously innocent streak that stubbornly refused to leave him no matter what life threw at him.
“So why didn’t you go to the police? Instead of calling me,” Alistair asked.
Adrien looked at him sceptically.
“With what? A possible tear in a piece of silk that had been underwater for weeks? The body was so bashed about it was surprising the slip was in such good condition. I think that was why I remembered. The thing was frayed, but the body of it was not. It was good silk. But I swear there was an identical tear in that slip yesterday. The wood was ragged when I checked it yesterday. That table hasn’t been used in three years, not since her disappearance. The splinter has been there all that time.”
Perhaps he wasn’t so innocent after all. He understood that his suspicions were only that, and also accepted that the police response was likely to be tainted by his behaviour three years ago. From what Alistair himself remembered, that might make a great deal of difference.
There was a knock at the door, then it pushed open and Ada appeared with a welcome burst of noise, carrying a laden tea tray. She staggered a little under the weight but made her way determinedly into the room, refusing any help.
“Mrs Creed is just coming downstairs, sir,” she told Adrien as she set the tray on the low table with a bump.
The door opened again, but quietly this time, and shut again just as silently. In the moment it was ajar, Juliana slipped inside the library, and the two men jumped to their feet to find her looking at them as if unsure how to go about the meeting. Alistair saw a small, pale woman, dark blond hair pulled straight back from her face and held in place with a couple of carved ivory pins. She had large grey eyes, made larger by the look of extreme worry in them. Her face was pinched and extremely pale, her lips thin. The clothes she was wearing were simple, but pinned to her sweater was a magnificent diamond brooch.
Adrien brought her over, holding gently on to her arm, and introduced them, looking hopefully at his wife. Juliana pulled herself together and rewarded her husband with a faint smile that endowed her for a moment with a trace of life. She shook Alistair’s hand with a cold grip, then sat down by the table, looking grateful for the cup of tea Adrien passed her.
“I am sorry that our first encounter should be in the middle of such a maelstrom, Mr Carr, but I can’t help but be pleased at your arrival. Adrien says he thinks you can help,” she said.
“I can certainly try,” he answered, noticing her hand shaking as it tipped the cup at her lips. “I like puzzles, Mrs Creed. I like to uncover their secrets.”
Juliana smiled at him as if his answer had reassured her, and her eyes grew warmer. She looked across at him. He looked back steadily, his queer lovat-coloured eyes calm under a mop of pale strawberry hair. His gaze was keen, seeming to miss nothing, but it did not intrude.
“Everyone else today has tiptoed around me,” she said. “As if I was about to break apart. You look at me like I’m normal.”
Even Adrien gave a smile at this.
“We were worried about you, Jules,” he said.
“I know. I scared you all into fits last night. But I’m not going to crumble. Mr Carr, I want to talk to you. Someone who has no connection here,” she said decisively. “I need to try to make sense of what I can remember.”
Alistair nodded, seeing resolve appear on her face, squaring the jaw and adding a hitherto unseen depth of character. He sat down on the other side of Juliana and took a buttered saffron bun from the plate she offered. Adrien hovered anxiously around by the fire, until his wife looked at him. She gave him another of those smiles and Alistair saw the relief flood his friend’s face. He realised just how deeply Adrien’s emotions for this woman seemed to run, and quailed a little at the thought of being responsible for them.
“Adrien, I would prefer to speak to Mr Carr alone.”
Adrien looked surprised. “Are you sure?” he asked. Alistair could see that he was uneasy about leaving her.
“Yes. Afterwards, I will tell you what we discuss, I promise. Please, Adrien.”
Adrien finally nodded and left the room, taking his tea with him and closing the door firmly behind him, as if to emphasise that they were quite private. Juliana waited a moment, then turned to the newcomer.
The Dead Woman Who Lived Page 18