The Sapphire Widow

by Dinah Jefferies

  “I thought it was time. I owe you an explanation,” he said.

  “Come in.”

  They stood together in the hall and he gazed about, hands clasped behind his back. “Hard to believe Elliot’s gone, isn’t it?”

  “Very. But what can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to explain what happened the day he died.”

  Louisa took a quick breath. “Will you come through?”

  “No, this won’t take a moment. You see, we had been planning to sail that day, but when I saw the wind was getting up, I phoned to postpone. To be honest, Elliot seemed relieved, and then asked if he might borrow my car.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But I agreed, of course—he was a good friend. Though I did ask why he didn’t use his own.”

  “He didn’t say anything?”

  “He just said he had a private meeting with somebody somewhere on the way to Colombo, some kind of deal he was involved in, I think.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, thank you for telling me.”

  “It’s long overdue. I’m terribly sorry I couldn’t make the funeral. I had to go to Bombay at short notice. Only recently returned.”

  “But have the police spoken to you?”

  “I gave them a statement earlier today. It confirms what my housekeeper told them while I was away.”

  “What about the car? I should make up the loss.”

  “No need to worry. The insurance will cover everything.” He paused. “But now I must be off. Please accept my deepest condolences.”

  After he’d gone she went across to the sitting room and saw her father was already there, listening to Margo playing some Liszt on the piano. She sat and leaned back in her chair to listen and think about Jeremy Pike.

  Though Margo played moderately well and it was a pleasant way to spend the early part of the evening, Louisa’s mind was on Elliot’s accident and the reason behind his drive that day. Her father sipped his drink and closed his eyes, and Ashan came and stood quietly while Margo finished the piece. When she had, he asked both women what they’d like to drink and then, as he went to mix their cocktails, Jonathan spoke. “So,” he said. “What are your plans, Margo?”

  Margo sighed. “I haven’t really decided. I suppose I’ll eventually return to England, try to get my old job back.”

  “You wouldn’t consider nursing over here? The country is crying out for well-trained medical staff.”

  “I’d consider it, of course, and I do love it here, but I’ve made a lot of good friends in England.”

  “You could make new ones here and keep your old friends too. Think about it.”

  “Maybe.”

  A smiling Ashan handed both women their gin rickeys: a fizzing mix of gin, lime and soda. “I hope they give satisfaction,” he said. “I mixed them myself.”

  “Thank you,” Louisa said.

  Jonathan came up to Louisa and squeezed her hand affectionately. “I haven’t told you how well you are looking this evening, Louisa. It’s a pleasure to see.”

  “I know you’ve been worried about me, but I am coping. And Margo being here has helped so much.”

  Margo left the piano. “I’m glad to be here, though I’m sure Mother will be itching to have me back with her before long.”

  “In the meantime, if you can prevent my daughter from giving in to despair we shall go on enjoying your company, won’t we, Louisa?”

  “Actually Dad, I wanted to talk to you,” Louisa said, once Ashan had gone. She leaned toward him, but then Camille came in to say dinner was served and they all stood up.

  Throughout dinner Margo talked a lot about Irene and Harold and how they were struggling in the aftermath of their son’s death, and the moment for telling Jonathan about Elliot seemed to have passed. I’ll tell him tomorrow, Louisa thought, though she didn’t relish the task. Her father hadn’t trusted Elliot at the start of their marriage and it had been she who had persuaded him. Now it seemed he had been right all along.

  “So, before we go to the cutting and polishing house have you any questions?” her father said as he pulled on his boots. “It would be good if you understood a little bit more about the business. I know it’s never been of great interest to you, but now…well, now Elliot’s gone, it might be time to learn.”

  “I do already know a bit.”

  He raised his brows. “Well, you say you do.”

  “I do! I know gemstone mining here is mostly from secondary deposits.”

  “Which yield sapphire, ruby, cat’s-eye, garnet.”

  “Tourmaline, topaz, quartz,” she added.

  “So, you have been listening. I always thought the talk of gems bored you.”

  She laughed. “I do love a pretty sapphire ring, but you know I’ve always preferred buildings.”

  “We have the perfect geological conditions—”

  “I know,” she said, interrupting him. “Enough. Ready, Pa?”

  They left the house and meandered along the lanes, passing the shops laden with fruit and vegetables and the fishmonger too. At the corner of a narrow passage a toothless elderly lady was sweeping her doorway with a stick broom while a little boy watered a large pot of red canna lilies. Jonathan nodded at the woman and they turned into the alley and veered toward the cutting house. As they walked, Louisa thought about their entire gem business. Once gems had been mined they had to be traded and only then were they cut and polished. That was the point at which Hardcastle Gems sold them on. Elliot had been proud of his work at the cutting house but, so far, they hadn’t been involved in the actual design and manufacture of jewelry.

  Once they entered the gloomy hallway of the building, Ravinath, the supervisor, came out to greet them. He was a wiry-looking middle-aged Sinhalese man with a slightly bent back from years sitting over a cutting bench.

  “So, everything going smoothly today?” Jonathan asked. “I’ve just come to show Louisa the ropes.”

  “Of course,” the man said, and they followed him through to the office.

  Jonathan made himself comfortable behind the desk while Louisa pulled up another chair.

  After the man had bowed and shuffled out, Jonathan laid out the cutting house records.

  “Elliot kept a close eye on all this, of course, but now I need to do it for myself.”

  Louisa allowed her gaze to travel around the room. Framed photographs of various stones decorated the walls, as well as a shot of Elliot with the cutters all grinning at the camera. As she felt a wave of grief pass through her, she could almost breathe in the scent of him.

  “Actually Dad, could we do this another time. I need some air.”

  Louisa went ahead and her father followed a few minutes later. Once out on the street she stood motionless and took deep breaths of salty sea air to try to calm herself. Then she turned to her father and reached out. He took her hand as seagulls circled above them. “I’m so sorry, Louisa.”

  She looked straight at him and saw the pain in his sun-creased eyes.

  Her mouth had gone dry but she knew she had to tell her father everything. She swallowed hard before she began and held his gaze. “The thing is, Pa, there are some things about Elliot I haven’t told you.”

  “Well, let’s not talk in the street. Home for a good strong coffee and, I don’t know about you, but I’m stopping off for some cake.” Louisa agreed. She knew her father was fond of bondahalua, a sweet cake made from coconut and jaggery, though her stomach was so knotted she didn’t feel much like eating.

  Back home she unpinned her hat. Looking in the hall mirror, she noticed how pale she was. Then, hearing a noise coming from Elliot’s office, she went toward it while Jonathan went straight for the sitting room to order their coffees. Those damn monkeys again, she tho
ught, and felt annoyed that one of the houseboys must have left a window open.

  She unlocked the office door and gasped. Papers were strewn everywhere, a chair had been upended, and the filing-cabinet drawers had been left hanging open. All their contents now littered the floor. The cardboard boxes on the shelves had also been emptied. She glanced at the window and saw a broken pane, which meant the intruder had been able to unlock the window and climb in. Jasmine flowers blown in by the wind covered the floor and desk. She’d often said they needed to put bars at the downstairs windows at the back, and yet they’d never gotten around to it. Any valuables were kept securely in the safe in the wall so they hadn’t thought it a great risk. She applied the code to the safe’s dials and it opened. Everything looked the way it should. All they kept in there was some cash for the running of the household and, usually, Louisa’s better jewelry. She checked carefully. Nothing missing. So what had the intruder been looking for?

  She called her father and he shook his head when he saw what had happened.

  “Who could have done this?” she said. “It’s been completely ransacked.”

  He shot her a look. “I think we’d better have a talk, don’t you?”

  They sat on the sofa together and in a halting voice Louisa told him about Elliot’s new debt to De Vos, and that Leo had said there were no shares in Cinnamon Hills. She explained that Elliot had also had an outstanding debt with the bank, which she had now repaid, but that he had emptied his account of the money she had transferred to him.

  “Mr. De Vos tells me there is a contract showing Elliot owes him money.”

  “I’d get that scrutinized. You don’t want to be paying out to every Tom, Dick or Harry who purports to have a claim.”

  And finally, not without a tear, and stumbling over her words, she told him what Leo had said about Zinnia and the child.

  At the end of it, he rose to his feet and began to walk back and forth. “Of all the things. A child he kept hidden? I find that hard to understand, let alone forgive.”

  “I still don’t know if I can bear to believe Leo,” she said, looking up at him and feeling annoyed with herself as a tear slid down her cheek.

  He glanced at her. “If I could get my hands on him now! He had everything with you. What more could any man want?”

  “Children, Pa. That’s what.” She almost choked on her voice as she said the painful words.

  “My dear,” he said.

  And when he sat back down next to her, and put an arm around her, she couldn’t stop herself sobbing into his chest, her curtain of blond curly hair concealing her face.

  Jonathan had stayed the night and over breakfast the next day he was ready to inform the police about the break-in.

  “We have to let them know,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  Louisa wondered if it was somehow connected to Elliot and felt an ache in her heart. She blinked rapidly to keep tears at bay. Despite her father being there, a feeling of vulnerability took hold in the way it often did at night, but now it was daytime and it was still as if she had no skin. “But what if it’s something to do with Elliot?” she said in a small voice.

  He sighed. “I’ll ask the police to keep it a low-profile matter. But I do have to tell them.”

  “How did anyone know we weren’t in and the house would be quiet?”

  He shook his head. “My guess is we’ve been under observation.”

  “Do you think they were looking for money when they ransacked his study?”

  “That, and valuables.”

  “What do you think Elliot did with the money?”

  He shrugged. “Probably used it to support this woman and her child.”

  “I suppose.”

  “By the way, sorry to raise this now, but I’ve been meaning to say, you’ll need to do something about his spice business in Colombo. I can take it over or sell it if it’s too much for you.”

  “No, I’ll take a trip to Colombo to the bank and go to his office while I’m at it. I think I’d like to oversee it.”

  The phone rang and they heard footsteps and then Margo’s voice. A few minutes later she came into the room. “Well,” she said. “I’m wanted at home. I knew it would happen sooner or later and it’s best if I go. I only hope I can be of some use to Mum this time. Anyway, it’s that darned bus for me again.”

  “I shall have to go to Colombo myself quite soon,” Louisa said. “I could drive you. Though I don’t think I’m up to it today.”

  Margo narrowed her eyes. “You do look pale. I wish I could stay.”

  “No. Your mother needs you. It’s only right you go. I’ll be fine.”

  “I can’t see how.”

  “I’m going to keep busy,” she said, though secretly Louisa agreed with her sister-in-law.

  * * *

  —

  A little later Louisa had taken a sketch pad and pencils to the Print House. The eighteenth-century mansion was typical of the colonial architecture of Galle. But she still needed to record what the front elevation looked like and then trace in how she wanted to change it. In truth, she didn’t feel like drawing; what she really wanted was to curl up and forget everything with a large gin. But she withdrew a 2B pencil from the case and began sketching the huge arched windows with their wooden shutters, in front of which was a veranda. Then she drew the large windows of the gallery floor and, finally, the beautiful old red-tiled roof. While she worked all she could think of was the humiliation and embarrassment of telling her father about Zinnia and the boy. And now, even while she tried to focus on her drawing, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  What was she to do?

  She couldn’t spend the rest of her life wondering if it was true. Wondering if all the time Elliot had been in love with somebody else; somebody who had been able to give him a child while she herself had not. Although the very thought of it made her feel ill, perhaps her only option really was to speak to Leo again.

  She went through the building and then, by way of the wide back doors, out into a courtyard garden. It struck her as a perfect place to serve tea and coffee. She sat down in one corner and drew the columns supporting an upstairs balcony, where she pictured the railings festooned with tumbling flowers. She hadn’t given much thought to the outside space until now, but it was an idyllic place to sit and think, surrounded as it was by tall coconut palms, and, though the courtyard itself was overrun with bougainvillea and unchecked weeds, it wouldn’t take long to fix.

  Once she was done, she packed up her drawing equipment and walked back home. There she sat in the garden, gazing at her flowering shrubs and nursing a ginger tea. A green male garden lizard, with white stripes on its body and a crimson-crested head, stared at her from where it perched on a log. It made her smile, but when Zinnia and the child continued to prey on her mind she decided she simply had no choice: she would have to return to Cinnamon Hills.

  * * *

  —

  Two days later, once Margo had left for home by bus after all, Louisa gathered her courage. Now it was May, the weather had become a little wetter. It was still warm, at least in the low eighties, and it would remain that way throughout the summer, when the monsoon would bring heavy rains from June until September. Louisa didn’t mind the rains and looked forward to the relief they could offer, when Galle’s streets would be running with water and the sea would be wild. But, for now, a light drizzle meant humidity was high, and she wiped her hand across her brow as she climbed into the car. It would be a sticky journey today, though she didn’t know if she was sweating because of the weather, or because of what she was preparing to do. She’d dressed carefully in lightweight trousers with a simple cotton blouse, and had tied her hair in a knot at the nape of her neck. It was too hot to wear it down. At the last minute, she threaded through her favorite sapphire earrings. They had once belonged to her mother and so
mething about them always made her feel better.

  Louisa soon arrived at the same beach where she had swum with Margo. She and Elliot had liked to collect large shells together but she hadn’t searched for any since he died. Shoeless, she walked slowly along the fringes of the ocean, feeling the sun-baked sand between her toes, while staring at the silvery blue water and thinking all the time.

  She picked up a few pretty shells and then made her way back to the car, where she sat to dust the sand from her feet before starting up the engine. After that she made a left turn off the main road and began the now familiar climb up Cinnamon Hills—but with her heart racing, she had no idea how she would approach Leo. All she knew was she had to hear the truth.

  She soon reached the house at the top with the gorgeous views. She knocked, but when the houseboy answered the door, he told her the master had taken a doctor to see his cousin and would return in a little while. Louisa deliberated: was this an opportunity to turn around and go straight back home? She took a few steps toward her parked car but then paused. If she didn’t do this, there would always be doubt. Never-ending doubt. She had to see Leo.

  She went a little way into the plantation, but walked straight into a giant wood-spider’s web strung across the track between the cinnamon bushes. She brushed its sticky strands from her hair and, nervous of losing her way, returned to the house, where she sat on a small bench in the shade of the upstairs veranda. Then, listening to the squeaks and chatter from the forest canopy, she waited in the sweltering heat. Relieved when the houseboy brought her a lemonade, she drank it quickly and flicked away the flies buzzing around the rim of her glass.

  After about half an hour she spotted Leo walking up the track. He paused when he saw her and then came straight up to the bench. Their previous meeting hung between them and for a moment neither spoke.

  Eventually he tilted his head. “Louisa?”

  “Leo.”