Lord of the Far Island

by Victoria Holt

  Rose, her face the color of chalk, came into my bedroom, where I was sorting out my clothes. Bessie was with her, peering from behind her back.

  "What's wrong?" I said.

  "There's been some accident. I don't know rightly what, but Mr. Rollo Carrington's here and he's asking to see you."

  I went down to the drawing room. Rollo was standing by the fireplace.

  "Is anything wrong?" I cried.

  I saw his face then—pale, drawn and anxious. He didn't look like the Rollo I had known.

  "Something terrible has happened," he said. "You must try to be calm."

  "It's Philip," I said.

  "Yes," he nodded. "Philip."

  "He's ill. . . ."

  "He's dead."

  "Philip. . .dead! Oh no, that can't be. How could it. . . ?"

  "Philip was found dead this morning."

  "But he wasn't ill."

  "He was found shot."

  "Shot! But who . . . ?"

  Rollo shook his head slowly and sadly.

  "It appears the wound was self-inflicted," said Rollo.

  I felt myself growing dizzy. Rollo caught me and held me for some moments until I regained my strength.

  "There's a mistake," I said shrilly. "I don't believe it."

  "No, alas. There is no mistake."

  Everything was collapsing about me. It was like a bad dream. I'd wake up. I must. The world had become a strange place full of distorted nightmares. And the greatest of these was that with Rollo standing before me saying in a low tragic voice: "Philip is dead. He took his own life."

  What did it mean?

  Dead Man's Leap

  I lay on my bed. I did not want to move. I couldn't believe it. Philip dead! Philip who had been so full of life! It was impossible. And to take his own life. He, who had been so happy! Only the day before he had talked exuberantly of our future. What could have happened so suddenly to make him do such a thing?

  Esmeralda came and sat by my bed. I wanted no one but I could just bear her. She was so quiet. She took a handkerchief soaked with eau de cologne and laid it on my forehead. I knew I should never smell that scent again without remembering this day.

  I kept seeing Philip in scenes from the past. The day we set the fields on fire—that mischief in his eyes! He had wanted to let it blaze for a while before we gave the alarm. How his eyes had shone! How they had danced! We'd be punished for this but let us enjoy it while it lasted. Philip at the dance, proposing to me, serious suddenly, assuring me that he would always look after me.

  And now he had done this.

  "I don't believe it," I said. "It's not true. It can't be."

  Esmeralda said nothing. What was there to say?

  A great deal would be said of course and they would soon start saying it.

  That very day it was there in the newspaper, the great headlines: "Suicide of Bridegroom-to-Be. Six days before he was to have married Miss Ellen Kellaway, Philip, son of Josiah Carrington, took his own life. What is the story behind the tragedy?"

  Everyone believed that there was a story and that I was the one who held the vital clue.

  Why should a young man who had every blessing shoot himself a few days before his wedding? It could only be that life had become too much for him to endure, so he had taken this way out. That he was to have been married in six days' time was the theme of the story.

  I lay in my room, the Venetian blinds drawn to keep out the sun. The sun that could not warm the coldness that invaded me. I could not eat; I could not sleep. I could only lie on my bed in shocked stillness and ask myself: Why? Why?

  Esmeralda told me what had happened. I commanded her to and in the same way that she had obeyed my orders when she was young she did now: "He was shot with one of the guns from Trentham Towers. He must have brought it from there."

  "It's not possible. That would mean that he had planned it."

  She was silent and my mind went back to that occasion when I had been with him in the gun room at Trentham Towers. I remembered the satin-lined case and the silver-gray pistol which he had taken out and touched so lovingly. There had been an empty compartment in the case and he had talked, jokingly I had thought, about keeping a pistol under his pillow. What could he have meant? Was it really true that he had done this? Had he then been serious when he had talked of burglars? Even so, what could have possessed him to turn the pistol on himself? Was it possible that I, who had thought I knew him so well, had been mistaken? Was there a darker side to his nature which he had never allowed me to see? I could not believe it.

  "He couldn't have killed himself!" I cried out. "He was talking to me only the day before. Imagine, Esmeralda, the despair a man must be in to take his own life! Can you imagine Philip ever in despair? I never saw him so. Did you? He wasn't the sort of man who could hide his feelings. He never attempted to. I knew Philip. Nobody knew him better, and I say it's impossible. I shall never believe it."

  But it had happened.

  Esmeralda said: "The newspaper people have been here. They want to see you. There'll be an inquest. You'll have to go."

  I roused myself. "I want to go," I said. "I want to discover the reason for this."

  It was like a dream. I saw their faces . . . Mr. Josiah Carrington looking unlike himself; his face pale and distorted with grief, Lady Emily more bewildered than ever with a tragic look in her eyes. And Rollo grown cold and stern; his eyes like ice; they looked searchingly at me, making me shiver.

  There could only be one verdict. Suicide. I wanted to cry out my protest.

  Not Philip! He never could. Anyone who knew him must be aware of that. But that was the court's verdict.

  There followed the funeral. I begged not to go. I just lay on my bed, weak from my emotions, lack of food and sleep.

  "Mother thinks you should go to the country," Esmeralda said. "I'm to go with you. The press keep calling. She says it's better to go away for a while."

  So we went and what a comfort Esmeralda was! I think in her mind was the belief that I had saved her from this ordeal and that she might so easily have been in my position if Philip had asked her to marry him as everyone had expected him to.

  I felt a little better in the country, but I still could not sleep well. When I dozed I dreamed of Philip, the pistol in his hand and the blood on his bed. I dreamed too that other dream. I was in the room with the red carpet and the painting and Philip was with me.

  He said to me: "You always felt the doom, didn't you, Ellen? Well, now here it is. I'm dead... I killed myself. I had to because I could not marry you."

  I woke up calling out to him.

  They were nightmare days.

  I was in the country for two weeks and then Rollo came to Trentham Towers.

  He walked over to see me. Esmeralda came to tell me he was there, and I went down into the small sitting room, and as he stood before me and bowed stiffly I thought how he had changed, as I must have done.

  He insisted that we be alone that we might talk. He came straight to the point: "I want you to tell me why Philip killed himself," he said.

  "If only I knew."

  "Don't you know?" he asked harshly.

  "How could I? If I had known what he was going to do I would have found some way of stopping him."

  "There must have been something. . . ."

  "I knew of nothing."

  "Who else would?"

  "It must have been something he kept to himself."

  "He was not that sort of person." Rollo kept his eyes on me. "There was simply no obvious reason. He had no anxieties. It must have been something in his private life, for he was never deeply involved in our business affairs. Are you absolutely sure that there were no differences between you? Because there appears to be no other reason why he could have taken his life."

  His eyes were cold and I believed he hated me because he actually suspected that I was somehow involved in Philip's death. It was more than I could bear.

  I cried out: "It was a g
reater shock to me than to you. I was to be his wife."

  He came close to me, his lips tight, and I noticed that he clenched his hands tightly together as though he were suppressing an impulse to do me an injury, so much did he blame me for his brother's death.

  "I think you know something," he said.

  "I have told you I have no idea how he could possibly have done such a thing."

  "It must have been something to do with you. Perhaps you had deceived him and he had discovered this. You betrayed him and this shattered him. He was very inexperienced of the world and he killed himself rather than face the consequences of what you had done."

  "You can't believe such nonsense. It's lies. . . wicked cruel lies."

  "Who was the man I found with you in the house in Finlay Square?"

  "How should I know who he is? He said he was a connection of yours."

  "You know that's untrue."

  "Then who was he?"

  "He was a friend of yours presumably."

  "I tell you, I don't know who he is. He was at the recital at your home . . . and then he came to the house to look at it. That's all I know of him."

  Rollo looked skeptical. "How did he get into the house?"

  "He told you. He got the key from the house agent."

  "I know too much, Ellen. I have made it my business to find out. He met you there by appointment and I came in and surprised you."

  "That's monstrous."

  "I can only draw the obvious conclusions. You had one key, Philip had the other, which I used. There was no third key. I spoke to the agent and asked him why he had given that man a key and he said he had given a key to no one but ourselves. There was only one way that man could have got into the house. You let him in. Don't lie to me any more, but don't be surprised if when you refuse to tell me the truth I draw my own conclusions."

  "This is nonsense," I cried. "I did not let him into the house. I was as surprised to see him as you were. He did have a key and the agent is lying."

  Rollo rose. "I would have respected you more had you confessed the truth. You were obviously very friendly with this man. I believe that this is at the root of the mystery and you know the answer. Philip died because of something you had done to him and you are responsible for his death."

  "How can you! How dare you! It's such lies. . . ."

  "So many lies have been told, I can see. But Philip is dead now. I wish to God he had never seen you."

  Then he went and I think that was the most unhappy time I had ever lived through.

  I was desolate. I had lost Philip and with him everything. I could have borne this better if it were not for the fact that Rollo despised me and suspected me so cruelly and unfairly of knowing something, of doing something, of being something I was not. He would not believe that Philip's death was as much a mystery to me as it was to him.

  I went for long walks but there was no comfort. There I had been with Philip. There was hardly any spot in the neighborhood which had not been one of our haunts. I rode out alone although Esmeralda always tried to accompany me, but then I would come to the inn where Philip and I—or perhaps the three of us but I suppose neither of us gave much thought to Esmeralda—had stopped for cider and a sandwich. There was the old smithy who had shoed our horses. He called a greeting to me as I passed, but his eyes were downcast and he did not know what to say. It was the same in the village where they had known us as children. They looked at me covertly and I knew the question which was in all their minds: Why had Philip killed himself? It was something to do with me. He would rather die than marry me. That was the inference everyone was putting on it.

  I couldn't resist going to Dead Man's Leap. There I would sit on the old wooden seat and brood over the many times when Philip and I had played in the woods from which we had emerged with a reluctant Esmeralda and forced her to witness our bravery in standing on the edge.

  . Dead Man's Leap! I thought a great deal about people who had found life so intolerable that they wanted to end it and I wondered what their tragedies had been to bring them to such a pass. One thing I was certain of. Philip had never been in that state. He could not have killed himself. But that had been the verdict. Why? Had I really known that boy with whom I had shared my childhood? Does one person ever really know another. I had always thought Philip was easy to understand. He said what was in his mind and rarely paused to think what effect his words might have. He was easygoing, good-tempered, a little lazy perhaps, eager for the good things of life but not liable to make any effort to get them, the son of a rich family who had never really lacked anything he wanted. That was how I had thought of Philip, but how much had I known of what lurked in the dark recesses of his mind?

  A great melancholy would descend upon me as I sat on that seat. Esmeralda asked me where I had been and when I told her she was horrified. "You shouldn't go there," she said, "it's morbid."

  "It suits my mood," I replied. "I can think of Philip there and in a strange way it comforts me."

  "I'll come with you," she would say, but I always protested: "No, no. I want to be alone."

  She was worried about me.

  One morning when I was in the woods I had the strange feeling that I was not alone. I wasn't sure quite what made me think so. Perhaps I heard an unexpected noise—the dislodging of a stone, the rustle of leaves, the sudden scuttling of some disturbed animal. But as I sat on the wooden seat I sensed a presence. I thought: Is it true that the spirits of those poor souls who ended their lives abruptly cannot rest and come back to the last place they knew on earth? That was what was generally believed by those who said the place was haunted.

  Oddly enough, instead of repelling me, this feeling attracted me. Perhaps I felt that I might be in touch with Philip and he would come back and tell me why he had died.

  So every morning my footsteps led me almost involuntarily to Dead Man's Leap, and often I had the feeling that I was observed.

  It was a hot sultry morning and I was glad to be in the cool woods. It was one of those still silent mornings when people say there is thunder in the air. More than ever I had the feeling that I was being watched as I sat on the seat and thought of Philip, wishing fervently that I could hear him whisper my name. I wished that I were young and carefree again when my chief desire had been to score over Philip and prove to him that girls were just as good as boys. I should have liked to go back to the time of our engagement that I might take less for granted and try to understand more about the man I was to marry. No matter what the evidence, no matter what the verdict, I could never accept the idea that he had killed himself. There must be another explanation.

  I went to the path as I always did before returning. I liked to look down into the bushes far below and remember the thrill it used to give me as a child.

  I gripped the rail and leaned forward and then suddenly it swung forward, taking me with it, so that I was clinging to it and hanging in mid-air. A startled bird flew up, brushing my face as it went past me. I had time to think: This is the end! before I fell.

  I opened my eyes. I could scarcely breathe so fast was my heart beating. I looked down; far below were the tops of trees. I felt my feet slipping and I clutched at the bushes into which I had fallen.

  Then I saw what had happened. By incredible good luck I had only fallen, a few feet before my skirts had been caught in one of the thick clumps of bushes which grew on the steep hillside.

  For some minutes I was unable to do anything but hang on with all my might. Then my heartbeats began to slow down and I was able to take stock of the situation. I looked up and saw that the rail on which I had been leaning had come away on one side and that I had had a miraculous escape from certain death.

  And now what must I do? One false move and I could go hurtling down. I must remain where I was and hope to attract someone's attention. Few people came to Dead Man's Leap and even if they did they would not know I was here clinging to the hillside bush.

  I shouted but my voice echoed back to
me. I could feel pains in my legs and arms. My hands were badly grazed and I knew I should certainly be bruised all over. I felt faint but that was the last thing I must do. I must concentrate on clinging to the bush.

  I shall never forget that terrible ordeal and how Esmeralda was my savior. But it was several hours before she missed me and then she immediately thought of Dead Man's Leap. What else she thought I was aware of, although she didn't mention it. She sent two of the grooms to look for me there and when they could not find me and noticed the broken rail they approached the place from below and that was how I was discovered clinging to the bush.

  To bring me down was not an easy matter. Two expert climbers from the nearby town came with special equipment; there were quite a lot of spectators and my rescue was reported in the press. There was a piece about the danger of Dead Man's Leap and how the rail had apparently been faulty although it had been put up not very long before. Greater protection was needed and something would have to be done about it.

  Esmeralda nursed me for three days. That was all I needed to get over the shock and my bruises and abrasions.

  The fact that Philip was reputed to have killed himself raised certain speculation as to what had happened to me. No one stressed this, but it was there.

  We could not stay in the country forever and Cousin Agatha recalled us.

  I felt a quiver of alarm when I entered the house and was confronted by her. Her expression was one of mingled exasperation and veiled triumph: exasperation because I had managed to get myself "talked about," as she put it, through this unfortunate affair on the hill, veiled triumph because although she did deplore the fact that a member of her family had failed to climb into the Carrington oligarchy, yet at the same time she was gratified because after all the "tumult and the shouting" I had failed and had had to come back to the old familiar position of Poor Relation to be victimized at her will.

  I went to Finlay Square and looked at the house. It was up for sale again but nothing would have induced me to go in. I wondered whether what had happened would affect its sale, because it had been mentioned as the future home of Philip and me. People might think it unlucky. That was, after all, how legends became attached to places.