Letters From the Past

by Erica James

  Maybe she had merely been born unlucky. That’s how it had felt when, back in 1938, and after only two and a half years of marriage, her first husband, Dieter, tragically died from TB. A German living in London, he’d left his country of birth because he was afraid of what Hitler was doing there. He had been the kindest and gentlest of men. Hope had met him during a lunchtime concert at the Albert Hall. When the recital had finished, and with a shyness that had touched her, he had struck up conversation and asked if he could accompany her to another concert one day. Charmed by his accent and impeccable manners, she had readily agreed. Before long they were inseparable. But then the genuine happiness she had experienced for the first time in her life was snatched away from her when he fell ill and died.

  Everyone told her that in time the pain would lessen and despite not believing a word of what they said, they were eventually proved right when Edmund, her childhood friend, achieved the impossible and brought a lightness back into her life. They married when the war was over, and he had been her constant and loving companion ever since. But never far from her thoughts was the fear that she might lose him, just as she had Dieter. Or maybe he would simply tire of her.

  She and Edmund had been staying at Island House for over a month now while work was finished on their new home. They had sold their old house surprisingly quickly and had to move out before Fairview was ready. Romily had come to their rescue by offering Island House as a temporary home. ‘I shall be away in America, so why not make use of it yourselves?’ she’d said with her customary logic, not to say generosity.

  Technically Romily was Hope’s stepmother, having married her father, Jack Devereux, but being only a few years older than Hope, they had been more like friends, or even sisters. Romily had inherited Island House – so named because of the stream that fed the large pond and which skirted around the house down into the next valley – when Jack had died shortly before war broke out, but the family had always been made to feel welcome. Well, everyone except for Arthur.

  Despite their initial reserve at having a stepmother not much older than themselves, Romily soon came to be a breath of fresh air in their lives. She was, even in her grief at being widowed, a tour de force and a great example to Hope, who was still mourning Dieter. But somehow Romily, with her can-do approach to life, had nurtured and encouraged Hope. It was thanks to Romily, too, already an established and successful novelist herself, that Hope had become a children’s author. She doubted she could have done it without her stepmother’s help and support. Kit often joked that the Devereux family could never do anything by halves. ‘Why have one bestselling author in the family when you can have two?’ he’d say.

  It had been Hope who had wanted to sell their old house on the edge of Clover Woods. Edmund had been happy to stay, but she hated the way it was no longer so private. The woods she had played in as a child had been partly cleared to make way for the building of a new development of houses. It was just one of the many changes going on in the village. It was called progress and she didn’t like it. She blamed it on the war; it had altered things, not just here in Melstead St Mary, but everywhere. People’s expectations had changed; they were dissatisfied with the old, they wanted newer, bigger and better.

  The main street in the village had seen a turnaround in shops. There was still Minton’s bakery and the butcher’s shop, but where there used to a hardware store, there was now a supermarket where customers wandered the aisles with a wire basket, filling it themselves. The choice of food available was greater, but the service was less personal.

  The one addition that Hope actually approved of was the small library which she and Romily had helped to get off the ground.

  Knowing how resistant to change she was, Edmund had been surprised when Hope announced that they should move. He had been even more surprised when she had suggested they build a new house to live in. He had gone along with her wishes, but hadn’t shown the same level of enthusiasm in the design process as she did. Her main priority was to find somewhere that was in no danger of being overlooked, and she had made doubly sure of that by buying the surrounding land from the farmer who owned it. Initially he had refused to sell, but when she offered an amount well over the odds, the farmer agreed. She kept that from Edmund because she suspected he didn’t always like the fact that her writing earned her the kind of money it did.

  Throughout the war Edmund had worked as a hospital doctor in London. He had wanted to enrol as an army doctor, but with so many already gone, his skill was needed to treat all those injured servicemen who were sent home to be patched up. They married in 1945, three months after the end of the war, and he immediately left his post in London and took over the practice here in the village when Dr Garland moved to Norfolk.

  Edmund had been keen to have a child of their own, but it was not to be. Tests proved that Hope was the one at fault, though no doctor used that word. She was secretly relieved. The thought of being weighed down by the needs of another child had frightened her. She had done her best with their adopted daughter, Annelise, but she knew deep in her heart, she was not the maternal kind.

  In August 1939, just days before Hitler invaded Poland, and a year after Dieter died, Hope had travelled to Germany to visit his family. It was in Cologne when she went to see Dieter’s sister, Sabine, and her Jewish husband Otto Lowenstein, that they begged her to save their only child by taking her to England. Hope tried desperately to convince them to come with her, to escape the fear of living in Nazi Germany, but they wouldn’t leave Otto’s parents. With a heavy heart, and fearful of the enormous responsibility laid upon her, Hope returned to England by train and boat, pretending the ten-month-old baby was her own. It was the longest journey of her life. Sabine and Otto’s fear at what Hitler might do was justified; they both perished in the Holocaust. But thanks to her, Edmund would remind Hope whenever she felt she had failed Annelise, their precious child had survived.

  Edmund had proved himself to be a wonderful father to Annelise and Hope would always be grateful for that. He was also an excellent uncle to their niece and nephew, Em and Pip.

  Downstairs, she spotted that afternoon’s post on the hall table. She flicked through it, putting aside most of the letters that were for Romily, then found one that was for her. It was handwritten and with a local postmark. Absently, she tore it open as she began moving towards the drawing room. She had taken no more than a few steps when she stopped dead in her tracks.

  Stunned, she realised she was looking at a poison pen letter. The words – in a jumble of cut out newspaper print – leapt off the page at her.

  you need to be a better wife

  and pay more attention to

  your adulterous husband.

  Chapter Three

  Quince Cottage, Melstead St Mary

  October 1962

  Florence

  Normally Florence Minton told her husband everything. Well, almost everything. Some things were best left unsaid. Was the letter something she should keep quiet about?

  ever wondered why your husband

  is so popular with the women

  in the village?

  Whoever had sent it had to be sick in the head. Billy was no philanderer. He would no more betray Florence than she would him. She trusted Billy completely. With her life. With their children’s lives come to that!

  The letter had arrived in the post that morning long after Billy had begun kneading the first batch of bread dough in the bakery, and just as Florence was about to set off for work at Island House. She had worked there for Romily since before the war and her job had changed many times over the years, from general housemaid duties, to nanny and now overall housekeeper and personal assistant. ‘You’re indispensable to me,’ Romily often said, ‘my secret weapon in keeping my life on track.’ Florence had always felt honoured that Romily regarded her the way she did, and that she insisted Florence use her Christian name. T
here had never been any standing on ceremony between them. Now, with Romily currently away in America, Florence was tasked with looking after Island House while Hope and Edmund Flowerday lived there temporarily.

  When she had opened the envelope, she had initially stared in confusion at the cut-out letters of newspaper print which had been glued onto the paper. Then slowly, as if word by word, it had dawned on her what she had in her hands – a poison pen letter. She had shaken her head in disbelief.

  ‘Rubbish!’ she’d declared aloud. ‘Disgusting filth!’ She’d then lifted the lid on the range and tossed the letter in. ‘That’s where rubbish belongs,’ she’d muttered, ever the pragmatist. For good measure she had added the envelope, but not before examining the handwriting to see if she recognised it. She didn’t.

  If she had believed burning the letter would put a stop to her thinking about it, she was wrong. All morning at Island House while she went about her duties, she couldn’t stop wondering who could have sent it.

  There was only one person who she could believe might want to cause her trouble, and that was Billy’s mother.

  Ruby Minton had never thought Florence was good enough for her precious Billy. Maybe the nasty woman was right, but they had been happily married for two decades and had given Ruby two wonderful grandchildren, George and Rosie. Even so, Ruby could still find fault with anything she did or said.

  In the early days of their marriage, Florence had hoped the antagonism her mother-in-law displayed towards her would lessen as the years went by, but it didn’t. Since Billy’s dad had passed away, Ruby’s behaviour had escalated, and she brimmed over with venomous resentment for Florence. But would she stoop to this? Did she really hate Florence that much? And if Ruby wasn’t the culprit, who did hate Florence to the extent they wanted to cause trouble between her and Billy? Was it some jealous woman who had designs on Billy for herself?

  Oh, if only Romily was back at Island House and not still in America! She was the one person in the world in whom Florence felt she could confide about this. She would know what Florence should do. That was the thing about Romily, she was always so clear-headed and always knew just how to deal with a crisis.

  Chapter Four

  Casa Santa Rosa, Palm Springs,

  October 1962

  Romily

  Lost in thought, Romily Devereux-Temple stood in her nightclothes on the terrace of the guest house at Casa Santa Rosa. After a restless night, she was pondering the wisdom of her being here. She couldn’t help but think it had been a mistake to extend her time in America by accepting the invitation to spend a week in Palm Springs. But everybody had been so persuasive.

  Or was it her flattered ego that had been so persuasive and overruled her common sense?

  That was the thing about Hollywood, people there could twist your arm to make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do; they could sweet-talk you into believing anything was possible. It was the place where dreams were made, and shattered.

  Following a lengthy tour of speaking engagements, Gabe and Melvyn Correll, the brothers who ran Starbright Picture Studios, had approached her to discuss their idea about filming the first in her series of Sister Grace books. Since her debut novel was published almost thirty years ago, and to great acclaim, she had written twenty-five detective novels, all of them widely sold around the world. She had only tried her hand at writing because she had hoped it would help fund her then two big passions in life – motor racing and flying. That was when she’d been in her twenties, and what an age ago that felt!

  Sister Grace was a fairly recent addition to her canon of sleuthing detectives and after half a dozen novels the rebellious nun with a twinkle in her eye had become a firm favourite with her readers. Romily was rather fond of her too, which was why, when the idea of a Sister Grace film had first been mentioned, she had dismissed the suggestion out of hand. Apart from her being an author and not a scriptwriter, therefore not suited to the job of adapting the novel for the screen, she had felt protective of her protagonist and hated the thought of her creation being spoiled. But then the persuasion, encouraged by her agent back in London who loved the idea and claimed it was high time one of her books was made into a film, had begun. And before she knew it, following a few too many Manhattan cocktails, she had agreed to delay her flight home to England in order to consider the idea in more depth. Gabe and Melvyn had said they had just the man to help her turn her novel into a film script. ‘His name’s Red St Clair and he’s a terrific scriptwriter,’ Gabe said, ‘a genius for getting to the heart of a thing. The pair of you will get on like a house on fire.’

  So here she was, a guest in Gabe and Melvyn’s sprawling Palm Springs home waiting to meet said ‘genius’. Much as it galled her, she had to admit that she was now experiencing a flutter of excitement at the prospect of seeing her novel Sister Grace Falls from Grace turned into a film. Which just went to show, even a grounded fifty-five-year-old woman like her could be seduced by the bright lights of Hollywood.

  With a wry smile, she leaned against the stone balustrade of the terrace. In front of her, and fringed with tall palm trees, was a sweep of lush green lawn and a turquoise swimming pool with sunbeds placed invitingly around it. Vibrant flowers of scarlet and fuchsia pink tumbled from stone urns and classical statues stood guard at strategically placed points.

  None of which, to Romily’s mind, could compete with the natural beauty of the mountainous backdrop. In the early morning light of dawn, Mount San Jacinto glowed in the roseate blush of the rising sun. High above it was an unbroken sky washed with pale lavender. It was an astonishingly beautiful sight. The arid air was already warm and fragrant with orange blossom. The guest house in which she was accommodated was entirely separate but lacked nothing in the way of comfort or luxury. A maid – a middle-aged Mexican woman called Clara – had shown her from the main house to where she was to sleep and had impressed upon her that if there was anything she wanted, any time of the day or night, she had only to pick up the telephone and ring through her request.

  For all its impressive extravagance, Casa Santa Rosa didn’t feel real; it resembled a film set. Any moment she expected to see actors take up their positions and cameras start to roll.

  She stepped back inside the guest house and telephoned her request through for her breakfast. Minutes later she reappeared on the terrace in her swimsuit, a towelling robe slung over her shoulder. An early morning swim seemed entirely appropriate. Especially as it would be something she wouldn’t be able to do once she was back in Melstead St Mary.

  She swam with a determined front crawl stroke, length after length, her arms slicing through the water, her legs kicking hard. She was perfectly used to spending long periods of time away from home, whether it was doing book research, or carrying out speaking engagements while promoting her latest publication, but for some reason she felt she had been away too long this time.

  Island House had been her beloved home for more than two decades; it was the longest she had lived anywhere. Prior to that she had lived a nomadic life. The place held so many memories for her, some heartbreaking memories, but many happy ones too. It had been an oasis of respite during the war, not just for Romily, but for all those she had taken under her wing – those who worked for her, like Florence, Lottie and dear old Mrs Partridge; her stepchildren Hope and Kit, and their extended family, including Annelise and Isabella, and not forgetting Stanley, the evacuee. He had come to Melstead as a nine-year-old boy, stick-thin and homesick for London, thoroughly convinced he would never get used to living in the country. Now he was a grown man of thirty-two who said he could never live anywhere but Melstead St Mary. Island House had been the making of him, he often said. It had been the making of them all, Romily believed.

  Bored with front crawl, she flipped over and proceeded to swim on her back, her gaze fixed on the cloudless blue sky above her. Stretching her arms over her head, her thoughts re
verted to the reason she was here.

  According to Gabe and Melvyn, Red St Clair had written for three of the major studios, Paramount, MGM and Columbia. ‘Of course, he’s never really needed to work,’ Melvyn had said, ‘not after inheriting a fortune from a printing company founded by his grandpappy.’

  ‘And don’t believe all the stories in the gossip columns about him never being seen unless it’s on the arm of some glamorous socialite,’ Gabe had added. ‘He’s really not that superficial.’

  He sounded like trouble to Romily. Big trouble.

  When finally she’d tired of swimming, she swam to the shallow end of the pool and stood in the sun squeezing the water from her hair. Going over to where she’d left her towelling robe, she wrapped it around her body. For a woman of her age she liked to think she was in reasonable shape. Her legs (one of which bore a pale six-inch-long scar) and arms were still toned, and her stomach was pleasingly flat. She was lucky that she had one of those metabolisms that magically kept any excess pounds at bay.

  She was just thinking she should telephone home to see how everybody was, when Clara, the maid from last night, appeared with her breakfast. Placing the tray on the table in the dappled shade of the orange tree, the woman passed Romily an envelope. ‘This just arrived for you madam. It was hand delivered.’

  Alone, Romily opened the envelope.

  Dear Romily,

  Unavoidably delayed! Will have to delay our meeting this morning until one o’clock. I’ll book us a table at La Bella Vista. You can’t miss it, it’s next door to the El Mirador on North Indian Avenue.

  See you there!

  Red St Clair.

  Unimpressed by the appalling handwriting, and by the rude and presumptuous content of the brief message, Romily’s hackles rose skywards. This, she thought grimly, did not bode well. Mr St Clair was clearly far from reliable. And far from being a man of good manners. See you there, indeed!