‘Must you think only of yourself?’ she demanded, her voice raised. ‘Would you have him ruin the poor girl’s reputation as he has ruined your own?’
Apart from a sharp intake of breath, her words were met with an angry silence. Even in the darkness, Rose was aware that the duchess blinked at her rapidly, her face taut. Rose admonished herself for having spoken so harshly. It was not helped by the stillness that followed which she felt certain both women were finding unbearable, punctuated as it was only by the faint sound of the waves lapping the shore in the distance and the ever-persistent humming of the cicadas.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Rose. ‘I should not have spoken as I did.’
‘You do not understand,’ said the duchess, at last. The haughtiness had returned to her voice and some of the colour to her face. ‘I am not quite the awful woman you suppose me to be, and Alec … Alec is not the man you think he is. You judge us both too harshly. If you only knew the truth …’ Her words faltered, as if she was overcome by a sudden tiredness, or was half afraid to continue her sentence. Indeed, Rose had the odd impression that she was trembling, though whether from fear or from emotion, she could not tell.
Fearing another wretched silence, Rose said quickly; ‘Then why don’t you tell it to me, the truth I mean? It’s possible that I can help you. It’s obvious that you are miserable, why –’
‘Oh, what does it matter anyway?’ the duchess said, clearly bored by the conversation, though a note of desperation had crept into her voice. ‘You have made up your mind about me. No, please don’t say another word. There is nothing you can do. There is nothing anyone can do.’
She broke off from what she was saying, for again there was the sound of footsteps. This time the two women instinctively drew apart so that only Rose was visible on the path, the duchess having retreated to the relative safety of the shadows cast by the bushes.
‘Ah, darling, there you are,’ came the welcome sound of Cedric’s voice. ‘I wondered where you’d got to. Lavinia didn’t see you leave. I thought it unlikely you’d have retired for the night without telling her.’
Rose gave a quick, furtive glance at the bushes. She could no longer make out the figure of the duchess in the darkness. It was possible, she supposed, that the woman, fearing the awkwardness of meeting the earl under such strained circumstances, had decided to disappear further into the bushes to await their departure.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been an age,’ Cedric was saying, He had taken Rose’s arm and was steering her back towards the hotel. Rose had a sudden vision of the duchess crouching in the dark, miserable and wretched. It occurred to her then that if she and Cedric made a short detour and walked instead in the direction of the tennis courts, and perhaps lingered there for a moment or two to take in the night air, the duchess would have an opportunity to make her way back to her own rooms unobserved. Quite oblivious to his wife’s musings, Cedric allowed himself to be propelled unceremoniously, and without objection, towards the tennis courts.
‘That Vickers fellow,’ he said, ‘is a querulous sort. He talks the most frightful rot, I can tell you. Kept telling me that Dewhurst is a petty thief who goes by the name of Goodfellow. Of course, I didn’t believe a word of it and I told him as much. Anyway, Kettering’s given him his marching orders. He’s to leave the hotel first thing tomorrow after breakfast.’
‘Did you find his camera?’ enquired Rose.
‘Oh yes, it was there all right. Kettering’s put it in a sort of safe. Our man Vickers made quite a fuss about it, I can tell you. He’s an unpleasant sort, and no mistake. The sooner he’s left the hotel, the better.’
They retraced their steps to the terrace and the dining room loomed in front of them, lit up by its giant chandeliers. The hotel band was still playing and the music drifted out to them enticingly. Had she been in a different mood, Rose would not have given the duchess another thought but drifted into the room and danced. But the odd encounter among the shadows had affected her, and she could not rid herself of the feeling that she had, to some extent, been at fault. The duchess had reached out to her and she had done very little to alleviate the woman’s suffering. If anything, she had only made matters worse. She wondered what it was about the woman that had antagonised her so.
Later, it occurred to her that had she acted differently, events might have taken a different turn, and the old proverb was to return to taunt her. For she was to realise too late that, of all of them gathered at Hotel Hemera, the one that had been truly blind had been herself.
Chapter Fourteen
The figure made its way stealthily across the hotel terrace. It was pitch black but he was familiar with the route and, though he was forced to grope his way blindly, he did not stumble. Rather, the darkness was his ally, cloaking him in a sheet of black. Even those hotel guests who kept late hours and might happen to glance sleepily out of their windows before retiring for the night would be ignorant of the fact that he was there. Of course, he had not chanced entirely to luck; that was not his way. He had made a point of studying the route in the daylight so that he might tread it easily at night when he was encumbered not only by the darkness but by his various treasured possessions, which, while small and light in themselves, seemed oddly to weigh him down heavily as if they were a manacle around his neck. Was it guilt, he wondered, that hung in the air about him? Was it what remained of his tattered conscience reminding him that what he had accrued had been achieved by deception?
It was only when he had cleared the terrace that it occurred to him that had he thought it all out properly, as he was wont to do, he would have packed up all his things in advance and had them sent down secretly to the boat, for he did not doubt for a moment that some of the servants could be bribed. Still, it was no use thinking about that now. What was done, was done and he must look forward. To a certain extent, things had gone to plan, if matters had to be rushed and hurried somewhat, so be it.
Somewhere, a few feet away, a twig snapped. In the ordinary course of things such an occurrence would barely have registered in his consciousness, but tonight for some odd reason he felt strangely apprehensive and jumpy. There was no reason why he should feel alarmed and yet he sensed that danger lay waiting for him as distinctly as if it had tapped him on the shoulder and called out his name. Such a notion was ridiculous, of course. He was not usually given to flights of fancy, and the thought that he was in the grip of some irrational fear annoyed him. He did not see it as a sign that something was amiss. His senses were heightened and yet he cursed the fact, as if it were some wretched inconvenience. Still, the broken twig had unnerved him and, despite himself, he quickened his pace. More to occupy his mind than anything else, he endeavoured to engage his thoughts on the task at hand.
He passed the formal gardens and the tennis courts and strode out purposefully towards the cliff. It had not occurred to him before that it was a considerable walk. The darkness and being alone seemed to accentuate the distance, so that for one awful moment he wondered whether he had taken a wrong turn. Despite his good intentions, he found that he had become distracted. His head had been preoccupied with thoughts of a sinister kind so that he became disorientated. All of a sudden he found himself on the cliff edge. It rattled him to think that a step or two more and he might have found himself falling to the beach below. He took a deep breath and straightened, scouring the area for the path. It would be something of a perilous descent in the dark, and one that he did not particularly relish. Still, he could not stay where he was and he dared not return to the hotel. There was nothing to be done but spend the night on the beach as he had originally intended. It meant a treacherous climb down but it had to be done, and the sooner it was accomplished, the better.
He had been badly frightened, not by the sheer drop that faced him but by the multitude of angry words exchanged that evening that had made him instigate a change to his carefully laid plans. It was a crying shame, but he must make the best of it and take with him what he could salvage. Utmost
in his mind was the conviction that he must disappear before his absence was noted. He did not wish to become a subject of common gossip for he knew himself to be in a precarious position.
He halted abruptly, frozen in the act of putting one foot before the other. He’d heard another twig snap, and this time it had sounded very near indeed; a few steps away at most. In all probability it was just some nocturnal island animal, and yet he felt what he could best describe as an affliction of the nerves. He was tempted to turn around and stare in the direction from where the noise had come, and yet he felt strangely afraid to do so, almost as if he thought that some strange apparition would rise out of the darkness and strike him, as penance for his numerous misdeeds.
He took a deep breath and admonished himself severely for letting his nerves get the better of him. He’d do far better to focus his attention instead on finding the path that led down to the beach, and then he would be thoroughly occupied, for he knew it would take all his concentration to descend it in the dark. It was difficult to get his bearings, yet he was pretty certain that if he walked a little way to the right he’d come across the path. Yes … there it was, complete with the old, gnarled handrail. Now all he had to do was grab the rail and watch his footing. He hadn’t remembered it being so steep. He’d have to edge his way along it gingerly, a step at a time. There was no need to rush …
When the blow came, he had all but forgotten about the broken twig. In the brief seconds between consciousness and oblivion, it came to him as a memory, almost as if in a hazy dream. He was vaguely aware also of a dull pain and a thundering in his ears, and above all else of the eerie sensation of falling. In that moment, before the darkness consumed him, he knew himself to be crashing down towards the beach below and to his ultimate death.
‘Peony, where have you been?’
The head that emerged from beneath the bed covers was all but hidden by the mob cap that swamped the grizzled curls beneath, giving the speaker the odd appearance of a baby roused unceremoniously from its sleep.
‘Go back to sleep, Hyacinth,’ said her sister a little harshly, her voice strangely hoarse.
Instead of complying, however, Miss Hyacinth sat up, propping her back against her pillows and lit the candle on the little wooden table that was positioned next to her bed. She regarded her sibling with open curiosity in the flickering candlelight which, to her fanciful mind, gave a rather ghostly glow to the proceedings. Indeed, studying her sister closely, she thought Miss Peony gave a very good impersonation of a beleaguered witch. If nothing else, she was dressed from head to foot in black, the stiff old-fashioned Victorian silk rustling as she moved.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked again. ‘And why are you dressed like that? Wasn’t that gown you are wearing Mother’s?’ Her gaze moved to the clock on the mantelpiece and she started. ‘It’s half past two in the morning!’ she exclaimed, her eyes wide open.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Miss Peony, somewhat gruffly, careful not to catch her sibling’s eye. ‘I thought I’d just take a turn around the hotel grounds, that’s all. I daresay I should have done it before turning in.’
Miss Hyacinth’s hand leapt to her mouth as an awful thought occurred to her. ‘You didn’t –’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Miss Peony, sharply. ‘Now, go back to sleep, Hyacinth. I can’t do with all your talking, not at this time of the night. I’m tired.’
Miss Hyacinth blew out the candle and settled down once more in her bed among the pillows, arranging the covers about her. A few minutes elapsed during which neither woman spoke. When Miss Peony next cast a cursory glance in her sibling’s direction, she was relieved that her sister gave every appearance of being asleep. Yet, if she had looked more closely, she would have seen that Miss Hyacinth was in fact wide awake and regarding her sister surreptitiously from behind her cotton sheets. Even in the darkness, it occurred to Miss Hyacinth that her sister appeared strangely agitated. For her sibling fumbled clumsily with the buttons of her gown, as if she could hardly muster the energy to undo them. Miss Hyacinth had the odd and disconcerting feeling that something dreadful had happened. It may have been just an odd fancy on her part, but she knew her sister well enough to conclude that at the very least something had unsettled her badly. The brusqueness of her manner and her clipped sentences said as much. And as for her taking walks after dark … well, she’d never heard anything like it. But it was not this that held her attention or troubled her. Rather it was Miss Peony’s hands. Strong, capable hands, she had always thought them, though they belonged to an invalid. But they didn’t look like that now. For, as Miss Peony paused to take off her wristwatch, Miss Hyacinth noticed with something akin to horror that her sister’s hands were trembling.
The Misses Trimble were not the only women to be awake that night. Mabel Adler joined their ranks, sitting forlornly in front of her dressing table, staring dejectedly at her tear-stained face, only too aware that a severe bout of crying did very little to accentuate one’s beauty.
It was her habit to brush her hair before climbing into bed each night and instinctively she reached out for her hairbrush, hardly aware of what she was doing until it dawned on her that it was not in its usual place beside her mirror. The recollection of where it was, packed neatly in her bag, brought on a fresh bout of tears, and this time she noted her red-rimmed eyes with a dark gratification, a testament to her desolate mood.
Tomorrow, she would look dreadful and it would serve him jolly well right to witness the misery he had caused in the person he claimed to love above all others. Miss Hyacinth was certain to comment on her wretched appearance, flitting about her in that way of hers like an over indulgent mother hen, which Mabel, unused to a mother’s ministrations, usually found so infuriating. Tomorrow, however, she would indulge the woman. Indeed, she would get a grim satisfaction in seeing the horrified look on Miss Hyacinth’s face when she told the woman her woeful tale. And what would he do while she was telling it, she wondered? Would his ears burn with the shame of it all, or would he scurry off and hide his head among his sermons and pretend that he was not the subject of shocked whispers?
She had known her father to be rather set in his ways, had recognised him to be jovial and tolerant and somewhat absent-minded in a way most people found quite charming and endearing. It was what they sought for in a man of the cloth. But never before had she had occasion to glimpse flashes of the latent anger which lay beneath the pleasant exterior waiting to be ignited. It was as foreign to her as disease or abject poverty, and because of that all the more terrifying. She stifled a sob as she remembered her father’s face, livid with emotion. As she laid down the hairbrush retrieved from her case, marvelling, in spite of everything, at the richness of her fine blond curls, it occurred to her to wonder whether that was not in fact what had upset her the most. She was so used to wrapping her father around her little finger that, not for a moment, had it ever occurred to her that she would not always get her own way. Her parent might harbour various misgivings about her proposed endeavours, but she had always been confident before that, with a very little effort, he could be persuaded to her way of thinking. For the first time in her rather spoilt young life, she could no longer be certain of her father’s unconditional subservience.
But it was not merely this fact, terrifying though it was, or that her carefully laid plans had been so unceremoniously broken that she found most distressing. It was that for the first time in her life she had been afraid; dreadfully afraid. It was only then that the thought struck her, so forcefully that for a few seconds she could do little more than gaze rather helplessly at her reflection in the mirror and take a deep breath. The question that had lingered at the back of her mind and had now succeeded in fighting its way to the fore was awful by the nature of its very simplicity. For whom had she been afraid? It hadn’t been for herself, not really. Her father would never lay a finger on her, but ... She shuddered violently and passed a hand across her face, obliterating her view of the room
with the neatly packed case standing waiting. Try as she might, she could not rid herself of the vision of her father’s face as it had looked that evening, full of hidden menace.
It was Ralph Kettering’s habit to go for an early morning swim when the tide was right. As proprietor of Hotel Hemera, the majority of his day was naturally enough spent attending to the needs of his guests. The few moments he could snatch to devote to his own wants were therefore extremely precious to him. At six o’clock in the morning, while the day was just beginning for his servants and the heavy wooden shutters barring the windows of his guests’ rooms were still resolutely shut, he was at one with the world. That time of day, from his point of view, was still his own and he embraced it with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy. This morning was no exception and, with his beach towel rolled up under his arm, he sauntered towards the cliff with a definite spring in his step. Indeed, he vaguely remembered afterwards that he had even been whistling a jaunty tune, so untroubled were his thoughts at that time of the morning. Even his dress, though decidedly casual, retained an air of smartness about it, consisting as it did of tennis flannels and shirt. Only later would he be required to don his lounge suit, the thick fabric of which he found stifling and uncomfortable in the Mediterranean heat.
Almost before realising it, he came to the edge of the cliff and scoured the edge for the start of the path, which he quickly located with a practised eye. It struck him now, as it had occurred to him often, that it might be prudent to erect a fence around the edge of the cliff to ensure the safety of his patrons. As on previous occasions, he dismissed the thought as soon as it had entered his head. To do so would undoubtedly spoil the view, and it was not as if he actively encouraged his guests to visit the cliff after dark. While he knew that for some of his clientele it held an irresistible, romantic fascination, he was always careful to warn his guests of the perils when they first arrived. And though he had been sorely tempted to do so, he refrained from lighting the path with torches. If his guests decided not to heed his advice and visited the cliff edge in the hours of darkness, he could very well argue that they did so at their own risk.
Murder on Skiathos Page 13
