by Aitana Moore
James would soon have to return to London and Lee would meet more of his friends, but in the meantime, there must be something she could find out, short of asking James for a list of every man of his acquaintance whose name began with S.
I only love James, and that’s a tragedy, Mia had written.
James had said that Mia was like a child, so it made sense for her to have a diary, like a teenager discovering the injustices of life. It made sense that her thoughts should be unsophisticated and self-centered, and that she had not had tools to cope with her boredom, her jealousy and her unhappiness. It even made sense that she wouldn’t write of her own schemes, of her attempts to make him jealous, of her plans to blackmail him through a fake suicide attempt.
The last thing Mia wrote, days before her death, was that she needed to decide whether to tell James or S about the child. She had told James: had he pushed her off the cliff for trying to blackmail him with a pregnancy? Had he become enraged at her attempts to manipulate him, just as he — perhaps seeing echoes of Mia in Lee — had become enraged in Sicily?
Had he planned his wife’s murder, driving down from London in less than three hours, luring her to the cliff and pushing her?
James could kill someone …
Lee couldn’t believe that James was a killer. She certainly couldn’t believe him to be a cold-blooded one — and if an accident had taken place, he would have owned up to it. People did sordid things all the time, but living with the guilt of killing a woman and his own child would have done more than send James crashing against a tree. He would never have kept such a secret.
S had killed Mia. She had told James about the baby, and he still didn’t want her. Mia had then, as the cunning emotional blackmailer that she was, told S, foolishly standing at the edge of a cliff. This was a man who knew James, and Mia had been about to bring everything out in the open and perhaps saddle him with a child he didn’t want.
In the week after Caitlin’s party, Deerholt regained its tranquility and Lee enjoyed being there as much as Mia had hated it. She and James spent most of their time at the estate, finding different corners to explore. They watched movies in the evenings and Lee began to like soccer when she understood the rules of the game.
Some days they took walks in small towns and she loved the terrible old pubs as much as he did. She loved the small teashops with old ladies like Miss Marple, who seemed frail but had clever eyes. They visited old abbeys, ruined castles and went to antique markets.
At night, or in the morning, or during an afternoon nap, they would make love.
I could get used to this, Lee thought, and then realized she already had.
And what did he feel, apart from not wanting her to go away?
Lee wasn’t Mia. She would never ask or expect to know. All she knew was that she sometimes sat listening for James when he wasn’t with her. She could be alone — she liked it — but when she heard his steps in the corridor, she always felt impatient to see him cross the threshold.
You’re in deep. But she wasn’t Mia; she was a survivor. She would survive anything. She would survive losing James.
On Friday they prepared to leave for Rosemount, Robert and Imogen’s house in Devon.
“Your generosity is great,” James told her as they faced each other in the bathtub. “God will repay you, my child.”
She put her feet on his chest. “Will it be that awful?”
“Robert will bore you by going over the portraits of the Earl and telling the story of how he was unfairly beheaded, and how we lost the title that’s ours by right, etc. He also has a collection of spoons.”
“Spoons!”
James nodded mournfully. “Spoons. There are hundreds. If he starts to take you toward the cabinet in the green drawing room, run.”
“Any more dangers I should know about?”
“Not really. Aunt Im won’t bore you. Just stick to her.”
Before Lee could get dressed, he started to sing inside the bathroom,
But fare thee well, my only love,
O, fare thee well awhile
And I will come again, my love,
Though it were ten thousand miles
Lee broke into laughter when he appeared at the door. He wore a ridiculous towel around his head as he finished in a booming baritone.
And I will come again, my love,
Though it were ten thousand miles…
She hadn’t stopped laughing as he caught her. Lee pulled a lock of his hair from under the towel.
“There, that’s better.”
“I would, you know.”
“What?”
“Travel ten thousand miles. To come.”
“I don’t think that’s what the song meant.”
“Yes, it is.” James lifted her and placed her on the bed. “And we have to be as naughty as possible today, since we’ll have to be quiet all weekend.”
“True,” Lee murmured, closing her eyes.
As they pulled up to the Tudor mansion later, Robert greeted them from the door. “Morning! How was the drive?”
“Smooth as silk,” James replied.
“Leave the bags, darling,” Imogen told Lee as she climbed down the front steps. “Someone will get them.”
Lee kissed her. “I’m afraid I had no idea what to wear here, and James wasn’t much help.”
Imogen considered Lee's dress, which was white with green flowers. “You’re a movie star. And you’ve been wise and worn flat sandals.”
Three small dogs ran out yapping. Robert introduced them. “Whistle, Pongo and Fox. We can take them for a walk later, that way you see the place, Vivien.”
An unexpected twitch of compassion for Robert ran through Lee. Now that he was in his own house, he displayed a childish desire to please. Imogen smiled placidly as he blustered around like a boy, showing things and hoping for praise. It was as if she knew what Lee was thinking yet couldn’t love her husband any less.
Rosemount was smaller than Deerholt, and it had maintained its Tudor interior. The original wood wainscoting made the hall look dark even during a bright morning, and Robert had kept armors and medieval weaponry there.
When he began waxing eloquent over axes, Lee had to bite her lip not to laugh. She was glad James couldn’t catch her eye. He was busy pushing the dogs aside with his foot as they jumped on his legs with shrill barks.
“Settle down!” Robert ordered sharply.
On the mantelpiece of a large stone fireplace, there were family photographs. The images of Robert and Imogen at Deerholt were recent, and Lee was surprised to see how attractive they had been. Imogen, so plump and lined now, had once been a beauty with classical features and a seductive body. Robert had had the magnetism of a young Sean Connery.
“Talk about movie stars,” Lee said.
Imogen snorted, embarrassed, and flapped a self-deprecating hand. “Those are the good photos.”
“Aunt Im was my first crush,” James said.
“She was everyone’s crush,” Robert said, looking fondly at his wife. He took her by the waist. “And is still mine.”
Imogen flapped her hand again, laughing, as they went through the house and out onto a terrace facing the sea.
“Not bad, eh?” Robert asked Lee with satisfaction. “Especially on a day like this.”
“How is that going?” James asked, motioning toward an old stone lighthouse to their right.
“It’s almost done,” Robert said. “There’s just the paint job inside and then clearing crates and rubble."
“Kept its character.”
“Oh, anything else wouldn’t have done.”
James pursed wry lips. “Certainly not.”
Imogen stayed behind to see to lunch as Robert showed James the improvements his money had made. Lee walked with them, enjoying the salty air and the breeze. When they returned, there were drinks waiting outside. Lee accepted white wine and Imogen poured some for herself as well, while the two men had gin and tonics.
“Do you live here all the time?” Lee asked.
“We lived in London for a while, when we were bringing up Caitlin. But once she went to Oxford, we really wanted to get out of the city. It’s not for us.” Imogen looked around at the garden. “I quite love it here.”
Lee inspected the blooming flower beds. “Are these the products of your green thumb?”
Her hostess gave a throaty laugh. “Yes, and I’m rather proud of them.”
“Will you show me?”
"Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bore.”
“I love flowers,” Lee said. “I can’t get over how beautiful they are in England.”
“It’s all the rain, you know. And then, every English person is a gardener at heart."
Imogen stood and told Robert she was giving Lee a tour of the garden.
“Are you sure she’s in for that kind of thing, poppet?” Robert asked.
“She says she is. Darling, keep the dogs with you or they’ll start burrowing.”
As they moved away, Lee could hear James causing mischief, “What Vivien really loves are small antique objects.”
“She’ll like the spoons, then.”
There were clumps of peonies, dahlias, and lilies — and bushes on the side of the house as well, with large red roses.
“It’s like an enchanted place,” Lee said. “What happens in winter?”
“I protect the earth here, but of course the flowers are all gone till spring. It’s one of the great, great joys of life to see them coming out again, growing and opening.”
“I hope I can have a garden like this one day. It’s a dream of mine, but I have to stop moving first.”
Imogen threw Lee a canny look, her eyes bright with meaning. “Don’t you think you will, soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Vivien, James is in head over heels!”
Lee could feel herself flushing. “No, he—”
“I’ve known him since he was a boy and I tell you, I’ve never seen him like this. His eyes are always following you around, and he gives you that look—”
“What look?”
“As if only you and he were in a place, even if a hundred people are there. It’s how he looked at you at the party, how he danced with you. He was so proud when you sang. But it was more than pride, I think. It was—” Imogen stopped and thought for a second, cocking her head. “It was as if he had found something. Something he hadn’t expected to ever find.”
But he was looking for the absolute — or so Attie had said.
They resumed walking, and Lee frowned stubbornly at the flowers, finally saying, “Aren’t these projections, though? We get dazzled by someone else and we build a fantasy around that person.”
“And then we have to live in the everyday, true,” Imogen agreed softly. “And we don’t always look our best as time passes, and we have belly aches and colds and we get grumpy and we’re angry, or bored, or there are money problems and differences of opinion. Yes, there is all that.”
It took a moment for Lee to ask: “Is it still worth it?”
“Do you mean is it enough?” Imogen shrugged. “I can’t answer that. It depends on each person. There is something deep that comes with time, on top of a crazy love that once was there. The deep thing … well, it’s not what songs are written about, but it has long, strong roots.”
“In the best cases, I guess.”
Imogen took Lee’s hand. “I will say this, don’t be afraid. You’ll regret it. Don’t waste what there is between you, whatever it is, wherever it leads. If there is pain, deal with it later, but take the joy. We regret the things we don’t do, believe me.”
Lee must have looked spooked, because Imogen laughed and patted her arm.
“Listen to the crazy old coot talking about passion. I’ve been reading too much Mills and Boon. Let’s go to the lighthouse, I’ll show you what I’m doing there.”
They walked up a serpentine gravel path amidst the grass to the old tower, and Imogen urged Lee to be careful with the bricks and tools on the ground. On the right side of the lighthouse, she had already planted hydrangeas, mixing blue with mauve.
“They’re healthy,” Lee said.
“Yes, they’re doing well. I won’t surround the whole tower, but you see here—” she pointed to holes on the earth. “I’ve already prepared the ground, and I’ll plant till that curve there. There will be a guest room up here as well, so if ever you and James feel like having a little escapade, you’ll be welcome.”
The two women looked out at the sea.
“At least here we don’t have those dangerous, pointy cliffs,” Imogen muttered.
After a pleasant lunch, Lee managed to escape hearing about the spoons but not about almost every ancestor on the walls. In the afternoon, they took a drive through a countryside dotted with white sheep and ended up in the pretty seaside village of Salcombe, where they ate good fish and watched the yachts in the bay.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Lee said in the evening.
“No,” James agreed. “It’s a nice place and Robert wasn’t as boring as he can get.”
“Imogen is a darling.”
“So she is.”
They were again moving toward the lighthouse, which stood white in the darkness. James turned from the view of the city to stare up at the construction and laughed.
"I wonder how she puts up with his pretentiousness, though. I mean, look at that!"
James motioned toward the top of the door, where a stone carving jutted out. Lee hadn't noticed it before. It looked like an initial intertwined with vines and leaves.
"He had it brought here from a house we sold," James went on. "And something like that shouldn’t be moved, or it’s just ridiculous."
He kept laughing as Lee noticed that the wind had turned chilly.
"Robert is so obsessed with this bloody name. As if it mattered to anyone but him."
The initial, of course, was S, with a tiny “t” and “b”.
S for St. Bryce, the family name that Robert prized perhaps above all things.
"He really is like a character in an Agatha Christie novel," James added, taking her hand.
But Lee couldn’t laugh; not when she had just discovered that inside the house where they were meant to sleep, there was a cold-blooded murderer.
THIRTY
Robert had been Mia’s lover.
Until she saw his photographs as a young man, Lee had wondered why Imogen, who was wise, had found a buffoon attractive in the first place. Yet he had once been strong and handsome, and perhaps Mia had still seen that in him, especially if he were giving her the attention she craved from James.
Mia had used the initial of his surname in the diary — the surname he shared with her husband. Perhaps by the time she and Robert began their affair, she no longer wanted James to find her diary. Or, if he did, she didn’t want him to guess she was sleeping with his uncle.
Yet she had gone on confiding in those pages. The notebook she had bought to call James’ attention ended up in deep hiding.
An old love has strong, deep roots, Imogen had said. And Robert loved his wife: he would often kiss her, put his arm around her when they walked, smile at her craggy face calling her poppet and love. It was the only endearing thing about him, and it wasn’t even pure.
Mia had told him that she was expecting his child — a child that Imogen had had never given him, either out of choice or difficulty conceiving — and she must have expected him to decide: new love or old love?
Robert had decided to keep the old one.
What had Mia said then? That Imogen, the wife he loved, would know? That James would know? James, on whom Robert depended for money?
Silly Mia, who didn’t know what people could do when they were cornered, when they were angry, when they needed to keep a secret. Lee knew only too well; Lee knew it could lead to murder.
Her mind presented her with the vivid image of Robert pushing Mia off the cliff, and she kne
w it was possible. Robert was a much more likely murderer than either James or Attie.
Lee’s heart beat so fast that James remarked on it. “Have you given yourself a fright?”
“Not really. Just a bad memory.”
He wouldn’t ask her what it was. He never did, if she didn’t volunteer information. Sensing that she was distraught, he didn’t make love to her that night, but he slept with his arm around her. When she moved, he only pulled her closer.
It was nearly three o’clock when she managed to leave the room. It was the hour of the wolf. Her grandmother had once told her that most people died around that hour, between three and five in the morning. It was the hour of deepest sleep, of faintest life — when humans could go mad if they were awake, haunted by their fears, their anxieties and their guilt.
“It’s the hour when the wolf comes to the door,” her grandmother had said. “Because it can smell terror.”
Lee had spent many an hour of the wolf awake, believing that she might be devoured for being weak or fearful. But not today. Today she had a purpose.
She didn’t know the house well, but when she arrived at a place she automatically noticed entrances, exits, and where stairs led. Once in the corridor, she descended to the first floor in silent, bare feet.
There wouldn’t be much time for her to look through Robert’s things. She needed to start in his study, the most probable place for him to keep secrets. Imogen, who didn’t seem to have a suspicious nature, would think it normal for him to lock legal correspondence and documents away from the prying eyes of the staff.
Lee could only use the light of her phone in her search. It wouldn’t attract attention if someone upstairs awoke and looked out the window.
There might be a safe, but would Robert keep something of Mia’s in there? She found it unlikely, since a safe was normally of common use for a husband and wife. Imogen’s jewels, for one, would be kept in it. And, in any case, Lee wouldn’t be able to open a safe — not without leaving a camera on it first, and she hadn’t brought the cameras to Rosemount.
Still, how could she tell James about his uncle’s affair with Mia if she had no proof? Once she found something, she would have to come up with a plausible reason for having looked in the first place.
