“It must have worried him for years,” said Lucian.
“An innocent man hanged for what he had done.”
“Exactly,” went on Dorothy.
“Poor man, he did not know how to act. He was afraid to come forward and accuse himself, and he would reason there was nothing he could do to save Tom Eccles.”
“He was right. There was no point in bringing up the matter,” suggested Lucian.
“Except, of course, that he would clear Tom Eccles’s name,” reasoned Dorothy.
“He was dead,” said Lucian.
“There was his family,” Lawrence put in.
“For instance, the old father. People don’t like to have murderers in the family, particularly one who has been hanged. People talk about these things.
There’s a slur. “
“Well,” said Dorothy.
“He did nothing until he was on the point of death. Then he wrote that letter to the press. No doubt it cleared his conscience.”
“After all,” said Lawrence, ‘he couldn’t be sure that he had fired the fatal shot. “
“No. That was the point. It was just that he might have. No one will ever know.”
“I suppose that sort of thing has happened before?” asked Lucian.
“It must have,” replied Dorothy.
“But I have never come across it.”
“If it were so, it is a case of accidental killing.”
“All very intriguing,” added Lawrence.
“You can see why Dorothy has this passion.”
The discussion had sobered everyone and the mood had changed. I guessed we were all thinking about that poor young man who had been hanged for a murder he probably had not committed.
After the guests had gone, I sat in the drawing-room with Gertie and the Hysons.
“Well, Aunt Bee,” Gertie was saying, “I think you can congratulate yourself on being a very successful hostess.”
“I was rather dreading that Sir Lucian,” replied Aunt Beatrice with a giggle.
“But he turned out to be ever so easy.”
“You had the right assortment of guests, you clever old thing,” said Gertie.
“Dorothy was good, wasn’t she? She’s a real entertainer.”
“My word, wasn’t that Sir Lucian interested in all that about the murder?” said Aunt Beatrice.
“As much as any of us, I’d say.”
A week after the dinner-party, I was surprised to receive a letter from Lady Crompton.
Dear Carmel [she wrote], Lucian has to go away for a few days next week and I should be so pleased if you could come and stay with me. It is always pleasant to talk to you, and when Lucian is here, he does tend to monopolize you.
I thought, if you were agreeable, we might have a quiet time together.
I have so enjoyed your visits and now that I am incapacitated, I do feel a little lonely. I should be so pleased if you could come.
Do not hesitate to say if it is inconvenient. Isabel Crompton.
I was rather intrigued by the idea, and wrote back at once accepting.
Gertie was amused.
“This could mean one of two things,” she prophesied.
“Either you are going to be granted parental approval, or you will be told some ghastly secret which is designed to warn you to keep off the grass.”
“Don’t be so absurdly melodramatic,” I retorted.
“This is just a lonely old lady seeking a little diversion.”
“Oh, isn’t it fun! Life is so amusing.”
“Particularly to people whose wedding-day is looming!”
“Or for those who have a trio of suitors.”
I was met at the station by one of the grooms, and taken to the Grange, where I was warmly welcomed.
“Lucian was so pleased when he heard you were coming. He’s very sorry not to be here. He was telling me about the delightful dinner-party your friends gave. How I wished I could have been there!”
“It was interesting, and so good of the Hysons to give it for my friends.”
“He was telling me about the doctor and his lively sister. They are very good friends of yours, I gather.”
“Oh yes. The doctor was a friend of my father, and then I met him on the ship again when I was coming over.”
“Yes, Lucian has told me.”
Later in the evening, she talked a little about Lucian’s marriage.
“It was unfortunate. So unlike Lucian. This girl, she was not right for him at all. Of course, she was very pretty. I suppose he must have been carried away. Young men do such foolish things. I knew from the moment she came into the house that it would not be a good thing. I wish he could make a sensible marriage now. The name has been in the family for three hundred years. In a family like ours, one feels there are obligations.”
“If Bridget had been a boy …” I said.
“I’m rather glad she’s not. With a mother like that…”
“She seems a very bright and delightful child.”
“Children can be delightful. No, I am glad she is a girl. I wouldn’t have wanted that woman’s child to have inherited. I did wonder whether she was Lucian’s child, you know.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. It was all so hurried and wrong from the start. I don’t think he really cared for her. I imagined he was caught up in some way. It was a horrible time. I was most unhappy.”
“Does it distress you to talk of it. Lady Crompton?”
“No, my dear child. I want you to know. He never really cared for her.
There are some things I do not understand. There is something rather secretive about Lucian at times. He used not to be like that. He was such a frank sort of boy, if you know what I mean. So serene. He took everything in his stride. Now he has changed. All of a sudden he became . well, moody. I think introspective is the word . reflective . as though something worried him. I am so glad he enjoys your company. “
“I’m glad to hear it. I enjoy his.”
“And that friend of yours, the doctor … ?”
“Lawrence Emmerson?”
“The one with the clever sister. Lucian wondered about them. I’m not sure whether he likes them or not. The doctor is a bachelor, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Attractive, presentable … dominated by his sister. Is that so?”
“Well, not really dominated. They are very fond of each other, and she looks after him. She gives herself entirely to the task. She is a very strong-minded person. She would tell you what she thought ought to be done, and you’d find that she was right most of the time. She is very practical and really is a wonderful person.”
“And they are obviously great friends of yours.”
“Yes, very good friends.”
“As friendly as Lucian and myself, I suppose?”
“Yes, I suppose so. It’s difficult to make comparisons.”
“Lucian is a good man, you know. That marriage was so wrong. That sort of thing has an effect on people. Nothing would please me more than to see him happy. He ought to be. He has a great capacity for happiness.
But that wretched affair hangs over him. I’d like to see a complete break from the past. It is difficult, because there are always . consequences. “
“Do you mean Bridget?”
“Not so much Bridget. That woman in the nursery.”
“Jemima Cray.”
She nodded.
“While she’s here, we shall never be able to put the past behind us. She’s a constant reminder.”
“I understand that, but this is your house. I suppose if you told her to go, she would have to do so.”
“I would send her straight away and tell her to go, but Lucian won’t hear of it.”
“Why not?”
“Some promise she gave to Laura to stay. She holds that over us, though it isn’t mentioned often. I have said to Lucian, ” Laura is dead. We care for the child. Why do we have to keep that
woman here?”
But he says it was Laura’s wish, so the creature stays. I don’t like her at all, but I suppose, because of this deathbed promise . “
“She is very fond of the child, and the child of her.”
“I don’t doubt that. All the same …” She put her hand over mine.
“I think, my dear, that between us, you and I might do something about all this. “
I was astonished, but she smiled at me serenely.
I knew then that, if Lucian asked me to marry him, I should have the whole-hearted approval of Lady Crompton.
I spent the next morning in her company, but she made no further reference to Lucian’s marriage. Instead she showed me some of the tapestry work which she did before it became such a strain on her eyes.
In the afternoon her rheumatism was very painful and, apologizing profusely, she told me she would have to retire to bed and rest. Could I amuse myself ?
I said I could quite happily, and decided to take a walk.
It was inevitable that my footsteps should turn towards Commonwood House. It was the first time since my visits to the Grange that I had been out alone. Had I been, I should probably have found the impulse to take another look at the house irresistible. Now was my chance.
There it was sad and derelict, yet so familiar. Mingling emotions rose in me at the sight of it.
Walk past it, I advised myself. What good will be achieved by going closer? It only saddened me. But when I approached, I found myself turning in at the gate. Just a quick look, I promised myself, and then I would hurry away.
I walked up the drive. I could scarcely see the house for the overgrown shrubs. It had that eerie look of old ruined houses. I could imagine that eyes watched me from the cracked windows. Eyes of those who had once lived there in the past-Mrs. Marline, Miss Carson, the poor, sad doctor.
Go back, I told myself. What point is there? But I went on.
I approached the door. I saw the broken hinge. I stopped myself from pushing the door open and instead walked round the house. I noticed the damp on the walls, the smudges of dust on the windows. I wondered to whom it belonged now? Henry? Why did he leave it like this? Where was Henry now? Lucian did not know. They had lost touch when Henry had gone to Aunt Florence with his sisters.
I was in the garden where Tom Yardley had found me under the azalea bush. It was withered now, smothered by the weeds. There was the spot where Tom Yardley used to wheel the chair. I looked back to the french windows of the room in which she had died.
It was too depressing. It was foolish of me to have come. What was I achieving by this?
I looked towards the woods and saw a column of smoke rising to the sky.
The gipsies, I thought. They must be there now.
My spirits lifted at the thought. I had to see if it was the same clan who had come before. I wanted to escape from this feeling of desolation which the house had cast upon me. I wanted to see the children playing round the caravans.
A hedge separated the garden from the edge of the wood. I remembered there had been a spot where I had scrambled through as a child. I found it. I did the same and walked through the trees until I came to the clearing.
There were the caravans. The children were playing on the grass: women were squatting around, chipping wood for their clothes pegs. Nothing had changed.
Could it really be that they were the same band? I had heard that gipsies returned to the same spots all over the country. If this were so, and I could see Rosie Perrin and Jake, it would be most interesting.
As I approached, I saw the caravan on the wheels of which sat a woman.
She looked remarkably like Rosie Perrin, but then there was a similarity among these gipsy women.
The children had noticed me. I knew that because of the silence which had fallen on them. They were watching me. The women looked up from their chipping.
Then a voice I remembered well cried out: “Well, if it isn’t Carmel come back to see us!”
I ran forward. The woman sitting on the steps was indeed Rosie Perrin.
She came down the steps and we stood smiling at each other.
“Where have you been, Carmel?” she said.
“To Australia,” I answered.
She gave that hearty laugh which I remembered so well.
“Come up. Come up, and tell me all about it.”
I followed her up the steps and into the caravan. It was just as I remembered it. She bade me sit down, her eyes gleaming with pleasure and excitement.
“You went away when the trouble started. I heard all about it. It was big trouble. Commonwood is a house haunted by tragedy.”
I told her about Toby who was my father and how we had gone to Australia.
She nodded.
“He did not want you mixed up in that. You, a child. And the other children went away too.”
I told her everything that had happened to me, that I knew that Zingara was my mother, and how I had come to visit the Grange.
“And you have been coming here ever since?” I asked.
She nodded.
“We have seen the house falling into decay. What good is it now? It is a ruin. Nobody will live there. It will fall right away into nothing.”
“Why? Why?”
“Because houses have lives of their own. Something happened there and the memory lives on. I feel it when I go near. Sometimes I look that way and a sighing comes to me.”
“Sighing?”
“It is in the wind … in the air. It is an unhappy house.”
“It is only bricks and mortar, Rosie.”
She shook her head.
“We gipsies feel these things. It will be like that until…”
“Until what?”
“Until it can be made happy again.”
“It would have to be razed to the ground and another house built there. A new Commonwood.”
“And made into a happy house.”
“It was never a really happy house, Rosie. Mrs. Marline would not let it be.”
“She is dead now,” said Rosie.
“Rest her soul. She made unhappiness in her life and in her death. There was more pity for the poor doctor than for her.”
“I cannot bear to think of him. Even before I knew what had happened to him … all through the years, when I have been so far away, even now and then I would remember.”
“Ah, my child, what happened yesterday can at times decide what will happen today. There are never-to-be-forgotten yesterdays in all our lives. But this is a happy meeting between us. Let us enjoy it. Tell me what has been happening to you.”
So I told her in detail about the trips with Toby, and of Elsie, who had been a surrogate mother to me; how Elsie was, in fact, Toby’s wife and how, though they were fond of each other, they were not contented to live together as husband and wife.
She nodded wisely.
“He was that sort of man. I know that from Zingara. Many loved him. He was a man who gave much and received love in return. You had a wonderful father, Carmel, and you have a wonderful mother. I say that, though perhaps all would not agree.”
“Where is Zingara now?”
“She is no longer on the stage. She gave that up. I shall tell her that I have seen you again. Tell me where you are living and I will let her know. Then she will write to you. She is clever. She can write. A gentleman had her taught, He came here to study us at first hand. He was going to write a book about the gipsies. He rented one of the caravans and lived among us for a whole year. We did not mind. He paid us well and he amused us. Of course, he noticed Zingara. She would have been about eight years old at that time. The loveliest creature you ever saw.”
Rosie paused and smiled into the distance.
“He taught her to read and write. She loved that. She always liked to know that bit more than anyone else. She read and read. And when this man went away and wrote his book, he did not forget her. He brought a man down and she danced and sang and that was how she
started. She comes back to the camp to see me now and then.”
“I wish she were here now. Should I write to her?”
She paused.
“I tell you what we shall do. You will write down where you are staying and I will have it sent to her. She will then do what she thinks is best to do.”
“I think that is a good idea.”
I took a pencil from the little receptacle I carried and tore a sheet from a small notebook.
“I’m Carmel Sinclair, not March, now,” I said.
“My father thought I should have the same name as his.”
I wrote down the Hysons’ address and gave it to her.
She nodded and put the paper in her pocket.
Then she made some fragrant tea like that which I had had before in this caravan, and we sat drinking and talking. There was so much I had to tell her still and she asked many questions.
Then I realized that I had been absent for a long time and Lady Crompton would be wondering what had become of me.
Gertie was married the following week. There was breathless excitement throughout the house. It had all been planned, down to the smallest detail. The reception was to be at the house after the ceremony, and then Gertie and Bernard were going to Florence for three weeks’ honeymoon. When they returned they would settle into the house which was waiting for them.
Lucian, Lawrence and Dorothy were present and the Hysons had invited numerous friends; and then there were Bernard’s connections. Aunt Beatrice was worried as to how they were all going to get into the house.
Gertie was in a state of ecstasy and Bernard was clearly a very contented man.
It was two days before the great event when I received a letter in an unknown handwriting. My heart beat fast as I looked at it, for something told me it was from Zingara.
I was right.
My dear Carmel [I read], I was delighted to have your address from Rosie. For so long I have wondered about you. You will see from the address above that I am living at a place called Castle Folly in Yorkshire. It is not a real castle, but you will see it when you come to visit it-which you will soon, I hope.
You would have to stay a while, for you could not make the journey there and back in a day. Send me a note please and say when you will come.
Zingara (I am Mrs. Blakemore now).
The Black Opal Page 25
