Murder on the Cliffs

by Joanna Challis

  “I’ll show you the whole house today,” Lianne promised, “even the forbidden quarters, but we’ll have to time it right. There are eyes everywhere here.”

  “Mrs. Trehearn?”

  “Among others .”

  Yes, I’d sensed that, too. One had a premonition of being watched every second, each movement calculated, weighed, and judged.

  Mrs. Trehearn’s frequent patrols of the house betrayed her obsession with it. Even when Lianne and I left the room, I half expected to see her skirts flouncing around a corner or to meet that steely gaze at a turn. “Mrs. Trehearn mentioned something about the tower being cursed?”

  “Yes.” Lianne skipped on ahead. “It’s the best part of the house.” She stopped to smile. “You think we’re odd, don’t you? Morbid? Unlike your fancy city friends?”

  “I am prone to morbidness,” I shot back. “In varying degrees, we all are fascinated by legend, superstition, and—”

  “Death?” She grimaced, legging over a restrictive rope farther down the corridor. “It’ll be great when this is fixed up, but somehow I prefer it how it is.”

  So did I. Entranced, I moved toward the base of the spiraled stairs, ready to climb this splendid ruin. I imagined I were Princess Elizabeth, a captive of the tower. . . .

  “Not that way, silly.”

  Lianne pulled me back with such force I stumbled.

  “It’s dangerous.”

  Danger bred through this house hold like a disease. How exciting, for this house provided more than a lush canvas for my book. I had a real mystery to solve, a place to explore, characters to unravel, and somewhere during my sojourn here, I hoped to write something worthy of publication, something Aunt Billy, my sternest critic, would approve of.

  Around the corner, Lianne searched the paneling with her fingers. Glancing about for intruders or a patrolling Mrs. Trehearn, she pressed a slight knob imbedded in the wood and the panel creaked open.

  A secret door. “I love this place!”

  “Shhh!” She drew me inside. “We mustn’t let anyone see us. Last time a maid stumbled up here, she fell.”

  Squinting, I peered up at the faint light ahead. “To her death?”

  “Not her, but others have.”

  “Others? How many others?” I must have voiced.

  Lianne answered, her tone curiously ambivalent. “Oh, one or two. They’re not supposed to know about it. Only the family. That’s what they get for snooping about. They think my brother’s not serious about the danger of the old parts. Nor do they heed the warning.”

  “The curse?”

  “The first lord imprisoned a monk in the tower. Shut him up and left him to rot— his bones lie around here somewhere. But before he died, he damned the place and scratched into the wall: Cavete intus serpentem est. It’s Latin and it means ‘Beware within a serpent there is.’ Apparently, ’twas his own cousin who threw him in here, so I guess the warning is clear.”

  Cavete intus serpentem est.

  How profound. The serpent lurking beneath the surface, the unknown Judas, was often of one’s own family or intimate connections. The Judas perhaps murdered his scholarly cousin for this house.

  Yes, people murdered for money and houses. In fact, wills and inheritances always complicated matters, tearing apart families and inciting desperation and violence. Reflecting upon it, I wondered what I’d do given the temptation.

  The subject intrigued me. What induced one to kill? It depended on character, emotion, a deep motivation lurking under the surface, an emotion that, if kindled, proved fatal. Had such elements driven Victoria to her death? “Did Victoria ever come here?”

  “Yes.” Lianne rolled her eyes. “David showed her. I followed them once, heard her giggling up the stairs.”

  I smiled. What a glorious idea for a romantic date, exploring an old house with its darkened corridors, endless rooms, and enchanting gardens.

  Conquering the winding upward stairs, we reached the turret landing. Having seen the tower from Lianne’s room, the gothic slatted windows and the open parapet, the inside did not disappoint. Now standing ready for my own exploration, I drew closer to the bright scarlet rope.

  “It’s all that remains of the old castle,” Lianne whispered, caressing the stone with her fingers. “This is next to be demolished.” Lianne peered over the edge. “It’s dangerous to rebuild, but Davie is determined. He wants it as it was: a lord’s solar.”

  A bedroom in the medieval style. I suppressed a sigh. How this man resonated with my soul!

  “Come see the top level.” Lianne darted ahead. “It’s finished.”

  The top level proved another circular room, transformed into a modern- day retreat. Light from the dome- shaped slatted windows illuminated restful day lounges hugging the walls, but it was the room’s centerpiece that attracted me: an exotic garden bearing herbs and rare flowers. I paused to inhale an unusually shaped pink and white orchid.

  “Careful!” Lianne wrenched me back. “Some are poisonous. You might get a reaction.”

  Here lurked an abundance of poison. Withdrawing to a safe distance, I casually mentioned the poison they’d found in Victoria.

  “Oh, the police have been here to check,” she shrugged. “They didn’t find anything, not even in Mrs. T’s, and she has everything. ”

  “Oh? Where?”

  “In the green house. Trehearn uses her plants for her medicines and sells them to the locals. They come to her for all kinds of complaints.”

  It appeared I had misjudged the wintry Mrs. Trehearn. A multifarious personality of hidden depth, a woman who prized her job above all else. “Your mother permits this, without a price?”

  “Oh, they share the money,” Lianne didn’t seem to mind my rude question.

  So I continued. “And are your mother and Mrs. Trehearn special friends?”

  Inspecting a tiny green plant from a cautious distance, Lianne snorted. “Friends! Sometimes I think they hate each other, but they’ve got an odd relationship. Mother relies upon her. Says she can’t do without her ‘talents.’ ”

  “Talents? Do such talents include murder?” I said it, half jokingly, half in deadly earnest.

  “No, silly, it’s Trehearn’s sleeping tonic she makes up for Mummy.”

  Sleeping tonics. Hmm, so I had my answer and yet I wasn’t satisfied. Something in the way Lianne mouthed “talents” led me to believe more lurked beneath Mrs. Trehearn’s talent for plants, poisons, and the like. If she knew the police were coming, any trace of the poison would have disappeared.

  And did Trehearn, like I, suspect a member of the family? Having unknowingly supplied the poison and then finding it missing, did she hide any evidence to protect her and her employers?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I agreed to stay with Lianne at Padthaway until two.

  “Two! But we’ve only done half the house and I’ve so much to show you. You can stay again to night. Old Ewe Sinclaire won’t mind. We can send a note around to her—”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I am staying at the cottage.” I did not say my parents would never permit me to stay beneath the roof of suspected murderers for an extended stay. Saint Christopher! Any female of marriageable age being in residence here would be written about in the papers and they’d assume—

  I swallowed. However unjust and without any foundation, they’d assume Lord David and I—

  “Let’s see Jenny.”

  Pulled across the foyer, I asked where she lived.

  Lianne giggled. “Here, of course. I love Jenny.”

  Her soft smile indicated the depth of their relationship and I understood. Children of aristocratic house holds were often left to nannies, nurses, governesses, and boarding schools. I had been fortunate with my own family. Perhaps because they dabbled so much in the theatrical arts, the world of literature and politics, with all of its social pursuits, had been open to me.

  Jenny Pollock, I learned on the way to the servant’s quarters, was your typical
part- of- the- furniture employee. She’d started off as a nursery maid when Lord David was born and grew to the rank of head nurse over the years. Never having married, her “babies” were everything to her, and I saw this reflected in her face when she greeted Lianne.

  She was a stout woman, forty or thereabouts, pleasant- looking with rosy cheeks and a merry outlook. Abandoning her rocking chair and knitting, she drew us into her cozy parlor overlooking a part of the garden and went to switch on the kettle.

  “So ye’re the du Maurier lass.” Jenny waddled back into her sitting room, fluffing cushions and undertaking to make a new guest comfortable and welcome. “Very nice ye’ve been to my Lee Lee . . . nasty business all that. Murder, they think.”

  Chattering on, she disappeared to pour our tea. “Poor lass. I’m glad that fuddy inspector ain’t lettin’ ’em off. Somebody done her in, I say. Pretty girl like that, set to marry my David. I ask ye. Who’d go and kill themselves when she had so much to live for? A baby, mind!”

  Expressing shock and outrage, tinged with a large degree of sorrow, Jenny soon returned with a tea tray bearing spiced lemon biscuits that she had baked herself.

  “Didn’t like ’er at first when she came here. I call such pretty girls ‘players.’ And Vicky was cruel to my Lee Lee after catchin’ my David’s eye. I warned him, but he wouldn’t listen. Smitten, he were. Then Vicky comes here to get me on her side. But I knew her game and she didn’t like me warnin’ me boy.”

  “I can imagine not,” I said, catching Lianne’s sneer across the room. I wondered how much truth lived in Jenny’s assessment. Was Victoria truly cruel to Lianne? Or perhaps in exercising her new role, Victoria’s firmness didn’t appeal to Lianne and such firmness translated to cruelty in Jenny’s eyes. The servants would know. I’d have to question those girls when I saw them again.

  Frowning, Jenny Pollock resumed her rocking chair, tea in hand. “I told Lee Lee to be nice to her when I saw David were serious. Vicky kept coming here. She wanted my approval. Or David did. I soon saw she just carried on to get attention. The pretty ones often do. She knew she’d have a hard fight to get past her ladyship.”

  “She did it deliberately,” Lianne said, munching on her biscuit. “To get at me. She was a player, like you said. She enjoyed causing trouble.”

  The resentful younger sister, I thought. Though I didn’t have a brother, I appreciated Lianne’s dilemma. A beloved older brother and a hated girlfriend who commandeered his affection and time, and flaunted it.

  Jenny sighed. “I just want all my babies to be happy. When I knew it were serious with Vicky,” she lowered her voice for emphasis, “I opened me heart to ’er. She was really a nice lass under all that and she did try with my Lee Lee—”

  “Only because you told her to,” Lianne interrupted. “She would’ve gone on tormenting me if David didn’t love you as he does.”

  Twisting to me, Lianne’s smile, upon mentioning her brother, softened. “Jenny’s more than a nurse to us. She’s a true mummy. It was she who dried our tears and stayed up with us when we were sick. My real mother would never do those things.”

  A common complaint in many aristocratic house holds. The children were wanted for appearances, to carry on the family name; the parents also followed a code, a code of no affection in some cases, and I pitied Lianne and David. But any warmth and security they’d missed with their parents they’d certainly gained with Jenny. “So you believe Victoria may have been murdered, Mrs. Pollock?”

  Jenny blushed. “I ain’t no Mrs. and Jenny’s me name. Murder . . . yes, I say it’s that.”

  “But who? And why?”

  Jenny’s lips sealed. “I don’t like to say but I’ve got me suspicions.”

  “She thinks Mummy did it,” Lianne blurted out.

  Jenny expressed a natural, motherly concern. “All I wish is that it doesn’t go bad for my Davie. He don’t need the stress, poor lad.”

  “But how can it go bad for him unless he did it? Why would he want to kill his own bride and child?”

  “There are those who hate him and will say anything. That Connan Bastion, for one, Vicky’s brother. He was always after money, and when Lord David put his foot down, Connan didn’t like it. Then his sister winds up dead. No, no, no, my Davie’s innocent. I’d stake my life on it. It’s the others I ain’t so sure about.”

  “The others?”

  “Her ladyship, Mrs. T, and Soames. I can never quite tell what Soames is doin’ or thinkin’, and I don’t like it. Nor did I like how friendly he and Victoria were.”

  I smiled at the overtalkative Jenny and said how she reminded me of Ewe Sinclaire.

  “Don’t know Ewe but heard of her as I’m house bound these days. Oh,” she said, patting my hand, “I’m so glad you’ve come to visit. You must come and have lots of cups of tea with me now, won’t ye?”

  I promised to do so.

  “She’s lovely,” I said to Lianne on the way out. “But how can she stay here if she and your mother don’t get along?”

  “Oh, they put up with each other, and Jenny’s been here so long, Mother’ll never get rid of her. Davie wouldn’t let her, anyway. I suppose you’ve heard Mother doesn’t get on with many people, only those whom she wants to impress.”

  It interested me that a woman so acutely aware of her own prominence had married so far beneath her. She had been an earl’s daughter married to an obscure lord in possession of only one house. Though on seeing more of the house, I understood the attraction. If the children were anything to judge by, Lord Hartley must have presented a dashing image to the young impressionable debutante now mistress of the house.

  Mrs. Trehearn summoned us for luncheon. With such a cold, unreadable face, she looked the kind to mix poisons in the dark hours of the night.

  We were directed to the Green Salon, a charming airy room of Lady Hartley’s dominion, tastefully decorated with a Victorian oval table and drapes and furnishings in swirling cream and sage greens. A roving green ivy wallpaper covered the walls, the gentle hue matching the twin divans perched under three landscape watercolor paintings.

  “I painted those,” Lady Hartley beamed. “I consider it a rare accomplishment. Do you paint, Daphne?”

  “No, I write.”

  “Oh , how interesting. You’ll find much here to amuse the mind, won’t you? David has mentioned your passion for the abbey records.”

  The way she said “passion” sent my face aflame, the blush deepening as her spidery eyes assessed me, her mouth poised in some kind of private amusement. I saw in that moment the hardness of a murderer, and it certainly added weight to Jenny’s suspicions.

  I loved the room and the circular table set out for luncheon with its pristine white cloth and sparkling silver. I noticed the table was set for four and hoped it meant David would be joining us. The likelihood aroused a quick flutter of the heart, and to silence it, I wandered across the room to examine the table of photographs.

  “My father, the late earl.” Lady Hartley marched to my side, pointing to the first silver frame. “David gets his height from him.”

  She was right. The late earl stood outside his mansion in hunting gear, his proud, strong features mirroring her own.

  “And this is my mother. . . . ”

  I nodded politely to the line-up of her family, seeing no resemblance for Lianne and David until at last we came to the photograph I wanted to see: the late Lord Hartley. The madman who’d shot himself.

  It was a wedding photograph: Lady Hartley, the beautiful, young, radiant bride, haughty and aloof; and beside her, a David.

  My heart stopped.

  “Yes,” Lady Hartley smiled. “The likeness is amazing, isn’t it?”

  On closer inspection, I located a few minor differences. David’s father had a sharper jawline and smaller eyes, and a faint cleft in the center of his chin. Picking up the photograph beside it, a recent one of David and Lianne, I compared the likenesses. Lianne had inherited her father’s eyes and someth
ing of his expression.

  “I hope she’s not boring you with the family history, Miss du Maurier,” drifted a voice from behind.

  Lord David’s composed entrance, the grace of his poise and attire, left me feeling quite numb. I didn’t know what to make of him, or what to think of him. Do I consider him an acquaintance, a friend, or a murderer? Should I even be here, conversing with any of these people? I wondered.

  Shaking, I promptly set the photograph down, smoothened my skirt, suddenly conscious of my hair and how I looked in my day ensemble and nondescript mauve blouse.

  “You must be famished.” Lady Hartley directed us to the table by ringing the bell.

  I sat down in a daze, not feeling hungry in the slightest. “I cannot believe the resemblance between you and your father, my lord,” I began, attempting a normal conversation.

  Glancing at the photograph, his face turned gray and his mouth tightened. I kicked myself under the table. I shouldn’t have mentioned his father.

  “Where’s the photograph of Victoria?”

  “I moved it,” Lady Hartley answered, instructing the maid to fill three glasses of wine and a juice for Lianne.

  Waiting until the maid left, David frowned. “You had no right to do that.”

  Shrugging, Lady Hartley reached for her glass. I did the same, feeling the tension between them.

  “Why keep it there? Why torment yourself?”

  “It ought to go back, Mother, and you know it.”

  “Oh.” Lady Hartley swallowed her wine. “I’ll put it back if you insist, but I don’t see—”

  “Stop it, please,” Lianne pleaded. “You’re making Daphne uncomfortable.”

  I felt uncomfortable to the extreme. To help the situation, I sipped a little more wine and Lianne asked me about my father’s theater business. During the serving and consummation of lunch, I babbled on, assisted by the crisp white wine, revealing the secret of Papa’s next upcoming play for I didn’t know what else to say. The theater was a safe subject and it seemed to ease all the tensions.

  However, an unpleasant side effect loomed. It reminded me of the one incident in my past where I’d been on holiday with Fernande, my French teacher and dearest friend, and she’d deliberately refilled my wineglass again and again so I should learn a lesson. Violently ill that night and the following day, I certainly did learn my lesson, and feeling flushed for a second time, I experienced all the familiar warning signs.