Murder on the Cliffs

by Joanna Challis

  After my third glass, my stomach began to gurgle. The mix of nervousness and wine was a nefarious combination, and I glanced around, frantic for an escape route.

  “I’ve a sudden urge to stretch my legs,” David declared, leaving his seat. “Would you join me for a stroll outside, Miss du Maurier?”

  “Oh, yes.” I shot to my feet, catching Lady Hartley tapping Li-anne’s hand to let us go alone. “But I must be back at the cottage by two.”

  “Two o’clock, you shall be,” he promised.

  “Thank you,” I whispered once outside the room and speeding toward fresh air. “Another moment and I . . .”

  “I know,” David pressed my hand. “How’s the stomach and the head?”

  “Fine now,” I replied, smiling. “The wine was nice, though.”

  “Yes, it was, and I thank you. I don’t know how we manage sometimes. What is there to talk about but—”

  His voice snapped off and silence accompanied us the remainder of the way. I didn’t mind. My spinning head demanded I just focus on walking and controlling my swirling stomach so as not to make another embarrassing scene in front of David.

  Summoning a strength of will I did not feel, I made it to the little labyrinth garden at the rear of the conservatory where David promptly steered me to a seat. Watching me clinging to the edge, a faint smile on his lips, he joined me, his face full of concern.

  “Would you like some water?”

  I nodded, and he went. I thought how kind and considerate he was, how lucky Victoria was to have secured such a fine man, in spite of, I dared to add, the encumbrance of having a mother- in-law like Lady Hartley.

  Somewhat revived by the water and fresh air, Lord David insisted on driving me home and I conceded.

  He brought the car around to the front of the house, and I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Trehearn’s stony face watching us.

  I shivered.

  “Don’t be frightened of old Mrs. T,” David joked as we followed the circular drive and passed through the gates. “She’s part of the furniture here, as is Jenny. You met Jenny? You talked to her?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He crooked his finger at me. “It’s David. And we love our Jenny very much, that’s why she’s still here. Part Lianne’s nurse, part live- in family, yet not family. You understand?”

  I said I did. We had many nurses and governesses we grew close to during childhood years.

  “You’ll be thinking my sister’s too old for a nurse, but Lianne is fragile. She’s so desperate for a friend, too, sometimes she becomes a little over eager, and I wouldn’t want you to end up despising her.”

  “I wouldn’t. My sisters and I have very different personalities, yet we get along.”

  He smiled. “Your father sounds very interesting. I’m trying to imagine him in his Phantom of the Opera costume.”

  “Yes,” I laughed. “He makes a habit of surprising us.”

  We started up the village lane and I cringed upon seeing Mrs. Penmark, the baker’s wife, recognizing me in Lord David’s car. Oh! What will they make of that now? I feared.

  It didn’t seem to bother Lord David. He drove me up as far as possible, wished me well, and invited me to resume our tour of Rothmarten Abbey. He asked me my intentions regarding the abbey and I replied with honesty.

  He nodded gravely. “You must allow me to assist you. There are lost scrolls there, you know, somewhere hidden. I think old Dorcas knows where they are, or at least their vicinity, but she fears if they come out in the wrong hands, they’ll disappear or be taken from the abbey. The abbey, you see, was entrusted with these records, brought to Cornwall by the crusaders.”

  I didn’t want the journey to end. “Thank you, my lord.”

  He opened the door. “It’s David, remember.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Slipping out of bed the next morning, I washed and perused my wardrobe for something suitable to wear on our excursion to the abbey. I wanted to make an impression. Selecting a simple elegant blue dress, I added a silver locket my father had given me and pinned two sides of my hair. There was no time to apply curlers or to color my lips, and besides, I felt it was a little too early to be coloring my lips under the circumstances. I didn’t want to be viewed as making a special effort for David.

  Lianne came to the door to fetch me.

  “Oh, hello, dear,” Ewe chimed, popping her head around the corner.

  Lianne, smartly dressed, acknowledged the greeting with a curt nod. I suppose she considered Ewe beneath her and followed the example set by her mother. One did not associate with lowly village folk.

  It felt a little odd to make a day excursion when death and murder and suspicion occupied the whole town.

  “Morning,” David said. “Have to stop by the Goring farm on the way, if you don’t mind?”

  I shrugged obligingly.

  “How is your brother, really?” I asked Lianne when he slipped out of the car.

  Her eyes lowered, and her lips quibbled. “I saw him wiping his eyes this morning. They were red. Poor Davie. I never liked her, but he was going to marry her and have his baby.”

  “Did you ever meet Victoria’s mother?”

  “She came to the house once or twice.” Wrinkling her nose, Lianne tried to copy the way I’d pinned the clip in my hair. “I saw her arrive in the car wearing her Sunday best with her silly little velvet hat. She came to make a point.”

  “Victoria asked her over?”

  “Yes, it was a plan between them. Oh, I can’t do this!”

  Taking the lovely enameled flower- comb from her hand, I completed the task. “What kind of plan?”

  “Victoria took her to the drawing room, the room where Mother always goes to give Soames the menu list for the day.”

  I failed to see the significance.

  “She took her there,” Lianne continued, eyes wide, “knowing Mummy sat there between ten and eleven. Mother prefers to take her morning callers in the drawing room. Victoria knew that, too.”

  It was as I had thought. Victoria had exerted her new authority and set a future precedent. “So what happened?”

  “I didn’t see, but I heard about it afterward.”

  “From Mrs. Trehearn?”

  “No. From the kitchen.”

  The kitchen. I should have expected it. Where else does one go to learn house hold gossip?

  David returned, and judging from the expression on his face, he was not too happy. Something had upset him inside the Goring farm. Something to do with Victoria, I wondered? The Bastions lived closest to the Goring farm, on the outskirts of the village. I saw the cottage on the way. The curtains were still drawn, no hint of life evident, the garden untended, the cottage and its grieving inhabitants shut off from the world.

  As a mother, Mrs. Bastion would fight the Hartleys, but what of her son, Connan? I ached to ask Lianne about him.

  The abbess expected us and invited us to her study first.

  “The lost scrolls,” Lord David teased. “Surely Miss du Maurier’s hands are safe enough to compose and deliver its exposé?”

  I could see the lost scrolls had been a contentious issue between them for some time.

  “As I’ve said before, my lord, the scrolls are not for public consumption. And you know the reason why.”

  “Trea sure hunters,” Lord David grinned at me. “Concealed within all the philosophic drivel there’s the promise of riches and maps.”

  “If word got out,” the abbess went on, “it would ruin our peace here. The Hartley family are protectors, as am I, and despite, my lord, your mother’s continuous attempts to see them ‘only for a moment,’ I cannot release them to any hands, safe or otherwise.”

  “I understand completely,” I replied, “and I’d do the same thing in your position. The lure of greed breeds trouble and death.”

  As I uttered the words, I thought of Lady Hartley. A greedy woman.

  I suddenly glanced at Lord David. Until the matter of Victo
ria’s death was settled, he, too, was not safe. Jenny Pollock thought so and had spoken of it. “Lord Davie has his enemies . . .”

  A desperate enemy might frame someone for murder.

  Those who knew him swore to his innocence.

  And those who hated him, had they framed him for murder?

  Later, as I strolled through the village, I came upon the Bastion home. The curtains remained drawn at the tiny cottage.

  I wanted to offer my condolences and marched up to the front door.

  And lost the courage to knock.

  Instead, I composed a note.

  I said nothing of this to Ewe, as I had my own reservations. Who was I, after all, a stranger in town, to send a card of sympathy?

  However, I had discovered the body with Lianne, I reminded myself, screwing up the fifth draft and settling upon the following:

  September 25, 1921

  Dear Mrs. Bastion and Family,

  I wish to express my deepest sympathies on the

  unexpected death of your daughter, Victoria.

  As you are aware, I am a stranger to the area and

  regret to have caused you pain by my unplanned

  involvement.

  If there is anything I can do to help, please let me

  know.

  Yours sincerely,

  Daphne du Maurier

  I kept seeing Victoria’s mother, her wizened, crowlike face, and her finger cranked at me, yelling “You’ll not be my daughter’s replacement. Not now, not ever. My Vicky were murdered. Someone didn’t want her bein’ Lady Hartley.”

  I ached to speak with Mrs. Bastion myself, purely for clues, I justified, dropping the sealed envelope into the Bastion letterbox. Mrs. Bastion hated me because she feared I’d replace her daughter. I wondered what Connan believed.

  “What ever ill- feeling exists,” I said to Ewe and Mrs. Penmark over a fresh pot of tea, “David Hartley will honor his word and keep Connan in employ. So, he works on one of the Hartley boats?”

  “Has done since he dropped out of school,” Mrs. Penmark nodded. “A clever lad with his hands, but his brain don’t work too good.”

  “Good- looking and dumb,” Ewe seconded. “Victoria had the brains in that family. She was the only one to finish school.”

  “You forget the young ones,” Mrs. Penmark corrected. “They miss a lot of school, but it’s too early to judge yet.”

  I pictured Mrs. Bastion’s days, inside her cottage, stranded with her children, entirely reliant upon Connan’s wage. What a blessing, a dream it must have been, when her daughter announced her engagement to Lord David! Mrs. Bastion must have thought her future secure. “Is the Bastion cottage rented from the Hartleys?”

  “No, a private lease. Landlord Tims.” Ewe searched the vast resource of her memory. “They’re related in some way. I think the cottage rent is ‘reduced.’ ”

  “Do you know if Mrs. Bastion had aspirations of moving into Padthaway?”

  “No doubt she did!” Mrs. Penmark cried. “And her ladyship wouldn’t ’ave a jot of that. Low- class fisher’s wife and her brats run-nin’ through the manor. Oh, no, no, no. It’s she who did it, I reckon. For if our Vicky were pregnant, she might have wanted her mother with her, to help raise the bub, the Hartley heir, mind, and a wife has a way of turnin’ her husband’s head.”

  “Lord David, war between mother and wife,” Ewe said, and whistled. “I don’t envy him. S’pose that’s all ended now, now that she’s dead.”

  Those final words sent an eerie shiver through me. How convenient it was for Lady Hartley that Victoria had died when she did, before the wedding. Surely she wouldn’t have murdered her own grandchild?

  “There’s no reason to suspect Victoria carried someone else’s child, is there?” I dared to pose the unthinkable to Ewe that night.

  Draining water from the boiled vegetables, Ewe lifted her shoulders. “She had plenty after her, you just ask Miss Osborn. Here, and in town, from what I’ve heard. Used to work at some fancy club, too. And ye didn’t hear it from me, but I’ll bet there were something goin’ on at some stage between that Mr. Soames and Vicky Bastion. How else do ye think she got the job!”

  “Yes, Jenny Pollock said she didn’t like how they were ‘very close.’ ”

  “Well, one thing is certain. He wouldn’t like her throwin’ him over for Lord David.”

  No, I agreed silently, recalling Sir Edward’s asking me if I thought Victoria a girl of “relaxed morals.”

  I reflected that Victoria and I, two girls of similar age, from differing stations in life and times had changed since the Great War. We no longer lived in the Victorian age of strictures, and engaged couples often enjoyed a sexual relationship before marriage. To the world it appeared to not be the case, yet I’d known of at least two couples who met discreetly in town prior to the wedding day.

  “Victoria’s room at the house . . .” I murmured under my breath. “Close to Lord David’s? Did she sneak into his room at night?”

  “What are you muttering about?” Ewe burst out of her bedroom, hunting for her reading spectacles. Helping her search the room, I soon found them precariously lingering under a cushion. “Good thing someone didn’t sit on it,” I smiled, and asked if she had any visitors today.

  “Not today,” she replied mysteriously. “But on Sunday, we will. A special visitor.”

  “Oh? Who?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see, won’t ye?” Ewe smarted. “I did have Saturdee in mind first but that’s the funeral, so I changed it.”

  “And our visitor is aware of this change?”

  “Indeed, he is. And a visitor ye father would approve of.”

  “Oh no.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve invited Timothy Carathers! I can’t abide him. I won’t be here. I shall go to Padtha-way.”

  “Not him,” Ewe gave me her deepest frown of disapproval. “Tho’ he’d be a good match for ye. Richest in the county but for . . .”

  Her words trailed off. “Richest in the county but for Lord David Hartley,” I finished for her. “The Lord David Hartley suspected of murdering his bride.”

  “The very one.” Ewe nodded. “And don’t ye be forgettin’ it.”

  Easier said than done.

  I had no compunction on using the term in my journal.

  I tried to imagine myself in Sir Edward’s shoes, as a police inspector. Would I blanch at horrific sights of bodies? What kind of methods did he employ to catch a killer?

  “Oh, he is very capable.”

  I bumped into Miss Perony on her way to start morning class at the school.

  “More than capable,” she reiterated, “and I now have utmost confidence that he will solve this dreadful, dreadful affair. He has to, for we are all watching and waiting for the right turnout.”

  I noted she did not use the words murder or mystery.

  “I’m glad we’ve run into each other like this, Daphne. It saves me a visit as I have a message for you from Mrs. Bastion.”

  “Oh? I didn’t expect—”

  “Nor did I, when she told me,” Miss Perony confessed. “She wishes you to visit her tomorrow afternoon.”

  Tomorrow was the day before the funeral.

  “Yes . . . it’s the day before the funeral. Perhaps you could offer some assistance?”

  Yes, I blushed. Perhaps I could. But what?

  “Good-day, Daphne.”

  “Good- day, Miss Perony.”

  I had to add the “miss,” for a schoolteacher demanded it, out of habit, I assumed. “Every person has a habit,” I said to myself on my morning walk. “Victims and killers.”

  I wandered far into the village hills, past the old church where the funeral would take place on Saturday. I envisaged a frazzled Vicar Nortby preparing the service. Did he secretly object to giving a service to an unwed mother? Was he nervous as to the publicity the event would attract? Cameramen, newspapermen, and policemen were sure to swarm the town.

  The early- m
orning light flickered on the horizon, across a dazzling sea, and within minutes, my feet entered the grounds of Padthaway. I intended to slip into the gardens by the house— undetected, if possible. Abandoning the path, I opted for the opposite route, a southern one of unchartered territory. I enjoyed nothing more than my early- morning or late- evening walks, alone, where I could indulge the senses and dream away to my heart’s content.

  Passing the gateway to the established Padthaway gardens, I saw a dog sniffing in the bushes, a great hairy beast of a dog, and delighted, I went to play with him.

  “What’s your name then? Fred? Rufus?”

  “It’s Jasper.”

  A large head loomed up out of the bushes and I recognized Ben, the gardener, who’d carried my makeshift bed into Lianne’s room with Soames.

  His eyes bored into mine, blank, motionless. “It’s Jasper,” he repeated.

  “Ah, Jasper.” I bent down to pat the dog, giving him a good rub on his tummy before toying with his ears. “I had a dog named Jock once. Jasper looks as if he needs a bath, though.”

  Ben stared at me, his crazed eyes trying to place me. “I’ve seen ye before . . .”

  “In Miss Lianne’s room,” I reminded him. “You brought the bed up. My name’s Daphne. What’s yours?”

  He didn’t seem to register any of my words and even when I waved good- bye, he still stared after me, wooden, lifeless.

  “What an odd fellow,” I remarked to the wind, thinking it kind of Lord David to keep him on. Mad old Ben looked as if he’d lived his whole life at Padthaway and the gardens were his life, his domain.

  Since I’d encountered Ben, I slipped out through the back gate to embrace the enchantment of Cornwall: its coastline, wildflowers burgeoning across its jagged proportions.

  “Whoa! Steady, boy!”

  Dazed, I confronted the sudden galloping intruder.