‘There’d better not be,’ said Ben softly, still holding the detective’s gaze. ‘I shall know it if you play me false. Remember that.’
A sheen of sweat broke out on the detective’s forehead. ‘Sir, I would never dream— Truly. I would never dream—’
Ben leaned back in his chair and passed a hand across his eyes. He was disgusted with himself for bullying this weak, honest man. Of course the poor bloke wouldn’t dare to lie. That was why he’d got the job in the first place. ‘Anything else?’ he said curtly.
The detective studied his notebook with a hopeful look. Then his shoulders sagged. ‘Not as such.’ Suddenly the spirit seemed to go out of him. He seemed to think that he was going to get the sack.
Again Ben kneaded his temple. All this effort, and he still couldn’t find Kate.
And she wanted him to. She did, didn’t she? That was what this was all about. The dreams. And that time in Jamaica when she’d appeared to Evie.
But why Jamaica? he thought suddenly. Why only in Jamaica, and never Brazil or Sierra Leone or Panama?
Jamaica.
He sat up. Was that what she was trying to tell him?
His heart raced. He forgot about being tired. Jamaica.
He’d been planning on going back for some time now; just to show them what he’d made of himself, and maybe teach one or two of them a lesson. So why not take his dead along too?
Why had he never thought of it before? It was perfect. The clean, sweet air. The warmth. The colours. It was everything they’d never had when they were alive.
He glanced at the detective, who sat meekly with his head down, waiting to be sacked. ‘In a few days,’ said Ben, ‘I shall be leaving London for good.’
The detective raised his head and gave him a small, defeated smile. ‘Very good, sir.’
‘I shall be going to Jamaica.’
The narrow shoulders sagged. ‘Yes, sir. To be sure.’
‘I shall want you to continue your work. Redouble your efforts. I’ll pay you a monthly retainer. Say, ten pounds. Will that do?’
The detective’s mouth fell open. Two spots of colour appeared on his sallow cheeks.
‘Will that do?’ Ben said again.
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir. And – if I may say so, sir, more than generous—’
‘I shall want a report every week, without fail.’
Weekly reports, wrote the detective in his careful copperplate, and underlined it twice. Then he raised his head, eager for more. ‘And where shall I, er—’
Ben waved a hand. ‘My secretary will sort out the details. But be sure and address the reports to him, rather than to me. The Honourable Frederick Austen, Fever Hill, Trelawny.’
The detective nodded, and wrote it all down in his book.
The curtain had gone down on the first act of Il Trovatore, and Sibella had hurried away to talk to an acquaintance in another box, having despatched Alexander to order champagne.
Sophie didn’t want any champagne, but Sibella insisted. ‘You can’t come to the opera and not have champagne.’
‘Can’t we have the champagne without the opera?’ suggested Alexander.
‘Ridiculous boy,’ said Sibella. ‘Now do what you’re told and go and fetch.’
While they were gone, Sophie sat and fiddled with the tassel on her evening bag, and hoped they would come back soon. It was her first time out of the house in a fortnight, and she couldn’t shake off the sense that everyone was looking at her. There’s that woman who almost killed a baby. Deplorable case. Deplorable.
It was ridiculous, of course, for no-one knew about Mrs Carpenter’s baby, and if they had known they wouldn’t have cared. But she couldn’t help herself.
To her relief, Alexander swiftly returned with a waiter in his wake bearing an ice bucket, glasses, and two bottles of Piper-Heidsieck.
As she watched him dealing with the waiter, she felt a surge of gratitude. How amazing to think that just two weeks before, she had longed to be free of the Trahernes. Then had come the horror at St Cuthbert’s. And after that Sibella had quietly extended their visit, to help her friend through what she called ‘everything’. And now Sophie couldn’t do without them. She didn’t want to do without them, not ever again.
Sometimes, a part of her mind would warn that she was becoming dependent on them. But then reality swiftly returned. She wasn’t becoming dependent. She already was. It had been self-delusion to imagine that she could be anything else.
Once, she had believed that she could be self-reliant, that she could achieve something by herself. Now she knew that to be a mistake. St Cuthbert’s had taught her that.
‘Sophie,’ said Alexander, as he shooed the waiter out of the box and handed her a glass of champagne. ‘Sophie – I wonder, could I talk to you for a moment?’
‘That’s what you’re doing,’ she said with a smile. She took a sip of champagne. It was just what she needed: icy and dry and delicious.
‘Quite so,’ he murmured. He paused, as if composing his words.
She knew what was coming next. She had thought about it a great deal. And she knew that what she was about to do was right.
‘I don’t know if you remember,’ he began, ‘but a few weeks ago, I said that I would wait a while, before I asked you whether you would—’
‘Yes,’ she said.
He gave her an enquiring glance.
‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘The answer, Alexander, is yes.’
Chapter Twenty Three
Fever Hill took Ben completely by surprise.
He had never expected to like it. He’d only bought it on a whim, because it amused him to imagine their faces when they found out. But when he got there, he fell in love with it.
He arrived in May, just after the rains, when the whole estate was bursting with life. The air buzzed and hummed and chirruped. The trees were in full flower: lemon-yellow cassias and dusty pink oleanders; vermilion poincianas and powder-blue jacaranda. One morning he stood on the great marble steps and looked out over the shimmering cane-pieces and thought in astonishment, Yes. I’m home.
For the first time in his life he was at peace. No more restlessness, no more black moods. No more dreams of the old days. He was finished with all that. He’d left it behind in London.
For two months he lived peacefully on the property. He left the running of the estate to the manager who’d handled it under Cameron Lawe, and bought half a dozen thoroughbreds, and set about schooling them. Isaac came to stay for weeks at a time, preferring to walk and survey the hills, rather than run his own place at Arethusa, on the other side of Falmouth. Even Austen was enjoying himself, having confessed somewhat sheepishly to a passion for bird-watching.
The weeks slipped by. Ben watched in amusement as Isaac and Austen finally became used to one another, even venturing out on joint bird-watching and surveying expeditions. He himself spent his days on long solitary rides, and his nights sitting up late, drinking rum and working his way through the latest crate of books. He was at peace.
Then, in the middle of July, the telegram arrived from the private detective.
Your brother Robbie, sisters Lilian and Katherine found. Report follows. Request instructions.
Robbie and Lil and Kate. Found. After all this time.
He stood on the verandah blinking at the telegram; trying to suppress an odd, nagging sense of apprehension.
They deserve to be out here, he told himself angrily. They deserve to escape the stink and din of London for the peace of Fever Hill.
But he couldn’t quite shrug off a suspicion that whatever had been plaguing him in London was now following him out.
Two days later, he and Austen caught the train to Kingston, and plunged headlong into arrangements for bringing out the bodies. They spent hours in shipping offices and the Telegraph Department. Ben forced himself to refer to his brother and sisters as ‘the remains’, slamming the lid down hard on thoughts of the rough, larky street kids he’d grown up with. T
hen, when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he left the rest to Austen, and took Evie out to lunch.
He took her to the Constant Spring Hotel, six miles out of town, and sat back in the hired carriage, and enjoyed her enjoyment. She loved it all. She loved the drive through the foothills ablaze with poinciana and bougainvillaea. She loved the great hotel with its manicured gardens and magnificent dining-terraces, and the enormous French menu that was entirely free of any taint of Jamaica. She loved the fact that their fellow diners – mostly wealthy English and American tourists – were all white, except for one well-to-do coloured family whom she felt entitled to ignore, as they were darker than she.
She wore a narrow gown of pale green silk which suited her willowy figure, and a wide-brimmed hat of fine pale straw, elegantly trimmed with cream silk flowers. Both hat and gown looked expensive, and Ben wondered how she could afford them on a teacher’s salary. But he dismissed that as none of his business, and told her that she looked enchanting.
She acknowledged the compliment with a stately little nod, then leaned towards him and whispered, ‘Our fellow diners probably think I’m your mistress.’
‘I wondered about that,’ he replied. ‘Do you mind?’
She put her head on one side and studied him. Then she smiled and shook her head. ‘Just so long as you explain yourself to the school governors if word ever gets around.’
‘I’m at your disposal,’ he said with a mock bow.
She took a sip of champagne and threw him a mischievous glance. ‘So what about that, Ben? Have you got yourself a mistress yet?’
‘You know very well that I haven’t,’ he said mildly. He should have known that she would ask. It seemed to offend her sensibilities to see him still unmarried at the age of thirty.
‘Cho!’ she said, lapsing into patois to tease him. ‘You fooling me up, boy? What are you waiting for? You must be the despair of every Society matron on the Northside!’
‘Very sad, I agree,’ he said drily. ‘Now what about you? When am I going to be introduced to your mysterious sweetheart?’
Evie snorted. ‘Never, if I have my way.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’d grill him like a snapper and chase the poor man away. Sometimes you act as if you’re my big brother.’
He shifted his water glass a fraction to the right. ‘Sometimes that’s how I feel.’
‘But Ben,’ she said gently, ‘I don’t need a big brother. I’m twenty-eight years old.’
And of course she was right. She had done extraordinarily well for herself. She had an excellent teaching position in one of the best girls’ academies on the island, and a pretty little house in a leafy, respectable street in Liguanea, on the slopes above Kingston. She even spoke differently: in an Anglicized Creole accent which only occasionally lapsed into patois for fun.
It was all a million miles away from the old slave village. And Ben knew better than to remind her of that. In seven years, she had never been back to Trelawny. She never mentioned her mother, or the visions she’d had as a girl.
Shortly after his arrival, he had asked her about that. She’d turned on him. ‘That’s over,’ she’d snapped, her lovely face ablaze. ‘I’ll thank you never to mention it again.’ Judging from the strength of her reaction, it wasn’t over at all. But he’d refrained from pointing that out.
The waiter came and refilled their glasses, and Evie applied herself to her pineapple ice, stabbing at it delicately with her spoon. ‘So why’d you buy it, Ben?’ she said suddenly. ‘Why’d you go and buy Fever Hill?’
He took a cigar from his case and turned it in his fingers. ‘I felt like it,’ he said sharply.
If she noticed his tone she gave no sign of it. ‘But you could’ve had any estate in Jamaica. Why Fever Hill? Is it because of S—’
‘I don’t know,’ he snapped. ‘Can we talk about something else?’
She studied him for a moment, and her long almond-shaped eyes were impossible to read. Then she put down her spoon and took a sip of champagne. ‘You bought it because it belonged to Sophie,’ she said calmly.
‘Evie—’
‘– because you can’t forget her. Because she broke your heart.’
‘I bought it’, he said between his teeth, ‘because it came on the market, and I liked the idea of annoying Cornelius Traherne. Now can we please talk of something else.’
She put down her glass and looked at him, and smiled. ‘Annoying Cornelius Traherne. Now that’s something with which I can truly sympathize.’
He pretended to be amused, but she wasn’t fooled. She had spoilt the day, and she knew it – although she seemed unrepentant.
They finished their lunch with a strained attempt at good humour, then he drove her back to Liguanea and dropped her off at her pretty little house. She made him promise not to leave it too long before he came back to town, and when he told her that he was busy at Fever Hill she only smiled and wished him luck. He didn’t ask her what she meant.
Back at the hotel, he found a note from Austen. Complications re shipping have sent me back to Port Royal. Irritating, but capable of resolution. Should be back by six. A. Ben cursed under his breath. He didn’t want to be on his own just now. He didn’t want a chance to brood on what Evie had said.
He went out onto the verandah and ordered tea and a newspaper, and stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing at the peaceful little groups of tourists strolling beneath the royal palms, and beyond them the fishing-boats bobbing in the harbour.
The Myrtle Bank Hotel was the best in town, and occupied a magnificent position on Harbour Street with far-reaching views of the sea. Like much of Kingston, it had been destroyed by the earthquake three years before, but had since been lavishly rebuilt. Everything about it was new and rich and recently established. Rather like me, thought Ben. The idea amused him, and made him feel a little better.
The tea arrived, and with it the Daily Gleaner. He sat down and forced himself to read every item on every page, determined to keep the black mood at bay. He ploughed through the foreign news which had come in over the wires, and the local happenings. He learned whose horse had won the King’s Purse at the Spanish Town meeting, and that the Jamaica Coloured Choir was successfully touring England, and that the Governor’s daughter was leaving on the Atranta for a holiday in the Mother Country.
Underneath that, there was a small paragraph which he nearly missed, for a waiter came up and asked if he needed anything more. Arrived by the mail steamer yesterday morning, he read as he waved the man away, Mr Augustus Parnell the noted City financier, travelling with Mr Alexander Traherne of Parnassus Estate, Mrs Sibella Palairet, and Miss Sophie Monroe, latterly of Fever Hill Estate. The party will be staying at the Myrtle Bank Hotel for a fortnight before travelling on to Trelawny. It is with great pleasure that this correspondent has learned that Mr Traherne and Miss Monroe have recently become engaged to be married.
Dinner was over, and golden light streamed out onto the hotel lawns. Fireflies spangled the hibiscus bushes. Ratbats dived after moths besieging the electric globes on the terraces. The waters of the harbour shimmered in the cool blue moonlight.
It was a peaceful sight, and Ben, standing with Austen on the balcony of his suite, wished he could take pleasure in it. But his sense of enjoyment had drained away like water into sand. First Evie’s cross-questioning; then half a dozen lines in a newspaper.
So much for peace, he thought, if that’s all it takes to destroy it.
He lit a cigar and studied the little pools of yellow light on the terraces below, where dress-coated gentlemen and bejewelled ladies murmured over coffee and liqueurs. He couldn’t see anyone he recognized. He despised himself for looking.
At his side, Austen asked if anything was wrong. Ben shook his head. ‘Just run through what you were saying again?’
Austen hesitated. ‘You mean, about the – er, arrangements?’
‘Well of course,’ snapped Ben. ‘What d’you think I meant?�
�
Austen did not reply.
Ben ground out his cigar and reached for another. ‘Just run through it again, will you?’
The waiter came and cleared away the dinner things, and set out coffee and brandy. Austen waited till the man had gone, then went through the arrangements again. Ben turned back to the terraces, and failed to hear a word.
They had dined in his suite because he disliked the idea of bumping into her in the public rooms. He hated himself for his cowardice – and even more for his stupidity. Why had it never occurred to him that she might return to Jamaica? Why had it never occurred to him that she might marry – and that when she did, she would be bound to pick that most appropriate of suitors, Alexander Traherne?
Half a dozen lines in a newspaper, and his peace was gone. Was that all it took?
But why should it matter where she was or what she did? Half a dozen lines about someone he hadn’t seen for years? Why should it matter?
He smoked his cigar and paced the balcony, aware of Austen’s scrutiny. He felt heavy with anger – and with something else: a kind of fear.
Fever Hill was only four miles from Parnassus. Would she live at the great house with her new husband, or would Cornelius give them the house at Waytes Valley? Would he be faced with breathless little bulletins in the Falmouth Gazette about the wedding celebrations, and – the christenings? Would the young Mrs Traherne force him out of Fever Hill as she’d forced him out of Jamaica?
No. No. He wouldn’t let her do that.
Behind him Austen stopped his recital, and asked if he’d care for a brandy. Ben shook his head and continued to pace.
And yet when you think about it, he reflected as he watched a mongoose slipping silently across the lawns, you’ve had a lucky escape. If it hadn’t been for that piece in the Gleaner you might have run into her anywhere. At least like this you can pick your own time, and get it over with in your own way.
Put like that, it didn’t sound so bad. In fact, it might even be fun.
He ground out his cigar under his heel and turned to Austen. ‘The arrangements sound fine,’ he said. ‘And on second thoughts, I think I will have that brandy.’
The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 66
