She will not live long. She could die next week…in two years’ time perhaps. I don’t think from the state of her lungs alone she can live another five years. Her asthmatical attacks are as frequent as ever; they are aggravating the lung condition. I knew that this voyage could not do her any lasting good. So, why should she not take this role? There would be compassion for her, particularly in Coralle…the sick and jealous wife. They wouldn’t have been hard on her. And you, Anna, you would be involved in scandal again, but I would be there to protect you. I would have power and position, which I longed for, and I would care for you. And although you would be pointed to as the Other Woman, just as you were as the Niece with a Motive—you see that passes. It is a necessary inconvenience in which I had to involve you then, as now.
But I am fond of you, Anna. It is something I never thought possible, so perhaps there are yet more secret recesses of my mind which I don’t understand myself.
So I decided that when Redvers came home he was going to die.
And that is what I intended tonight. I had worked on Monique. I had deliberately roused her jealousy, oh very subtly. I had seen how useful Suka could be. It was going to be easy. His jealous wife was going to murder the erring husband and that murder was going to take place either tonight or tomorrow night, when the Captain was in this house. I was waiting my opportunity. I knew it would come because she loved to make coffee. She was proud of it because it was her only domestic virtue. I had told her that she made it better than anyone else in the house. I only had to wait for the moment. Tonight he had been talking to you in the garden. Suka knew it and she had told Monique, who made coffee for him in her own room where she had a spirit lamp. She made it and I put something in his coffee, Anna. I shall not tell you what. It was something that would act quickly. Something which was comparatively—but not quite—tasteless. He was excited. He was thinking of you. I didn’t think he would notice that slight acrid taste. When she had made the coffee I said that I thought her blue negligee was more becoming than her red, and she acted as I knew she would and went into the adjoining room to change it. I then did what was necessary. I put the deadly drug into the coffee, stirred it well, and when she came back in the blue negligee everything was set.
I went away to wait. I was so excited, so tense. I paced up and down my room waiting.
I have never done anything as big as this. It was very different helping sick old women out of the world. I was not entirely sure what effect a large quantity of the drug would have. I must be ready, prepared to say the right thing, to do the right thing when the time came. I was trembling and apprehensive.
I thought some coffee would steady my nerves. I was going to make some, but as I came out into the corridor I saw Pero; I did not want to risk talking to anyone in my state. I did not want to go to the kitchen. I most dreaded seeing Suka. She has an uncanny way of guessing. No, I could not face that old woman—which I might well do if I went to the kitchen—not when I had just made a murderess of her darling Missy.
So I said to Pero: “Would you make me some coffee and send it up to my room. I am very tired. It has been a busy day.”
She is always eager to please; she said she would; and ten minutes later she came back.
I poured out the coffee; it was very hot but I never cared for hot coffee. I gulped down a cup and poured out another…and then…I began to taste that unusual taste.
I looked at the fresh cup I had poured out. I sniffed it. There would be no odor, but a horrible suspicion had come to me. I told myself I was imagining it. It couldn’t be.
But I had to satisfy myself. I found Pero in the kitchen.
I said to her: “You made me some coffee, Pero.”
“Yes, Nurse.” She looked frightened; but then she always looks frightened, always fearful of complaint.
“You made it yourself…?”
“Why, yes, Nurse.”
I felt better. I realized that my skin was cold although I felt as though my body was on fire. I reminded myself that I must be careful. People were going to be talking about coffee a great deal in this house.
“It was not good, Nurse?”
I did not answer.
“Missy Monique made it,” she said.
“What?”
“For the Captain, but he did not drink it. He was called to the ship. So, I heat it up for you.”
I heard myself say: “I see.”
So now you understand. You can see how one must take every possibility into consideration if one is to be certain of success. This house of economy! It was something I had forgotten. You have to think of everything, and the most irrelevant details can prove your downfall.
And here is your letter, Anna. I took it. I was going to use it. I had not yet put it where she could find it. She will never see it now. It would have been useful, you see. It would have been found in her room and would naturally have been part of the motive.
But everything is changed now. The truth will come out. It is better for Rex this way. He could never have gone through with this without me, and now he will stand alone.
“A long farewell to all my greatness.” You see, I quote to the end. Good-bye to you, Anna. Good-bye to Rex.
I dropped the sheets of paper and Redvers’s letter to me; I ran to Chantel’s room.
She was lying on her bed.
“Chantel,” I cried. “Chantel.”
But she lay still, unheeding. I knew that I was too late, but I knelt by her bed, taking her cold hand and crying:
“Chantel, Chantel: come back to me.”
***
That happened more than two years ago, but the memory of that terrible night will never leave me. I could not believe what she had written. It was only the sight of her lying there dead that brought home the reality to me. Redvers took charge of everything. I think I lived in a bemused state for weeks afterward. I kept going over parts of my life with Chantel. I dreamed of her gay mocking beauty. To me she had been the sister I had always wanted; I suppose I had been that to her. She had had an affection for me; there was softness in her; there was kindness; and yet how could she have planned such diabolical actions? The murderess was the secret woman in her, the woman I should never have believed existed if she herself had not shown her to me.
Events happened fast. A week or so before Chantel’s death, that old nurse—Gareth Glenning’s stepmother—had died, and when she knew her end was near, she confessed to Lady Crediton what she knew. Chantel had been right when she had said that it would have been impossible to ward off the inevitable discovery by the blackmailers.
Lady Crediton wanted Edward brought back to England without delay and later I took him back to England but not on Serene Lady.
Lady Crediton received me with some respect. She said that in view of what had happened and the shock it may well have been to Edward—he had become very important to her now—she hoped that I would stay with him for a while in my old capacity for it would be somewhat inconvenient if I did not. So I stayed on at the Castle.
Monique had remained on the Island. Madame de Laudé, with whom I was in communication about her furniture, wrote to me often; she said that the new doctor—a young man with modern ideas—had charge of Monique and was very hopeful of her case.
I had not seen Redvers; he had reached England before Edward and I arrived and was gone again on another voyage by the time we came. He was the heir to the vast Crediton empire, but he extended to Rex the same generous treatment he had accorded Dick Callum. Rex remained in the same capacity to the firm that he had before it was known that he was not the true heir, and stayed in Australia for the rest of the year and I heard that he had married Helena Derringham.
Madame de Laudé, who was delighted because I had been able to arrange for the sale of some of her furniture, kept me informed. The Flame Men had received their reward for recovering the diamonds, and w
hat was more important, they had convinced themselves that it was an alien goddess who had caused the accident, so that when the injured boy reached manhood, he would lose nothing by bearing the scars of going into battle against an enemy and surviving. They believed that the Fire Goddess had sent their servant in the form of a nurse who now lay buried in the Christian cemetery. The Flame Men laid red flowers on Chantel’s grave at the time of Grand Celebration and had vowed to do this forever.
I often thought of Chantel. My life seemed empty without her. Once I went up North and found the vicarage where she used to live. I went into the graveyard and there I found the grave she had told me about. The stone had slumped to one side and it was scarcely possible to read the inscription on it. “Chantel Spring 6 6.” I thought of Chantel’s mother coming here and reading the name on that stone and deciding that if the child she carried should be a girl that would be her name. I made inquiries in the neighborhood and called on Chantel’s sister Selina. We talked for a while. She did not know all the truth. There had been no need to tell her. Chantel had accidentally taken an overdose of some sleeping tablet, she thought. She spoke of her with pride. The truth but not the whole truth, as Chantel would have said.
“She was beautiful, even as a baby. And she was different from the rest of us. She knew what she wanted and she wanted it passionately. We always said she would get what she wanted. Of course she was so much younger than the rest of us. Our mother died when she was born and I think we were inclined to spoil her, but she was always gay and affectionate. We were so surprised when she took up nursing. She told us she looked on it as a sort of gateway. And as she married that millionaire, I suppose that was what she meant. But it didn’t last, did it. Poor Chantel—to have so much and to lose it.”
And I came away sadly and I continued to mourn for her…and Redvers.
I should not stay at the Castle. I had made up my mind that I should be gone by the time Redvers returned. I had to plan a new life for myself.
In making arrangements for Madame de Laudé, I had come into contact with several antique dealers whom I had known in the past. One of these told me I was wasting my time at the Castle. I had an expert knowledge. If I cared to join his company, they would have a place for me. I said I would think this over.
I went and sat on the cliff and looked over the river to the docks where the ships lay at anchor; the barques, the barkentines, and the fast moving clippers now being ousted by the modern steamers, and I thought of the days when I used to come here as a child with Ellen and listen to stories of the grandeur of the Lady Line.
I had come full circle. And now there was a decision to make. Edward would soon be going away to school; there would be nothing for me at the Castle—besides to remain was to cling to the old life, the life that was over.
***
How strange is life. Suddenly when one has almost made up one’s mind to a certain action it casually throws an opportunity into one’s path. One morning I received a letter from my tenants at the Queen’s House, asking me to go and see them.
It was almost summer and when I stepped through the iron gate into the garden and saw the waxy beauty of the magnolia tree I felt that I had come home and that if I could not hold that ecstatic happiness for which I had longed at least I could find a certain peace in this house. I knocked; a neat maid took me into the hall. It was furnished as I would have furnished it with the Tudor refectory table and the pewter ornaments. On the turn of the stairs where I had once stood with Redvers to face an infuriated Aunt Charlotte stood a tall Newport grandfather clock. “Tick tock. Come home!” it seemed to say.
My tenants were apologetic. They had a daughter in America who had just had twins and who had wanted them to go out for a long time; they had now decided. They wished therefore to give up the tenancy. They had done the repairs and they would sell the furniture at a very reasonable price; but they wished to leave.
I knew at once what I was going to do. I was coming back here. I was going to buy and sell antiques. I had had the usual commission on the sale of Madame de Laudé’s goods; I had saved from my salary. Was it enough? There was no need for immediate payment, I was told, and I realized that my tenants’ one desire was to get away as quickly as possible.
Could I do it? It was a challenge. I walked through the Queen’s House—up the staircase straight into the room. How beautiful it looked now! It should never be cluttered again. I would begin in a small way. I should put pieces where they belonged. I could do it. I knew I could.
I went to the Queen’s room. There was the precious bed. I turned and looked in the mirror. I remembered how I used to look in that mirror and see myself years hence. “Old Miss Brett. She’s a bit odd. There was some story about her. Didn’t she murder somebody?”
But I could not see that old Miss Brett now. Everything had changed. There was no mystery. I knew how Aunt Charlotte had died.
I knew too that I had accepted this challenge.
***
Ellen came back to me. Mr. Orfey was not doing so well that she could afford to live a life of idleness. She brought news from the Castle.
“My word, Edith said you could have knocked her down with a feather. So it’s Captain Stretton who’s the big man now…Captain Crediton I should say. Mr. Rex has come home and Mrs. Rex…she’s a bit of a madam. She’ll keep him in order, but Edith says she’s all right at heart.”
I tried to concern myself completely with my business affairs so that I had no time for brooding. It wasn’t possible of course. I had found a new way of life, but I should never forget.
One day Ellen came in with the news. “Mrs. Stretton, I mean Mrs. Crediton, is dead. Out on that island place. They’ve been expecting it for months. It’s what you might call a happy release.”
***
Autumn had come. There were big ships in the docks. I never tired of climbing the cliff and looking down on them—the ships of the Lady Line into which one woman had crept—The Secret Woman.
I still treasured the figurehead. I looked at it every day and asked myself: Does he still think of me?
Then one evening when the mist was on the river and the dew drops were clinging like tiny diamonds to the spiders’ webs draping the bushes in the garden, I heard the gate open and footsteps on the flagged path.
I went to the door and waited there. He was coming towards me.
I thought: He has changed; he has grown older; we have both grown older.
But when he reached me and took my hands in his I saw that he had not changed. There was the same lilt in his voice, the same eager smile in those slightly uptilted eyes. But after all, there was a change. He was free.
And there, in the garden of the Queen’s House on that autumn evening, I knew—and he knew—that the future was for us to make.
About the Author
Eleanor Alice Burford Hibbert, better known to readers as Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, and Jean Plaidy, is one of the world’s most beloved and enduring authors. Her career spanned five decades and she continued to write historical fiction and romantic suspense until her death in 1993. She has sold more than 100 million books and has twenty-one international bestsellers.
The India Fan
by Victoria Holt
New York Times bestselling author
Blackmail. Arson. Murder. Obsession.
Beautiful as its peacock feathers may be, the priceless fan hidden deep within the Framling mansion has a legacy of death and destruction. And Drusilla Delany has no idea she’s been marked by its curse…
But the fan’s dark past might prove less of a danger than Fabian Framling himself. Dark, brooding, and dominating, will he be the one to save her from the fan’s cruel fate…or cause her demise?
“I found this to be an absolutely engrossing read. The storytelling is excellent, and I found the historical background fascinating.”—Romantic Historical Lovers
For more Victoria Holt, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
The Time of the Hunter’s Moon
by Victoria Holt
New York Times Bestselling Author
Rumors. Murder. Fortune. Lies.
According to legend, a girl will see her future husband at the time of the hunter’s moon. But when the handsome stranger revealed to Cordelia Grant disappears after an all-too-brief encounter, she has to wonder: Was he merely an apparition…or something more?
The memory of her mysterious gentleman continues to haunt Cordelia when Sir Jason Verringer comes calling. It’s rumored the dashing land baron murdered his wife and mistress. But Cordelia knows, better than anyone, not to believe in society gossip. And there’s no denying that Jason is dangerously compelling. Her future hinges on one choice.
One man is her destiny. The other is her demise.
“One of the supreme writers of gothic romance, a compelling storyteller whose gripping novels have thrilled millions.”—RT Book Reviews
“First-rate Holt… Nobody does it better!”—Library Journal
For more Victoria Holt, visit:
www.sourcebooks.com
The Shivering Sands
by Victoria Holt
New York Times bestselling author
Ancient ruins. Family scandal. Forbidden love.
Caroline knows something is wrong. Her sister Roma has gone missing, and no one can tell her why. The only option is to go to where Roma was last seen—an estate with a deadly history…
The Secret Woman Page 39
