Chapter Thirty-eight
‘It must have been rather awful for you having to sit there and hear us talk like that about your sister,’ said Rose, as she and Josephine strolled in the gardens a few hours later.
‘Oh, it wasn’t so very bad, really,’ said Josephine languidly. She looked as if she hadn’t slept properly for days and was still walking around in a trance. ‘It was almost as if you were talking about someone else. I can’t quite take it all in, any of it. Even now I can’t believe what she did. How could she have killed Claude? I can’t quite believe he’s really dead. I can’t believe she’s dead, that I’ll never see them again, I can’t –.’ She broke down finally in a fit of sobbing and Rose put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her.
‘It’ll do you good to cry. I suppose it’s only now that it’s all over that you’re beginning to take it all in. I say, I’m jolly glad, you know, that you didn’t drown yourself in the lake.’
‘What? W-why would I have done that?’ Josephine glanced up at Rose nervously. She looked frightened.
‘Because you killed your sister,’ Rose said quietly.
‘H-how do you know that? Are… are you going to tell the police?’
‘To answer your first question, because I can’t see Isabella killing herself. She would have gone down fighting. And, to answer your second question, no I’m not going to tell the police, and you mustn’t either. I know you did it for her own sake, to save her from the public humiliation of a trial and ultimately the gallows. It was only a matter of time until the police worked it all out.’
‘Even then, I’m not sure I would have given her away if…if.’ Josephine faltered, and then continued, her voice quiet and strangely free of emotion. ‘Last night, Isabella asked me if I had any Veronal that she could take as she had had trouble sleeping. I took some to her room and she told me to mix some in her glass of water for her. I thought then how easy it would be to give her an overdose. I thought about it, you know. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was only when….’
‘Yes?’ prompted Rose.
‘It was only when she tried to kill you that I knew I had to do something.’
‘Kill me? She tried to kill me?’ Rose felt herself grow cold.
‘I’d brought up her cocoa, and yours too. She was very interested when she heard that the second cup was for you. I was immediately suspicious, especially coming as it did after what you’d said about knowing who the murderer was and telling the police in the morning. She asked me to look for her hairbrush on her dressing table and, while I was looking for it, I caught sight of her reflection in the dressing table mirror. I saw her put Veronal into your cup of cocoa.’
‘So what did you do?’ Rose found that she could hardly breathe.
‘I pretended that I hadn’t noticed. Then, when her back was turned I switched the cups. When I walked out of her room that night, I knew that by morning she’d be dead.’
‘Rose, I’ve been thinking,’ said Cedric as they wandered down to the lake. The way he said the words filled Rose with a sense of dread. He never wants to see me again, she thought. He associates me with death. Two murders, no, three really if one counted poor Claude Lambert. It’s too much. He wants to be able to visit his friends at weekends without being scared that a murder is suddenly going to crop up.
I can’t say I blame him, she thought. I can’t say that I blame him at all. Of course she’d be sad. No, she realised suddenly, she’d be far more than sad; she’d be devastated. The thought of never seeing Cedric again, why it would be unbearable. To know that he’d be living his life somewhere, while she was living her life somewhere else, as if they’d never met. It would be as if they’d never known each other, as if they were nothing more than strangers. She must make him change his mind, she must –.
‘I’ve been thinking, Rose, that next time we meet up it should just be you and me. What do you say? Oh, I know I’m not very exciting and that you might find it rather boring without some more company. I’m really rather a dull old thing and you’re probably used to…’ He turned to look at her. ‘Oh, I say, Rose, have you got something in your eye? It must be this wind. It’s probably blown up a speck of dirt, shall I take a look?’
‘Cedric,’ said Rose, throwing herself into his arms. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer than it just being you and me. And don’t worry, I’m absolutely sure there’ll be no more murders…’
02 - Murder at Dareswick Hall Page 29
