Voices in a Haunted Room

by Philippa Carr

  I guessed that in the circumstances, because of his fear for me, Jonathan would not pause to consider the story closely. He would come at once.

  How long had she been away? It must be more than half an hour. These could be my last minutes on earth. I had seen purpose in Dolly’s eyes; she had loved her sister devotedly. Evie had been all that she was not… pretty, attractive—and she had lived for Evie.

  Oh, I understood Dolly’s motives, her feelings, her emotions. The sadly maimed one, taken care of by her beautiful sister, giving all the affection of which she was capable—and that was a good deal—to Evie. Then the chain of events… the coming of Alberic, the love between him and Evie, the consequences, and then the death of Alberic.

  I could understand the heartbreak, the intensity of the sorrow she had felt. Yes, I could understand why Dolly had been thrown off balance. I could understand why she could contemplate murder. But she had been moved by Jessica. I could see that in her face when she had spoken of her. I trembled to think that it might have been Amaryllis. What if it had been? Oh no, that was too appalling to contemplate!

  I tried to look into the future. Jonathan would come. He would be killed. Then Dolly would shoot me. Would they send us both to the bottom of the ocean?

  An idea came to me which filled me with horror. We should both be missing… lying at the bottom of the sea, weighed down so that there was no danger of our bodies being washed ashore as Alberic’s had been. They would say that we had gone away together. Millicent would recall her suspicions. And David… what of David?

  I had not thought of that until this moment and now I was filled with wretchedness. This was what I could least bear. He would believe I had gone off with his brother… that I had deserted him and my child.

  “Oh no… no…” I moaned.

  I cared so much about David, and the thought of his believing this of me, of the wound it would inflict, hurt me more than anything else I could think of.

  I was in a cold sweat.

  I would implore Dolly not to do this. Let her kill me if she would… but not let it be thought that I had disappeared… with Jonathan.

  She would never agree. How could she without implicating herself?

  “Shoot me,” I would plead. “But leave my body in the boat house. Leave me here with Jonathan… and Billy Grafter could get away in the boat… but leave us here. Let David know that I was not guilty of the ultimate betrayal.”

  An hour must have passed.

  It could not be long now. I was straining my ears. Then suddenly I heard the shot and I knew that Jonathan had arrived.

  There was another shot and another. The shooting went on for some seconds.

  Dolly was in the boat house; her hair fell wildly about her shoulders; she was white-faced and she was staring at me madly.

  She said: “Billy’s dead. He’s got Billy.”

  Great gladness seized me. I said: “And Jonathan…?”

  “Him too,” she said. “They’re both lying there. I’ve got to kill you now. It’s your turn… and Billy’s not here to help me.”

  I felt numb. Jonathan dead! I could imagine it. He would have come riding onto the beach, making for the boat house… and Billy was lying hidden. Billy would shoot, but unless he killed Jonathan with the first shot, he would not succeed. Jonathan would be ready… on the alert.

  “Dead,” I said. “Jonathan… dead.”

  “Billy too…” she murmured and she picked up the gun, and pointed it at me.

  “There’ll be blood,” she said. “There is blood. Poor Billy. I don’t like blood.”

  Then she dropped her gun and covered her face with her hands. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I thought I could but I can’t. I couldn’t kill the little baby.”

  “Of course you can’t do it, Dolly. I understand everything. I know how you felt. Help me now. Untie these ropes. Let’s go and see them. Perhaps they’re not dead.”

  She looked at me and I saw the timid girl I had always known.

  “They are dead,” she said.

  “They might not be. Perhaps there is something we could do.”

  She hesitated. I felt then that my life was in the balance. Everything depended on the next few seconds. Suddenly she nodded. She felt in the pocket of her gown and brought out a knife. She looked at it for a moment and paused. I thought she was going to change her mind. Then she cut the ropes.

  I stumbled out of the boat house. I saw Billy Grafter first. He was lying on the sand, which was dyed red all around him.

  He was undoubtedly dead.

  And there was Jonathan.

  I had never thought to see him so. He lay limply and his face was the colour of ivory. He looked like a different person… so quiet… so still. His horse was standing patiently by. He must have dismounted before he was shot.

  I leaned over him. I thought I detected a faint flutter of breath.

  “Jonathan, my love, don’t die. Please…”

  Dolly was standing beside me.

  Hope had come to me. He was not dead. He might yet be saved.

  “Dolly,” I said. “Ride back to Eversleigh. Get help. Tell them there’s been an accident. Tell them that Mr. Jonathan is very seriously hurt. Promise me you will do this. I will stay here with him.”

  She said: “I can’t. What will they say?”

  I took her arm. I wondered whether I should go. But I did not want to leave her here with him. I was still unsure of her. I kept telling myself that there was hope and I was desperately afraid to leave him.

  I said very seriously: “This is a terrible thing, Dolly. We’ve got to save them if possible… him and Billy. You have played a part in this, but you are no murderess. If we can save their lives you’ll feel so much better. You’ll forget that you lured him here. Tell them quickly and get a doctor and a stretcher and bring them here quickly… Please, Dolly.”

  “I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll go.”

  And I believed her.

  I knelt beside him. “Jonathan,” I said. “Oh… Jonathan. Please don’t die. You mustn’t leave me, you mustn’t…”

  His eyes flickered for a moment and his lips moved. I bent low to hear what he said. It was: “Claudine.”

  “Yes, Jonathan, my dearest. I am here with you. I am hoping to take you back to Eversleigh. You’re going to recover. Yes, you are. I promise you.”

  “Finished,” he whispered.

  “No… no. You’re too young. Nobody could do this to you. Not to you… Jonathan Frenshaw. You’ve always been the one who succeeded. You’re not finished. Your whole life is before you.”

  His lips formed my name again.

  “Remember…” he murmured. “Live… happily, Claudine. Don’t look back. Secrets… best kept. Remember. For Amaryllis… remember. Ours…”

  I kissed his forehead. He seemed to be aware of me, for something like a smile touched his lips.

  He was still trying to say something. “Be happy…” I think it was, and I knew he was reminding me of his philosophy. I was to be happy, to make David happy. I was to keep our secret. Dolly shared it, but I had a feeling that she would never betray it. There were many things which she would want to forget.

  “Don’t go, Jonathan,” I said.

  “Do you love me?”

  “I do… with all my heart.”

  His eyes flickered and there was that smile again.

  “Jonathan,” I pleaded. “Jonathan…”

  But he was unaware and he spoke no more.

  When they arrived he was dead.

  October 1805

  IT WAS A LONG TIME since those agonizing moments on the beach when I had watched Jonathan die. Amaryllis and Jessica were now eleven years old. We had celebrated their birthdays this year—as we always did—simultaneously. They were growing up together, close—perhaps closer than sisters would have done. They were so different—Jessica a dark flamboyant beauty with a temper to match her looks; Amaryllis, fair as an angel with the sweetest of natures. They w
ere the darlings of our household.

  I had enjoyed a happiness with David such as I had not believed possible. It was not complete happiness, of course. How could it be? There were dreams when I thought I was in that room and I heard voices telling me that I had sinned—sinned against the one who had loved me so dearly, so tenderly. Sometimes during the day when I was laughing and so intensely happy, the voices would intrude, shattering my pleasure and my peace of mind. Then I thought of Jonathan and found a certain comfort in remembering his words. I must never make David unhappy by letting him guess that ours had ever been anything but the perfect marriage. My punishment was to live with my secret, and I would never be completely rid of my guilt. Always there would be the reminder like voices in a haunted room.

  Life at Eversleigh goes on much the same as it ever did.

  It could no longer be kept secret that Billy Grafter had been a spy for the French and that Alberic had worked with him; and this was why they had met their deaths. Jonathan was the hero who had brought them to justice—and lost his life in doing so.

  I often wondered about Dolly. I saw her frequently and she seemed to have become quite fond of me. She was happier than she had been for a long time, and I think it was due to her grandmother. Evalina Trent had changed. I never knew how much she had been aware of, but she ceased to mourn so desperately for Evie and gave herself up to the care of Dolly. I think in a way she saw that her ambitions for Evie had been one of the main causes which had led Evie to take such drastic action. It must have been a sobering thought that she preferred a watery grave to her grandmother’s wrath.

  Neither Dolly nor I would ever forget that dramatic event in which we had taken part. Once I talked to her of Jonathan and told her how he believed that it was better to keep secrets rather than make confessions which were going to hurt people.

  “I don’t know whether he was right or not,” I said. “Perhaps before I die I shall find out.”

  Millicent had been stunned by Jonathan’s death. She had truly loved him.

  She talked to me of him.

  “I once thought there was something between you and him,” she said.

  “Oh?” I replied. “But David is my husband.”

  “That is not always a deterrent. I don’t think it would have been with Jonathan. I was not sure with you. Jonathan was the most attractive man I ever knew… or ever will. He was perhaps irresistible. He was not a good man… as David is. There was adventure in him. He would have his way, and he didn’t always consider other people. But he died for his country.”

  I agreed with her—and so we accepted our lives, as we needs must.

  When her child was born she became absorbed in him. He was her delight. She called him Jonathan, and that other Jonathan lived again for her in him.

  She was happier now—and so was I. I had David; I had Amaryllis; we were a united family and I was grateful to be a member of it.

  One day we had an unexpected visitor who came from the Continent. He had met Charlot, who had begged him, if he returned to England, to take a message to my mother. Both Charlot and Louis Charles had married and left the Army. They now had their own vineyard in Burgundy; and the message was that when there was peace between England and France we should all meet again. My mother’s happiness was great. Only then did I realize how deeply saddened she had been by the loss of her son.

  We had lived through stirring times. We had seen Napoleon become the Emperor of the French, with almost the whole of Europe under his control.

  We had shivered with apprehension when he had turned his acquisitive eyes on our island. We were to be the next, and the threat of invasion by those seemingly unconquerable armies hung over us.

  But we had our great men. Lord Nelson was one of them. We had just had the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Trafalgar Bay, and there was a lightness in the air; bonfires were blazing from one end of England to the other.

  Nelson, the national hero, had died on his flagship and that flagship was symbolically called the Victory.

  We were a large party that night and the conversation was all of the victory at Trafalgar, which had removed the threat of invasion and stopped the conqueror in his uninterrupted progress through the world.

  My mother proposed a toast to Lord Nelson, the dead hero.

  “And there is another I should like to include,” she went on. “Jonathan Frenshaw. It is because of men like these, who give themselves, that we may enjoy our peaceful lives. They are the real heroes.”

  And we drank to that, for it was true.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Daughters of England series

  Romany Jake

  I BELIEVE THAT VERY few people who lived through that summer and early autumn of the year 1805 will ever forget it. Throughout the entire country was a feeling of dread of what might be our fate, which was only surpassed by a determination to prevent it. We were a nation preparing for invasion from the most formidable foe any country had ever had to face since the days of Attila the Hun. The Corsican adventurer, Napoleon Bonaparte, had shown the world that he was determined on conquest, and, having subdued the greater part of Europe, was now turning his attention to our island.

  His name was on everybody’s lips; any little rumour about him was magnified and passed around; he was generally known as Boney, for nothing is such an antidote to fear as contempt—even if it is assumed—and he was slightingly referred to as The Little Corporal; but the most ominous warning a mother could give to a naughty child was: “If you are not good, Boney will get you”—as though Boney was the devil himself. Boney was the bogey-man and there could have been few in England at that time who did not contemplate his coming to our land with considerable apprehension.

  Bands were formed all over the country; weapons were collected and hidden. We looked at the sea which lapped our shores, and whether it was calm and blue, or lashing our beaches in a grey fury, we thanked God for it. It was our great ally because it separated us from that mass of land over which the Emperor Napoleon’s battalions had ranged and where, it seemed, none could deter him.

  Enemies became allies in the only cause that mattered. We were all one great family, determined to maintain our independence. We were no little European state to be lightly overrun. Until now we had ruled the seas—and we were going to carry on doing so. We were—we hoped—impregnable in our little island, and thus we were going to remain.

  There was talk of little else in our household, and we would sit over meals listening to my father discussing the state of affairs. My father was very much the head of our household. He was the patriarch, the master of us all, one felt. There were only two in the family who knew how to soften him; my mother was one; I was the other.

  He was quite old at that time—sixty in fact—for my mother was his second wife, and although they had been in love with each other in their youth, there had been a previous marriage for both of them. My mother already had a grown-up son and daughter by her first marriage—and I was the result of that long delayed union.

  This made complicated relationships in our family. For instance, my constant companion, Amaryllis, who had been brought up in the nursery with me, and who was only a month younger than I, was in fact my niece; her mother, Claudine, being my mother’s daughter by her first marriage.

  I always felt this gave me a certain superiority over Amaryllis—one month’s superiority plus the fact that I was her aunt.

  I used to call her Niece sometimes until Miss Rennie, our governess, told me not to be ridiculous.

  “But it is a fact,” I would insist.

  “There is no need to stress it,” retorted Miss Rennie. “You are both little girls, and there is scarcely any difference in your ages at all.”

  I was not such a pleasant little girl as Amaryllis was. She was fair, with a face rather like the angels of the coloured pictures in our Bible. I sometimes expected to see a halo spring up about her curly head. She was pretty in a fragile way, with blue eyes and long fair l
ashes, a little heart-shaped face, and hair that curled about her head—hyacinthine locks, someone once called them and the description fitted.

  She was very kind and loved animals; her mother, my half sister, Claudine, doted on her, and so did David, her father, who was my father’s son. The relationship seemed more and more complicated whichever way one looked at it. But we were a very close family and few in it were closer than Amaryllis and myself.

  We were in the schoolroom together; we had our ponies on the same day; we learned to ride under the tuition of the same riding master; we shared a governess; we were as sisters. But although we were related and scarcely ever out of each other’s presence, we were not in the least alike in looks and temperament

  I was very dark—with almost black hair and dark brown eyes, heavy dark brows and lashes. In our family there were very dark-haired and very fair-haired women. The picture gallery bore witness to this. Some of the dark-haired ones had blue eyes, which was a very attractive combination. My ancestress Carlotta and my mother were two of these. They were the dramatic ones, the ones who struck out from conventions when they wanted to. I was one of that kind. Then there were the gentle ones with their pleasant good faces. They were quite a contrast to the dark side of the family.

  Amaryllis and I seemed to fit quite neatly into these categories. We were surrounded by love. Amaryllis was the sort of daughter most parents would have chosen had they been given a choice; but I believe my father and mother preferred me as I was. They knew that I might be a little rebellious, that I might act in an unpredictable manner. My mother might have been like that once. As for my father, he had always been bold and determined to get his own way, so he would want a daughter who was a little like himself.

  That Amaryllis and I were the best of friends was largely due to her unselfish and forbearing nature. When I seized the more exciting toy or demanded more than my fair share of the rocking horse, she had merely stood aside. It was not that she had no spirit. I was sure that, in a good cause, she would have had a good deal. Perhaps she was wise and from an early age saw the futility of screaming for something which was after all not worth the effort; perhaps she was far sighted enough to realize that after I had taken the prize from her, it had already lost its value because she did not want it as desperately as I had done.