by Maria Hoey
“She wanted a kitten. She thought she’d be allowed to have one if the dog was gone.”
“Christ Almighty, a kitten.” He put his coffee down on the floor next to the chair leg and ran both hands over his face and into his hair. “I should have said something at the time, I knew I should have, even then. But I had no way of proving it was she who poisoned Prince and nobody would have believed me. I did let her know in my own way that I knew it was her. I’d like to be able to say I enjoyed that part but frankly I couldn’t bear to be near her after that. Every time I thought of what she’d done, it made me feel ill.”
“So ill you wanted to go away to boarding school.”
“As ill as that,” he said with a bitter twist of his lips.
“She knew you’d guessed about Prince. She thought you knew about Alexander too and that you’d told me all about it. She thought we were all in on it together, spying on her, trying to catch her out – that was what she kept on saying.” I looked at him uncertainly, thinking about what I wanted to say. “You do know that it was she who threw Oliver’s ball into the pond that time when he almost drowned?”
“I know, Violet-May filled me in. That thing with the attic-room window ...” Robbie got up from the chair and went back to stare through the window once more. “But why in God’s name? Did she say?”
“She thought he was Alexander,” I said.
Robbie swung round. “What do you mean, she thought he was Alexander?”
“Just that,” I said. “She thought Oliver was Alexander come back again.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Robbie.
He hand swept across his face once more then it dropped to his side and he stood for a moment, head up, eyes on the ceiling, and I saw from the way his neck was working that he was struggling for composure.
“Then that was why,” he said. “I knew something was wrong about the way she was with him, and I knew that Violet-May was uneasy about it too.”
“So you did think she might try to hurt him?” I said.
“It was just a fear, a suspicion. Prince was one thing – but her own child?”
“I think it was a bit more than a suspicion,” I said. “I think you were really worried and I think that Violet-May always knew it was Rosemary behind all those near-misses with Oliver. And to think I suspected her – and Grace too!”
“Grace? Grace wouldn’t harm a hair on either one of those kids’ heads. Grace was a safeguard – as you were. But I didn’t realise the level of the danger Oliver was in. I thought Rosemary was disturbed, not crazy. Christ, what a bloody nightmare!”
“You know you could have told me, Robbie?” I said and I was beginning to croak again. “When you asked me to move in you could have told me the real reason. Rosemary accused me today of being a spy – and, when you think about it, she was right. That was why you wanted me there, not for any of the reasons you gave me but simply to spy on her ...”
My voice gave out and Robbie hurried to pour me some water. While I drank it, he prowled about the room, his hands in fists by his side, throwing me occasional unhappy glances. And when I’d put the glass down and was lying back against my pillows he came and stood next to my bed.
“I’m sorry, Kay,” he said. “You’re right of course, I should have been honest with you. But there was no proof, none and she’s ... she was my sister after all. For crying out loud, I could hardly admit what I suspected to myself let alone to you!”
I said nothing and Robbie flung himself back into the chair and for a while he just sat there staring down at his hands. When he looked at me again there was an altogether different expression in his eyes.
“You know, Kay, I’m not the only one who hasn’t been honest. I did ask you if there was anything you were keeping to yourself. Why didn’t you tell me then what you knew about the day Alexander died?”
Afterwards I told myself it was because of what I had been through, because I was still in shock and completely exhausted, that I lost my temper with him then. And that was part of it – but I think now it was also down to a niggling sense of disappointment, the cause of which I had not yet examined.
“How dare you, Robbie Duff,” I croaked. “You don’t know what I knew or what I didn’t know. You don’t know what I felt, you don’t know the first thing about it. So how dare you judge me, how dare you!”
I was aware of a stricken look on Robbie’s face but just then a nurse burst in and, having taken one look in my direction, she promptly sent Robbie out.
After she too had gone, I was left alone and free to pull the sheets up around my shoulders and give in to misery and the comfort of tears.
Chapter 31
By the time my next visitor sailed into my room, I was already eating myself up with guilt. Robbie Duff had saved my life and his sister was dead and I had yelled at him – or come as close to yelling as a person can who has recently been half-drowned. Under the circumstances, I thought Violet-May looked almost indecently glamorous – she was even wearing her usual perfume – I smelled it when she leaned in to kiss me. That was when I saw the evidence that she too had been crying. No amount of make-up could quite cover up the ravages grief had wrought to the skin around her eyes.
“I brought magazines, lots of magazines,” she said, her voice determinedly bright. “And flowers too, but unfortunately an impossibly stern nurse took them from me – apparently they’re not allowed. They were meant as a peace offering, not from me but from Robbie. I was to give them to you with the message that he knew he’d been crass and insensitive and had upset you badly without meaning to. I was also to tell you that he’s an idiot and he knows you’re not to blame for any of this and would you please forgive him? There, I think that was the spirit of it.”
“I upset him too,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that, not with everything he’s going through, everything you’re both going through. I’m so sorry about Rosemary, Violet-May, I’m so very sorry.”
Violet-May, who had settled herself into the chair next to my bed and was busy spreading her long pale coat so as not to crease the silken fabric, glanced up suddenly.
“How can you be?” she snapped.
I watched as all pretence at levity drained from her face, leaving her looking bereft and suddenly every minute of her age.
“I’m sorry, Kay,” she said. “I know you’re a nice person, much too nice for the likes of me and Rosemary-June, that’s for sure, but how can you be sorry? There wasn’t any accident, and we both know it. Rosemary really did try to drown you, didn’t she?”
“Fine,” I said baldly. “Yes, Rosemary tried to drown me. She dragged me by the hair to the edge of the Pool and then she kicked me and pushed me in. Then she stood there and watched me flailing about trying to save myself without a lifting a finger to help me. Then she got in to finish the job.” I saw Violet-May flinch and I said quickly, “I’m sorry. Robbie told me I have you to thank for the fact that you both turned up on time. He said you suspected Rosemary had it in for me. What made you think that?”
“It was just a feeling at first,” said Violet-May. “I caught her looking at you with that expression in her eyes, the same expression I’d often seen when she looked at Oliver. What I couldn’t really figure out was why she wanted to hurt you. I still can’t.”
“She thought Robbie had brought me to the house to spy on her. She believed, or at least she suspected I knew what she’d done that day on Bone Bridge.” I looked away from Violet-May and said miserably, “Actually she couldn’t have been more wrong. The truth is I never had the slightest suspicion it was Rosemary. I’m so sorry, Violet-May. I thought it was you.”
“Everyone thought it was me,” said Violet-May. “They were supposed to.”
“No, you don’t understand,” I said.
“What don’t I understand?”
“I heard you, Violet-May. I heard you and Rosemary-June talking on Bone Bridge that day. You were telling her that she had to say it was an accident, not just telling her,
you were ordering her to say it. And there was something in your voice, you sounded so terrified, and then when I came through the gap and found the pram empty I just knew it hadn’t been an accident.
“Well, you weren’t wrong, were you?” said Violet-May bitterly.
“But I thought it was you. I thought you’d done it on purpose. It was the way Rosemary-June kept staring from me to you. I didn’t know then that she’d seen me through the gap in the hedge. She thought I’d seen her too, that I knew what she’d done. And then when she began to scream, but you kept on looking terrified, that made me think all the more that you were guilty.”
“Oh well, don’t feel too bad, Kay,” said Violet-May. “Easier to believe it was me than angelic little Rosemary, right? But, if you believed I’d not only done it, but done it on purpose why did you never say anything?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s complicated. I knew what you’d done or I thought I did, but I hadn’t actually seen anything. It was just a feeling I had based on what I’d heard and I didn’t want to believe it. Just thinking about it made me feel sick and so somehow or other I managed to forget about it. But then coming here brought it all back. Right from the very first day, seeing Oliver looking so much like Alexander – and then there was Rosemary telling me about the day your mother died, and how Oliver was almost drowned. And there was something about the way she told me too, almost as though she was making a point of it.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, she managed to make me feel that there was more to it all than she was actually saying. She went on about how your mother had taken a turn and been really agitated, how she’d kept repeating your and Oliver’s name over and over again.”
“She was putting you off the scent,” said Violet-May dully. “Laying a trail that would lead you straight to me. She must really have hated me.”
I looked at her in silence. How, I wondered, must it feel to mourn a sister, as I knew Violet-May was mourning Rosemary, and at the same time know the things she knew about her?
After a while I said, “Do you remember that day when I first came to stay at Robbie’s house and you made some comment about feeling that you were being watched?”
“I did feel like I was being watched,” said Violet-May. “Even before you came I’d had that feeling, and then you arrived out of the blue and that made me even more suspicious. I think I knew in my heart that Oliver was in danger but I began to wonder if Robbie thought the same thing and believed it was me who wanted to harm him.”
“It wasn’t Robbie who was watching you, it was Rosemary,” I said. “She knew where the danger lay. She suspected Robbie knew what she’d done to Alexander but she knew for certain that you knew. I believe that’s why she tried to point me toward you. And she did a good job of it, I’ll give her that, she led me by the nose.”
“And still she couldn’t resist trying to harm Oliver,” said Violet-May. “But she was clever – she only did it when I was around.”
“Well, there was Grace too. For a while I suspected her.” I looked Violet-May in the eyes. “I know about Grace, Violet-May. Robbie has told me that she’s your half-sister.”
Violet-May opened her bag and rummaged, head bent so I could not see her eyes. “So he told me,” she said. “So that’s all the dirty linen out there for all to see now.” She shut her bag with a snap and looked at me once more. “Robbie says Rosemary believed that Oliver was Alexander come back to trick her? I suppose that makes sense of it all in some twisted way.”
“I suppose it did in her mind,” I conceded. “And then of course I put the wind up her even further when I told her about the diary.”
“What diary?”
So I told her about the diary, how I had remembered its existence and retrieved it. I told her what I had written there.
“I’m sorry, Violet-May, I got it so very wrong,” I said.
“We all got it wrong,” she said.
“But then I had to go and tell Rosemary that I believed you were trying to harm Oliver. She pretended to believe me, even told me she’d suspected the same thing. But all the time she was convinced I knew it was her who’d killed Alexander, and that I was trying to trick her. And so she decided to shut me up.”
“Then knowing that,” said Violet-May, “how can you say you’re sorry she’s dead?”
I considered the question, but only for a moment. “Because I am. I’m sorry for Rosemary herself and for you and Robbie too, but most of all I’m sorry for those two innocent little children. But do you know what else makes me sorry, Violet-May? You said just now that I’m too nice for the likes of you and Rosemary? You’re wrong, you know. Don’t put yourself in the same box as her, because whatever your sister was, whether she was sick or mad or just plain bad, you are not the same. Do you hear me, Violet-May? You are not the same.”
“Please don’t, Kay. Please don’t be kind to me, I don’t think I can bear it.”
And I watched as the tears fell, tracking the make-up and cracking the carefully applied mask she had made for herself.
“Just tell me one thing, Violet-May. Why did you cover for her? That day on Bone Bridge. Why did you cover for Rosemary and take the blame for Alexander’s death yourself?”
The crying had eventually stopped and with the aid of a small gold compact Violet-May had repaired the damage to her face and reapplied her lipstick.
“Why did I cover for her?” Violet-May snapped the compact shut and dropped it into her bag. “Partly, I think, because I didn’t know what else to do. Partly because I was terrified for her. I thought she’d be sent to prison or something. But Rosemary didn’t seem to understand the implications of what she’d done at all. If anything she was put out that I wasn’t more pleased that Alexander was ... that Alexander ... and all the time he was in the water, getting further and further away from us and I didn’t know what to do to help him.”
“Did you actually see her drop him, Violet-May? Couldn’t it still have been some sort of terrible accident?”
It was a stupid question and I knew the answer before I heard it.
“I saw her, and she did it on purpose. I’d been leaning over the wall of the bridge waiting for a stick I’d dropped in to come out the other side. When I turned Rosemary was holding Alexander out over the wall, dangling him, you know, and then she just ... she just let him go. He didn’t slip, she let him go, and she didn’t scream or cry out. I screamed and when I did Rosemary gave a sort of start and she turned and I saw the smile on her face. As long as I live I will never forget that smile.”
I felt myself shiver, then I said inanely, “So it was you I heard. I always thought it was Rosemary-June who screamed first.”
“She saved that until she had an audience,” said Violet-May. “She knew I’d seen her and she didn’t even pretend she’d done it accidentally. And when I asked her why she’d done it, she said it was because I’d wished Alexander would go away. She reminded me that I’d said I hated him and wished he’d never been born. And the worse thing was, it was all true – I had said those things and wished those things.
“But you didn’t mean those things,” I said.
“But I did say them, Kay, you know I did.”
“So what? Children say things like that all the time – it doesn’t mean anything. You would never have wanted any harm to come to Alexander and you know that as well as I do, Violet-May.”
“But Rosemary-June couldn’t seem to understand that. “She was very angry with me. She told me she’d done it for me, that I’d wanted Alexander to go away and she’d made it happen, just like she’d made the stupid dog go away. It was she who killed Robbie’s dog, Kay. Rosemary killed Prince.”
“I know,” I said, “she told me that too.”
“She reminded me that I’d said I’d wanted him dead, that time he chewed my shoe. And it was true, I had said that, and so you see, I really did feel that I was to blame somehow.”
“But why did it have to be you?”
I asked. “Why not say it was Rosemary-June who’d dropped Alexander but that it had been an accident?”
“Because I knew instinctively that she’d give herself away,” said Violet-May. “I knew she’d be incapable of behaving as she should if she’d been the one responsible, even if it was an accident. It was just easier if I took the blame. I could act the part. And you know, it really wasn’t so bad. Moving away really helped and people felt sorry for us and were kind to us, the few who knew what had happened, because after all it was just a terrible accident that had befallen two children.”
“Three children,” I said. “There were three children on Bone Bridge that day, Violet-May.”
“Of course, I know that, I’m sorry, Kay.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “Whatever you chose to tell people, whatever Rosemary tried to make you believe, none of it was your fault.”
“I don’t feel that. I’ll never feel that.”
We were quiet for a while, then I said, “What was she like, afterwards? Didn’t anyone ever realise there was something wrong with her?”
“Not as far as I know,” said Violet-May. “There were things, I suppose, a coldness you might call it. She seemed incapable of seeing things other than as they affected her, and I don’t just mean that she was selfish.” She laughed suddenly. “I’m selfish, I’m very selfish and always have been, but this was different. No, there was no one big sign that she was warped inside, but then again I didn’t spend my life looking for signs either. Just like you, Kay, I found a way to forget what had happened, or at least to push it to the very back of my mind and never look at it again.”
