Diamonds of Death

by Vivian Conroy

  Helena turned at the door. She studied Alkmene a moment. Her expression was not vicious any more, just tired and perhaps even a bit sad.

  ‘It depends on your point of view,’ she said tersely and left the room.

  Alkmene sat at the empty table looking past the half finished desserts. Here were people who were all frustrated about their lives: the eldest and heir to it all Albert because his younger brother did not behave and his wife wore a necklace that he considered inappropriate in the face of his father’s recent murder.

  The younger son George because he had gotten too little of the family fortune and he was angry about it, so angry it ate him up from the inside out.

  Young Anne because she wanted to be with her friends far away instead of locked up in this old cold place with people who didn’t care for her wishes.

  And Helena, the new Lady Winters…

  What exactly did she want?

  Alkmene was not quite sure. At first she had believed that the beautiful woman had just wanted a man with a title and money so she could have a great home, beautiful clothes, jewellery, and to show it all off to posh people who would admire and envy her.

  But there seemed to be much more hidden behind her attractive but cool facade. Her relationship with her husband was volatile at best, and she seemed to have a strange bond with her misbehaving brother-in-law.

  Alkmene had not forgotten how George had run in calling for her, like a little boy for his mother. Like someone in need of good advice.

  Helena talked about ‘if I had an only daughter’ while she had no children of her own. Did she consider Anne her daughter and was she protective of her for that reason? What were those complications she had referred to, that should be avoided?

  Alkmene sighed and pushed back her chair.

  There was so much emotion churning here that it was hard to make out what part the murder had played in it.

  It might be a lot more difficult to identify the killer than Jake and she had hoped and thought.

  Chapter Seven

  Alkmene awoke the next morning feeling like she had had a very bad dream. Something dark and sinister had pursued her across an open moor driving her further and further away from the village and help, into the wilderness where the wild beasts lurked and quicksand could suck her under.

  Stretching her arms over her head and yawning, she told herself it had just been a dream. There was no sinister marshland around here, just nice forests with little deer and friendly badgers, and a beautiful garden full of roses to explore.

  Perhaps with Anne, who had seemed so eager to talk to her one on one.

  About her plans for the future, away from her domineering family? Perhaps that was also why she had written to her, hoping to gain support from someone outside her direct family circle. Someone who lived in a big city and might have more modern views about what young women could do?

  Alkmene got out of bed, did some quick exercises, then slipped into a tweed skirt and a blouse with cardigan and tiptoed down the stairs. Over dinner the other night Helena had mentioned in passing there was a conservatory with a door leading into the garden out back and after trying two doors that led into the wrong room, Alkmene had found it and passed orchids and other tropical plants blossoming and spreading a sweet scent. It seemed a small fortune worth of rare plants was here. Also Helena’s doing? She had claimed Anne knew nothing about plants.

  Alkmene stepped out onto a terrace where a couple of lounge chairs waited for the sun to come out and turn them into ideal places to read a book with a cool drink at hand.

  Alkmene walked down the steps that were carved out in stone between two large statues of guard dogs, with metal chains around their necks. The spikes on them were rusty but still had a vicious look about them. However, Alkmene paid little attention.

  There ahead of her, down the shell-covered path, a trim figure walked at a brisk pace.

  Alkmene hastened her steps to overtake her.

  ‘Good morning!’ she called out to Anne. ‘What a great coincidence. You promised me a tour of the gardens. Now we can do it right away. Don’t you think the morning air is just so crisp and bright and brilliant?’

  Anne didn’t seem to think it was a great coincidence, because she froze and studied Alkmene with dismay. She looked around her as if to discern a way out, then hung her shoulders and gestured for her to come along. It was odd she was no longer eager for the tour she had suggested herself. Did she suffer from mood swings?

  Alkmene kept up a brisk pace and tone, saying, ‘It promises to be a great day. If you’d like, we could take a spin in my car.’ It would give Jake an opportunity to observe Anne and perhaps conversation would yield useful information about the night Lord Winters had died.

  Anne perked up at once, then said morosely, ‘Albert will think it is not proper.’

  Alkmene shrugged. ‘It is not like we are going to a party. Only to breathe some fresh air. My driver can take us down some country lanes. You can direct us. Choose whatever you think I should see around here.’

  Anne’s face brightened. ‘There is a house nearby that is open to the public. It has a beautiful collection of china from abroad and some vases that are really precious. You should really see it now that you are here. We could go this afternoon.’

  Alkmene nodded. ‘Fine with me.’ She folded her hands behind her back. ‘I do want you to know I am sorry for your father’s death.’

  ‘He had it coming to him.’

  Alkmene froze under the echo of what George had said the other night. It was a brutal conclusion – especially coming from a girl – but she tried not to show it. ‘You mean, he was ill or something?’

  ‘Oh, no, he was strong like an ox. He always believed he was indestructible. That is what I mean. Hybris, you know. The classics are full of it. It can only lead to one thing. Disaster. Death.’

  Alkmene nodded. ‘Hybris, yes. Arrogance, believing you are immortal. The biggest transgression thinkable in Greek tragedy. I never knew your father well of course, so I really cannot judge his character but if you say so…’

  ‘Did you know my mother?’

  It sounded so eager that Alkmene’s throat constricted. How often had she herself not wished someone would tell her more about her own mother. Father had no stomach for it in the years right after her death, then he had feigned it was too long ago to warrant discussion. She had often felt like she was the only one who wanted to keep the memories alive.

  She knew it was not true. Her father had loved her mother. He had never remarried, despite not having a son, an heir. It was a huge sacrifice for a titled man to make.

  But still the longing had never died. Longing for a fuller picture of what was now but a shadowy figure in the margins of her life.

  ‘No,’ she had to admit. ‘Your mother married your father in India. She had been raised there and… There weren’t as many opportunities to be in touch in those days as there are now, I suppose.’

  She felt slightly guilty as she supposed there might have been opportunities that had gone unused because of the step down their grandmother had made by marrying a captain. People could be ruthless in cutting others out of their lives as soon as those others didn’t comply.

  Anne sighed. ‘I had hoped you could tell me something about her. I know so little.’ She stared ahead with pursed lips. ‘She died when I was eleven, but I can’t bring back the memories. I try, at night, you know, lying in my bed. I try to bring back the colours of the landscape, the house, the sounds of the animals and the scurrying of the servants. That is all there. But my mother’s face… It is sort of a blur.’

  Alkmene nodded. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do you?’ It sounded bitter.

  Alkmene kept her gaze in the distance. ‘My mother died when I was just four years old. I can only see her clearly as she sat at her dressing table doing her hair before she went out. I see that hair across her back all golden and shiny. I cannot see her face well. It is too long ago.’

>   Anne grabbed her arm. ‘Do you feel guilty about it?’

  Alkmene frowned, puzzled. ‘Guilty? No, not really. Why? I was so young.’

  Anne let go of her and said, ‘I was older. I should remember her.’ There was a desperate insistence in her voice. ‘I should not let her be forgotten, locked away, as Albert wants. He has the key to the room with her things and I am not even allowed to look in there, to see anything that was hers. I am surprised he did not just burn all of her things, to blot out her memory. He wants to act like she never even existed!’

  Alkmene said, ‘You mean the boxes with her things in the so-called blue room? I am in that room now. You are welcome to come in and look through the boxes.’

  Anne grabbed her arm again, pinching hard. ‘You are in my mother’s room? Why? Why are you that important? Her sister’s daughter, yes, but you never showed your face here before.’ She let go. ‘How can they do this to me?’

  ‘Anne!’ Alkmene halted her before she could storm off. ‘Consider it this way. You now have an opportunity to see the things. I will gladly let you in the room to see it all. I will not tell the others about it. You can do what you want, perhaps take some things into your own room if you want to.’

  She realized she was going far here, perhaps too far, but winning Anne’s confidence would be worth it. Not to mention she could not stand the pain of this girl not having access to her deceased mother’s things. What cruel and heartless people decided a thing like that?

  Anne said breathlessly, ‘I’d have to hide them. She goes through everything. She is always snooping behind my back. Because she thinks that…’ She fell silent.

  ‘Your sister-in-law?’ Alkmene asked softly.

  Anne nodded. ‘Helena. I won’t call her Lady Winters. Ever. That was my mother’s title. It can’t now be hers. She doesn’t deserve it. Besides, Helena knows what really happened to my mother. She should have refused to take the title. Lady Winters is accursed.’

  Alkmene was curious why, but didn’t ask. She had time ahead with Anne, this afternoon on the car trip to the other estate, and later as the girl would come to look through her mother’s things. She could talk to her then and try to understand more of the troubled family relations.

  Anne said, ‘It is all her fault. When she came, she ruined everything. She drove my mother to…’ She bit her lip.

  ‘Helena was there with you in India? She met your mother before she died? Somehow I had always thought that…it was later or…’ Alkmene frowned in confusion.

  ‘No, she was there; she came to our house. Father had met her at some official reception with a local dignitary. She had danced there. She was a dancer, you know, not anything fancy, just an ordinary dance girl.’

  Anne’s expression was a sneer now. ‘But he was entranced by her. That was what Mother said. That she had bewitched him. She came to our house often, having dinner with us and playing the piano and singing. She didn’t play well, she didn’t have a great voice, but somehow she managed to make everybody listen. Father and Albert. Everybody was in love with her.’

  Alkmene frowned again. ‘Your father was…’ She fell silent, uncomfortable to say something like that out loud about a dead man.

  Anne shrugged. ‘He was married of course. And British law doesn’t allow for a man to take a second wife. He often said that it was possible in some cultures. That it was a good idea. I think that if it had been possible, he would have married Helena as well. Taken her on as such a second wife.’

  Alkmene studied the girl’s profile. ‘Instead she married your brother Albert.’

  ‘It was very odd. I was so sure that if Mother did die, Father would marry her. I would have hated her for becoming my stepmother. But Mother died, and then Helena did not marry Father, but Albert. It was very odd. Albert had left to see a friend in another town and when he came back, he walked in with Helena by his side and said they were married now. Father nearly had a fit. He called at them: how could you have done that? I don’t know whether he was more angry with Albert or with her. Like they had tricked him, betrayed him.’

  Alkmene’s thoughts raced. Had Lord Winters really been in love with an enticing girl, believing that once his wife was dead, he could marry her? Had he felt betrayed because he had wanted her for his own, or because he had actually killed his wife to be with her, only to find she preferred a younger man, and his own son at that?

  ‘I never liked her,’ Anne said, ‘and now I am stuck with her for ever. She never lets me do anything.’

  ‘Why not leave?’ Alkmene asked.

  Anne made a face at her. ‘What will I live off? I have been to boarding school but I only learned useless things like charming French conversation and math. I can’t work in any job. I said once I’d be a secretary, because I thought you only had to be pretty for that and polite, but Helena laughed at me and said you need to be able to type and know shorthand and all kinds of terminology. Is that true?’

  Alkmene nodded. ‘I think so. Not that I ever worked as one, but I have read about it.’

  Jake would give her a pitying look if he could hear this, so she said quickly, ‘But it is never too late to learn, you know. You could go to a school to learn all those things and then become a secretary.’

  Anne sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know how to live on my own. I have never been alone, you know. I have always been provided for. I guess I am spoiled.’

  It sounded like an affirmation of something that had been said to her once. Recently, judging by the sad tone.

  Alkmene decided not to press the point right now, but to give it a little more time. ‘Oh, there is my driver,’ she called, waving at the figure of Jake Dubois, who was standing near a wall looking down into a flower bed. ‘We can ask him to drive us out to the estate you mentioned earlier.’

  ‘Ask him? I thought you ordered servants.’

  Alkmene flushed. ‘I do not order mine like they are dogs. Parker is quite an individual, you know.’

  Anne giggled. ‘He is so handsome. My boarding school friends would swoon.’

  Alkmene sighed. ‘Don’t let him know. He is vain enough as it is.’

  Anne giggled again. ‘Checking his hair in the rear-view mirror?’

  Both laughing like schoolgirls, they caught up with Jake.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Anne asked, looking at the overturned dark earth in the bed.

  Jake shrugged. ‘I saw something had been removed here.’ He cast Alkmene a brief look. She studied the earth. Somebody had been digging here.

  Digging?

  Anne shrugged. ‘I think there was a hedge here. It died last winter because there was so much snow. When it didn’t turn green again in the spring, Albert said it had to go. I guess he finally ordered the gardener to do something about it.’

  Alkmene nodded. ‘Anne and I were just discussing a little trip this afternoon. Can you drive us?’

  Jake smiled. ‘I have little else to do here. The servants are not exactly welcoming to strangers.’

  Anne grinned up at him. ‘You have to know the right tack. Our butler loves to talk about his days in India. Just mention an elephant and he will regale you with stories of hunts he has been on. All lies, as he has never been on any hunt, but just listened in on my father and his friends talking. He was always going around listening in on everything.’

  Alkmene cast Jake a look. Such a butler had to be a treasure trove of information. Anne’s allusions to the strange family relations in India, Helena’s part in it, had made her all the more curious to learn more about it.

  Of course they had to solve a present-day murder here, but now that she was in touch with her long-lost relatives again, she also wanted to find out as much as possible about her mother’s half-sister, her marriage and life.

  Her death also maybe?

  Anne was saying in the meantime, ‘And Cook can always be drawn out if you ask anything about food. She knows recipes by heart. A whole book full of them. The maids should like you enough.’

&n
bsp; She didn’t go on but flushed, not looking down.

  Jake gave her a solemn look. ‘Lady Alkmene doesn’t like me encouraging such things.’

  Anne giggled. ‘I can imagine.’

  Alkmene shot up straight. ‘It can soon cause a disturbance in the home where we are staying as guests. It is merely to prevent trouble.’

  Anne nodded solemnly. ‘Of course.’ But her eyes sparkled, and Alkmene felt more blood flood her cheeks. Even Jake was snickering.

  She said quickly, ‘What time shall we leave?’

  ‘Why not leave right after breakfast?’ Anne said. ‘I want to leave this dreadful place behind for a few hours. In fact, I wish we had never had to come back here.’

  She stood and stared at the house. ‘It even looks disapproving, don’t you agree? With those horrible straight pillars in front, like it can’t relax and have any fun.’

  She took a breath. ‘People say it is odd I see houses like I see people. But houses do have a spirit, an atmosphere you sense when you come into them. Our house in India was a happy place. My mother was kind to the servants, and they all loved her in return. We had animals about, even though Father never liked that. But Mother could never say no when a servant brought in a motherless monkey or a little deer to bottle feed. It was so cute.’

  She smiled until the smile suddenly vanished, leaving her face cold and still. ‘Helena changed everything. When she came, the happiness fled. She didn’t like the animals either. She said monkeys could bite and give people rabies. She even said the deer were dirty. I think she killed one.’

  ‘Lady Helena killed a deer?’ Jake asked with a frown.

  Anne nodded. ‘I had a little deer I took care of. It ran around the yard one day and it got dirt on Helena’s dress. She was so upset about it. Like that stupid dress was the only thing she had in the entire world. Two days later the deer was dead. Somebody had opened the gate in the fence of the corral it lived in and let it out where a wild dog got it. I am sure that Helena did it to get even with the deer for spoiling her dress. She is a mean, vengeful, ugly troll.’