Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave

by Antonia Fraser

  “She says she wishes Kiria Alice had never tried to make the Villa Elia into a business, never involved Nikos in business; she says Kiria Alice and Kirie William were happy once together when they built the villa.”

  “I was happy. Alice was never really happy. She could never leave anything or anyone alone. No sooner did we build that villa than she saw how it could be used. The gallery too, that could be used.”

  On that sad little speech, spoken at last with resignation rather than rage, William Gearhart turned away. His slumped figure could be seen wandering back in the direction of his cottage. After a moment Sarah shrugged her shoulders and followed him. It was a signal for the rest of the party to disperse, Fizzy allowing herself one Parthian shot: “When the police start to ask the real questions, there’ll be some explaining to do.”

  A long swim must be in order, thought Jemima, in the late afternoon. There was no sign of the doctor, nor the local policeman, no kind of official had come near them since the last incursion. Were they all to spend another night together then? Under the general unhappy umbrella of the stricken villa? That seemed to be the general plan, or rather, in the general lack of plan (no outside touring office to assist them: Alice had been the office), there did not appear to be any alternative. To remove oneself to a hotel—always supposing one was to be found empty in the high tourist season—might be tactless under the circumstances.

  In the afternoon a grim-faced Irini did reappear: she visited Jemima’s cottage and was on her way to the others. Nikos had been, she learnt, up at the police station, but was now back. There was nothing sinister about his presence there, Jemima understood. So far. She did not know what the ramifications of Alice’s death would be for Nikos—his friends—and their presumably illegal smuggling business. The message Irini brought to her, written in careful English, was that officialdom would return to the Villa Elia tomorrow.

  Another night together! Not dinner together, surely? That would be too much. But no, Irini was going up to the village: there was nothing for her to do here but mourn; Irini mimed sorrow. Another note, written in much less good but still comprehensible English, indicated that Irini’s sister would prepare a cold supper and leave it for them all as usual on the terrace. After that it was up to the individuals concerned to eat it there, or carry it away to their separate cottages.

  A long swim was definitely in order. Picking her way carefully along the pretty but stony beach, Jemima avoided the spot where Alice’s body had been found. It was marked—by Nikos? by Nikos at Irini’s orders? by the police? by Fizzy?—by a little cairn of stones.

  Once she was in the sea, Jemima floated out easily into the bay. The water grew deep within a few yards of the shore; the swell was gentle but commanding, the water almost chilly. (Even in high summer the Corfu water, unlike that of the rest of Greece, remained coolish and thus invigorating.) Jemima turned on her back and looked back at the villa itself, the cliffs and headlands, the extensive olive-spattered territories of the Villa Elia. The little cairn remained a marker and a monument which she had to admit could not be ignored.

  How peaceful and clean everything looked now, washed in the late afternoon sun! Yet it was this very shore which on the night of Alice’s death—without any knowledge of what was occurring—had seemed to Jemima so abruptly menacing, cries heard, lights perhaps flickering, a boat maybe seen. Had it been her instinct that something evil was afoot? A fatal accident: that was after all a far more likely explanation. Why had William, and Fizzy too, seemed to jump to the conclusion that there was something unnatural, as well as tragic, about what had happened?

  Fresh starts, fresh perspectives. Lapped by the water, gazing up at the villa itself (blue shutters now firmly closed against sun—or tragedy), Jemima began to meditate anew on the so-called theme of the Villa Elia holidays.

  Supposing Alice had been killed? Presumably they would know for sure in the morning. Had she been killed to prevent her making a fresh start? Or in revenge by those incapable of making one? Fizzy might come into the first category, or even Martha, locked in their jealousy of each other; William and Sarah in the second. Mrs. Vascoe, on the other hand, if as innocent as she seemed about Alice’s secret smuggling ventures, had no motive to wish the dead woman ill. But if Mrs. Vascoe was a somewhat deeper character than she appeared—not altogether improbable, since she had surprised them all with her news of the partnership—then she might have got hold of some inkling of Alice’s business-within-a-business. And she might not have liked what she found out, the misuse of her money, the misuse of the late Harry’s money … Under these circumstances, even meek little Betsy Vascoe might find it in her nature to behave less like an apologetic mouse and more like an enraged rat.

  Jemima watched as a figure, a woman, walked along the shore and paused by the small cairn, her head bowed. From her figure, so much more substantial than that of the rest of the female guests, Jemima guessed she was looking at Fizzy. She saw the black scarf fluttering round her head. At this distance, Fizzy looked both fine and dignified.

  Fizzy? No, Fizzy could not have desired Alice’s death. Fizzy had manifestly hero-worshipped Alice. Jemima remembered the embarrassing spectacle of some of Fizzy’s enthusiasms; how graceful Alice Garland had dealt with them, used them as it now seemed. Surely Fizzy could never have wished for any harm to come to Alice, her model of all a woman should be, practical, helpful, businesslike … Jemima recalled Fizzy’s frequent outbursts of praise.

  Martha, then? How could Martha have desired Alice’s death? Other words rang in Jemima’s ears: Martha’s words. “My Alice.” And then Fizzy’s further exclamation: “All our pasts are crying out to haunt us.” The figure of Fizzy, head still bowed, had by now walked away from the cairn, and vanished among the olive trees.

  A fresh perspective … wait. Jemima saw suddenly how you might look at the whole matter from another angle; she began instinctively to swim back for the shore with a practised crawl that was very different from the reflective way she had been floating, and looking up at the villa. Then she realized that there was in fact no hurry for what she had to do. She swam more slowly, floating again. Night would fall and with it the gentle cloak of warm darkness which would cover all things and make them, at least for the time being, acceptable.

  A confession. Jemima thought that there had been enough pain already, and enough shame; more pain, if not more shame, might be avoided if certain things were known, confessed, before the officials came in the morning.

  “You did care for her,” she said much later that night, sitting on the terrace of the other person’s cottage; “I know that. You cared for her most of all. And so you killed her.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you it was an accident?” The person spoke in a low voice. Both of them looked out to sea. The cottage was in darkness. There were no lights on the terrace. Both had preferred it that way.

  “In a way it was an accident. I wanted her to let me go. Why couldn’t she let me make a fresh start?”

  “But you never could,” Jemima spoke gently. “You were the one person who could never make a fresh start while Alice Garland was alive. And perhaps not now, now that she’s dead.”

  “When did you guess?”

  “The one bond that can’t be broken, ignored, forgotten. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what kept you as her slave?”

  “The bond was—”

  “Motherhood. That was it, wasn’t it?” Silence fell. “Alice Garland was your daughter, wasn’t she? That was the hold she had over you. The hold that meant she would never let you go.”

  Martha James’s cigarette glowed in the darkness. Jemima could see a little white heap of stubs in the pottery ashtray—blue like everything else—at her feet.

  “I knew when you knelt by her body. You looked so alike. Even at that moment.”

  “No fresh start for me,” said Martha James. “Not while Alice was alive. You’re right. I realized that at last. I realized it in fact last night.”

>   “I think you must have fought with her,” continued Jemima. “You must have suffered so much: being involved yet again in one of her crooked businesses. She used you: you had to be loyal to her. She’d used you, I imagine, over the gallery business, as she’d used William and Sarah Halliwell. As she was now using Fizzy, poor, hapless, devoted creature, and Mrs. Vascoe. Your reputation had already suffered. Now she was going to use you all over again, restoring, painting up, as Fizzy euphemistically put it. Finally, I suppose”—she hesitated—“I suppose your loyalty came to an end.”

  “I did fight with her,” admitted Martha. “I was haunted by those cries: at first I did think it was some kind of a ghost, a woman wailing, the woman I had been, if you like, an expression of my conscience. But that night, last night, for God’s sake, I began to understand a little more of how she operated. Nikos and the boat, devoted Nikos, so eager to work up his own little business, trusting her that she would not get him into trouble. Loyalty—where was her loyalty? Those cries were Nikos’s signal. For the loading, I imagine.

  “I heard the cries. I went out. Nikos was leaving the boat. No wailing woman, but plenty of bad conscience; she had me looking at the vases, restoring all day. Now the results were being shipped off. I should never have indulged her, spoiled her, helped her. William knew that; hence his outburst. Justified in a sort of ghastly way, I suppose. I was unlucky to her. Alice always wanted something more, you know. With her little angel’s face, she could wheedle anyone. Beginning with her mother.”

  “Beginning: but not ending.”

  “Not ending. No. Last night I hit her. I’d never done that before, not even when she was a little girl. I didn’t believe in it: ironic, isn’t it? But last night she laughed at me; said the only value of my work was to make a little money for her. Laughed at me for thinking the world had lost anything with the failure of Martha James, artist. ‘You can’t escape me, ever, you’re my mother, you’re not a painter, you’re my mother.’ That was when my loyalty ended, if you like. Or my control. Listening to her laughter. ‘You’re not a painter, you’re my mother.’ Her last words. I went towards her: I slapped her, hard, she fell, she stumbled, we were on the little path, on the edge of the cliff, she fell.

  “I ran down,” went on Martha. “She had fallen, fallen all the way. She was dead. No pulse, nothing. There must be—injuries. The doctor will tell you about that. Her head had hit a rock. I never meant to kill her.”

  “You were quite sure she was dead?”

  “Of course,” replied Martha in her cool, spare manner; the emotion had drained from her voice; they might have been discussing, once more, the fishing boats, the stars or the night breeze. “She was dead. And so I floated her body out to sea. Mad: I was mad. I had killed the person I loved, and so I let her float away in the water. The cleansing water.”

  “But Alice floated back.” Jemima kept her voice equally lacking in emotion.

  “She came back to me. Yet again. There was to be no escape, as she had told me, no fresh start for me. I’ll tell them all this in the morning, of course. The others will know too. They’ll recover. Fizzy will find someone else to hero-worship. William and Sarah have each other. Mrs. Vascoe: she’ll find something more truly useful to do. But for me”—Martha James stared out in the darkness as though she could still see her daughter’s body floating on the edge of the sea—“there isn’t any escape from her, from Alice, ever.”

  Jemima put out her hand and gently touched the older woman’s thin brown arm. She thought that what Martha had said was probably true: for this particular mother there could never be a real escape.

  Aloud, all she said was, “You didn’t really want that, Martha, did you? Up to the end, you wanted to protect her: she was your little girl.”

  The first thing I noticed was the leaves. Or rather the lack of them. The deep ocean of dry brown leaves which had settled over the Jarvis forecourt in October and had remained there untouched for so many weeks—it was now late November—had suddenly been removed. Or at least partly removed, in the corner which I could see. Normally I would have been delighted. I hate disorder and the sight of this dead ocean offended me. But things weren’t normal. That meant, had to mean, that Galina Jarvis was back. And so my heart sank when I thought of Marcus. It would be the first thing Galina did, the very first thing she did, to sweep the leaves away from the forecourt: advertising to the world—and to Marcus—that she was back.

  And sure enough, when I went upstairs and got a better view out of my bedroom window there was Galina Jarvis herself, wearing her cherry-red woollen hat, the one she always wore to keep her warm during the leaf-sweeping. She’d only made a start on all the leaves she had to move. Politely enough—Galina always had good manners, if you like, except where men and money were concerned—she’d started at the corner nearest my house. It was going to take her some time.

  Later the police told me that it was also the last thing she did: that sweeping.

  Behind the huge pile of black plastic sacks already full of leaves in the far corner of the forecourt, Galina’s body was found. She hadn’t quite finished the job. There were still some leaves underneath and around her body. The postman noticed her red hat the next morning and went to investigate. She still wore the cherry-red woollen hat. The key to the house was in her pocket. She was clutching the broom in her cold hand, Galina Jarvis, beautiful in life, but perhaps not so beautiful in death (I never actually asked the police how she looked), had been brutally beaten with her own spade many times.

  The detective in charge of the case did tell me that the first blow would have been enough.

  “Enough for the deceased, that is, poor lady. Not enough for him. The murderer, I mean. He really went to town on this one.”

  “A man then?” I enquired delicately.

  “A man and a strong one at that. If you can show me a woman with that kind of strength, even these days, whatever they say—”

  It was not clear exactly who they were, but I got the impression that the detective was making some confused protest against the growth of women’s liberation. As I agreed with him (why advertise ourselves when we’ve been managing things perfectly well for centuries?) I did not pursue the point. As a matter of fact the late Galina Jarvis would have agreed with him too, her approach to men and life having been distinctly old-fashioned.

  “No, not a woman’s crime, not a brutal beating like this. A man and a young one, if you want my opinion.”

  “I’m glad I’m in the clear at least, Inspector,” I said modestly. “On two counts what is more. Age and sex.”

  Inspector Portsmouth smiled and patted my knee: a gesture to which I suppose he thought I was entitled by my advancing years.

  “Oh, Mrs. Langhorn, it would never do for us to go about suspecting sweet little old ladies like you. Besides you’re just the sort of person who solves the problem in the murder stories my wife reads. Says they take her mind off my work, whatever that means.”

  I smiled in my turn: graciously, I like to think.

  “Don’t forget, Inspector, I’m a witness as well. About the leaves and the timing, I mean. I can be quite exact about that. I passed down the side of the Square at one o’clock because the Sub Post Office closes for lunch at one-fifteen. Such nice people there now! The Singhs. We have experiences in Kenya in common. Now don’t smile: it does form a bond, even if mine were safaris in the thirties with my late husband, and hers were—well, rather different. I certainly appreciate their arrival in our little neighborhood. To return to the leaves: as I passed, there was Galina Jarvis sweeping up her leaves. And I said as much to Mrs. Singh behind the counter. ‘Mrs. Jarvis is back,’ I observed. “It had to be one-fifteen, when they close.

  “After that I went shopping, went to the hairdresser—I still like to keep myself nice. I had a cup of coffee and a pastry in the new so-called Viennese place: a little treat if you like after the hairdresser. I was back at six: I know the time because I popped into the Singhs’ shop for a
Standard on my way. It was quite dark of course. There was no way I could have noticed—” I hesitated. “Her,” I said finally.

  “We certainly know the leaves were thick in the morning,” commented the Inspector. “Both neighbours—the houses on either side, numbers thirty-five and thirty-seven—swear the leaves were untouched when they went to work in the morning. ‘Desolate-looking,’ Cavett, the City man at number thirty-five, called it. ‘Had been for at least a month.’ He was surprised no one had tried to burgle the house he said: such an advertisement for its being empty. His own house is actually for sale but he’s still right there on the site; the result is that everyone thinks the Jarvis house is the one for sale because of the leaves.”

  “No crime while she was away,” I commented thoughtfully, “and then a major crime the moment she came back. No matter that she lost her life as a result of it: that’s no excuse. Inspector, I must tell you plainly that Galina Jarvis was a trouble-maker all her life, and this is the final proof.” I think the Inspector looked rather startled at this point of view: he certainly didn’t pat my knee again after what I said.

  I should tell you about the leaves. All our houses in Notting Square have these wide paved areas in front of them. Forecourts, we call them, although that does sound rather like a garage, doesn’t it, something most inappropriate to Notting Square, designed as it was in the Regency period and still elegantly looking it. The forecourts are not gardens, at any rate, but an area behind the high railings which sets each house back from the road. We have our gardens, of course, beautiful gardens too, but they lie behind the houses, tucked well out of sight.

  Some of us put a couple of bay trees in the forecourt, and there is one bed of floribunda roses—not quite appropriate, I sometimes think. I myself have one very large magnolia which I planted when my grandson Marcus was born nearly thirty years ago. Nothing really softens the fact that these are rather dreary dark forecourts. They are merely intended to distance the busy world yet another fifteen yards from the discreet silent houses of Notting Square, with its huge leafy trees, above us and protecting us all.