Snare of Serpents

by Виктория Холт

  I could not stop looking at it because I was sure I had seen it before. It was exactly like one my mother had worn.

  The next day I mentioned it to her.

  I said: “I noticed that lovely ring you were wearing last night.”

  “Oh?” she said. “My ruby.”

  “It’s a beautiful ring. My mother had one just like it. It’s going to be mine one day. My father just didn’t think I was old enough to wear it yet.”

  “Yes … I see what he means.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s exactly the same. But it is very like it.”

  “I suppose one ring can look like another. There are fashions in rings, you know.”

  “Are there?”

  “They were probably made about the same period.”

  “It is lovely anyway. May I see it?”

  “But of course.”

  She went to a drawer and took out a case.

  “The case is like my mother’s, too,” I said.

  “Well, aren’t all those cases rather alike?”

  I slipped the ring on my finger. It was too big for me. I remembered there was one time when my mother had been wearing her ruby ring. I had admired it and she had taken it from her finger and slipped it on mine. “It will be yours one day,” she had said. “Your fingers will be a little fatter perhaps by that time.”

  Miss Grey took it from me and put it back in the case.

  I said: “The ruby matched the piping on your new dress.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I thought that. It was the reason why I wore it.”

  She shut the drawer and smiled at me. “I think we should practise our dancing,” she said.

  The next time she wore the dress I noticed that she did not put on the ruby ring.

  THERE WERE TIMES when I felt that I had been thrust into an entirely different world. Everything had changed so much since my mother’s death. The servants were different; they were aloof and disapproving. When my mother was alive it had seemed as though life went on just as it had been doing for generations. Now it was all changed.

  Lilias’ departure had helped to change it. Lilias had been what one expected a governess to be. She and I had had a close friendship, but that did not mean that our lives had not been conducted in a strictly conventional way. When I thought of the old days … Sunday church … Sunday lunch … prayers … the amiable but regulated relationship between the upper and lower sections of the house … it was all so natural and orderly … just as it must have been for generations.

  Now it was as though a whirlwind had struck the house and left the old order in ruins.

  There were prayers every morning; the whole household attended, Miss Grey, discreet and demure, praying with the rest of us. But it was different. My father went to church on Sundays and I went with him, Miss Grey—as Lilias used to—accompanying us. But there was no chatting outside the church, only the occasional “How do you do” from my father and myself.

  There was smouldering resentment in the kitchen, often openly displayed by the Kirkwells. They did not understand, any more than I did, why Miss Grey was allowed to remain in the house, or why she was chosen in the first place. She was a disruptive influence, not so much because of the manner in which she behaved—indeed she seemed to want to be on good terms with all of us—but because she was so different and people are suspicious of anything that does not conform to the rules.

  It was at this time about nine months after my mother’s death. I felt bewildered. How often I wished that Lilias was with me so that I could have talked frankly to someone. I was caught up in the general uneasiness which pervaded the house; and then suddenly I stumbled on a clue which explained a great deal to me. It was like finding a key which opened a door to … knowledge.

  It was night. I was in bed. I could not sleep and lay tossing and turning when suddenly I heard a faint noise. I sat up in bed listening. I was sure I heard light footsteps going along the corridor past my room.

  I got out of bed and opened my door very slightly. I was in time to see a figure on the stairs. I tiptoed to the banisters and saw quite clearly that it was Miss Grey. She was in her night attire—very different from mine which buttoned up to the neck. Hers was diaphanous, pale green with lace and ribbons. Her hair was loose about her shoulders.

  What was she doing? Walking in her sleep? I must be careful not to wake her. I had heard somewhere that this could be dangerous to sleepwalkers. Very quietly I started to follow her.

  She had descended the staircase and was walking along the corridor. She paused at the door of the master bedroom. It was where my father slept.

  She opened the door and went in. I stood still, staring after her. What was she doing? What would happen now? She would awaken my father.

  I waited in trepidation. Nothing happened. I stood there staring at the door. He must be awake by now.

  I waited. My bare feet were cold. Nothing happened.

  I mounted the stairs and stood at the top looking down. Minutes passed … and still she was there.

  Then I knew, of course, why she had come here … why she was unlike any other governess. The truth came to me in a flash of understanding.

  She was no governess. She was my father’s mistress.

  I LAY IN MY BED thinking of what this meant. But he was so religious! He had been so outraged by Kitty’s conduct. How could he when he was acting in a similar way himself? How could anybody be so hypocritical? I felt sick with disgust.

  So he had brought her here for this. She went to his room at night. He had given her my mother’s ruby ring which was to have been mine. And this was my father—the worthy citizen, whom the people of this city so respected. Already he was putting Miss Grey in the place of my mother.

  I did not know how I should act. I wanted to go to that room and burst in on them … as Aunt Roberta had on Kitty and Hamish. I wanted to tell them what I thought of them. Not so much for what they were doing—that was something I knew nothing about—but because it was despicable to stand in judgement against people who did the same.

  What could I do? My impulse was to leave the house. How foolish! Where should I go? To Lilias? Again foolish. The Lakemere vicarage was not a home for all those in trouble. In any case, what I suffered from was not that sort of trouble.

  I had a home, plenty to eat, comfort, and I felt I could never look my father in the face again.

  And Miss Grey. What of her? I did not mind so much about her. She was not a lady. I knew that. That she was exceptionally beautiful and attractive I had to admit. I supposed she would be considered quite fascinating. But my father … how could he?

  What should I do? What should I say when I met them? Say nothing, was the wise answer. Certainly not yet … not until I had thought how I must act.

  If only Lilias were here how different it would be. But Lilias had gone. If she had not, Miss Grey would not be here.

  My father had wanted Miss Grey to come to the house. It was fortuitous that Lilias had been dismissed for a crime of which I was certain she was innocent.

  I was getting entangled in the maze of my thoughts. I felt lost, bewildered, completely shaken by this sudden understanding.

  I WISHED that I could get away … out of this house. I was writing to Lilias but, of course, I could not mention in a letter what was in my mind. It would have been different if I could have talked to her.

  My father did not notice the change in my attitude. It was different with Miss Grey. She noticed at once.

  “Is anything troubling you, Davina?” she asked.

  “No,” I lied.

  “You seem …”

  “How do I seem?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Different … as though you have something on your mind.”

  I looked at her and I could not stop myself seeing her and my father on that bed as I had seen Kitty and Hamish. I felt sick.

  “Do you feel all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you might be sick
ening for something.”

  Yes, I thought. I feel sick when I think about you and my father.

  I hated him more than I did her. I thought: that is her way of life. She wasn’t really so shocked about Kitty and Hamish and didn’t pretend to be. She would say with Hamish: it’s human nature. Human nature for people like her and Hamish … and it seemed my father. He only held up his hands in horror when girls like Kitty succumbed to it. He went to church and prayed and thanked God that he was not as other men.

  Then I started to think about Lilias. How strange that she should have been dismissed just when he wanted to bring another governess into the house. But Zillah Grey was not a governess. She was a Jolly Red Head. She was really a loose woman. That was what they called them. She was one of those and my father was by no means the good man he pretended to be.

  My mind kept going back to Lilias. Who had put the necklace in her room? The more I thought of it the more strange it seemed. Could it be that my father had wanted Lilias out of the house so that he could conveniently bring Zillah Grey in … so that she could share his bed at night with the greatest ease?

  He himself had selected her. He had said that. And it would have been impossible for her to masquerade as an educated woman, a proper governess, one of those genteel ladies who had fallen on hard times. So she had come to teach me the social graces. That was really amusing. I felt waves of bitterness sweeping over me.

  What had this done to Lilias? She would have to go through life with that stigma upon her. People would say she had been dismissed for theft because a missing necklace was found in her room. I had always believed that someone had put it there. Now it seemed that someone might have had a reason for it, and I had a burning desire to find out who.

  I could not imagine my father’s stealing into my room, taking the necklace and putting it into a drawer in Lilias’ room. That was beyond my imagination. But a short while ago should I have been able to visualise my father in positions which I could not get out of my mind?

  I often found Miss Grey looking at me speculatively. I was betraying myself. I was not as skilled at subterfuge as they were.

  I wondered whether Zillah Grey had guessed that I had discovered the truth about her relationship with my father. She was clearly a little anxious and I was not subtle enough to hide my feelings.

  One afternoon my father arrived home early and very soon afterwards Miss Grey came to my room.

  She said: “Your father wants you to go to his study. He has something to say to you.”

  I looked surprised. I fancied he had been avoiding me lately. When we dined he seemed determined not to meet my eyes, but as he rarely addressed a remark to me it was not really necessary to do so.

  She came with me to the study and shut the door behind us.

  My father was standing leaning against his desk. She went and stood beside him.

  “Sit down, Davina,” he said. “I want to tell you that Miss Grey has promised to become my wife.”

  I stared at them both in astonishment.

  Miss Grey came to me and kissed me.

  “Dear Davina,” she said. “We have always got on so well. It is going to be wonderful.” She turned to my father. “Wonderful for us all,” she added.

  She held out her hand and he took it. He was looking at me rather anxiously I thought.

  “The wedding will not take place for another three months,” said my father. “We must wait the full year … and a little more, I think.”

  I wanted to laugh at him. I wanted to cry out: “But you did not wait. This is a pretence. It’s all a pretence. There is sham everywhere.”

  But “I see” was all I could manage to say.

  “I am sure,” he went on, “that you will realise this is the best thing possible. You need a mother.”

  And I thought, you need someone … as Hamish did.

  It was disturbing how I heard myself speaking inwardly … saying things which I would never have dared say aloud, things which I would never have believed possible a year ago.

  How I hated them standing there, pretending … both of them. But I hated him more than I did her.

  “There will be a wedding,” I heard myself say stupidly; and that other voice within me said, of course there will be a wedding. A quiet one … all very right and proper … just as it should be … and no one will know.

  “A quiet one naturally,” said my father.

  “Naturally,” I repeated and wondered whether they noticed the sarcasm.

  “Are you going to congratulate us?” asked Miss Grey archly.

  I did not answer.

  “It is something of a surprise, I have no doubt,” said my father. “But it will be the best thing possible … for us all. You will have a mother …”

  I looked at Zillah Grey. She grimaced and somehow I liked her for that. She was not the hypocrite he was, whatever else she might be; and I think at that time it was the hypocrisy which was the greatest sin in my eyes.

  “Well then,” said my father. “I want us to drink to the future.”

  He opened a cupboard and took out three glasses and a bottle of champagne.

  There was a little for me, less than half a glass. I kept thinking of Miss Grey lying on her bed singing “Mary Queen of Scots”; and I began to laugh.

  My father smiled quite benignly, not understanding. When had he ever? I asked myself. But I think Miss Grey was aware of my feelings.

  AT FIRST the news was received with dismay throughout the household, but after a few days they all seemed to accept it.

  Mrs. Kirkwell had a little talk with me.

  She said: “A lot has happened in this house lately, Miss Davina. Mr. Kirkwell and I were beginning to look on you as the mistress of the house. Of course, you are young as yet. We had thought that Mr. Glentyre might marry again, but we hadn’t thought it would be so soon.”

  “It will be a year since my mother died when they marry.”

  “Oh yes. Well, they couldna very well do it before. That wouldn’t have been right and Mr. Glentyre, he’s one who’ll always do what’s right. It’s soon … but it will be the full year. And we shall have a new lady of the house.” Mrs. Kirkwell wrinkled her brows. I knew she was thinking that it would be difficult to imagine Zillah Grey as the mistress of a staid Edinburgh residence.

  “There’ll be changes,” she went on. “I’m sure of that. Well, we must take them as they come, I suppose. A man needs a wife … even a gentleman like Mr. Glentyre, and having a daughter to bring up.”

  “I think I am brought up by now, don’t you, Mrs. Kirkwell?”

  “Well, there’ll be things to arrange and a woman’s best for that even if …”

  “I am glad you and Mr. Kirkwell are not too upset by all these changes.”

  She shook her head sadly and I guessed she was thinking of the days when my mother was alive. I wondered if she were aware of Miss Grey’s nightly excursions. Mrs. Kirkwell was shrewd and she had always liked to be aware of what was going on in the house.

  I imagined she and Mr. Kirkwell might have decided that when there were certain “goings-on” in a respectable house— men being what they were—it was as well to have them legalised.

  And so the house settled down to a mood of greater serenity than it had enjoyed since my mother died.

  Later I heard Mrs. Kirkwell’s comments on the mistress-of-the-house-to-be. “She’s not the interfering sort. That’s the kind neither Mr. Kirkwell nor me would work for.”

  So, unsuitable as the match might seem to outsiders, it was— if somewhat grudgingly—accepted in the house, largely because it was recognised that a man needed a wife and the chosen one in this case was “not the interfering sort.”

  THE WEDDING was, as had been decided, quiet—just a simple ceremony performed by the Reverend Charles Stocks who had been a friend of the family all my life.

  There were few guests, chiefly friends of my father. Aunt Roberta did not appear, for the feud between her and my father conti
nued. There were no friends of Zillah Grey present. The reception at the house was brief and very soon my father, with his bride, left for Italy.

  THE GOVERNESS

  I went at once to my room to write to Lilias.

  “I have a stepmother now. It seems incongruous. So much has happened in the last year. Sometimes I wonder what is going to happen next …”

  Jamie

  WHEN THEY HAD GONE the house seemed very quiet and the strangeness of everything that had happened struck me afresh. I could not get out of my mind the fact that just over a year ago my mother had been alive and Lilias had been with me.

  I had reached my seventeenth birthday in September and had left my childhood behind me—not only because of my age. I had learned so much—chiefly that people were not what they seemed to be. I had learned that a man like my father—outwardly a pillar of virtue—was capable of urges as powerful as those which had lured Kitty to abandon herself recklessly to disaster. They had carried my father so far that he had not only brought a woman like Zillah Grey into the house but had actually married her. So there was no doubt that I had grown up.

  A sense of aloneness came over me. I had lost my best friends. There was no one now. Perhaps that was why I was so ready to welcome Jamie into my life.

  I found a great pleasure in walking. In the old days I should not have been going out alone, but now there was no one who could stop me. In the absence of my stepmother I was the mistress of the house. I was on the way to becoming eighteen years old … an age, I supposed, when one could, in some circumstances, take charge. Mrs. Kirkwell had made it clear that she would rather take orders from me than from the new Mrs. Glentyre.

  It will be different when they return, I reminded myself.

  There was comfort in exploring the city, and the more I saw of it, the more captivated I became by its inimitable charm.

  I was struck by the Gothic buildings which had been infiltrated with a touch of the classic Greek which gave an added dignity. In the first place, the situation was impressive. From one point it was possible to overlook the estuary of the Forth flowing into the ocean, and away to the west were the mountains. Such a superb position must be paid for, and the toll demanded was the bitter east wind and the snow from the mountains. But we had grown accustomed to that and it made our warm houses the more luxurious.