“Did you tell him about the letter?”
“Yes. He looked astounded, and then he laughed.”
But later, she remembered, he had looked uneasy…almost afraid…
“You look,” she heard her stepmother say, “as though you ought to be in bed. Let me send your dinner up.”
“No, thank you; I’m all right.”
After dinner, she went to her father’s room; he was already in bed, propped against snowy pillows, awaiting his warm milk. She stood by him—he disliked people sitting on his bed—and took his hand.
“Tired, darling?” she asked.
“A little.” He sighed faintly; he looked like a saint meditating. “I don’t like to see my sisters growing so frail.”
“But they’re well—and active. We did a lot while I stayed with them.”
“They do too much.”
“Would you like me to read to you?” She picked up the books that lay on his bedside table: Proust, Thomas Mann, and a surprisingly light new-comer. “Mystery and adventure?” she teased.
“Your stepmother”—he sounded vaguely displeased—“finds reading aloud tiring unless the books are . . . undemanding. No, thank you, I don’t want to be read to.”
She bent over and kissed the broad, noble brow, and felt a moment’s wild impulse to tap it to find out whether it gave off a hollow sound.
“Sleep well, darling.”
She went up to her room and walked over to the dressing-table and stared at Grant’s photograph. She had always had a habit, she reminded herself, of panicking at the last moment. Before parties, before school departures, before examinations. Then she had found that the parties had been fun; she had enjoyed school once she got there—and she had passed the examinations. It was too much to expect that she could get through marriage without experiencing similar sensations. She loved Grant. For a little while, in the car, a man had touched her and her body had taken fire. But one could not alter one’s entire life because passion had made an unheralded and fleeting appearance. She loved Grant.
She slept dreamlessly, and woke later than usual. After breakfasting alone, she went in search of her stepmother.
“Any plans?” she asked.
Mrs. Marston’s eyes, taking in the signs of strain, led her mind to a swift and accurate diagnosis. But all she said was:
“We could go and have lunch out somewhere, if you felt like it. Your father won’t be getting up today; yesterday tired him, although of course he won’t admit that he finds his sisters exhausting.”
They drove to a roadside inn; after lunch, they drove home and worked together in the garden. They had tea on the lawn in the sunshine and dinner on a table in front of the drawing-room fire, with rain beating on the windows. They talked of fashion, of flowers, of ocean and air travel, of music, of pictures. Not once was there a mention of Grant, or of marriage, or of Canada. There was no speculation, useless and worrying, over Wills. Nobody mentioned a letter. Claire’s heart went out in gratitude to her stepmother who was, she knew, deliberately avoiding all but safe, tried topics, who by the end of the day had soothed her, charmed her out of her depression and given her courage to face whatever the future might bring. It was a day of respite.
Only when at last they parted in the hall, Mrs. Marston to go to her husband, Claire to go upstairs to bed, was the day’s peace shattered, splintered.
The telephone rang, and Mrs. Marston walked over to answer it.
“You’d better wait a moment; it’ll probably be for you,” she said.
It was not for Claire. At her stepmother's low, incredulous cry, she turned and waited, her hand gripping the balustrade. There were no words to be heard—only a feeling of dread, of sick anticipation. She heard her stepmother put down the receiver, and waited, her eyes upon her white, shocked face.
“Who?” Claire asked, speaking with difficulty.
“The hospital. He ... he got in. They . . . He went between half past seven and eight—the only half-hour in the day when there isn’t a nurse on duty at the door—only a doorman. The off-duty nurses were at supper; the two nurses on duty on her floor were busy with another patient. He gave his name and insisted on seeing his . . . his old nurse. He persuaded the doorman to go and fetch a nurse, and when the doorman went, he walked along the corridor until he found her name—and went in.”
There was a long silence. Claire closed her eyes and saw him opening a door...
“And then?” she heard herself asking.
“The nurses heard her screaming. They rushed to the room, but all they heard was the sound of the car driving away.”
“Did he ... did he get the letter?”
“No.”
Claire said nothing. She turned and walked slowly to her room and went in and closed the door.
Chapter 8
Throughout her life, Claire had heard the sea murmuring or splashing or battering against the rocks that lay almost beneath her windows, but the sounds had never been more than an accompaniment to her thoughts or dreams. Tonight, lying sleepless, she gave her mind for the first time to the rising wind and the increasing restlessness of the waves, counting the moments between the swift uprush to the rocks and the boiling, hissing retreat. Crash, silence and splash; roar, uprush and angry return. It was better to listen than to think.
To think ... of a man invading the sickroom of an old, defenceless woman. To think of a man who, under cover of furthering Grant’s interests, made love to Grant’s future wife.
Lying. Cheating. He had left her with the sound of passion still in her ears—and then he had tricked his way into the hospital in an attempt to wrest a letter from a frightened old woman.
The letter. He had known that it had some connection with Mrs. Tennant’s last tragic hours. He had known, but he had lied.
Some time towards morning, she slept. She awoke to a day dark with rain clouds; gusty showers spattered against her windows. It was almost ten o’clock; there was a long day to be got through, another long night to be faced.
She went downstairs, drank some coffee, and then paid her morning visit to her father.
“Margaret has gone out to do a little shopping,” he told her. “I didn’t think she ought to go out in this heavy rain, but she wanted to look into the library and bring me something new to read.”
But the books were on the table in the hall, and the maid had reported that the car had turned away from the town…
She stayed in the quiet, comfortable room for a time, adjusting a curtain, making up the fire, putting the newspapers closer at hand, her movements quiet and controlled, careful as usual to avoid any noise or brusqueness that could jar her father’s sensibilities. Then she left him, and thereafter moved swiftly and purposefully. She was still buttoning her mackintosh as she climbed into the high, out-of-date car and backed it out of the garage. She drove fast. Ahead, in the hospital, a woman held a secret, and she was certain that her stepmother had gone to find out what it was.
That she was there, Claire was certain, even before she entered the wide drive of the hospital and saw the little black car parked outside the building.
And beside it, Richard’s …
There was nothing to check her at the door; yes, Mrs. Marston was in Number Four; if she would go down the corridor and knock, she would be told whether she could go in or not.
Claire walked to the door, opened it, and went in.
Two people stood beside the bed: her stepmother, and Richard Tennant. Between them lay a long, emaciated figure, and Claire, who had never looked on death, did not need to be told that she was looking on it now.
She stared, horror-stricken, at the dead woman’s face. Hollow cheeks, fallen in, shapeless lips, sparse, pitiful strands of hair. This was the woman whose screams had brought nurses running to aid her. This was the woman from whom a man, young and strong and ruthless, had attempted to drag a letter.
She saw Richard put out a hand and draw the sheet gently over the dead face. Then his eyes came up
to meet the horror in her own.
“You ... you killed her,” she said.
He seemed unmoved.
“No. But I was here when she died.”
“You wanted the letter.”
“Yes.”
“And you ... you got it.”
He hesitated, and then shook his head.
“I told you before,” he said in the same level tones, “that it—”
“You said that it had nothing to do with the Will. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Could we say that it was a mistake?”
“That letter was the reason the Will was changed.”
His face, which had been grey and drawn, lost the last vestige of colour.
“Yes.”
“Then you must give it to me. I have a right to see it, and so has Grant.” She held out a hand. “Will you please give it to me?”
He shook his head, this time decisively.
“No,” he said. "I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Mrs. Marston spoke for the first time.
“You must let her see it,” she said. “Please give it to her.”
He turned to look at her. Nothing was said, and Claire could not find out what he read in her stepmother’s eyes. But slowly, he put his hand into his pocket, and drew out not one letter, but two. One was written on the thick white paper with the Spenders House heading. The other was a single sheet of very thin blue paper, with lines. The writing on it was large and bold, but in faded and almost indecipherable pencil. He held the blue sheet out to Claire, and she took it, and read it.
It was in French; brief, but long enough to reveal a man’s heart.
“My own Lotty,
My own. How often did I say this when you were in my arms? My own. Mine. And how much more mine now that you hold my son under your heart? For yes, he will be a son, and we shall call him Paul, after me.
When I read your letter, when I knew that we were
to have this son, I wept. And then I prayed. And then I danced.
Lotty, Lotty, Lotty, I must see you. I cannot wait until you come. I shall come to you. I shall come to England and we shall be married. When you have read this letter, look out of your window and I shall be there, to claim you and to claim my son. I am glad that Corinne is with you, and that she knows. I told Richard. He did not weep or dance or pray but he said yes, he must be called Paul Richard.
My darling, God be with you always. I am coming.
Paul.”
Richard’s voice broke the silence.
“He didn’t come,” he said. “I saw him off at Orly Airport. The plane didn’t crash; it was a less dramatic end. When he landed in England, he couldn’t wait for the usual means of transport; he bought a motor-bike in London and he was killed on his way to Spenders. I didn’t know. Corinne didn’t know—but, somehow, Lotty knew. There was no way of getting news; he was a Frenchman on a visit, and nobody had any idea where he was going to when he crashed. But Lotty knew that he was dead. She came over to me and she stayed with me until the news of his death reached his parents in Paris. She stayed with me—and then Geoff Summerhill, who loved her, came over to try and persuade her to marry him. She said she would—if he would be a father to Paul’s son. And he was—until he, too, died.”
“And Grant’s mother”—Claire took up the tale in a toneless voice—“knew nothing until she found this letter. She loved Lotty’s son because—”
“Because she thought he was Geoffrey’s; yes. She found the letter, and in a blind rage, she decided that she and Grant were the only two people in the house who hadn’t been in the secret—in the conspiracy. She was sure that Mrs. Peel had known—and Pierre. She knew she could get even with them, but the one she wanted to hurt most was Corinne. So she wrote to her and she sent her Lotty’s letter. You needn’t read the letter she wrote; it can be told in one word: hate. She told her that it was clear that everybody but herself knew the truth and that Lotty and Paul would get nothing more from her. She meant to change her Will, go back to the house and tell them what she’d done, and turn them out there and then.”
“And when you heard that an old woman in this hospital had a letter—”
“No. Things were falling into place before that. Mrs. Peel’s story about receiving a letter and writing a letter—at first it looked like nothing more than a grim coincidence—but I came to realize that it might be something more. If the letter Mrs. Tennant had received, or found, was Lotty’s letter, who would be the first she’d hit out at? Corinne, who loved Lotty, who had guarded Lotty, fought for Lotty. If on that last morning Mrs. Tennant had written a letter, I thought that the person she must have addressed it to would be Corinne. I was right. Corinne got the letter and set out on a bitter morning for the telephone booth in the village—not to telephone, but to telegraph—to me. She didn’t get to the phone. She was brought here, and . . . you know the rest. She clung to the letter because she knew that its loss would mean Lotty’s betrayal.”
“And you wanted it because you knew that it accounted for the change of Will. But you wouldn’t have shown it to Grant.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“You . . .” She paused; pain was tightening her throat. But when she went on speaking, it was in a cold, factual, relentless tone. “You didn’t want Grant to see it because you didn’t want him to know the truth. Not the truth about Lotty, but the truth about Paul. You tried to stop Grant from making the house over to Mrs. Peel; when you didn’t succeed, you came and asked me to help you. You didn’t want Mrs. Peel to have the house, but you wouldn’t have raised any objections if Grant had then decided to give it over to Paul. But if Grant had seen this letter, he would have known that Paul had no claim to the house, because he wasn’t Geoffrey Summerhill’s son. And so you had to get the letter. And”—her glance went for a moment to the sheeted figure on the bed—“you got it. And in getting it, you killed a harmless old woman.”
“I warned you once before,” he said, “about letting your imagination run away with you.” He put out a hand and took the letter from her. “Your summing-up is somewhat wide of the mark. It would be better if you didn’t repeat it to Grant.”
“Grant has a right to know the truth.”
“Of course. Whether it would be right to tell him is another thing.”
“You don’t want him to know, because if he knows, he’ll know the kind of man you are.”
“If you care to put it that way —yes. If we’re speaking of rights, I haven’t any right to ask you—but I hope you won’t tell him. If you’ll agree to that, I’ll go back to Paris today and you’ll both be free of me. He’s down at Spenders giving the house away — you said yourself it was his way of ... of driving out the devil. Let him do it in his own way. Will you agree not to tell him?”
She looked at him; he was colourless, but entirely calm.
“I won’t tell him,” she said, “until we’re . . . until he’s had time to forget all he’s been through since his mother died. I won’t tell him that you …”
She stopped. Her stepmother’s hand closed firmly over her arm.
“Claire—come with me.”
Claire turned to her.
“He lied and lied—to me. He cheated. He—”
She was stopped by the sound of a quietly-closing door.
He had gone. He had gone, and with him the letter which had betrayed Lotty. She was left with her stepmother and with the dead woman who had tried to guard Lotty’s secret.
“Claire—” Mrs. Marston began.
Claire broke in abruptly.
“I’m going down to Spenders,” she said. “Grant’s down there—he’s seeing Mrs. Peel and the lawyers. I’m going to tell him that I’ll marry him and go to Canada with him.”
“Later, Claire,” her stepmother begged. “You’re not giving yourself time to think.”
“Think about what? We know everything now. We know why that Will was made.”
“Are you going to—”
&
nbsp; “— tell Grant? No. He’s found his own way of getting back his peace of mind and I’m not going to do anything to shatter it. I’d like to be there when he signs the house away. When it’s gone, he’ll be free and we can both get away from it all—and forget. The one thing I can leave Grant is his feeling for Richard. Let him go on thinking he’s…upright and honourable.”
Her stepmother looked at her for a few moments without speaking.
“I didn’t know you could be so hard,” she said at last.
“What do you want me to do? Forget what Richard did? Forget all his lies and—”
“I wasn’t thinking about forgetting. I was thinking about forgiving.”
Claire’s eyes went to the figure lying under the sheet. Then she looked at her stepmother.
“Was the visit last night,” she asked, “was the fact that she was shocked and frightened, was the attempt to force her to give up the letter the cause of her death?”
Mrs. Marston frowned.
“She was extremely ill. She—”
“You said that she was recovering. Did the visit cause her death?”
“How can one say for certain what—”
“In your own, your professional opinion, did it cause her death?”
“I’d—”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Marston.
“That’s all I wanted to know.”
“But Claire, if you like someone, love someone—”
“What,” asked Claire coldly, “has that to do with the present circumstances?”
There was a long, tense silence, and it became clear at last that Mrs. Marston was not going to end it. Without saying any more, Claire turned and walked out to the car and drove down to Spenders, and it seemed like a continuation of her thoughts to see Lotty coming out at the sound of her arrival.
“Claire... I thought it was Grant.”
“Isn’t he here?”
“He came down this morning, and then he went into Spenders to see the lawyers about the house—about making it over to Mrs. Peel.”
Claire went into the hall, and looked round it for what she hoped would be almost the last time.
Letter To My Love Page 12
