Take No Farewell - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  Since Wright believed Victor to be the object of a murder attempt, urgency had attached itself to finding the murderer, who might theoretically strike again at any time. He had questioned the kitchenmaid who had laid the tea tray and the footman who had taken it to the drawing-room. Neither had aroused his suspicion. What had, however, was the fact that Consuela had been alone in the drawing-room when tea arrived. He had thereupon applied for a search warrant in the hope that discovery of a cache of arsenic would lead him to the murderer.

  The search of Clouds Frome had taken place on 21 September. In one of the outhouses they had found an opened tin of powdered weed-killer called Weed Out, which the gardener, Banyard, had confirmed to be arsenic-based. He had been unable to say whether the tin contained less than he would have expected, but he freely admitted that anybody could have had access to it; the outhouses were never locked. Later, at the back of a drawer in Consuela’s bedroom, a policewoman had found a blue-paper twist containing white powder which analysis showed to be arsenious oxide and three letters still in their envelopes held together by a rubber band. The letters were addressed to Consuela and had been posted in Hereford on 20 August, 27 August and 3 September, at intervals therefore of exactly one week. They were anonymous, written, according to a graphologist, in a disguised hand and contained one reiterated allegation: that Victor Caswell was pursuing an affair with another woman. When questioned, Consuela had denied all knowledge of the items; she had never received any of the letters. Wright had pointed out to her that since the letters were correctly addressed and stamped, her denial of receipt was unsustainable, but she had insisted that no such letters had ever reached her. In the face of this and the discovery of arsenious oxide, Wright had arrested her and later charged her on two counts – murder and attempted murder.

  ‘Looks bad, dunnit, Mr Staddon?’

  ‘Bad for whom, Kevin?’

  ‘Conshuler Caswell, o’ course. The letters and the arsenic. The motive and the method. ’Ow’s she gonna get outa that?’

  How indeed? As Kevin said, it looked bad. Very bad.

  ‘Tell you what I think, Mr Staddon. I think she’s for the rope.’

  And that, I suppose, was the first moment when I became aware of what was really at stake in this affair. Consuela’s life. Or her death.

  I did not heed Major Turnbull’s warning. More accurately, I bore it in mind but to no effect. What is rational and well-advised can often seem insignificant compared with the other compulsions that rule our lives. I continued to see Consuela and to become more and more infatuated with her as the spring of 1910 gave way to summer. A fine summer it was too, with few interruptions to work at Clouds Frome and fewer still to the progress of my acquaintance with its future mistress, a progress towards the brink of love.

  There were occasions, as there were bound to be, when we met by chance during my visits to Hereford. Consuela would happen to be emerging from a milliner’s shop as I was crossing the road from my hotel. Or I would happen to find myself on Castle Green at the time of her regular afternoon stroll. Such coincidences were part of our silent conspiracy: to meet as often as possible because we craved each other’s company, yet never to admit what the source of that craving might be.

  We both knew though, well enough, and I suspect the real reason why we never expressed in words what was happening to us was that we feared – for excellent reasons – that it could not continue. Consuela had been taught by her religion and her upbringing to believe that marriage was irrevocable save by death. She would be ostracized by her church and her family if she ever acted contrary to such a principle. As for me, I did not find it hard to imagine what difficulties in finding future work an architect who had stolen his client’s wife might have.

  Victor himself made it easy for me to excuse my conduct. Towards Consuela he was never better than inattentive. Generally, he displayed a presumptuousness bordering on contempt. No doubt he considered that the right and proper way for a husband to behave towards a wife, but I did not. Nor did Hermione’s various hints that he was disappointed by Consuela’s failure to produce a son and heir seem to me to justify his behaviour. I knew from Consuela that their marriage had been agreed behind the closed door of her father’s study long before her own view of the matter had been sought. The price of coffee on the international market had been falling for some years and the fortunes of the Manchaca de Pombalho family ebbing as a result. What Victor Caswell had offered the old man in exchange for his daughter’s hand was financial salvation: a share in his rubber empire. Accordingly, it had been made clear to Consuela that the match was not one she could refuse. Abandoned by her family to a loveless marriage in a country she did not know, was it any wonder that she was drawn to the only man who showed her anything besides scorn and indifference?

  Consuela did have one confidante besides me: her maid, Lizzie Thaxter. A Herefordshire girl of quick wits and bright demeanour, she would probably have guessed what we were about if her mistress had not told her and, besides, there had never been any secrets between them. I suspect, indeed, that a shared sense of subjugation made them natural allies. Before long, Lizzie had become our go-between, pressing a note suggesting time and place into my hand as I left Fern Lodge or delivering a message to my hotel and waiting for the reply. It was clear Lizzie had no liking for the Caswells and equally clear that she enjoyed her secret role in our rebellion against them. Her father and two of her brothers worked for the paper mill in Ross-on-Wye owned by Marjorie’s brother, Grenville Peto, and he was evidently noted for his harshness as an employer; perhaps this was the origin of her resentment. Whatever her real motive, it was certain that without Lizzie’s help Consuela and I could not have seen as much of each other as we did.

  And so the months passed. The snatched and plotted time we spent together came to matter more and more. And the completion of Clouds Frome, looming ever closer, came to seem less and less desirable. For once the house was finished I would have no reason to visit Hereford or call at Fern Lodge; no pretext for meeting or speaking to the wife of my client. What we would do then – how we would resolve the crisis our emotions were leading us towards – I could not imagine.

  Around the end of November, 1910, word reached Consuela from Rio de Janeiro that her father was dying. With Victor’s consent, she decided to return home at once in the hope of arriving before it was all over. Her departure was hastily arranged and I only learned of it the day before she set off. A message via Lizzie had implored me to be on the riverside path in Bishop’s Meadow within the hour. I was not late – indeed I was early – but Consuela was there before me, pacing up and down by a bench and staring pensively across the river at the cathedral. When she told me the news from Rio, I took it that this explained her distracted state and did my best to console her. But there was more to it than that, as I swiftly learned.

  ‘These tidings of my father have woken me from a dream,’ she announced, avoiding my gaze as she did so.

  ‘A dream of what?’

  ‘Of you and me. Of our future.’

  ‘Is it a dream?’

  ‘Oh yes. You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Consuela—’

  ‘Listen to me, Geoffrey! This is very important. I am married to Victor, not you, however dearly I wish it were otherwise. And you are an architect with a career to consider, however much you might like to forget it. We cannot ignore what we are. We cannot afford to.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, we can’t ignore what we mean to each other.’

  ‘We may have to.’

  ‘Harsh words, Consuela. Do you really mean them?’

  There were tears in her eyes now. She had worn a veil, no doubt in the hope of disguising them, but it had not succeeded. The selfish hope came to me that she was weeping for us rather than her father. ‘I leave tomorrow,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Only because of that have I found the courage to end this, before it is too late.’

  ‘When will you return?’

&nbs
p; ‘I don’t know. Six weeks. Two months. I cannot say.’

  ‘Then why end anything? I’ll still be here.’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Her lips were trembling as she spoke. I understood all too well and my pretence of not being able to rose to rebuke me in the face of her determination. ‘If we cannot acknowledge our love to the world, I would rather stifle it. If we cannot be man and wife, we must be nothing.’

  ‘Not even friends?’

  She smiled. ‘Friendship between us means love. And love we cannot have.’

  ‘Therefore?’

  ‘Therefore I shall go home to Rio, mourn my father and comfort my mother. And you will finish Clouds Frome and go on to your next commission.’

  ‘Surely—’

  In a gesture that took me aback, she raised her gloved hand and pressed it against my lips. ‘Say no more, Geoffrey, in case my courage deserts me. Believe me, this is for the best.’

  I shook my head dumbly. Her hand fell away. Then she moved past me, a last sweep of her eyes engaging mine. I heard the rustle of her skirt fading into the distance and knew I might never see her again. I longed to turn round and call her back to me with declarations of love and promises for the future. But I did not move, I did not speak. There were no promises I could make and be sure of keeping, no vows I could utter and be sure of honouring. We both knew that and it sufficed to hold us apart. For the moment.

  The fourth day of Consuela’s hearing had been given over to the testimony of various servants at Clouds Frome. A kitchenmaid called Mabel Glynn had described laying the tray and filling the urn for tea on the afternoon of 9 September. A freshly baked fruit cake, sliced and buttered bread, raspberry jam, tea, milk – and sugar. Such were the ingredients of the tragedy that had followed. The sugar had been spooned into the bowl from a jar and was neither the first nor the last taken from that jar. She had been horrified to learn that it was probably used to administer poison, but by then sugar from the same jar had been consumed at several meals, so she was at least relieved to know that the fault could not lie in the kitchen.

  A footman called Frederick Noyce had recounted delivering tea to the drawing-room, where he had found Consuela alone. She had thanked him and asked him to inform her husband that it was ready; she would herself speak to Miss Roebuck, the governess, on the internal telephone and have her daughter sent down to join them. Consuela had seemed, Noyce thought, entirely normal. He had found his master in his study and given him her message. He had been on his way back to the kitchen when the doorbell had rung, heralding the arrival of Marjorie and Rosemary. He had shown them in and been despatched to fetch extra crockery and cutlery. Upon delivering these he had noticed only a genial family gathering in progress. He, like Mabel Glynn, had been horrified to learn of the poisoning, but he had been adamant that the sugar-bowl had not left his sight between its collection from the kitchen and its delivery to the drawing-room.

  Next came a servant whose name I recognized: John Gleasure. A footman at Fern Lodge who had moved with Victor to Clouds Frome, Gleasure had since become his valet. Concerned to hear from the butler, Danby, that his master had not felt well enough for dinner, he had gone up to Victor’s room to see if there was anything he required. Finding him sick and in considerable pain, he had reported his concern to Consuela, but she had not thought it necessary to call for a doctor so late. Thanks to Marjorie’s telephone call, of course, Dr Stringfellow had shortly arrived. A tentative enquiry from the prosecuting counsel had elicited a firm denial from Gleasure that Victor had been having an affair. ‘Inconceivable, sir. I should have been sure to know of it. And I did not.’

  So much for the loyal valet. Banyard, the gardener, was clearly a less respectful character. Responding to a suggestion from the bench that the storage of arsenic on unsecured premises was irresponsible, he had contested that that was for his employer to decide – and he never had. As for who might know that he used Weed Out, he had agreed that Consuela took more of an interest in the garden than did Victor. It was even possible that he had mentioned it to her during one of their regular discussions. ‘I couldn’t say as I did and I couldn’t say as I didn’t.’

  The last witness of the day had been Consuela’s maid, Cathel Simpson. (What, I wondered, had become of Lizzie?) She was the person best placed to judge Consuela’s reaction to the anonymous letters, but she had resolutely refused to admit any knowledge of them, insisting that they and the twist of arsenic had almost certainly not been in the drawer where they were found when she had last opened it for the purposes of removing or replacing items of her mistress’s underclothing, which she thought she had done the previous day. As to Consuela’s state of mind, this had been entirely normal before, during and after the tea party of 9 September.

  There was small comfort in any of this for Consuela. None of the servants had maligned her. Indeed, the impression created by the report was that they all liked her. But that did not matter. What mattered was the weight of evidence being piled up against her. Alone when tea was served. In receipt of letters questioning her husband’s fidelity. Aware of Weed Out’s poisonous contents. Aware also of how easy it was to remove some. And found in possession of the letters as well as a quantity of arsenic. I did not believe she had tried to murder Victor, but clearly most of the citizens of Hereford did. A Brazilian-born wife seeking to poison her Hereford-born husband and killing his innocent niece by mistake: it was enough to excite their worst prejudices. And according to The Times those prejudices were now apparent in the unruly scenes being witnessed daily outside the court. The odds against Consuela were lengthening. Wherever her thoughts turned in the lonely darkness of her cell, she can have found no hope.

  In the immediate wake of Consuela’s departure for Brazil, I gave way to self-pity. I was still too young then to understand that the path to happiness cannot always be trodden and too self-centred to realize that others could suffer more grievously than I. In my more rational moments, I accepted the necessity of what Consuela had done, but such moments were outweighed by the memories of her that I cherished: the sight of her approaching along a path, the sound of her voice close to my ear, the cautious intimacies exchanged, the tremulous hopes embraced.

  Some of this I poured out in a long letter to her. I wondered how it would find her, in what mood, on what occasion, at the House of Roses in distant Rio. I did not expect a reply, for she was likely to return as quickly as any letter could reach me, but still I found myself sifting through my mail every morning in search of her handwriting beneath a Brazilian stamp.

  I could hardly ask Victor when Consuela was expected back and it was, in fact, Hermione who told me that they had received a telegram reporting her father’s death on 22 January; it was thought she would stay for a week or so after the funeral, then return to England. By now, I was finding it ever more difficult to know how I should react when she was within reach once more: whether to obey her parting instruction or seek to recover what we had once enjoyed.

  Perhaps it was as well, in the circumstances, that I had other matters to occupy my mind. In early February, 1911, one of the carpenters at Clouds Frome, Tom Malahide, was arrested for complicity in a robbery at Peto’s Paper Mill in Ross. To my astonishment, I learned that his confederate was none other than Lizzie Thaxter’s brother, Peter. He had been stealing bank-note printing plates for some months from the mill, where he worked on the maintenance of the plate-making machinery, and passing them to Malahide, who then conveyed them to a corrupt engraver in Birmingham to complete a potentially highly lucrative counterfeiting racket. Random stocktaking at the mill had revealed the discrepancy and the police had soon identified Thaxter as the thief. He and Malahide had been arrested during a handover of plates and the engraver shortly afterwards.

  Lizzie had accompanied Consuela to Brazil, which was as well, for Victor would probably have dismissed her simply for being related to one of the gang had she been in Hereford at the time. As it was, he assuaged his feelings by criticizing me and
the builder for employing suspect characters and so dragging his name and that of his new house through the mud. No matter that Malahide had come to us with an exemplary character. Nor that Peto’s should have taken better precautions. I was still required to do penance over an agonizing luncheon at Fern Lodge attended by Marjorie’s brother – the outraged mill-owner himself, Grenville Peto. I can remember with awful clarity stumbling out an apology I did not owe to this dreadful, inflated bullfrog of a man, whilst Marjorie and Mortimer looked on censoriously and Victor squirmed with an embarrassment I knew he would make me suffer for later.

  That episode made me glad to think how soon the house would be finished. There was, indeed, no reason why it should not be ready for occupation by Easter. I could feel well pleased with what I had achieved. Its final appearance really did match its promise, the stolid gables and elegant chimneys couched perfectly between orchard and wooded hilltop. All had been done to the highest of standards and even Victor had grudgingly to admit that it was a job well done.

  The first weekend of March found me at my flat in Pimlico, contemplating the lonely existence I had led in London since my commitments in Hereford – both professional and emotional – had come to bulk so large. It was Saturday night and Imry had urged me to accompany him and his decorative cousin Mona to the latest Somerset Maugham play at The Duke of York’s. But I had declined the invitation, preferring to check and re-check the plans and schedules of Clouds Frome. I had commissioned some photographs at Victor’s request and now, sifting through the prints, I reassured myself that the house was all I had envisaged that day, two and a half years before, when I had seen the site for the first time. And so it was, all and more; there was no doubt of that. I should have felt proud and exhilarated. I should have been out celebrating my success. Instead, I sat absorbed in dimension and proportion, poring over measurements and lists of materials, peering at every photograph in the brightest of lamplight, seeking the flaw in the design that my heart told me was there. And knowing I would not find it. For the flaw was in me, not Clouds Frome at all.