“When can I see him?” Louisa demanded, trying to maintain control. “You must have made a mistake.”
“I wouldn’t advise it tonight. I would be grateful if you could formally identify the body, though tomorrow will do. Or maybe Mr. Hardcastle could. The body…He’s…well, he’s a bit of a mess. Let them tidy him up.”
“I don’t want him tidied up!” Her voice rose sharply. “I want to see my husband now! Where is he?”
“In the mortuary, Madam.”
“Right.” She turned to Margo and her face contorted. “Please. Tell me this isn’t real, Margo.”
As Margo took a deep breath, Louisa turned at the sound of her father entering the room. He frowned and glanced at the policeman.
“I’m afraid there’s been a fatality, Sir,” the inspector said.
“It’s Elliot, Dad. They’re saying…”
Jonathan went straight to her and attempted to hold her close, but she took a step back and shook her head. She couldn’t allow him to hold her. Not now. She needed to find the strength to take this in. She tried to explain, stuttering her reasons, but the scrambled words choked her. All she could do was shake her head again. Part of her wanted to sink into her father’s arms, but the other part knew she must do this without him. If she did not she might never stand on her own two feet.
Although she appeared calm on the outside, inside she could hear herself screaming. Elliot dead. Elliot dead. Suddenly she began to tremble. She clutched at Margo, who was looking white and pinched. “You’ll come with me, Margo, won’t you? I have to see for myself.”
Margo swallowed, visibly shaken. “Are you sure? I don’t know if I can. We could wait till tomorrow, like the Inspector says.”
Tears sprang from Louisa’s eyes. She brushed them away angrily. She would not believe this until she saw him with her own eyes. “No. We have to go now.”
“I’ll get Ashan to take care of the guests,” her father said. “He’ll know what to say. But, darling, I’m coming with you too.”
“No. Please stay here. Tell Ashan not to say what has happened unless he has to.”
Her father gazed at her. “Louisa…”
“Really, Dad, I’d rather you stayed here.”
The inspector drove them to the mortuary. There, they waited in an anteroom while the body was being laid out in a small chapel of rest. A feeling of terrible anticipation flooded through Louisa, and then horror at the awful randomness of sudden events that could change your life forever. She felt frightened, though surely the most frightening thing had already happened. Surely nothing could ever frighten her again. There would be no fear, just an endless straight line through life with no bumps and thumps, no twists and turns. Nothing. A life without Elliot.
Just before they were asked to go in, Louisa’s heart pumped so hard she felt as if it was about to burst from her chest. Then, as she went in, she saw Elliot laid out on a trolley with a sheet covering his body but not his face. She heard Margo gasp and she froze as the shock hit her in the stomach, lodging like a rock behind her ribs. How could she bear to look at her husband’s lifeless face?
After a few moments, she gathered her courage and took a few steps toward him. She glanced at his face. It looked all wrong, doughy and gray. Her breath caught but she forced herself to touch his forehead. It was unmarked, but when she pulled down the sheet a little she saw his neck had been lacerated and blood was congealed all around the wound. She felt a rush of heat and an intense burst of nausea. She closed her eyes, willing herself to hold on. When it passed, she looked at him again but she didn’t have the means to process the pain. To see him destroyed like this when he had been so whole, so handsome, so alive. How did people cope?
“Tell me, Elliot,” she whispered. “For Christ’s sake, tell me this is a dream.” She twisted back to look at the inspector. “How? How is this even possible?”
“He hit a tree at the side of the road. We can only assume he was driving too fast.”
“Elliot was an expert driver.”
The officer shifted from one foot to the other.
“I…I need to sit down,” Louisa said.
The man pulled up a chair and placed it beside the body. She sat down and bent forward, resting her head on the edge of the trolley. Margo was standing beside her and Louisa could feel her sister-in-law stiffen.
“I’ll have to leave you,” Margo said with a catch in her voice. “I’m sorry, I can’t…I think I need some air.”
Louisa nodded then heard Margo run to the door.
As the inspector and Margo left the room, Louisa closed her eyes. How could this be happening? One moment Elliot was Elliot—and now he was this. In the unnatural silence of the room she gulped back a sob and covered the awful sight of his neck with the sheet again. Now she understood why the inspector had wanted her to wait.
She gazed at Elliot’s face once more. She’d never forget the image for as long as she lived. And the way, despite his curling dark hair looking just as it usually did, he seemed like an imposter and the entire room felt as if it were a film set. There was nothing real about it. Nothing. She longed for him to open his eyes so she might see him alive one last time, so she could say a proper goodbye. But of course, he could not. He never would again. It was an impossible thought. Then she stood and wiped a smear of grease from his forehead and stroked back his hair.
“Oh, my darling,” she said. “How am I to go on living without you?”
And as she stared at him something pulled at her, something she’d never felt before. She saw herself standing right at the edge of a well, knowing she would be dragged inexorably into its depths. Struggle was pointless.
* * *
—
Louisa didn’t sleep though Margo stayed with her. All night, images of Elliot tormented her. The contrast between his living self, so full of energy, and his lifeless body was too much to absorb. She kept expecting him to suddenly sit up and say it had just been a joke. There you are, Lou, fooled you. Ha ha ha! She felt locked up inside herself and even though she wanted to cry, it was as if a perpetual lump had stopped up her throat. The tears wouldn’t come, nor would anything else; just a horrible feeling of blank disbelief and a loveless life opening out before her.
The inspector had promised to return at ten o’clock in the morning to give them the full details of what had happened. Until then Louisa had to go through the motions. Wash. Get dressed. Brush hair. Drink coffee. Margo, meanwhile, was in floods of tears and apologizing constantly for them. Apart from Margo’s sobs, the house was strangely silent, as if the bricks and mortar had somehow absorbed the shock and were only just about holding the place together. The servants, always lightfooted, were soundless, gently padding about, and even the cook, who was prone to raising his voice, kept his words to a minimum. The news had spread around the party after all, the evening before—bad news traveled fast—but Ashan and her father had managed to swiftly send the guests on their way.
When Margo telephoned Irene in Colombo just after dawn, her mother had been utterly hysterical. Neither of the younger women could explain why they had waited until morning, but it was as if they had both needed to assimilate the death a little bit more before having to deal with Irene. They didn’t know when she would come, or even if she would come, she was in such a shocked state.
Jonathan had stayed the night and now was full of comfort and practical assistance. Quite early on, the doorbell began to ring with people wanting to inquire after them and to offer their condolences. Although Jonathan suggested seeing them in her place, Louisa needed to take care of this herself, but she did ask him to sit with her. Then she went through the motions, serving tea, nodding politely at her visitors’ kind words while staring past them at the windows, where she watched the clouds slip over the sun. Mr. Bashar, the librarian, came, as did Janesha from the grocery store, plus less welcome vis
itors, such as the chief flower arranger at the church, Elspeth Markham, who was something of a snob and a gossip. Louisa managed to find words to answer their questions. How are you coping, my dear? Fine, thanks. If there’s anything I can do. I’ll let you know, of course. If you need any help, anything at all. She just thanked them and asked them how they and their families were, listening to their voices but not hearing the words. And all the time it was as if she wasn’t even there. In her mind she was with Elliot, wherever he had gone. That pale, bloodied body was not him. She wanted the real Elliot, and could not comprehend she would never feel his touch again.
The constant stream of visitors was beginning to wear her out so eventually she let her father take over and, detached from the reality of Elliot’s death, she went into the garden with a large gin, bothering with the tonic but not with the ice. Who cared if it was lukewarm? It was the alcohol she craved. Only alcohol would allow this almost catatonic state to continue. Only alcohol could stem whatever might be edging closer. She thought vaguely about a funeral. But it seemed a shadowy, unlikely sort of thing, quite unlike the parties she was fond of throwing. Unable to cry, she judged herself for her lack of feeling. Wasn’t she supposed to weep and wail, fall into a faint, rail at God, collapse into a sobbing heap? Wasn’t she supposed to do something? Anything? She felt hungry but at the same time it was as if she and her body had parted company; it was a hunger that could never be assuaged by food. All her attention was focused on one single question: how could the world go on as normal? How could people go about their daily lives, complaining about this or that, when all that mattered was life itself?
Just after ten, when the inspector arrived with the local doctor, Louisa felt herself growing inexplicably hot, her palms sweating as she struggled to suppress a rising sense of panic.
Margo showed the two men into the dining room while Jonathan continued to receive their well-wishers’ condolences in the living room. Margo had just come off the phone to her mother again. Elliot had been the apple of Irene’s eye, her darling boy, the one positive in what had turned into a somewhat disappointing life. Louisa shot Margo a commiserating look and her sister-in-law gave her a wan smile.
The two women sat together on the sofa opposite the officials.
“I suppose you’d better tell us,” Margo said.
“Well, as you know, there are bends on the road to Colombo. Mr. Reeve crossed the bridge over the inlet to Rathgama Lake, and soon after a fisherman spotted the car coming around at speed, then it veered off the road and crashed into the tree. He may have swerved to avoid an elephant or a bullock cart. The witness wasn’t sure about that, but he raised the alarm. Unfortunately, by the time help arrived it was too late. I’m so sorry. We haven’t yet been able to establish whose car he was driving, but there was no passenger in the car with him.”
Louisa bent her head for a moment and then looked up again. “But why was he driving somebody else’s car? Can you tell me that?”
A couple of days later the funeral had already taken place. You couldn’t hang about in the heat of the tropics; the bodies went off too quickly. In a kind of trance Louisa had managed to organize everything, from the order of service to the floral tributes of scarlet hibiscus, while Margo had been the one to inform Elliot’s friends on the plantations and in Colombo. Irene had wept copiously, while Harold had remained stoic, intent on supporting his wife. Louisa had watched him putting an arm around Irene, murmuring in her ear, trying to make something that could never be all right, all right. He wore a constant look of resignation, and kept polishing his glasses with his handkerchief, as if that might wipe away the pain he was so hopelessly attempting to disguise. Both Margo and Louisa had remained dry-eyed. At the end of the service, as they stood with Jonathan in the church doorway, they shook hands with friends and accepted their sympathy.
The turnout was on a grand scale. Sudden, premature death would do that, Louisa thought, whoever had died. But the truth was that Elliot had been popular; with such a winning smile and easy manner, people were drawn to him. Louisa recalled the times when Elliot’s eternal optimism had been a bit tiring and then immediately felt guilty to have thought it, especially today.
The only notable absence was Elliot’s sailing partner, Jeremy Pike. She had always thought he had valued Elliot’s friendship, and they had spent so much time together. At least Leo McNairn from the cinnamon plantation had come. He held her hands in both his large ones and looked into her eyes. The compassion in them shook her.
“I am so terribly sorry for your loss,” was all he said and, though she struggled to maintain the mask of calm dignity, she felt her tears welling up. Not here, she said to herself. Not in front of everyone. He moved away and by the time Louisa had thanked everyone, she felt exhausted.
Back home, when the truth of what had happened finally punched her in the chest, she phoned Gwen at the tea plantation. She needed to confide in someone, and yet she didn’t want to speak to anyone here in Galle. In a halting voice, she told Gwen in more detail what had happened to Elliot and, though it was hard to say the words, it did make them feel more real.
“If it would help,” Gwen said, “you’d be welcome to spend a bit of time here. We’re in a very peaceful spot, and it might save you from having to face people while you’re feeling so raw.”
“That’s very kind. Can I think about it and let you know?”
“Of course. I am so very sorry.”
Louisa gulped back a sob and got off the phone. The raw pain of losing Julia had never gone away. Never would. And now this too. And that was when she began to cry. Everyone had been so kind, but she’d been so determined not to believe the evidence of her own eyes that it was only now, when she understood he wouldn’t be coming home anymore, that she allowed herself to feel it. She went to her bedroom, drew the curtains and curled up on her bed, hugging her pillow and sobbing until her eyes felt swollen and her face was puffy. She cried for her own loss, but she also cried for Elliot himself. To be cut off so young, deprived now of ever having the chance to be a father. Nothing about this was fair. And when she was finally silent, all emotion spent, it was then she heard his voice. Saw him talking, laughing, making love. See. Not dead. Not dead at all.
The world she now inhabited shocked her, as did the fact she could somehow, inexplicably, still be alive while he was not, and so she tried to talk to him. But he was gone again and his absence was something so big, so terrifying, she could not comprehend it. How was it possible to be and then not to be? But strangely, the absence was not an empty space. It was full of images and memories and the feelings attached to those, as well as the feelings that sprang from knowing there would be no more memories. She spoke to him out loud. Where are you, Elliot? Where have you gone? But there was no answer. And when she asked him why he’d lied about going sailing when he was really going to Colombo, and driving somebody else’s car too, the silence curdled inside her. And in that silence, she imagined awful things.
The transfer of the proceeds from the sale of Louisa’s shares—a considerable sum—to Elliot’s own account had been completed several days before he died. And now, just a fortnight after his death, Louisa had a meeting with her accountant and the solicitor who had drawn up Elliot’s will. Of course, she knew the contents already, but the process had to be endured and it would be crucial to quickly pick up the financial reins of her new life.
The solicitor was a bright Sinhalese called Silva, the nephew of their old family solicitor, now retired. A slight and serious-looking man, he was young but seemed very keen. She had given him permission to visit the bank in Colombo on her behalf and bring back statements summarizing how much remained in her own account and in Elliot’s, so she’d know where she stood. Usually she would have had to go to the bank herself but, under the circumstances, the bank manager, an old family friend, had agreed to release the statements.
Their accountant, Bob Withington, was
someone they’d known for years, and now the three sat together in what had been Elliot’s study. It had seemed a good idea at the time but, surrounded by Elliot’s things, Louisa wished she’d taken up their first suggestion of convening the meeting in Colombo.
Once the will had been read, Margo had coffee brought in and the two men exchanged pleasantries. Basically, Elliot had left everything to Louisa, minus the balance of a separate deposit account, which was to go to Leo McNairn.
“It’s just a trifling sum, but do you know why your husband might have wanted to leave money to this particular beneficiary?” the accountant asked.
“I have no idea. He runs a plantation called Cinnamon Hills. Elliot had shares in the business there, so maybe he intended buying more?”
“I didn’t realize that,” Silva said. “Do you know where the share certificates are?”
“Surely he lodged them with you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Well, they’re probably here somewhere.” She pointed at a mahogany filing cabinet. “I’ll make time to go through that soon.”
“Now, Mrs. Reeve—Louisa,” the accountant was saying. “The bad news is your husband’s main account was virtually empty.”
She frowned. “It can’t have been. I had only recently transferred a large sum to him.”
“Yes, I see the transaction here.”
“Half of that money was to pay off the outstanding sum for acquiring the Print House, so I’m not surprised that’s gone. I’m expecting the deeds in the post any day. But the other half should still be in there.”
He shook his head.
“So where did the money go?”
“It seems your husband withdrew it in cash.”
“Then it must be somewhere here.” She waved vaguely at the room. “Though I don’t know why he would have taken it out so soon.”
“There was also a legally binding contract for a loan he had taken out but not paid back,” the solicitor said.
The Sapphire Widow Page 7
