Letters From the Past

by Erica James

  ‘That’s all right, Mrs Devereux-Temple, I’ll put it on account.’

  His hand inside his sodden overcoat, Stanley pulled out his wallet. ‘I’ll deal with this, you go and ring the doorbell,’ he said to Romily.

  He’d caught her up just as Jim drove off and Evelyn opened the door. ‘What on earth are you two doing out in this weather?’ she greeted them, ushering them inside and into the hallway.

  When her comment didn’t receive the light-hearted response she probably expected, her face turned serious. ‘What is it? What’s happened? It’s not Kit, is it? Or the children?’

  ‘No,’ replied Romily. ‘It’s not Kit, or Pip and Em, it’s Hope. I’m afraid there’s been an accident and she was hit by a car. At least that’s what we think has happened. We’ve just come from the hospital. Edmund is with her. He wanted us to tell you. Is Kit here?’

  ‘No, he’s been in London for the day. I have no idea if he’ll manage to get back if this storm keeps up. How badly hurt is Hope?’

  But before Romily had a chance to reply, Evelyn said, ‘What am I thinking? Give me your wet things and come into the drawing room and warm yourselves in front of the fire. Then tell me everything you know. You both look like you could do with a stiff drink.’

  ‘We won’t say no to that, will we, Stanley?’ said Romily.

  He nodded his agreement and handed his coat over to Evelyn. Romily was about to do the same when the soggy envelope she’d earlier stuffed into her coat pocket slipped out and fell to the floor. She’d forgotten all about it, and stooping to pick it up, and curious to see if it was important or not, she looked at it more closely. The flap of the envelope was open and just as she pulled out what was inside and unfolded it, she heard a sharp intake of breath at her side.

  She looked up and saw what could only be described as an expression of stunned confusion on Evelyn’s face. But something else. If Romily didn’t know better, she would say it was recognition.

  ‘Evelyn,’ she said, holding out the letter, ‘do you know something about this?’

  Evelyn said nothing, just stared at the jumble of cut-out letters, some of which were beginning to come unglued.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Stanley, leaning over to take a look. ‘Good God,’ he then said, reading the words aloud. ‘“I warned you before about neglecting your husband. You’ll pay the price one of these days.” It’s a poison pen letter!’

  ‘It would appear so,’ said Romily, once more regarding the other woman’s face closely. ‘And judging by your reaction, Evelyn, I suspect you do know something about it. Am I right?’

  Evelyn hesitated, her eyes flicking between the piece of paper and Romily’s gaze. ‘How did you come by it?’ she asked.

  ‘Hope had it,’ said Romily. ‘It must have been in her pocket when she was run over.’

  Evelyn swallowed. ‘Let’s go into the drawing room and I’ll pour us all a very large drink.’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  La Vista, Palm Springs

  November 1962

  Red

  ‘Red, I’m not going to beat about the bush; you look like hell.’

  ‘Gee, thanks, little sis. Did you make a special trip to come and insult me?’

  Patsy smiled. ‘Chuck and I were in Bel Air last night for a charity gala dinner and ran into Gabe and Melvyn.’

  So that was why she was here. Red might have guessed. ‘I bet they were singing my praises,’ he said.

  ‘And some.’ Patsy gave him a meaningful glance, which he chose to disregard. Except his sister, a power-house of outspoken frankness, was hard to ignore. Her speciality was showing up when he least expected it to make a nuisance of herself.

  One minute he’d been sitting out here in the shade of the verandah bashing away at his typewriter, and the next, a localised tornado hit town in the form of his flame-haired sister. Twelve years his junior, she always managed to make him feel about a hundred and ten. From the age of eighteen Patsy had been a determined socialite. She had dated not one but two of the Kennedy brothers, and had been proposed to numerous times, including by an Italian count. She had turned them all down and on her twenty-seventh birthday married Chuck Seymour III, a decorated war hero and Ambassador to the United Nations. He was now a senator with designs on the highest office in the land. Their marriage had always been something of a mystery to Red. On the face of it they were polar opposites, but they were two of the happiest people he knew.

  ‘Orange juice?’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. And neat, please.’

  From the jug on the table, he poured a glass of the freshly squeezed orange juice his maid, Conchita, had prepared for him. ‘I presume by neat, you mean without ice,’ he said.

  ‘What else could I possibly mean?’ she replied archly, while taking the glass and peering at him over the top of her sunglasses.

  ‘What else indeed?’ he muttered, wishing he could splash a large measure of vodka into his own drink.

  ‘I had wondered if you might show your handsome mug at the gala dinner last night,’ she said.

  ‘Patsy, you know I have no interest in showing my handsome mug at events like that.’

  ‘But now,’ she said, as though he hadn’t spoken, ‘I can see why you didn’t go, you’d have been turned away as a hobo. Lost your razor, have you?’

  ‘My dearest little sister,’ he said, giving his stubbly chin a rub, ‘oh how I love your jesting ways.’

  ‘I know you do, which is why I’m here to cheer you up and put some pep back into your humdrum life.’

  ‘Who says I need cheering up? And what the devil do you mean by my “humdrum” life?’

  She lowered her sunglasses and gave him the benefit of one of her most scrutinising stares. ‘When was the last time you went out and had fun?’

  Her question brought him up short. It was too reminiscent of the charge he’d made against Romily.

  ‘I’ve been out every night this week,’ he lied.

  ‘I’m not talking about propping up a bar and bringing some young blonde piece back to your bed and then sleeping off a hangover. That’s not proper fun. That’s just shallow distraction.’

  He forced a grin to his face and lied again. ‘It was fun to me.’

  She gave him a pitying look. ‘Oh, Red, you’re so much better than that.’

  ‘No, I’m not. You’ve always overestimated my competence. That’s your trouble, Patsy, you want everyone to be as smart and as content as you.’

  ‘I just want everybody to be happy. Is that so wrong?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not realistic. As I’ve told you before; just because you were born with a relentlessly happy disposition, it doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be like you. Take it from me, I’m happy enough when I’m working.’

  ‘So what are you currently working on?’

  ‘A new film script, if you must know.’

  ‘A commissioned script?’

  ‘No, something I want to write.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. You know I hate to share anything until it’s finished.’

  She drained her glass of orange juice. ‘Tell me about this English woman called Romily.’

  He kept his expression frozen in neutral. ‘Presumably Gabe and Melvyn brought her name up in conversation at your swanky dinner?’

  ‘They might have,’ she said carelessly. ‘Now why don’t you give yourself a break from your typewriter and take me for lunch. And then you can explain why you deliberately sabotaged the project Gabe and Melvyn wanted you to do.’

  ‘I didn’t sabotage the project,’ he said with heat. ‘If that’s what they told you, then they’re way out of line. It was Romily who walked away. She was the one who flew back to England in a state of high dudgeon.’

  ‘Did you try to stop her?’

 
‘Trust me, there’s no stopping a woman like Romily Devereux-Temple; she’s a law unto herself.’

  ‘As are you, brother dear. As are you.’

  Following lunch and his sister’s departure to rejoin her husband and fly home to Washington, Red sat in quiet contemplation outside on the verandah watching the setting sun.

  Never one to pull her punches, Patsy had seen fit to put him straight. ‘You’re drinking too much and making yourself maudlin because some clever English dame got one over you,’ she’d said. ‘Personally, I’d like to shake her by the hand. God knows it’s high time your ego was given a good working over. Does it really matter so much to you that she outsmarted you?’

  ‘I never said she did!’ he’d remonstrated.

  ‘You didn’t need to. I know you, Red. I know how pig-headed you are when your pride has been dealt a blow. I also know that when somebody gets under your skin you deliberately push them away.’

  ‘How the devil you’ve reached that conclusion is beyond me.’

  ‘It’s based on what you’re not telling me.’

  For all his sister thought she knew him, and she probably knew him better than most, she didn’t know the whole of him. No one did.

  In the distance Mount San Jacinto shimmered with a vibrant roseate hue as the setting sun smouldered and dipped yet further in the sky. The sight of it made him wish he could paint. But stick a paintbrush in his hand and he could do no more than produce a childish daub. Words were what he painted with.

  But as his frustrated attempts to write that morning before Patsy had arrived had proved, he wasn’t exactly scoring any bullseyes on that particular target. He gave the typewriter on the table in front of him a reproachful look. Then with sudden resolve, he pulled it towards him and putting in a fresh piece of paper, he took a deep breath.

  An hour later, and in the light of several candles on the table, and with the ground around him covered in balls of screwed up paper, he took what he’d finally managed to write from the typewriter. He laid the single sheet of paper flat on the table and scrutinised every word he’d typed.

  He then signed his name at the bottom of the page. First thing in the morning he would post it.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Melstead Hall, Melstead St Mary

  November 1962

  Julia

  Julia was a bundle of nerves. Sick with fear and dread, she had been unable to eat any breakfast. In the dining room, and at the other end of the table, hidden by that morning’s Times, Arthur was calmly drinking his third cup of coffee after eating devilled kidneys, followed by several pieces of toast and marmalade.

  All night she had lain awake in bed, reliving what had happened when they’d been driving home yesterday evening. Again and again she heard and felt the awful thump when the car had made contact with what Arthur maintained was a deer in the road. Julia had been sure it was no such thing, but when she’d voiced her belief and urged him to go back and see if she was right, he’d told her not to be so stupid, that she was imagining things. ‘I’m the one who’s behind the steering wheel,’ he’d said, driving even faster now, ‘and I know exactly what I saw and hit, so keep your highly impressionable imagination under control.’

  ‘But it would do no harm to turn around and check,’ she’d pleaded.

  ‘Please do not contradict me,’ he’d said, ‘it doesn’t become you.’

  ‘But darling, I’m sure I wasn’t imagining—’

  ‘Don’t but-darling me anything. Now put it out of your mind; it was just a deer. Count yourself lucky it didn’t cause us to drive off the road and crash.’

  Julia had tried to do as he said, but she couldn’t stop picturing what she was sure she’d seen in the light of the headlamps: a woman in a headscarf. To put her mind at rest, she planned to go for a walk later that morning. She wanted to go to that spot in the road where Arthur was so sure he’d hit a deer. It stood to reason that if he had, the body of the animal would still be there. Unless, of course, it had only been hurt and managed to get away.

  As if reading her thoughts, Arthur said, ‘What plans do you have for the day?’

  ‘Erm . . . I thought . . . if you didn’t need me for anything, I thought I’d—’

  He lowered his newspaper with a display of annoyance. ‘Don’t dither, Julia, you know how it irritates me. Get to the point. What did you think you would do?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said weakly. ‘I thought I might write to Charles and then go . . . go for a walk.’

  ‘Your inventory of the kitchen is overdue, so perhaps you should concentrate on that. And then I’d like you to redo the shirt you mended for me last week; the stitching wasn’t up to your usual standard.’

  ‘Yes, of course, darling,’ she said as he raised the newspaper and disappeared behind it once more. Thereby ending the exchange. It was one of his rules that when he was reading the paper he wasn’t to be disturbed.

  In the silence of the dining room, Julia listened to the ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece and stared out of the window. The storm last night had wreaked havoc in the garden. The lawn was strewn with twigs and branches, along with the last of the leaves that had clung on so tenaciously.

  November was her least favourite month. It brought back too many painful memories. Of being a child and walking in the local park with her mother. She could see them now, hand in hand, the path covered with slippery wet leaves beneath their feet, the air dense with the earthy smell of decomposing vegetation. Julia knew that her mother was not well as they lingered in the park that cold afternoon, but she didn’t realise just how ill. That was the last walk they ever took together. The next day the doctor was summoned and a week later, after being confined to bed, her mother died.

  To this day Julia never knew what her mother died from. Her father refused to tell her, refused even to talk about her mother ever again. Overnight, life became very different. Her father couldn’t bear any noise. Laughter, in particular, was banned. Not that Julia had anything to laugh about then. There were no more happy walks to the park, no more bedtime stories, and no more treats. She tiptoed round the house, afraid of upsetting her father. She did all that she could to please him, in the way that her mother had. She was a poor substitute, she knew. But she did her best. She did her duty, just as her father said her mother would have wanted . . .

  A knock at the door made her blink and sit up straight.

  ‘Enter!’ Arthur responded without lowering his newspaper.

  It was Miss Casey. The housekeeper looked as formidable as ever and without so much as glancing at Julia she addressed Arthur. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but the delivery boy from the butcher’s has called and—’

  ‘I’m sure I couldn’t care less whether the butcher’s boy has called or not,’ interrupted Arthur.

  ‘Yes, sir, of course. But he told me something I thought you might like to know. There was an accident last night.’

  The newspaper lowered a few inches and Arthur peered over the top of it. ‘What sort of accident?’

  ‘It’s your sister, sir. She’s in the cottage hospital in Chelstead. It seems she was hit by a car on the Melstead Road last night.’

  Julia gasped. Arthur shot her a look. ‘Did the boy tell you how badly hurt my sister is?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, sir. Those are all the details I have. Would you like me to organise for some flowers to be sent to the hospital?’

  ‘No. My wife can see to that.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Miss Casey quietly closed the door behind her and not caring if the woman was standing the other side of it, Julia said: ‘I told you it wasn’t a deer you hit.’

  ‘Don’t be so absurd. It’s a coincidence.’

  ‘How can it be? It’s the same road. We should tell the police what happened. That you thought you’d hit a deer. It could have happe
ned to anyone in that dreadful weather. They’ll understand. I’m sure they will.’

  Arthur cast aside the newspaper and cleared his throat. ‘The only person who needs to understand what happened last night is you, Julia. I hit a deer, and that’s an end to the matter.’

  Julia was trembling now. She didn’t understand how her husband could be so adamant that he’d done nothing wrong. ‘But it’s your sister,’ she said.

  He slowly rose to his feet and came towards her, his expression as hard as granite. ‘Hope may well have been involved in an accident last night, but it has nothing to do with us.’

  ‘What if she dies?’

  ‘What if she does?’

  Julia was appalled. ‘Don’t you care about her?’

  ‘I care as much as she would care about my demise.’

  ‘But Arthur, if she dies, it . . . it will be murder.’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. And if her death was to be classed as murder, or perhaps manslaughter, it would still not have anything to do with me. For the simple reason, I didn’t hit her. I hit a deer. Do I have to keep reminding you of that? But if you persist with this nonsense, you will risk sending me to prison for something I did not do. Is that what you want? Is it?’

  ‘Of . . . of course not,’ she stammered.

  ‘Then you need to stop talking such gibberish. Or you’ll get us both into a lot of trouble. Because, maybe I might become as confused as you and remember things differently. That it was you who drove us home and that I begged you to stop when you hit something in the road, but you refused.’

  Julia stared at him, horror-struck. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Darling,’ he said with a laugh, ‘I wouldn’t. Why would I want you to be sent to prison? It would be too awful. Especially for Charles. Think what it would do to the boy.’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘But if you made the situation so difficult, well, then you would leave me no choice. Now why don’t you be a good girl and go and organise those flowers for Hope?’

  He was at the door, his fingers on the handle, when he turned around. ‘By the way, don’t forget the kitchen and pantry inventory, will you? Oh, and I’ve decided to go up to London for a few days.’