Bridesmaids Revisited (29 page)

She turned on her elegant heels and walked to the door farthest from the stairway, tapped on it and went in. I knew what would happen next. She would come back out and tell me Sir Clifford couldn’t see me. I could either give her my letter or take it with me. She wouldn’t of course have told him anything about me. She’d come up with another excuse, possibly a legitimate one, for not interrupting the meeting. I was on my feet with the letter and box in my hands and across the floor in a flash.

Without consciousness of having reopened the door I found myself standing in a room that was a gentleman’s library in all but the enormous table. Seated around it were a dozen or so men and women and there were large sheets of paper scattered the length and breadth of its mahogany surface. Only Amelia Chambers and Sir Clifford were standing. He was instantly recognizable from Sophia’s drawings and still a strikingly handsome man, despite his seventy-odd years. His dark hair was sprinkled heavily with silver and there were lines on his hawklike face, but I didn’t have a doubt in the world that many women, even some much younger ones, would still find him dangerously attractive. Amelia was frozen in place beside him and he was staring at me as if he had seen a ghost.

“Here,” I said, crossing the room to stand in front of him. “These are for you. There’s a letter and Sophia’s diary—only it’s filled with her drawings, and oh, yes—there’s a photograph that may remind you that there was a special place in Knells that she loved. It’s a place that shows up in several of the drawings. Could it be because it was one of the places where you and she used to meet? If you should ever want to see me, I’m sure a man of your brilliance will be able to figure out where to find me.”

I emptied my hands into his and without looking up into his face ran out of the room. I was halfway down the stairs, suitcase and handbag in hand, when I heard someone cross the gallery. But the footsteps stopped and I kept going. Let him read what I had written; let him look at what was in the box before we talked.

I didn’t see Mrs. Rover when I passed through the hall. I went out the door and hailed a taxi.

“Where to, lady?”

“Kings Cross.” I had to take the train back to Rilling. I couldn’t leave Mrs. Malloy abandoned, either still at Gwen’s or at some bed and breakfast. I’d pick her up, arrange to have my car towed to a garage, and when the tires were repaired, drive with her back to Merlin’s Court. I got out of the taxi and headed for the underground. I wasn’t thinking about my mother, not even when I reached the steps going down.

Not until I felt that prickling down my spine and I became frozen, unable to inch my head around to see who was there. I was seven or eight years old again and someone was coming up behind me before bending over to kiss my cheek. And suddenly I knew who that person was. I realized that today was Thursday and that I should have known from what Jane had said that it all hinged on the third bridesmaid. Now all the pieces were falling into place.

A hand took a firm grip of my arm and Hope’s voice spoke in my ear.

We didn’t speak much on the train back to Rilling. Hope and I had spent an emotional couple of hours in a cafe near Kings Cross Station. I had told her all that had happened since my arrival at the Old Rectory. Detailing how I’d heard that rendition of “Here Comes the Bride,” had woken to hear the evil voice, and my subsequent discovery of the secret staircase. She then explained that she had also decided to go and see Sir Clifford and had arrived in a taxi just as I was leaving in mine. And some compulsion had led her to tell her driver to follow that cab. I’d told her how I had stood frozen at the top of those steps, certain that someone was about to push me down them, just as had happened to my mother. But that person must have hesitated a moment too long before catching sight of Hope.

And now there we were, Hope and I, in that cafe. For the time being, safe and sound. I told her I was certain I had figured out who the person was who wanted me dead—laying out my reasons. After which she explained to me who she really was and why she had disguised herself as best she could with the wild hair and colored lenses and gone to Knells. To say that it was a shock was putting it mildly. It was this more than everything else we had discussed that I sat mulling over on the train. I knew now why I had experienced that sense of recognition on first meeting Hope in the lane—why her perfume had made me think of the violets my mother had grown on the windowsills of the flat in St. John’s Wood. Hope was my mother’s twin sister. Hadn’t one of the bridesmaids said when we were talking about Abbey and Tam that twins tended to crop up in families?

Sophia had given birth to two baby girls out in the Belgian Congo. Having contracted a fever after a difficult delivery she had been too ill to name them. William Fitzsimons, having done his sums, as Mrs. Malloy would say, and realizing that they were Hawthorn Lane’s children, had refused to do so. So the caring black midwife (hadn’t I dreamt about her?) had named one baby girl Sophia after her mother and the other Wilhelmina after her presumed father. For second names she had chosen Hope and Faith.

My immediate question was how had the babies come to be separated? Hope had grown misty-eyed in the telling. When Sophia had regained her health sufficiently to leave William, who had grown increasingly angry and punitive, she had been seriously injured in the car accident, as had Hope, while Wilhelmina had been lucky—suffering only mild abrasions and bruises. When William showed up at the hospital, he had informed a barely conscious Sophia that he was taking the healthy baby home; what became of the other one, or of Sophia herself, he did not care. He must have considered this to be his final act of vengeance.

“But you lived,” I said to Hope. “Who brought you up?”

She had looked at me for a long moment. “My mother.”

It was almost more than I could take in.

“Not only didn’t she die in that car accident, Ellie. She is still alive.”

“Then why didn’t she go to William”—my voice broke— “and demand that he give her Wilhelmina?”

“He was the legal father. And he told my mother that if she did not disappear with me, never to return, he would report her to the authorities for murdering her father, Reverend Hugo McNair. Something she had revealed while in the throes of that fever after giving birth.”

“But why, after the passage of time, after William was dead, didn’t she attempt to get in touch with my mother?”

“She was afraid he would have poisoned Wilhelmina’s mind against her, and that in making contact she might do far more harm than good. It may be hard to understand, Ellie, but my mother was so emotionally shattered that she couldn’t work her way out of the nightmare to think clearly about any of it. The best she could do was try to block it out.”

“Did you grow up knowing that you had a twin sister?”

Hope had sat in that cafe, her coffee cup, like mine, sitting in front of her untouched. “I didn’t know any of this until recently, when my mother was found to have a growth on the spine and thought she was dying. And all the barriers she had built up over the years came crashing down. And after she had told me I persuaded her to talk to one of her doctors, a wonderfully kind, sympathetic man who assured her that she couldn’t have killed her father with those sleeping tablets. The idea was preposterous.”

“And she realized that Rosemary had lied to her.”

“That’s why I came to Knells.” Hope’s eyes flashed in anger. “My mother was out of the woods. The growth wasn’t malignant, as had been assumed. And after leaving the hospital she was sent to a convalescent home for rehabilitation of her right leg, which had lost all feeling. I wanted to find out why Rosemary had done what she did. I wore green contact lenses and the wild hair hoping that people—in particular the bridesmaids, as you call them, Ellie—would miss the resemblance to my father, which my mother had told me was strong. The idea of pretending to have psychic powers came to me the first day I was invited to the Old Rectory. I later proposed a séance seeing it as a means of frightening the truth out of Rosemary. Then Memory Lanes entered the picture and when the bridesmaids suggested that Sophia might wish to make contact with you, I couldn’t do anything but agree, without raising their suspicions that I wasn’t the genuine article. Besides which I was so eager to meet you. I never thought I might be placing you in danger because it never occurred to me that Reverend McNair had died from anything but natural causes, which Rosemary had played upon for her own ends.”

“Then why didn’t you go through with the séance last night?” I asked.

“It’s strange.” Hope shivered. “Because, as I’ve said, I don’t consider myself to have any psychic ability. But from the moment you arrived I became increasingly alarmed that you were the target of a resurrected malevolence. I was afraid that if I were to confront you with my fears you might well think them far-fetched. All I could come up with was to unnerve you sufficiently to get you out of that house, or at the very least frighten your ill-wisher into leaving you alone until I could come up with a better solution.”

“Which is why you went to see Sir Clifford, hoping to find out if he had an ounce of gallantry left in him.”

“But that’s all right, Ellie; you were there ahead of me.”

“He still doesn’t know the whole story.”

“Perhaps it’s best he doesn’t.” Hope frowned. “We still have to figure out what we are going to do. But why don’t we talk about ourselves for a little while. We’ve so much to catch up on.”

So I talked to her about Ben and the children. I told her of my mother’s happy marriage, of her dancing, her winsome nature, and the wonderful childhood she had given me. She told me that she was married, with two grown sons, and that her husband had been in Canada on business for the past couple of months.

“It was strange how Shadow took to you right away. Almost as though he knew. He’s been missing Mummy dreadfully,” said Hope.

Then, after we had sat holding hands across the table, I told her of the idea that had taken root in my mind. The one I hoped would succeed in exposing a three-time murderer. And she added her suggestions. One of which occupied much of my thinking on the journey back to Rilling.

When we got off the train, Hope took my arm and as we headed for the exit asked me if I was sure I wanted to go through with our plan.

“Are you?” I asked her.

“Of course, but you’re the one who has to go back to that house, Ellie. Alone, because I have to make the arrangements we talked about.”

“I’ll only be there for a few hours before you arrive, and being forewarned I’ll be quite safe. Don’t worry, I really can take care of myself.”

“But do you think the bridesmaids, as I’m now beginning to think of them, will agree to a full-scale séance after the scene I made last night?”

“I’ll tell them you were in the grip of such powerful forces that you were confused, or deliberately misled, into thinking that the darkness came from an earthly source. After all her talk about her desperation to make amends, Rosemary will have to agree to a reenactment of the day Reverend McNair died, and persuade the others. It would be difficult for Jane to refuse after all her talk of emanations. And I don’t think Thora will.” We were now standing outside the station under overcast skies.

“I really was afraid you wouldn’t believe me if I told you who I was.” Hope put up an umbrella as the rain came down. “You might well have thought I was working undercover for Sir Clifford.” Her lips formed a half smile. “Well, there’s no point in thinking about that now. We’ve got to concentrate on this evening and pray that nothing goes wrong. You’ll be sure to have Richard Barttle and Edna there?”

“Try not to worry.” I signaled to a taxi and got in. “See you at seven.”

Talk, of course, was easy. By the time I found myself standing outside the Old Rectory gate. I felt more than a little sick and wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see Ted waving at me with a pair of pruning shears while blood dripped down his neck and he cackled, in a perfect imitation of the parrot: “I’m telling! I’m telling!”

Before I could quake myself to death and join him on the other side of the earthly fence, the door opened and Rosemary came out, looking relieved to see me. So I gave my legs their marching orders and she and I went into the house together.

“Let’s go into the sitting room,” she said, taking my suitcase from me and depositing it by the stairs. “Thora’s out in the garden and Jane’s in her room. Both of them are quite upset. I told them about the talk I had with you last night. And it was a shock to them. Although they both tried hard not to show it or to condemn me. They weren’t surprised you had left.”

“But I’ve come back,” I said when we were both seated. “I’ve spent a good part of my time away talking to Hope. And I’d like you to listen to what I have to say.”

She did so. Sometimes adjusting her glasses. Sometimes unbuttoning her cardigan only to do it up again within moments. When I was finished she agreed to the proposed scheme without quibble.

“If you think this is what it will take to restore harmony between the living and the dead I will do my utmost to make sure that all is as you ask, Ellie. Perhaps if I had taken Jane’s emanations more seriously you would have been spared the awful visitations you have described. It must be me”—Rosemary trembled visibly—“with whom Sophia has been attempting to make contact. But my guilt must have formed an impenetrable barrier.”

“You do understand how important it is that we re-create everything as nearly as possible?” I asked, unsure how often her mind had wandered.

“Yes, Ellie.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “Jane, Thora, and I are to wear our bridesmaid dresses. And we are to gather at seven in the conservatory. Although I don’t quite understand why we should not be in the bedroom where we tried them on that day.”

“Don’t worry about that now. You’ll understand when the time comes.”

“Very well.”

“And you can persuade Thora and Jane?”

“No question.” Rosemary appeared to be brightening. “And I will also arrange for Richard and Edna to be here. They weren’t in the house that day. At least Richard wasn’t; but I do see that as such a dear friend of Sophia’s his presence could be an added inducement in summoning forth her spirit. And, of course, there is the link, as you mentioned, that he was the best man at her wedding. And now I come to think of it, Edna could have been here filling in for her mother. Some parts of that day are so clear and others very vague.” Rosemary got up. “If only I could believe that I have the opportunity to finally make peace between Sophia and myself.”