Snare of Serpents (7 page)

LlLIAS

I wrote back.

Dear Lilias,

Thank you for your letter which I was delighted to receive. I think of you a great deal. I am going to try and find out who did that terrible thing. You know where my suspicions are, but I can’t think of a reason.

I loathe him. He has been brought in by my new governess to partner me. I am learning dancing and need a partner. There isn’t anyone else, Miss Grey says. I could enjoy dancing lessons but for that.

Miss Grey is the new governess. She came very soon after you left. It is hard to describe her because she is more than one person. She is beautiful in a way that makes people look at her. She has reddish hair and green eyes. My father seems to approve of her. That surprised me because we don’t do lessons in the ordinary way. She tells me what to wear … how I should walk … and, of course, I am learning to dance. I think it is a sort of preparation for launching me into society. I’m getting old, I suppose.

Oh, Lilias, how I miss you! I wish you could come back.

My love as ever,

D
AVINA

M
ISS
G
REY
said I was not to wear black anymore.

“It doesn’t become your colouring, Davina,” she said. “You are too dark. Dark hair and blue eyes … an attractive combination, but not for black. I can wear it, though it is not my favourite colour. It’s too sombre. I’m fair skinned, you see. There is hardly any skin fairer than redheads. So I can get away with black … but it is not for you.”

“Mrs. Kirkwell said I should wear it for a year.” She held up her hands in mock horror. “But I say no black … and no black there shall be.”

I was not displeased. I hated the black clothes. I did not need them to remind me of my mother.

Of course, the Kirkwells were very shocked, but my father raised no objection.

I discovered that Miss Grey was very interested in the family. She wanted to hear about my mother and all the relations I had. There was little family except Aunt Roberta, I told her. I found myself talking quite frankly, for she had a way of drawing me out. I was soon telling her how Aunt Roberta had descended upon us after my mother’s death and how she had discovered Hamish and Kitty together in one of the bedrooms. I thought that might make her realise that Hamish was not a fit person to be my dancing partner.

She was thoughtful. “The young devil,” she said at length.

“Yes. It was very shocking. Aunt Roberta and I were together at the time. She opened the door … and there they were.”

“Caught in the act! And you a witness. Oh, Davina, what a sight for you!” She laughed and went on laughing, the greedy mouth open, the green eyes full of tears, so great was her mirth. “And little Kitty was given her marching orders, eh? ‘Don’t darken these doors again.’ “

“It was not very funny for Kitty.”

“No. I suppose not.”

“Lilias … Miss Milne … has a father who is a vicar. He took Kitty in.”

“God’s good man, eh?”

“He was good to Kitty. He found her a post in a house near him.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t any good-looking young men around like Hamish.”

“Do you call him good-looking?”

“He’s got something. There’s no doubt about that. I don’t suppose Kitty was the only one who couldn’t say no.”

I did not want to talk about Hamish. I felt I should say too much and that I suspected him of stealing the necklace and putting it in Lilias’ drawer. I must not tell anyone of my suspicions as I had no proof.

She asked a lot of questions about what had happened when my mother was alive. I told her how we used to go shopping and visiting friends.

“It was not so long ago,” she said.

I discovered that she kept a flask of brandy in her room. It was in a cupboard which she kept locked. She let me into the secret once. She had been out to luncheon on that day. I did not know with whom, but she did now and then make these mysterious excursions and on this occasion she came back rather flushed and extremely talkative. Her speech seemed different and she was more affectionate than ever.

I went to her room on some pretext—I forget what—and found her lying fully dressed on her bed, propped up by pillows.

“Hello, Davina,” she said. “Come and sit down and talk to me.”

I sat down and she told me she had had a very good luncheon … too good in fact … with a very great friend.

“I feel sleepy,” she said. “I could do with a little tonic. Here. Take the key in that drawer and open that little cupboard. There’s a bottle in there and a glass. Just pour out a little, will you? It’s just what I need.”

I could smell that the tonic was brandy.

I poured it out and took it to her.

She drank it quickly.

“That’s better,” she said. “Leave the glass, dear. I’ll wash it later. Put the key back in the drawer. Now sit down. There. Let’s talk. I’ve had a lovely meal … and the wine was delicious. I like people who know how to choose a good wine. It’s one of the things I’ll have to teach you, Davina.”

“I didn’t think I had to learn things like that. I know absolutely nothing about wines.”

“When you’re in a big house with a nice husband and he brings his guests home … you’ll have to know how to entertain them.”

“So that’s what I have to learn as well!”

“Well, it’s as good a reason as any …”

“What do you mean, ‘as good a reason as any’?”

She hesitated. I could see how sleepy she was. She seemed to rouse herself.

“I’m just babbling on. I like to talk to you, Davina. I think we’ve become friends … and that’s nice. That’s how I wanted it. You’re a nice girl … a nice
innocent
girl, and that’s how young girls should be, shouldn’t they?”

“I suppose so.”

She went on: “What a nice cosy time you must have had, Davina, my dear. Living all your life in this house … with kind Mama and stern Papa, the worthy banker, pillar of society in a great city.” She laughed. “You ought to see London.”

“I’d like to.”

“We’ve got our grand houses, you know. Grander than this even. But we’ve got some which are not so grand.”

“That is so here. I suppose it is like that everywhere.”

“In big cities the contrasts are greater.”

“This is a big city.”

“I was thinking of London.”

“It’s your home, is it?” I asked. “Why did you come up here?”

“I came for a little while and decided to stay … awhile at least.”

She sounded as though she would soon be asleep.

“Were you a governess before?” I asked.

She laughed. “Governess, me? Do I look like a governess?”

I shook my head.

“I was on the boards,” she said.

“Boards?”

She was laughing again. “Music hall,” she said in a slurred voice. “Song and dance act. It went down well for a time … as that sort of act goes. Quite a long time really.”

“You mean you were on the stage?”

She nodded dreamily. “Those were the days …”

“Why did you come here then?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I like a change. Besides … well, never mind. I was in Glasgow with the Jolly Red Heads. Three of us there were … all red-haired. That was what gave us the idea. We’d come on stage with our hair flying loose.

Brought the house down … to start with. People get tired. That’s the trouble. Fickle, that’s what they are. We toured the provinces and then we came to Glasgow. Did quite well there. It’s a hard grind, though. There comes a time when you feel like settling …”

“And are you going to settle, Miss Grey?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“I’ll leave you, then you can sleep.”

“No, don’t go. I like to hear you talking. You’re a nice girl, Davina. I like you.”

“Thank you. I had no idea you were on the stage.”

“Didn’t you, dear? That’s because you’re a nice little innocent.”

She was changing again, but her voice was getting fainter. I was sure she was almost asleep.

I said: “When I first saw you, I thought I had never seen anyone less like a governess.”

“Thank you, dear. That’s a compliment. How am I doing then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Governessing,” she said.

“You are a very strange governess.”

“Hm,” she murmured.

“You are quite different from Miss Milne.”

“The one who stole the necklace?”

“She didn’t steal it. It was put in her drawer … by someone.”

She opened her eyes and some of the sleepiness dropped from her. “You mean, someone planted it?”

“I mean that someone did it deliberately to make trouble for her.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody told me. I just knew.”

“How could you know?”

“Because Miss Milne couldn’t possibly have stolen anything.”

“Is that the only reason you know?”

I nodded. “I wish I could find out the truth.”

“You never know people, dear. They do the oddest things. You never know what’s going on inside people. They go on and on … in the same old way and then suddenly they break out and do something you couldn’t have believed they ever would.”

She was growing dreamy again.

“You don’t seem to be interested in the usual things,” I said.

“Like what, dear?”

“Mathematics, geography, English, history. Miss Milne was ever so keen on history. My mother was, too. She knew a lot about what happened in the past and she used to talk to me about it. It was very exciting. Once I went to Holyrood House.”

“What’s that?”

I was astounded.

“Surely you know. It’s the old palace. Mary Queen of Scots was there, Rizzio was murdered there. And then there’s the castle where King James was born … the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England. His mother was Mary Queen of Scots.”

She was almost asleep. Then suddenly she began to sing:

Wasn’t it pitiful what they did to Mary Queen of Scots?

Of her emulsion I have taken lots and lots and lots.

They locked her up in Fotheringay,

Fotheringay was not so gay,

Mary, Mary, Hanover Squarey, Mary Queen of Scots.

I listened in amazement. Then I thought: she is drunk.

How
COULD MY FATHER,
who was so stern and so conventional, allow such a woman to remain in the house, and moreover to have brought her in in the first place?

Of course, he had never seen her lying on her bed singing “Mary Queen of Scots.” She changed her personality when he was there. She wore the black dress often. It seemed to me that she could adjust herself to fit the occasion.

She did refer to that afternoon.

“I don’t know what I said, dear. You see, I had been to lunch with a dear friend. She’d been in trouble … it was a love
affair and suddenly everything came right. I was so happy for her. She wanted to drink. She told me what had happened … how it had nearly gone wrong and then come right. And there was champagne … to celebrate, you see. She made me drink with her. Well, I’m afraid I’m not used to it.”

I thought of the brandy in the locked cupboard and she must have guessed my thoughts for she went on quickly: “I just keep a little something in case I’m off-colour. I know I look robust, but I have my little weakness. Internal, dear. I get quickly upset if something doesn’t agree with me and a spoonful always puts me right. I had to drink with her. It would have been sort of unkind not to. You understand?”

“Oh, yes,” I reassured her.

“I must have said a lot of silly things, did I?”

“You sang a song about Mary Queen of Scots.”

“It was … awful?”

“Well, it was joking about Fotheringay, which was very sad really, and something I didn’t understand about ‘hanover squarey.’ I didn’t know what that meant.”

“It’s a well-known place in London. Hanover Square, actually Squarey, to rhyme with Mary. That’s why that’s there. It was silly. An old music hall song. Was that all? Did I say anything else?”

“Only that you used to be with the Jolly Red Heads.”

She looked a little grave. “People talk a lot of nonsense when they have been so foolish as to be persuaded to drink too much. I’m sorry, Davina, my dear. Forget it, will you?”

I nodded again and she swept me into her perfumed embrace.

“I’m getting very fond of you, Davina,” she said.

I felt a sense of uneasiness and a desperate longing came to me for the old days with Lilias.

Soon after that we were in Princes Street shopping and she said to me: “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Doesn’t the castle look grand? You must tell me about all that history sometime. I’d love to hear.”