The Return of the Gypsy (48 page)

It would be different at the inquest. I had never been to an inquest and was unsure of the procedure, but I did know that the verdict was all-important, and it would be decided whether or not this was a case of suicide, accidental death or a case of murder against some person or persons unknown. And if the latter a trial would follow.

It was the day before that fixed for the inquest. My mother sent a message to Grasslands asking me to come over to Eversleigh.

I went immediately.

It was late afternoon and the house was quiet. She was waiting for me in the hall. She said: “Jonathan has taken Tamarisk for a ride. Jake has gone with them.”

“What has happened?”

“Come up to our bedroom,” she said. “Your father is there.”

“Something has happened. Do tell me.”

“Yes. You can trust your father to act.”

He was there in the bedroom and to my surprise Mrs. Barrington was with him. She kissed me warmly. “I expect you are surprised to see me here,” she said.

My father put his arms round me and kissed me.

“Sit down,” he said. “Everything is going to be all right. The inquest is tomorrow and there is going to be a verdict of suicide.”

“How?” I stammered.

“I’ve talked to Jake. I know he had no hand in Edward’s death.”

“How can you know?”

“Because he said so. I know men. I know he would not have been such a fool as to do a thing like that. He was confident of getting Edward’s understanding and you your freedom.”

“He had not spoken to Edward!”

“No, but he intended to.”

“Then how do you know … ?”

“Toby has told me that Edward spoke to him two nights before his death. He said he thought there was little point in his going on living. He said, ‘I am sometimes tempted to slip in an extra dose. That would finish the job and I’d slip quietly away.’ That will be important evidence and Toby will give it. There will be no one who had the slightest reason for wanting Edward’s death.”

I said: “What of the letters?”

My father put his hand in his pocket and drew out two sheets of paper. I snatched them from him.

“Where did you get them?”

“I have them. That’s the important part. I wanted you to be here … to be sure. These are the letters?”

“Why yes. But I don’t understand …”

There was a lighted candle on the dressing table. I had vaguely wondered why it was there as it was not dark. He took the letters from me and held them out to the flame. We watched them burn.

“There!” said my mother, blowing out the candle. “That is an end of that.”

“Did Clare give them up?” I asked.

My mother shook her head. “I took Mrs. Barrington into my confidence. When I explained everything to her she understood …”

She smiled at Mrs. Barrington who said: “Yes, Jessica my dear, I understood. You brought great happiness to my son. He was never so happy as he was through you. I am for ever grateful. Your mother made me see that you loved this man, and he you… and I love you all the more for not leaving Edward but staying by his side. I want to help you. Clare can be of a jealous nature. She was always a difficult child, always looking for slights. Edward could manage her better than the rest of us, and she was very fond of him. I did think at one time that they might have married… but it turned out otherwise, and he was so happy with you. I wanted to help, so when I knew there were incriminating letters I was determined to find them.

“Clare has a very special box which Edward once gave her. It was on her fourteenth birthday. It was very precious to her. In it she kept her treasures. Clare is a creature of habit. She always kept the key to that box on a key-ring—another present of Edward’s—and it was kept in the third drawer of her dressing table. I guessed that the letters would be in that box and I knew where the key was. Poor Clare, she has always been an unhappy girl. She came to us when she was seven. She was a distant cousin’s child. Her parents had been poor. Her mother had died and her father had very little time for her. He was glad when we offered to take her. She was an envious child. Perhaps if her life had been different, she would have been. She always had to remember misfortunes and thought other people should suffer as she had. The only time she was really happy was when she was with Edward. It might well be that he would have married her if you hadn’t come along. People drift into these things. I think she would have been a different girl if he had. Well, I knew of the box and I knew of the key. I chose an opportunity when she was out. It was quite simple. I went into her room. I took the key and opened the box and, as I expected, there were the letters. I brought them to your mother.”

“You have done this … for me?” I cried.

“How can we ever thank you,” said my mother warmly.

“I knew in my heart that it was what Edward would have wanted. The last thing he would have wished would have been for you, Jessica, to be unhappy. So I am doing this for Edward as well as for you.”

My father said: “This will make all the difference. There will be no accusation now.”

My relief was so intense that I could not speak.

My father took my arm and led me to a chair. I sat down beside my mother and she put an arm round me.

“This will pass, my darling,” she said. “Soon it will be like some hazy nightmare … best forgotten.”

I went back to Grasslands. I should have been easier in my mind but the gloom had returned to hang over me. I felt as though I were groping in the dark and at any moment would come upon a terrible discovery.

I wanted to see Jake … desperately I wanted to. I wanted to talk to him … to ask him questions, to beg him to tell me the truth. I did not think he would lie to me. Did he hold life cheaply? Once he had killed a man and felt no remorse for that. What sort of life had he led on that convict ship? He must have seen death and horror in various forms. Did that harden a man? Make him hold life cheap? Make him determined to get what he wanted no matter the cost?

Yes, I wanted to see him and I dared not see him.

As I approached the house I noticed a rider coming towards me. It was Peter Lansdon, one of the last people I wanted to see at that moment.

“Jessica!” he cried.

“Hello.”

“Amaryllis is coming over to see you. She’s very anxious about you. You look drawn. This is a terrible business.”

I was silent.

“Have you just come from Eversleigh?” he asked. “I suppose the parental wits are being exercised to fullest capacity.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This kind of situation … it’s always difficult for the spouse in the case. It’s a commentary on marriage, I suppose, that when a man or woman dies mysteriously, the first suspect is the wife or husband.”

I hated him, with his cool supercilious eyes. How could Amaryllis love such a man? How could I myself have ever considered him romantically?

He was a man who could change his personality as easily as most changed their clothes. It was the secret of his success.

“I have no doubt,” he went on, “that your parents will extricate you from any difficult situation in which you find yourself. How fortunate you are to have a father who is not only doting and determined to save his daughter from any predicament into which she may project herself, but has the influence to do something about it!”

“The truth will be told,” I said. “That is what I want and what my father wants.”

“The truth? The whole truth and nothing but the truth?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows.

“We want the truth,” I said.

“There is one little aspect which I think it would be wise to keep secret. You know to what I refer for we have discussed that matter before.”

“What do you want now?” I said.

“I am no blackmailer. I just seize opportunities. And I would be a fool to blackmail you with staunch Papa standing guard. You and I share secrets about each other. What I want from you is perpetual silence. Suppose … just suppose … all goes well at this inquest and you and your lover are exonerated from all blame. Suppose you marry. Then you might say, ‘What does it matter now if the whole world knew that I took a lover before my husband’s death? The verdict is given. The matter is closed. What then? Why should I not tell what I know of Peter Lansdon and his less than respectable activities in London Town?’ I do not take risks. I want a vow of perpetual silence from you, Jessica, and I want it now before the inquest.”

“And if I do not give it?”

“Then I shall be forced to tell the coroner that you had a motive for wanting your husband out of the way, that I had discovered … quite by chance of course … that you and your lover used to meet surreptitiously in London. So … I shall be obliged to hint that you had a reason for wishing him out of the way.”

“You’re despicable.”

“One has to be ruthless sometimes to fight one’s way in the world.”

“I wonder what Amaryllis would say if she knew the sort of man she had married.”

“Amaryllis is devoted to the man she has married. She has never had a moment’s regret on that score.”

“That is strange to me.”

“Then it should not be. We all appear differently to different people. To you I am the abandoned sinner. To Amaryllis I am the hardworking and successful businessman who at the same time is the perfect husband and father. You judge too superficially. I am all that when I am with Amaryllis just as I am the wicked adventurer when I am with you. I am both these people, Jessica. Life is like that. Of course, I do not believe that you administered the fatal dose. But what of that other who would gain his desires by so doing, eh? What of the passionate Jake? Come on … give me your word. Forever more you keep my secret, and I shall not come forward at the inquest and tell what I know of you and Cadorson.”

I remembered then one day long ago when we had met Leah and she had told our fortunes. She had said that Amaryllis would go through life happy because she could not see the unpleasantness and danger all around her. How right she was! I supposed Amaryllis had always been like that. It was why life had always seemed so good to her. She saw no evil and therefore for her there was no evil.

I remembered that Aunt Sophie had seen nothing but evil and how unhappy she had been; and it occurred to me that people made their own happiness or otherwise in this life; and that it was in the hands of us all to shape our own lives. And this was never more true than when one was passing through a situation such as this which now beset me.

“Well,” said Peter, “what is it going to be? Let us both take the vow of silence, eh?”

I said slowly: “I will never tell what I know.”

He leaned towards me. “Nor I of you, dear Jessica.”

He lifted his hat and rode away.

The day of the inquest came at length.

Jake was there; so was Amaryllis with Peter Lansdon. James and Toby would be called as witnesses, as I should with Jake. We had been the last to see Edward alive.

I sat between my father and mother. My father’s face was set and grim. He looked old and tired. How much of that was due to sleeplessness and anxiety I did not know. I knew he had been deeply worried by the danger which hung over me.

I watched Jake giving his evidence. He told how he had helped Toby to get Edward to bed. It was explained that it was James’ duty but because of his strained back Toby had been called in. That was all.

Then James said that he had put the dose into the glass of water and left it at the bedside on top of the cabinet. He had gone out with Toby, Sir Jake had remained behind for a few minutes, chatted with Mr. Barrington and then he had gone.

It was my turn. I told them that I had returned to the house on Christmas night and my husband had been brought out of the carriage and put into the wheelchair to go into the house. After he was in bed I had visited him which was a normal practice. The water containing the sleeping draught had been on the top of the cabinet and I had handed it to him as I usually did before I said goodnight.

Had there been anything different about it?

I had noticed nothing.

Had my husband noticed anything?

“He grimaced when he took it, but then he had done that before. He said the draught had a bitter taste.”

Had my husband ever said to me or implied in any way that he might take an overdose?

“Never,” I said.

That was all.

The sensation came with Toby’s evidence.

He had been a gardener, he told them, when Mr. James Moore had strained his back and could not easily lift Mr. Barrington. He had given up his work in the garden and had been solely employed in the sick room ever since.

Had Mr. Barrington at any time given the impression that he might have considered taking his life?

“Yes, he did on one occasion.”

“When was that?”

“The night before Christmas Eve.”

“What did he say?”

“He looked at the glass and said, ‘Sometimes, I feel I am a burden to so many.’ He asked what I thought of the morality of taking one’s own life; and he said was morality more important than common sense?”

“Was the bottle containing the sleeping draught within easy reach of Mr. Barrington?”

“It was in the cabinet. Not exactly within
easy
reach. But Mr. Barrington could just about reach the bottle … by stretching over.”

“Was it wise to leave it in such a place?”

“It would not have been possible to remove it without Mr. Barrington’s knowing that it was done,” said Toby.

It seemed the bottle was there where he could reach it, and he had considered the possibility of taking his own life.

Suicide was the verdict.

I sat in the garden of the old
château
in Burgundy. I could hear the shouts of Charlot’s children and those of Louis Charles as they played some ball game in the field near the old castle. I could look ahead to the vines with their ripening grapes.

In a few weeks the vendange would begin.

I had been here for eight months, and had left England with my mother and father soon after the inquest on Edward. They had said it was best to get away for a while.

My parents had sustained me during those months when I needed help. They knew that in my heart I did not believe that Edward had taken his life. He had always been stoical. He had accepted life. Even had he known of my love for Jake he would have accepted that, too, as inevitable. But he would never have taken that way out. I knew that someone had put that extra dose into the glass on that night.