The Secret Woman (8 page)

I didn't believe it. He would have said so. But why should he discuss his private affairs? I must have misunderstood bitterly. I had thought… What had I thought? I was a simpleton. I was all Aunt Charlotte said I was. That evening had meant nothing to him. Two people could see the same event entirely differently. He had called on me because he had nothing else to do before he sailed. Perhaps he knew how I felt about him and was amused. Perhaps he had told his wife about that last evening. The meal by candlelight, the arrival of Aunt Charlotte. I suppose it could be seen as comic.

“How interesting,” I said.

“I had no idea, had you, miss?”

“Of what?”

“That he was married of course. He kept it dark. There's trouble about that, too. Whoops! You nearly dropped that. There would have been trouble if that had been broken.”

Broken, I thought dramatically, like my dreams, like my hopes. Because I had been hoping. I had really believed that one day he would come back to me and then I would begin to be happy.

Captain Redvers Stretton was married. I heard it from several sources. He had married somewhere abroad, married a foreigner, so they said. He had been married for some time.

When Aunt Charlotte heard, which she did inevitably, she laughed as I had rarely seen her laugh before. And from that day she taunted me. She never lost an opportunity of bringing his name into the conversation. “
Your
Captain Stretton. Your evening visitor. So he had a wife all the time? Did he tell you that?”

“Why should he?” I asked. “People who come to look at the furniture don't feel it necessary to acquaint one with their family history, do they?”

“Perhaps people who come to look at Levasseurs might.” She laughed. She was better tempered than she had been for a long time, but spiteful and malicious.

He came home I believe but I didn't see him. I heard from Ellen that he was there. And the time passed—one day very like another, spring, summer, autumn, winter; and nothing to make one week different from another except perhaps that we sold one of the Chinese pieces which nobody seemed to want, for what Aunt Charlotte called an excellent price but which I believed was what she had paid for it. She was relieved to see it go. “You wouldn't find another like that,” she said. “Carved red lacquer. Fifteenth century of the Hsüan Te period.”

“And you wouldn't find another buyer either,” I retaliated.

We were like that together, constantly bickering; I was getting old and sour and so was everyone in that house. Ellen had lost some of her exuberance. Mr. Orfey was still waiting. Poor Ellen, he wanted the legacy she would get more than he wanted her. Mrs. Morton was more withdrawn than ever; she went off on her free days once a fortnight and we never knew where she went. She was mysterious and secretive in her ways. I was twenty-five—no longer young. Sometimes I thought: It is four years since that night. And it meant nothing to him because all the time he was married and he didn't tell me. He implied… But had he implied or had I imagined it? Aunt Charlotte never forgot. She was constantly reminding me that I had behaved like a fool. I had been an innocent and he had known it. It seemed amusing to her; she would titter in an infuriating way when she spoke of it. It was the only subject she ever found amusing.

Oh, the dreariness of the Queen's House with four women growing old and sad, all waiting for something to change their drab and dreary lives. I knew what it was: Aunt Charlotte to die. Ellen could marry Mr. Orfey. Mrs. Morton was no doubt waiting for what she would get. And I…At least I thought I should be free. Why didn't I go away? Could I have found a post? Perhaps somewhere in England there must be an antique dealer who could make use of my services; and yet much as I hated her—for hate her I did at times—I felt a responsibility toward Aunt Charlotte. If I went she would be bereft. I was doing more and more of the essential work. I could run the business alone—except of course that I was never allowed to see the accounts. But in my heart I believed that I had a duty to her. She was my father's sister. She had taken me in when my parents left me in England; she had looked after me when I became an orphan.

The clocks ticked on. There was a very special significance in their ticking now.

***

Aunt Charlotte had grown worse; she could not move from her bed. The injury to her spine aggravated her complaint, said Dr. Elgin. Her bedroom had become an office. She still kept a tight hold on the books and I was never allowed to see them; but I was taking over all the selling and a great deal of the buying, though everything had to be submitted to her first and accounts passed through her hands. I was very busy. I devoted myself passionately to my work and if ever Ellen or Mrs. Buckle started to talk about what was happening up at Castle Crediton I implied that I was not interested.

One day Dr. Elgin asked to see me; he had just come down from Aunt Charlotte's room.

He said: “She's getting worse. You can't manage her without help. There'll come a time very soon when she'll be completely bedridden. I suggest you have a nurse.”

I could see the point of this but it was, I said, a matter I should have to discuss with my aunt.

“Do so,” said the doctor. “And impress on her that you can't do all that you do and be an attendant in the sickroom. She needs a trained nurse.”

Aunt Charlotte was against the idea at first but eventually gave in. And then everything changed because Chantel Loman had arrived.

How can I describe Chantel? She was dainty and reminded me of a Dresden china figure. She had that lovely shade of hair made famous by Titian, with rather heavy brows and dark lashes; her eyes were a decided shade of green and I thought her coloring the most arresting I had ever seen. She had a straight little nose and a delicately colored complexion which, with her slender figure, gave her the Dresden look. If she had a fault it was the smallness of her mouth but I thought—and this had occurred to me with some of the finest works of art I handled—that it was the slight imperfection which added something to beauty. Perfect beauty in art and nature could become monotonous; that little difference made it exciting. And that was how Chantel seemed to me.

When she first came into the Queen's House and sat on the carved Restoration chair which happened to be in the hall at that time, I thought: “She'll never stay here. She'll not come in the first place.”

But I was wrong. She said afterward that the place fascinated her, as I did. I looked so…forbidding. A regular old maid in my tweed skirt and jacket and my very severe blouse and my really lovely hair pulled back and screwed up in a way which destroyed its beauty and was
criminal
.

Chantel talked like that—underlining certain words and she had a way of laughing at the end of a sentence as though she were laughing at herself. Anyone less like a nurse I could not imagine.

I took her up to Aunt Charlotte and oddly enough—or though perhaps I should say naturally enough—Aunt Charlotte took a fancy to her on the spot. Chantel charmed naturally and easily, I told Ellen.

“She's a real beauty,” said Ellen. “Things will be different now she's come.”

And they were. She was bright and efficient. Even Aunt Charlotte grumbled less. Chantel was interested in the house and explored it. She told me later that she thought it was the most interesting house she had ever been in.

When Aunt Charlotte had been made comfortable for the night Chantel would come and sit in my room and talk. I think she was glad to have someone more or less her own age in the house. I was twenty-six and she was twenty-two; but she had lived a more interesting life, had traveled with her last patient a little and seemed to me a woman of the world.

I felt happier than I had for a long time and so was the entire household. Ellen was interested in her and I believe confided in her about Mr. Orfey. Even Mrs. Morton was more communicative with her than she had ever been with me, for it was Chantel who told me that Mrs. Morton had a daughter who was a cripple and lived with Mrs. Morton's unmarried sister five miles from Langmouth. That was where she went on her days off; and she had come to the Queen's House and endured the whims of Aunt Charlotte and the lack of comforts because it enabled her to be near her daughter. She was waiting for the day she would retire and they would live together.

“Fancy her telling you all that,” I cried. “How did you manage to get her to talk?”

“People do talk to me,” said Chantel.

She would stand at my window looking out on the garden and the river and say that it was all
fascinating
. She was vitally interested in everything and everybody. She even learned something about antiques. “The
money
they must represent,” she said.

“But they have to be bought first,” I explained to her. “And some of them have not been paid for. Aunt Charlotte merely houses them and gets a commission if she makes a sale.”

“What a clever creature you are!” she said admiringly.

“You have your profession which is no doubt more useful.”

She grimaced. At times she reminded me of my mother; but she was efficient as my mother would never have been.

“Preserving lovely old tables and chairs might be more useful than preserving some fractious invalids. I've had some horrors I can tell you.”

Her conversation was amusing. She told me she had been brought up in a vicarage. “I know now why people say poor as church mice. That's how poor we were. All that economy. It was soul-destroying, Anna.” We had quickly come to Christian names, and hers was so pretty I said it was a shame not to use it. “There was Papa saving the souls of his parishioners while his poor children had to live on bread and dripping. Ugh! Our mother was dead—died with the birth of the youngest, myself. There were five of us.”

“How wonderful to have so many brothers and sisters.”

“Not so wonderful when you're poor. We all decided to have professions and I chose nursing because, as I said to Selina, my eldest sister, that will take me into the houses of the rich and at least I can catch the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table.”

“And you came here!”

“I like it here,” she said. “The place excites me.”

“At least we shan't give you bread and dripping.”

“I shouldn't mind if you did. It would be worth it to be here. It's a wonderful house, full of strange things, and you are by no means ordinary, nor is Miss Brett. That is what is good about this profession of mine. You never know where it will lead you.”

Her sparkling green eyes reminded me of emeralds.

I said: “I should have thought anyone as beautiful as you would be married.”

She smiled obliquely. “I have had offers.”

“But you've never been in love,” I said.

“No. Have you?”

That brought the color flooding my cheeks; and before I could prevent myself I was telling her about Redvers Stretton.

“A roving Casanova,” she said. “I wish I'd been here then. I would have warned you.”

“How would you have known that he had a wife abroad?”

“I would have found out, never fear. My poor dear Anna, you have to see it as a lucky escape.” Her eyes shone excitedly. “Think of what might have happened.”

“What?” I demanded.

“He might have offered marriage and seduced you.”

“What nonsense! It was all my fault really. He never gave the slightest indication that he was…interested in me. It was my foolish imagination.”

She did not answer but from that moment she became very interested in Castle Crediton. I used to hear her talking about it and the Creditons with Ellen.

My relationship with Ellen had changed; Ellen was far more interested in Chantel than in me. I could understand it. She was wonderful. By a deft touch of flattery she could put even Aunt Charlotte in a good mood. Her charm lay in her interest in people; she was avidly curious. After Ellen's day off she would go to the kitchen to prepare a tray for Aunt Charlotte and I would hear them laughing together.

Mrs. Buckle said: “That Nurse Loman's a real bit of sunshine in the house.”

I thought how right she was.

It was Chantel who had the idea about our journals. Life, she said, was full of interest.

“Some people's,” I said.

“All people's,” she corrected me.

“Nothing happens here,” I told her. “I lose count of the days.”

“That shows you should keep a journal and write everything down. I have an idea. We both will and we'll read each other's. It'll be such fun, because, you see, living as close as we do we shall be recording the same events. We'll see them through each other's eyes.”

“A journal,” I said. “I'd never have time.”

“Oh yes, you would. An absolutely truthful journal. I insist. You'll be surprised what it will do for you.”

And that was how we began to keep our journals.

She was right, as she always seemed to be. Life did take on a new aspect. Events seemed less trivial; and it was interesting to see how differently we recorded them. She colored everything with her own personality and my account seemed drab in comparison. She saw people differently, made them more interesting; even Aunt Charlotte emerged as quite likable in her hands.

We had a great deal of pleasure out of our journals. The important thing was to put down
exactly
what one felt, said Chantel. “I mean, Anna, if you feel you hate me over something, you shouldn't mince your words. What's the good of a journal that's not truthful?”

So I used to write as though I were talking to myself and every week we would exchange our journals and see exactly how the other had felt.

I often wondered how I had got through the days before Chantel came. She was as much a nurse to me in a way as she was to Aunt Charlotte only I didn't need the physical attention.

***

It was only ten months since Chantel had come and the autumn was with us again. The autumn tints and smells still filled me with sorrow but my heart was considerably lightened. That summer had been a wet one and the damp atmosphere had had its effect on Aunt Charlotte; she was still unable to leave her bed. How right Dr. Elgin had been when he said she needed a nurse. The ease with which fragile Chantel was able to lift her up with the help of Mrs. Morton, always astonished me. Aunt Charlotte's disease had moved into an advanced stage and the doctor gave her opium pills to make her sleep. She fought against what she condemned as drugs but finally she gave in.

“One a night,” said Dr. Elgin. “At most two. More would be fatal.”

The pills were always kept in a cupboard in the anteroom as I called it which adjoined her room. The doctor said it was better not to have the pills near her bedside in case she was tempted to take more than the prescribed dose if her pains were acute, for the drug could become less effective after too frequent use.

“Nurse Loman, you will see to that.”

“You can trust me, Doctor,” said Chantel.

And of course he did. He talked to me about Aunt Charlotte. How wise I was to have brought in Nurse Loman. My aunt was a very strong woman. There was nothing organically wrong with her. But for her arthritis she would be absolutely healthy. She could go on for years in her present state.

The night after Dr. Elgin had told me that, I had a strange experience. I woke in the night to find myself standing by my bed. I was not sure what had happened to me. That I had had a strange dream I was sure, though I could not remember what. In my mind was the thought of us all growing old, waiting on Aunt Charlotte—Ellen, Mrs. Morton, myself, and Chantel. All I could remember from that dream were the words which were still ringing in my mind: “for years…” And I was not sure how I came to be out of bed. At one moment I thought I remembered getting out of bed; and the next I was sure I did not.

It was a frightening experience.

I went to the door of my room and stood there listening to the sounds of the house. Had something happened to disturb me? I could only hear the faint soughing of the wind through the trees outside my window, the sudden creak of a floorboard. Then I was aware of the clocks ticking all over the house.

What had happened? Nothing but that I had been disturbed by a dream.

***

The weeks passed. The winter was a hard one; the east wind penetrated the house and, as Aunt Charlotte said, “stiffened up her bones” and made it painful even to move. She was resigned now to being completely bedridden. Her feet were swollen and misshapen and she could not stand on them. She relied completely on Chantel and Mrs. Morton.

I was away from the Queen's House for whole days at a time, visiting sales, though I never went so far that I had to spend the night. A woman could not very easily travel alone. Besides, I curtailed my trips as much as possible because it was difficult for business, as there was no one to attend to customers while I was away.

I had begun to suspect that Aunt Charlotte had often bought unwisely. The Chinese goods were still hanging fire. Her expert knowledge had often carried her away and she would buy a piece because of its rarity rather than salability—all very well if one were a collector; but our business was buying and selling.

During that long hard winter I kept my journal up to date; and so did Chantel. I learned all that was happening at home, all the little details, made amusing and lighthearted by Chantel; and in more heavy style I wrote about my visits to sales and customers.

And then one morning when I awoke to find a crisscross of frosty pattern on the windows it was to learn that Aunt Charlotte was dead.

***

Chantel had gone in as usual at seven o'clock to take a cup of tea. She came running to my room. I shall never forget the sight of her standing there—her green eyes enormous, her face unusually pale. Her titian hair falling about her shoulders. “Anna…she's gone! I don't understand it. We must send for Dr. Elgin at once. Ellen must go.”

So he came, and we were told that she had died from an overdose of her opium tablets which were always kept in the anteroom. How then had she been able to take them? The inference was obvious. Only if someone had given them to her. The Queen's House had become not only a house of death, but a house of suspicion.

We were questioned, all of us. No one had heard anything during the night. My room was immediately above Aunt Charlotte's, Chantel's was on the same floor, Ellen's and Mrs. Morton's were together on the other side of the house.

I cannot remember details of those days now for I did not write in my journal until the inquest. Somehow I could not bring myself to do so. It was a nightmare; I would not believe it was real.

But there was one question which must be answered because the law demanded it. How had Aunt Charlotte taken sleeping pills which were kept in the next room when she could not walk? The inference was: Only if someone gave them to her. And the inevitable question was: Who?

Who had something to gain? I was her main beneficiary. The Queen's House and the antique business would be mine on her death. I was her only surviving relative; it was a foregone conclusion that everything would be mine. I had been trained with that object. The suggestion was there right from the start. Before anyone mentioned it: Had I become tired of waiting? It hung about the house like some miasma, horrible, insinuating.