Authors: Alison Stuart
“And she came every week?”
“Except for the month when my uncle died.”
“For someone who seemed not to care much for you, that seems strange,” Helen said.
“I always thought she saw it as her duty.” He shrugged. “But then my relationship with Evelyn has always been complicated.”
“I suppose she is your only living relative.”
He looked up at her. “Evelyn and I are only related by marriage. I have only one living blood relative, your daughter, Alice. But you’re right. Despite everything, she is my responsibility as much as she saw me as hers and she will fight for those she loves. You know the story of my engagement?”
Helen nodded.
“Fi came to the hospital to tell me she was breaking off the engagement. It happened to be during one of Evelyn’s visits and she went for Fi in a fury. I’ve no idea what she said but it reduced Fi to tears.”
“Did you mind?”
“About Fi? No. She did write me a letter eventually. Quite a nice letter. Truth was she didn’t want to marry me, any more than I wanted to marry her. We only got engaged because it seemed the thing to do at the time. The war had just started and we were young. I was only twenty-one and she was seventeen.” He set his aunt’s frail hand back on the bedcovers and looked across at Helen. “There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s go home.”
* * * *
On their way, they stopped at the vicarage. They found Alice playing cribbage with Lucy in the drawing room and seemed quite happy to remain at the vicarage. To Helen’s relief, neither the vicar nor his wife asked about their battered appearances.
With a promise to collect Alice the following morning, Paul and Helen returned to the hall, where Sarah had supper ready. They all ate in the kitchen seated around the kitchen table.
“Poor soul,” Sarah said, pouring the tea. “Do you suppose she’s at peace now?” Helen asked.
Paul looked at Sarah. “Well, Sarah?”
“Why are you looking at me?” Sarah asked, bridling. “Do you want to know if I can still sense her?”
Helen nodded.
Sarah closed her eyes. “I can’t feel anything, but this is the wrong part of the house. I’ve never sensed ‘em down here.”
Helen looked up at the ceiling. “I think they’re gone. Although I feel we still have to find her murderer.”
Sarah shivered. “Imagine that poor thing down there all those years and no one knowing and the whole world saying she’d run off with another man. That’s the scandal, in my book.”
“I agree, Sarah,” Helen thought about the dreadful things that Lady Cecilia Morrow had written about her missing daughter-in-law.
“Do you want me to close off the ‘ole in the library again?” Pollard asked.
“I suppose so.” Paul picked up a piece of Sarah’s cherry cake. “Mind you, all that water can’t be doing the foundations any good. I should get it sealed.” He sighed. “God knows what that will cost.”
“I’ll have a good look tomorrow,” Pollard glanced at his wife. “You don’t think it will come back, do you?”
Paul shook his head. “Whatever it was, it was trying to stop us finding Suzanna.” He rose to his feet. “I’m going to have a look at that last diary entry. Helen?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to join me?”
Helen nodded. “I’d better telephone Tony first.”
“I’ve laid a fire in your grate, sir,” Sarah said. “It’s chilly tonight.”
Helen rang Wellmore, telling Tony that while Evelyn still remained unconscious she felt she should remain at Holdston. While not exactly a lie, she still felt guilty about misleading him.
Upstairs in his room, Paul switched on his light and indicated the grate. “Can you manage the fire, Helen? I’ll pour us both a brandy. God knows we’ve earned it.”
Helen set the match to the kindling and sat back on her haunches, taking the proffered glass from Paul. He wandered over to his table, picked up the small leather bound book, and flicked through the pages to find the right spot.
Helen stared at him.
“That’s it!”
He looked up in surprise. “What is?”
“The thing that was missing from her bag. Her diary! She would never have left her diary.”
Paul looked down at the book in his hand.
“She wrote her last entry and secreted it back among her books, intending to return to it,” Helen continued. “Even if she didn’t intend to take it, she would have destroyed it, not left it in her room for anyone to find.”
“Anyone with a desire to read a commentary on one of the Saints,” Paul remarked drily. “Maybe she just forgot it? As you say, she packed in a hurry.”
Helen walked over to the table and took the book from him. “No, it would have been the first thing she packed.”
He took it back from her. “If you want me to finish it, I had better get on with it.”
Helen picked up the other book that sat on his table. “Is this your copy of Homer?” She flicked open to the first page and gasped. “This was Robert’s!”
He nodded. “It was a birthday present from my uncle.”
Helen turned the pages. “Where’s your translation?”
He handed her a bound notebook, the leather cover stained and creased. “Excuse its appearance. I had it with me when...I’m afraid some of the stains may be blood. I did try and clean it.”
Helen traced the dark stains on the cover. The price Paul had paid for his life.
“This is what you worked on in the trenches?”
“War is ten percent terror and ninety percent sheer boredom. Homer filled the boredom more than adequately.” He smiled. “I hope you can read my writing. It may be a bit shaky in bits. It’s hard to write when the shells are falling around you.”
Helen poured them both another brandy and settled down in the large chair by the crackling fire, and opened Paul’s notebook. He wrote in pencil, his hand firm and sure despite the conditions under which he had been working.
Taking a sip of brandy she abandoned herself to the conversations of the gods as they decide Troy’s fate. Another futile war in another time. Paul’s translation moved in a gentle rhythm, capturing the grace and beauty of the prose. “Paul, this is wonderful,” Helen said. “Are you going to have it published?”
He looked up and shook his head. “I’m glad you like it, Helen, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever finish it.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “It was a means to an end and I think, maybe, I’ve reached the end. Like Odysseus’ Penelope it is time to put the past away and concentrate on the present. Now let me finish this.”
* * * *
The clock on the mantelpiece showed nearly midnight before Paul straightened and pushed back his chair with a scraping noise that woke Helen, who had been dozing in the chair.
She sat up with a start. “Finished?”
Paul stretched, easing his left shoulder with a wince. Drawing a deep breath, he gathered up the papers on his desk. “I think we have our answer.”
She looked at him, fully awake and her eyes bright with curiosity. “Do we?”
“You read it and tell me what you think?”
He handed her the papers and she read aloud:
“
September 9: Last evening Robert called me to sit with him before the fire. I took a seat and picked up a piece of needlework. ‘Put it down, Anna and come sit with me,” he said. ‘I have done you a great wrong and caused you great hurt.’ I did as he bid and he placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘Anna,’ he said softly. ‘I seek your forgiveness for what passed between us. I have been to hell and I hope my feet are now turned back on a path of righteousness.’
“ ‘What do you mean?’ asked I, seeing a new pain in his face. He buried his head in his hands and began to weep. ‘Ah Anna, such sights as no man should see...’
“ ‘You must not talk of it,’ I said, remembering Lady Morrow’s edict. He looked up at me. ‘Please let me talk,’ he said. ‘I must unburden myself.’ I took his hand and kissed it. ‘Then talk, if you must.’ And talk he did, until the small hours of the morning, of his time in Spain. Of the friends he had seen killed and of that fateful day before Badajoz. His tales were horrific and I began to understand the anger within him, the frustration of a man burdened with a terrible pain that those he loves cannot share. After a while the words ceased to have meaning, I watched just his face and his eyes, seeing for the first time since his return a certain peace and the shadow of the man I had once loved. When he was spent, he slept in his chair. I covered him with a blanket and stole away to my bed to toss sleepless with indecision.
”
Helen looked up at Paul and he saw the empathy in her eyes. It would have taken enormous trust on Robert’s part to talk to her of his time in Spain. Helen understood that, just as she understood why Paul would never talk about what had passed between himself and Charlie in no man’s land.
“Go on,” he said.
“
September 10: Last night I went to my husband. As I slipped into the bed beside him, he took me in his arms and held me close. We did not make love, just lay together in silence. He slept fitfully. His leg bothers him again and I was most concerned not to cause him more pain or distress. As the first light of the day began to break, he awoke and kissed me. At his direction we made love and when we were done, he wept, kissing my hair and calling me his ‘dearest.’ When I left him I called the maid for a bath. I lay in its steamy depths and wept as if my heart would break.
“
Robert rose and dressed for breakfast and spent the day with us, laughing and teaching his son to play chess. In the evening, he insisted on taking a walk in the garden with his mother. My fear that it would overtax him has come to pass and tonight he seems tired and feverish.
“
September 11: Robert is grievous ill. His exertions of the previous day have quite overdone his fragile strength. The doctor has attended and bled him. He says the wound in his leg has reopened and must be attended to. I fear this setback will mean Robert will once more be bedridden for the next few weeks. I sat with him in the afternoon and read to him from a most amusing novel by ‘A Lady’ called Sense and Sensibility which I obtained while I was in London. It was quite the talk of the salons. Her observation of life in country society are unerringly accurate and quite biting in their comment. Lady Morrow would disapprove, I am sure but it was nice to see him smile though he is so weak and in such great pain. He reached out a hand across the bedclothes and encircled mine, once more beseeching my forgiveness for the cruel way he has treated me these past weeks.
”
Helen stared at the paper in her hand. “Robert was bound to his bed,” she said, looking up at Paul. “He could not have physically stopped Suzanna leaving.”
Paul nodded and she continued.
“
September 12: It lacks but an hour until the appointed time when I am to flee with S. He will be waiting for me at the churchyard with a coach and our passage for Port Jackson. All that is left is for me to pack a portmanteau and slip away. In doing so I leave behind my two children and a husband that I see now loves me beyond measure and needs me. If I leave it will destroy him utterly. If I stay, what passed between us cannot be undone but it can be forgiven. What appeared such a simple decision but a few days previously now presents itself entirely differently. If I do leave, my husband and my children will be disgraced and I shall spend my life looking over my shoulder wondering when we shall encounter someone who knows us, knows our past and all the hurt and anguish I will have caused will be revealed. My clock has chimed twelve. My mind is certain. My decision sure. It is time to close this book and put it safely to one side and pen a note which I will leave safely with the first baronet. When I do not appear as arranged, S will know to look there. What I will do tonight will be for the best of reasons - for love of a man and that man is my husband.
”
Helen looked up at Paul, her eyes misting with tears.
“You were right, Helen,” he said. “She was not going to leave him and Robert could not have been the murderer.”
“So what happened?” Helen frowned.
“She left her room, in her day clothes as you observed,” Paul said thoughtfully.
“She reached the library, opened the secret door and then...” Helen continued
“Go back,” Paul said. “Retrace her steps. She slept in the green bedroom. To reach the library she had to pass this room.”
“Where Robert slept?”
“Robert, who was grievously ill and incapacitated with his bad leg. As you said, even if he had heard her, I can tell you from experience he would have been in no position to follow her, let alone do her any harm.”
“She would have had to pass Lady Morrow’s bedchamber, your mother’s room.” Helen looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Cecilia. We have forgotten about Lady Morrow. Her room was above the library. Suzanna would have had to go past her door and down the stairs and then open the secret door. If Cecilia was still awake she would have heard everything.”
“But why not before?”
“Because Suzanna’s trysts were during the day or at times when Cecilia was otherwise occupied and Suzanna was thought to be ensconced in the library or on some other errand. It makes sense now. Can’t you see, Paul?” Helen felt the excitement rising.