Snare of Serpents (46 page)

“Why did he give them to you? Why did he want you to keep them?”

“He didn’t say. And I thought I’d better, since he’d said.”

She took them from me and put them back in the drawer.

“Nobody comes in here,” she said, “unless I invite them. I do my own room. He’s quite right. They’re safer here with me than they are with him.”

“But why should you want to keep them?”

“I don’t know. I just feel I ought to … as he said. He might want them back. But what I wanted to say to you was that I knew. I suppose Mrs. Lestrange doesn’t?”

I shook my head.

“Well, it’s only the master and me.”

I was feeling ill. I just wanted to get away. First the shock of what I had discovered in the rondavel and now, immediately
afterwards, this which had temporarily driven all else from my mind.

I said: “What are you going to do?”

“I’m not going to do anything. But I thought you’d understand me better if I told you I knew. I could see Mr. Lestrange was very fond of you. After all, he’s gone out of his way to help you, hasn’t he? Didn’t he let you know about the school? That’s why you’re here. Your secret’s safe with me. It’s some time since I knew. It was just before Mr. Lestrange left, of course. When he comes back I shall tell him I’ve told you. I shall say it was only right and proper that I should. Now look, don’t you worry. Mr. Lestrange doesn’t believe you did that terrible thing … and nor do I. Nice girls don’t go round murdering people … especially their own fathers. He took it himself. Men are like that … and him with a young wife. It’s easy to see … and that’s what they thought it was, didn’t they, because they let you off. So don’t you worry. I’ll go on calling you Miss Grey though you’re not. But you couldn’t very well use the other, could you?”

I wished that she would stop. I stood up.

I said: “I’m going now, Mrs. Prost.”

“All right. But don’t worry. I just thought that you ought to know that I know and I didn’t hold it against you. You just have to be careful, that’s all. I understand. I’m the sort of person who can put myself in other people’s place. I was young myself once. But you don’t want trouble.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll go.”

“Get a nice rest. I know this has been a bit of a shock … but it’s safe with me. So don’t you fret.”

I hurried back to the schoolhouse. At the sight of me Lilias knew something was wrong.

“What news?” she said. “There’s been a lot of activity out there. Something’s going to break soon.”

“Lilias, I’ve had a terrible shock. Mrs. Prost …”

“Oh, not on again about that handkerchief!”

“No. She knows who I am. She has cuttings … newspaper cuttings of the case. She knows what happened in Edinburgh.”

“No! How?”

“Roger Lestrange had them. He gave them to her. So he knew … and now she knows. You see, there was no escape. You can’t run away from a thing like that.”

“Let’s get this straight. She told you, did she, that
he
gave her these cuttings?”

“She was dusting the room. He went to get something out of a drawer and they fell out. She picked them up for him … and saw.”

“Rather fortuitous, wasn’t it?”

“It sounded accidental, the way she told it. She rushed to pick them up. She couldn’t help seeing. There was a picture of me. He realised that she had seen. He said he believed in my innocence and wanted to help me.”

“So he kept the cuttings and dropped them at her feet?”

“He gave her the cuttings, he said, because he thought they might fall into the hands of one of the servants.”

“What’s wrong with a nice bit of fire?”

“I don’t know why they had to be kept. But she has them. She
knows,
Lilias. She says she believes in my innocence and wants to help me as he does. Oh, Lilias, I wish I had never seen Roger Lestrange. I wish I’d never come here.”

“I am wondering what this means. Why should he have let her see those cuttings? Why should he have given them to her … to keep? What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Oh … and something else has happened. I’d forgotten in all this. I’ve found out who did those carvings and put them in the Model House. It was Umgala … the little deaf-mute who was murdered.”

“What?”

“There is one of the rondavels which is empty. Someone died there, and you know how superstitious these people can be? It’s a little apart from the others and quite dilapidated. One of the boys warned us about going there and told us that Umgala used to go there often … and he was unlucky. He was murdered. The boy seemed to think it was because he had gone to that place. I went in and saw the wood shavings on the floor. I
opened a drawer and there was one of the figures. The one I’d seen in the Model House.”

She was looking at me incredulously.

“And you think he was murdered because he did those figures and put them in that place?”

“Oh, Lilias, I’m beginning to think all sorts of things.”

“The figures were significant.”

“Oh yes. There was one lying at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t see the others … the ones which upset Myra so much. It was a man holding a woman and it was set at the top of the staircase. Myra said it was placed so that it looked as though the male figure was throwing the female down.”

“It would seem that Umgala saw this happen. He couldn’t speak … so he tried to explain in some other way.”

“Yes, he was trying to convey something … that it was no accident. Margarete Lestrange had not fallen down the stairs accidentally. She had been deliberately pushed … murdered, in fact.”

“And that was why the boy died. Someone did not like those figures.”

“Roger Lestrange did not like them. He was furious when he found them. Though he gave the impression that it was because it had upset Myra.”

“And soon after that the boy disappeared.”

“Do you think that he … murdered his first wife … and would have murdered Myra? She has been so much better since he has gone. She is almost recovered. She began to get better after I broke the bottle by her bedside. Was she being poisoned … not by an unspecified insect … but by her husband through the tonic? It’s a terrible situation. Did he murder his first wife and was he trying to remove his second?”

“That’s a theory,” said Lilias slowly. “He had reasons, didn’t he?”

“His first wife had the big diamond … the Kimberley Treasure. He bought Riebeeck with her money … and then she died. He came to England looking for a wife … one with money … one who was docile and unassuming. You see, Myra fitted exactly what he wanted.”

“Are we running on too fast? Was it as simple as that? And following on those lines, I see another aspect of the case. Why was he interested in you?”

“Was he?”

“Certainly he was. That was obvious.”

“True, he paid for the cabin.”

“What?”

“I never told you. I knew you’d hate it. The cabin we had at first was the one we had paid for. There was no mistake. He paid the difference. That was why we went to a better one.”

“What a fool I was!” said Lilias. “I might have known. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know until we were almost at Cape Town, and then it was too late. We couldn’t have gone back. I thought you would be upset about the money … so I decided to accept graciously.”

“I shall pay him back,” said Lilias. “But that is not the point now. That’s for later. I am trying to make sense of this. That handkerchief story. Found under his bed the day after the night you spent in the house. What if he put it there? And the newspaper cuttings … fluttering onto the floor. A likely story! He
wanted
her to see them. And why should he give them to her? She was to keep them. Why? Oh, Davina, I don’t like this. I think you could be in danger.”

“How?”

“Don’t you see? His first wife died in mysterious circumstances.”

“Did she? She fell down the stairs … after she had been drinking.”

“There may have been suspicions. She had inherited this diamond and she had died soon after their marriage. Then he married again—an acquiescent woman, rather like the first; she also has money. She is being slowly poisoned. Now he may be clever and get away with the second, as he did with the first … but suppose he doesn’t? He’d want an escape route. And there is a woman who has been accused of poisoning her own father who was threatening to cut her out of his will. She is tried for his murder and suspicion still hangs over her as the
verdict is Not Proven. She comes to the house; the housekeeper finds her handkerchief under the bed. A little indiscretion perhaps … but indiscretion is not murder. She is interested in the handsome master of the house, but he has a wife already. Once she was on trial for the murder of someone who stood in her way. Suppose she were really guilty? Might she not try the same method again? I know this is a wild supposition. He could hope to succeed and then you would not be necessary. But if he did not … well then, he has his scapegoat. Oh, Davina, I may be romancing … but this could just be the truth!”

“How can you think of such terrible things!”

“Because I’m being practical. I’m being hard-headed. I’m trying to get a clear picture. I am asking myself why this, why that? And I’m putting the worst construction on every thing just to see whether it fits … and it could, Davina. It could.”

“I’m frightened, Lilias. I couldn’t go through all that again. So much of it fits. He has always made me feel a little uneasy. And now … now I feel he was there right from the first … like that snake in the grass … waiting for the moment to strike … lurking there … laying the snare … because of what had happened to me. Thank God he went away. I can even thank God for the siege. If he had stayed … oh, I can’t bear to think of it! Lilias, if this is true, when he comes back he will expect to find Myra dead.”

“Perhaps he won’t come back … perhaps we shall never know. How do we know what is happening all over the country? People die in wars. Where did he go? We do not know. He was on some secret business, he implied, did he not? How could one know with a man like that? But if he comes back … perhaps we shall know more.”

“He can hardly come back while we are in siege.”

“Then we shall never know the truth.”

“What shall we do, Lilias?”

“We can only wait and see. But I tell you one thing. When he comes … if he comes … we shall be prepared.”

We sat up late that night, talking, for we knew neither of us would sleep. We went over and over everything that seemed significant.

I could not really believe that he had helped to bring me out here because he planned to murder his wife and wanted a scapegoat, should the need arise.

Lilias said: “It might not have been deliberately planned. Such things often are not. Perhaps in the first place he really wanted to help you. He must have discovered early on that you were Davina Glentyre.”

“I remember there was an occasion … you were there. We had been visiting Mrs. Ellington and I fell while mounting my horse. Kitty was there. She called out my name.”

“I remember. That would have been enough.”

“It’s an unusual name. It might have started a train of thought in him. He has certainly been very friendly. He was so anxious that I should go to the house to be with Myra. Then there are the handkerchief and the cuttings …”

“We can go over and over it, Davina, and still we shall not be sure. Let’s wait and see what happens when he returns. Perhaps we shall learn more.”

And so we talked.

W
E DID NOT HAVE TO WAIT
very long. We knew the Army was closing in. Between it and the town were the Boer commandos, and what hope had a group of wartime fighters, fresh from their farms, in conflict with trained soldiers?

How could Kruger and Smuts stand up to Kitchener and Roberts … and the British Army? The breakthrough was inevitable. It would be any day now. We were waiting for them. And at last they came.

It seemed that every man, woman and child was in the streets. We were out there to greet them as they came in and their welcome was tumultuous. People were embracing and kissing each other.

“It’s over. They’re here. We always knew they’d come …”

It seemed as though it was worth living through a siege because it was so wonderful when it was over.

Mafeking. Ladysmith. They were now free.

“Good old Bobs. Good old Kitchener,” cried the people.

We were all carried along on the wings of victory during those days.

T
HE RELIEF OF
K
IMBERLEY
was such an exhilarating experience that, in spite of all that had so recently happened to me, I was caught up in the rejoicing. But the terrible realisation of what evil might have been hovering over me was never far from my mind.

After the first days had passed, after we had grown accustomed to having the Army in town, to food arriving, to feasting, to singing “God Save the Queen,” I became haunted by the thought that now Roger Lestrange would come back. And then … what? What could I say to him? I could not accuse him of attempting to poison his wife and devising a devious plot to implicate me. I could not say to him, “Myra started to recover as soon as she stopped taking the tonic which you insisted on her having.” What could I say of the handkerchief and the cuttings? It was, as Lilias had pointed out, nothing but theory even though it did seem a plausible one.