The Ashford Affair (44 page)

“She laughed.” Frederick put his hands to his temples. “I can still hear her now, laughing, laughing.… And she said, she said”—his voice rose in a vicious mimic of Bea’s—“‘I’ve already tried divorce, darling. It’s a dead bore.’”

The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock.

“It deteriorated from there.” Frederick’s voice was flat. He reached to pour himself another shot of whiskey. This time, Addie didn’t object. “I told her I’d divorce her whether she liked it or not. She told me she’d like to see me try. I—”

“Yes?”

“I called her a lying whore.” Frederick’s face twisted with self-loathing. “I told her that she was no better than a cat in heat and that no court in the world would back her against me. I told her that the girls would be better off without her.”

“Oh.” Addie’s hand rose to her lips. “Oh.”

Frederick went grimly on. “I told her they’d be better off with no mother than a mother such as she. And Bea—and Bea said—” He drew a long, shuddering breath. “She said that she’d be only too happy to oblige.”

Addie’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. There was nothing to say.

“I can’t get that out of my head. You know what Bea was when she got an idea in her head. And that night—she was high on something anyway. Gin, cocaine. God only knows. She laughed at me. She laughed and said she’d be only too happy.” Frederick set down his glass with a clatter. “I killed her. I didn’t do it with a cudgel—or that bloody scarf!—but I killed her all the same. I drove her out there.”

“No.” Addie found her voice. She clutched at Frederick’s hand, squeezing it as hard as she could. “No, you didn’t! Bea wouldn’t have—Bea would never—” What did she know about what Bea would or wouldn’t? She was beginning to think she hadn’t known her cousin at all. But she couldn’t say that to Frederick, not now. “This was an accident, a horrible, awful accident. It wasn’t your fault.”

“The things I said to her—” He looked up at Addie, his face haggard. “Do you know the worst of it? I meant every word. I can’t even say I didn’t mean it. I did.”

Addie’s hand tightened around his. She felt so feeble in the face of his grief, so incapable of doing anything at all. “Frederick—”

“All I wanted was to be rid of her. But not like this! Never like this.” Frederick’s eyes were bloodshot, his face haunted. “I didn’t love her, but I didn’t want her dead.”

“I know,” said Addie brokenly. “I know.”

It had been eating away at her for the past month, the same horrible guilt. She’d wanted Frederick, but she’d never wanted Bea gone, not gone gone.

“I wanted us to be together, but not like this. It’s all ruined. After this—you must despise me.” Frederick grasped both of her hands with feverish strength. “Go back to England. It’s the only thing for you. Take the girls. Don’t let me drag you down.”

“Stop being an idiot!” Addie’s voice cracked through the room. In a low, earnest voice she said, “I let you drive me away once before, and look what happened. I’m not going anywhere. We’ll see this through together.”

Frederick made a strange noise deep in his throat. He shook his head, murmuring something indistinct.

“Frederick?” His head was bowed, his shoulders shaking.

It took Addie a moment to realize that he was crying, in gut-wrenched, soundless sobs that shook his whole body.

“Oh, darling.” Addie slid off her chair, wrapping her arms around him, pressing his head against her breast. She could feel his tears soaking through the thin fabric of her wrap. “It will be all right, I promise. We’ll all be all right.”

Except Bea. It tore at her, the idea that there would never again be a Bea flitting in with that impish smile of hers, dispensing charm and worldly wisdom, making everything brighter just by walking into the room.

She pushed the thought away, wrapping her arms more tightly around her cousin’s husband. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

She stroked his head, where the dark hair was beginning to thin. There were silver stands in the candlelight, gray that hadn’t been there before. Her eyes were damp with tears, but she tried to keep her own voice steady. She had to be strong for both of them, for all of them, for Marjorie and Anna, too. She might have failed Bea in everything else, but she’d take care of her girls.

“I’m staying right here with you. For as long as you need me.”

Frederick looked up, his eyes red, his face ravaged with tears. “Don’t leave me,” he said hoarsely. His hands reached up to frame her face. “Promise you won’t leave me.”

“Never,” she promised, but the word was lost against his lips as he drew her face down to his.

TWENTY-FIVE

New York, 2000

Aunt Anna’s apartment looked much smaller without Jon in it.

This time, it was Aunt Anna who met Clemmie at the door, casually elegant in a brightly patterned dress that looked like—and probably was—vintage Pucci. Jon and his snowmen seemed like half a lifetime ago.

“Thanks for having me over,” Clemmie said, trying not to wince at the brightness of the colors. She had the hangover to end all hangovers. She hadn’t had one this bad since law school.

Aunt Anna led her past the study, into a small, rectangular living room with built-in bookcases on two sides of a small, glassed-in fireplace. Some of the shelves held books; most were filled with pictures, pictures of Aunt Anna’s stepchildren and pets. Clemmie recognized the late, lamented Shoo-Shoo.

“I wondered when you’d be over,” said Aunt Anna, not realizing that her voice had the effect of a buzz saw. “Coffee? Or something stronger?”

“Coffee,” said Clemmie with feeling. “But that’s okay, you don’t need to—”

“It will take two minutes. Sit.”

Clemmie didn’t sit. Instead, she wandered over to the bookcases. Jon’s wedding picture was still there, Jon in a tux, Caitlin in a traditional meringue of a dress. It suddenly struck Clemmie that she wouldn’t want to be in Caitlin’s shoes, married to a man who didn’t know if he could believe in love. It was a strange feeling, feeling sorry for Caitlin, but she did. It made a nice change from bitterly resenting her.

Was Jon right? Were they all too screwed up to ever love anyone properly? Clemmie didn’t want to believe that. Surely that was what self-determination was all about, taking responsibility for one’s own destiny. Just because their parents’ marriages had been screwed up didn’t mean theirs needed to be.

She just wished she could be as comfortable with anyone as she was with Jon, could feel as alive bickering with someone. Tony was a nice guy, but talking to him felt like an exercise in translation. What was it someone had called the Americans and the Brits? Divided by a common language? It was that and more than that. She hadn’t quite been able to shake off that slight feeling of the creeps she’d gotten when he’d told her he’d had a crush on her grandmother’s portrait. They’d had a good time last night, especially after the third round of drinks, but any little spark she might have felt was long since gone.

She’d been glad when they parted with a wobbly kiss on the cheek. They’d parted friends, she was fairly sure. He’d reiterated his invitation to come stay at Rivesdale House.
And not because of the portrait,
he said, and she’d thanked him with an effusiveness born of booze.

Clemmie winced in the afternoon sunlight reflecting off Aunt Anna’s blindingly white bookshelves. Tony must think she was slightly unstable.

She was slightly unstable. She felt off-balance, and not just because of the hangover. No law firm—no Granny Addie—all the familiar paving stones of Clemmie’s life had been dug up and dumped away, leaving her on highly uncertain ground.

There were so many familiar family pictures on Aunt Anna’s shelves, but Clemmie looked at them differently now, trying to figure out who was really related to whom, scrutinizing Uncle Teddy for any resemblance to Granny Addie. Clemmie had thought her mother looked like Granny Addie, but it must have been simply a trick of expression.

“Here you go.” Aunt Anna came back into the room carrying two heavy ceramic mugs.

Clemmie turned away from the pictures. “Was Uncle Teddy Granny Addie’s or Bea’s?” she asked.

“Addie’s,” said Aunt Anna promptly. “He was the only one of us who was.” Dropping gracefully onto the couch, Aunt Anna reached for a crumpled pack of Benson & Hedges. “God, I miss him. It’s been almost thirty years now—can you believe it?”

“I remember his funeral,” said Clemmie, and she did, vaguely. She remembered the hushed tones and the dark clothes and her mother’s red eyes and feeling obscurely guilty for taking such pleasure in her new black velvet dress. “It was the first time I met Jon.”

“Jon.” Aunt Anna held up her orange plastic lighter. Her eyes took on a very particular gleam. “Speaking of Jon—”

“I gather Caitlin’s back in town,” said Clemmie quickly.

Frowning, Aunt Anna held the flame to her cigarette and breathed in, making the point glow red. “I hadn’t heard anything about that.”

“Well, anyway,” Clemmie said quickly, before they could wander further down that alleyway, “what I really wanted to talk to you about was—”

“I know. Your grandmother.” She didn’t specify which one. Aunt Anna stretched out comfortably on the couch. She still, Clemmie noted, had amazing legs for a septuagenarian. “I’m glad you called me. I wanted to tell you years ago, you know.”

“Thanks,” said Clemmie, and sipped her coffee. It was one of the powdered, flavored varieties, thick and cloying. It made Clemmie’s stomach churn. She set it aside.

“Your mother was against it. She didn’t want to screw up your relationship with Addie.” Anna’s expression amply betrayed what she thought of that.

Clemmie sat on the edge of her chair. “I’ve seen the newspaper clippings,” she said bluntly. “About Bea’s death.”

Aunt Anna’s manicured eyebrows rose. “You have been a busy little bee, haven’t you? You always did do your homework.”

Clemmie wasn’t in the mood to play games. “What happened?”

“That’s the million-dollar question. Wouldn’t we all like to know?” Aunt Anna flicked ash into a silver ashtray. “The short answer is that no one really knows. My mother, my father, and Addie went on safari. My mother didn’t come back. You do the math.”

“Couldn’t it have been a horrible accident?” Clemmie wasn’t sure why it mattered quite so much, but it did. A grieving widower remarrying was one thing. The other possibilities weren’t to be contemplated. “The way Granny spoke about Bea—she sounded like she loved her.”

“She might have,” said Aunt Anna coolly. “Once. But she loved my father more.”

There was no arguing with that. Granny Addie and Grandpa Frederick’s love for each other had been legendary. Clemmie could remember them together when she was little, still entirely wound up in each other, finishing each other’s sentences, leaning on each other for support—although it had always seemed that Grandpa Frederick leaned a little more. Which made sense. He had been older and frailer, already suffering from the first stages of the esophageal cancer that later killed him.

“Once she had him,” said Aunt Anna, breaking into Clemmie’s thoughts, “she would have done anything to keep him.”

“Not murder,” said Clemmie stubbornly. This was the woman who had bandaged her childhood cuts and supervised her homework. Addie might have lied to her, but Clemmie couldn’t believe her capable of that. Not even for love, love with a capital
L,
the kind of love Clemmie sometimes doubted existed.

“No,” agreed Aunt Anna, and there was a decidedly odd expression on her face. “Not murder.”

Clemmie felt some of the tightness in her chest release.

Until Aunt Anna added, “I don’t think my mother was dead. And I’m fairly sure Addie knew it.”

“That’s—” Clemmie choked on sickly sweet coffee, her eyes watering. “That’s insane.”

“Is it?” Aunt Anna sipped her coffee, smoke curling up from the cigarette balanced in the ashtray. “All they found was a scarf, a shoe, and a diamond clip. The party line was that my mother wandered away from camp and was eaten by animals. There were certainly plenty of people with a motive for murder—my father and Aunt Addie among them—but nothing was ever proved. One way or the other.” She added, almost as an afterthought, “They never found the body.”

Clemmie looked up sharply at her. “But she was declared dead. She would have to have been for—”

“For Addie to marry my father. Yes. They married two years later, as soon as my mother was declared legally dead. Legally dead and dead are two very different things.”

“But wouldn’t they have had to have proof—”

“What proof? All they needed to do was wait it out. There was never any proof. There was never any body.” Anna leaned forward, her face intent. “I saw her. In Nairobi.”

Aunt Anna rose from the couch, pacing restlessly across the room, years of pent-up energy, pent-up anger, in her stance.

“I was seven years old, and there she was, in the bazaar. I tried to find her, but Addie caught me and brought me back. They told me I was imagining things.” After all these years, the hurt and rage still came through. “As if I would imagine that! They sent us off to school in England not long after that,” she added bitterly. “Addie saw her, too. I’m sure of it.”

Clemmie looked up at her, not sure where to even begin. “Wouldn’t Addie”—she stumbled over the name, strange on her tongue without the usual honorific—“have said something? Done something?”

“And risk blowing everything? Are you kidding? With my mother out of the picture, she had it all—the farm, Farve. And then there was Teddy. If Mummy showed up out of the blue—” Aunt Anna gestured expressively. “Marriage might have been a loose concept in Kenya, but they still frowned on bigamy.”

“Even though she—your mother—had been declared dead?”

“You’re the lawyer,” said Anna. “I don’t know. But it would have been a legal mess and a huge scandal. Addie didn’t like scandal.”

That much was true. Granny Addie had been very much of the shovel-it-under-the-carpet variety. Clemmie’s mother had inherited that in spades.

“But couldn’t they have just gotten a divorce? Your mother and Grandpa Frederick, I mean?” Clemmie was floundering. “If they divorced and Granny Addie and Grandpa Frederick remarried—”