Peril at Somner House (14 page)

I saw Kate before dinner.

The events of the day had left me bone weary. Time for a cavelike retreat, a warm meal in bed, and a good book. However, I considered it my duty to seek out Kate first. She was seated at the dressing table of her room looking pensive, blankly staring at the mirror, reflecting in some private thought that troubled her. I hadn't properly seen her room, this room on the lower level down the hall from the breakfast parlor where I'd caught her and Josh Lissot. The room, a former sunroom of a curious L-shaped design where rows of arched mullioned windows spanned around the corner, possessed the best light in the house and I could see why she'd chosen it. The windows alone were the finest in Somner, one wrought-iron latch left open on the window facing full west to allow in the light and the fresh, salty sea breeze.

Unlike her retreat room abovestairs, the decorations in her lower quarters followed the African theme of the house. From the giant old-world four-poster bed dominating the end corner with its sweeping white silken drapes and spiraling towers, to
the multicolored weave rugs lining the faded carpet, it was a room for artists and lovers. Filled with warmth, vibrancy, paintings, chaos, mess, order, it was a room to indulge every whim.

A faint smile touched Kate's lips. “Oh, it's you, Daphne. I thought it might be Angela.”

Putting aside her grim thoughts, she resumed a cavalier attitude, remarking on the day and its endeavors, how nice it was that Angela arranged the painting outdoors, and adding the odd tease or two with reference to Major Browning. She also mentioned Peter, her brows lifting quizzically regarding him. “You've quite a few beaus to choose from at present. Who's the current favorite?”

“I saw Mr. Lissott this morning,” I said, avoiding the subject.

Face drawn and eyes downcast, she listened gravely to everything I had to say.

“I feel dreadful,” she confessed, rising from her chair. “Josh and I…”

“You don't have to explain,” I murmured. “If the Major presents this information—”

“Yes!” Her eyes glowed new hope. “That is the answer. He's the
only
one who can talk sense to Fernald.” She shivered. “I don't like Fernald…there's something about him.”

Yes, I felt that way, too.

“Oh, Daphne.” She embraced me. “I'm so glad you and Angela came to Somner…what do you think of her portrait?”

I stopped to critically appraise the painting by the open window Kate promptly shut. She'd captured Angela's facial expression perfectly, her languid pose a trifle daringly sensual. My parents wouldn't approve, but of course I said no such thing to Kate. I gave a polite response, seasoned with the
appropriate praise and admiration, and asked what she intended to do with it.

“Showcase it in a new exhibition,” she divulged. “I've been working on a few pieces for a while.” The hope suddenly vanished from her eyes. “Josh and I were going to do one together, with Sir Marcus's backing.”

“Will you still go ahead?”

“I don't know. How could I when he…when he—”

“May swing for the murder of your husband?” I summed up dispassionately. I didn't mean to sound so brutal. Perhaps it was the writer within me, painting the plain facts as they stood. “I'm sure the Major will point Mr. Fernald—”

“Yes, yes,” she cut in, her voice becoming a distant echo, “but if
Josh
didn't do it, then who did?”

 

The same question haunted me into the next day as I ate my breakfast.

It could be anyone, any resident at Somner or nearby on the night of the murder.

One fact remained glaringly clear. Whoever had disfigured Max's face had a propensity for violence. Jackson appeared to be the mostly likely candidate. Perhaps he'd consulted legal advice and learned that
two
witnesses were required on the will and had come to Somner that night with the intention of rectifying the problem? On his pursuit for the master of the house, he'd found him lying on the path leading to the beach. He'd seen him there so vulnerable, and anger coiled inside of him when he thought of his cheated daughter and grandson and then—

“Miss du Maurier, does a visit to the tower suit you now?”

Roderick Trevalyan loomed out of his chair at the head of the breakfast table.

I smiled and replied that visits to towers always suited me, noting on my quick ascent to fetch a shawl that he'd dressed in his overalls. Did he intend to work in the boatshed? Intrigued by this prospect, and keen to get away before Bella heard of our plan and invited herself along, I met him outside.

“You are a very contrary man,” I began upon reaching the beach track.

“Contrary?”

I decided to see whether it was possible to tease Roderick Trevalyan. “Why, yes. You are born to be lord of the manor, and still you favor the man of the land archetype. Or are you,” I paused to reflect, “Hermit of the Tower?”

He laughed. A pleasant sound, musical, alert, alive.

“Well,” I prompted, “which is it?”

“All and none,” came the eventual rejoinder.

“No girlfriends or wives to change your ways?”

“None,” he laughed again.

“All the better for it, perhaps,” I went on. Did he truly feel comfortable with me? “Some are unhappy unions.”

He nodded in silent agreement.

Then he said, “If you were thinking of my brother and Kate…theirs was a dismal fate. I shall not speak ill of the dead, but my brother was not a good man. He wasn't a kind man. Partly because of the war and partly because he'd always been that way.”

I nodded. “Erratic. Unpredictable. Cruel.”

His brows drew together at “cruel.”

“He couldn't help it. He destroyed everything closest to him. Even his friends turned away from him, except Davis
and Kate. She's been a good wife to him and tried to keep up the pretense.”

“Of the happily married couple,” I finished, noting the sudden pallor of his face. Following his gaze to the cordoned-off section of the track, I led him past it. “I've spoken a little to Mr. Davis,” I admitted, putting on my shoes as we reached the end of the strip to climb up the hill. “Friends at school. Friends during the war…what happened over there probably preserved the friendship for all time.”

Roderick nodded. “Yes. Davis saved him. Has done so on many occasions.”

Mercifully, the wind had lessened its assault and I enjoyed the trudge up the hill. “Kate said the same thing.” We reached the tower door and I paused to appreciate its Baltic beauty. “I am so envious. I should love to live in a tower like this.” Or a lighthouse. Or a castle. I wasn't fussy. My wild ramblings managed to extract another low chuckle from Roderick.

Drawn first to the bookcase in the tower's library, my fingers soon located a book hidden at the back.

“Oh, not that one!”

Roderick Trevalyan seemed most insistent to the point of desperation.

I held the book from him. “I'm no missish prude. Can't I at least read the title?”

Holding the book out of his grasp, I gave him a beguiling smile. “Aha! I see you
are
a romantic soul at heart.” Lord Byron's verses. It was an entire book devoted to romantic love, its pitfalls, its euphoric allurement. The subject interested me vastly, and I asked if I might borrow it.

His secret passion for poetry thus detected, my companion retained a decidedly darkened expression.

As he began a monotone tour of his beloved tower, I noted that the tribal decorations alluded to Kate's strong influence in his life.

“She's my sister-in-law!” He became stricken at the suggestion.

“Yet she's a…femme fatale,” I crossed the line cautiously.

Roderick sat down with a sigh. He hung his head in his hands. “Once, she came here,
once,
” he reiterated. “It was over Max again. She came here to escape. She wanted to stay for a time.”

“Did you let her?” I asked.

“Yes, but not as you imagine it. I'd not touch my brother's wife. I'm not that sort of man.”

I was impressed.

“I do
care
for her,” he went on, guarded, yet eager to unload the burden he'd been carrying for far too long. “I
did
care for her”—he paused, perhaps wondering how much to confess—“in a wrong sense, for a time. She was my brother's
wife
and all I wanted to do was to protect her…from him.”

It appeared many men were in the business of protecting Kate Trevalyan. She had three chivalrous knights: Josh Lissot, Roderick Trevalyan, and now, I daresay, Major Browning.

“She stayed at the tower a few times,” he continued, looking around his chamber for the fleeting memory of her. “I slept in the boatshed.”

“But most of the time they remained in London?”

“Yes. Max was only interested in weekend parties and the like, never the land.”

I caught a glimpse of righteous indignation underlying the thin layers of his guarded tone. The biblical passage suddenly
blazed through my mind,
“you have been weighed in the balances and have been found deficient.”

A chill scalded me. If a family's honor and survival depended on the removal of one member, was Roderick Trevalyan the kind of man to murder and disfigure his own brother?

No, I couldn't believe it of him. I'd sooner suspect Arabella of a private vendetta than Roderick.

Yet the fact remained. He had a strong motive for removing his brother, permanently.

 

Roderick and I deepened our friendship that day. For some unknown reason, this man of intense privacy and few words liked me. Perhaps he'd thought me a dowd when I'd first entered Somner House. Winter forbid extravagant dressing, but under Kate's skillful élan I had emerged, I am daring enough to say, a beauty.

I had enjoyed the attention, especially from the Major.

Sir Marcus remarked upon the attraction. “Have you settled your differences then, Daphne girl?”

He'd taken a liking to calling me Daphne girl, after the fashion of Katie girl, which I despised. I reminded Sir Marcus he lacked the appropriate Irish heritage to behave in this glib fashion, but it amused him.

“The Irish hide nothing.” He grinned, marching smartly into Hugo's forbidden domain. “Unlike you and the Major, and all members of this house for that matter,” he added, his purpose clear as we descended upon the kitchen.

Hugo scurried away.

“Never thought I'd live to see the day a hunchback turns into a frightened rabbit,” mused Sir Marcus, swinging a kitchen hand towel Hugo had left on the cutting table. “I daresay he is troubled, for dinner was not
au fait
last night.”

Unequivocally, I accepted his assessment.

“The meat was
half
cooked and those carrots! They tasted like bricks!”

“So you're claiming the apron tonight?” I asked.

He nodded, gaily inspecting the supplies. I shook my head with a gentle laugh, declining to participate and deciding on a walk instead.

 

Rachael Eastley lived in a ramshackle cottage on the outskirts of the main town. It was a two-story cottage resembling a townhouse divided by a thick hedge of overgrown shrubbery. Up above a balcony looking out to sea, strands of wisteria and ivy scaled down the dark gray stone brick walls.

Opening the tall, thin, rusty gate, I dodged a jagged ensemble of mismatched cobbles up to the front door, hoping I'd find her at home. I knew she worked at the local pub, but three o'clock in the afternoon seemed a safe time to visit.

A moment's hesitation gripped me before I knocked on the painted red door. I knew nothing of this woman or how she'd take to me showing up in my Sunday best. I don't know why I chose to dress thus, even snatching one of Angela's hats to wear at the last moment. Perhaps I felt the need to present myself in a professional sense, like one of my mother's important social calls.

The door was opened by a grimfaced old woman.

“What ye want?”

“To see Mrs. Eastley. Is she in?”

“Who's askin?”

I paused. “Say…a guest from Somner.”

Her eyes quickened at this—a visitor from the “Big House.” I hadn't seen much of the island, but I suspected Somner House far surpassed all other residences in the area.

The door closed in my face. Only to swing open again a moment later. Bidden inside by the stern-faced serving woman, I encountered the tiniest parlor I'd ever seen, beautifully decorated with a table bearing fine lace cloth and chairs covered with embroidered cushions. A small fireplace, unlit, glimmered to the left, as did a narrow flight of stairs leading to a second level.

The serving woman disappeared to what appeared to be the kitchen as I removed my hat and gloves. I looked for photographs or other clues as to the life of Mrs. Eastley, but there was nothing in the parlor other than a neat, cheerful welcome.

Low voices resounded down the tiny hall and I held my breath in anticipation. The serving woman burst through the door and behind her appeared the serene face of Mrs. Eastley. Carrying a book in her hands, she set it down on a passing hallstand before indicating we sit at the table.

“Tea, Nanny,” she spoke in a firm but fluid manner.

“Miss du Maurier, isn't it?”

Suddenly questioning the wisdom of my visit, I nodded. In the falling light, Mrs. Eastley's radiance cast a welcoming glow into the embers of my story. But did I feel guilty, coming here, partly for inspiration, and partly out of curiosity? No. Quite the contrary.

“I hoped you might come,” she said, lowering eyes that had no right to possess such thick, curling lashes. “Major Browning speaks highly of you.”

I blinked. “I…er—”

She smiled softly. “My husband knew him. He served under him for a time.”