Peril at Somner House (5 page)

“Does Roderick drink, do you think?” I mused while stumbling across a few interesting titles. “I can't imagine it for I daresay it'd crack the dourness of his face.”

“Is that so, Miss du Maurier?” Roderick Trevalyan's voice boomed from the doorway.

Stunned, I gaped out a fumbling apology as books tumbled to the floor.

“Don't trouble yourself,” Roderick said, assisting my dismayed efforts to pick up the mess, a hint of amusement flickering in his blue eyes.

“I find it immensely funny.” Chuckling, Sir Marcus waved his finger accusingly at me. “Next time you'll check the door before sprouting derogatory comments about your host, won't you, Daphne girl?”

I flushed scarlet and apologized again, but, to my surprise, Roderick just smiled.

“Here.” Angela thrust a glass in his hand. “Have a drink.”

An uneasy silence pervaded the room. Sir Marcus gravitated to my refuge amongst the books while Roderick and Angela sipped from their glasses, her attempt at conversation barred by his ongoing austerity and one-word replies.

Clearing his throat, Sir Marcus threw me one of his eyebrow lifts. I sensed his silent request to charge the subject. We began to talk about a book I had begun to read, a histori
cal account of a church and other ancient sites on the Isles of Scilly, filling in the next ten minutes until Roderick deigned to join the conversation.

“Weather permitting, there are crossings to the other islands,” he obliged. “But to the mainland, not for another month, I'm afraid.”

So we were all stranded for a month, trapped on an island with a violent murderer on the rampage. When Sir Marcus posed the possibility of an island trip, I felt ill at ease when Roderick was only too happy to accommodate the request. I kept thinking of Max's words:
Rod's just waiting to get his hands on the estate.
Angela was noncommittal to the idea of an island trip. She wanted to stay by Kate's side, but as I had never been involved in their particular crowd, I felt slightly unwanted and unneeded. Sir Marcus shared my view. He mentioned again to Roderick the possibility of us finding accommodation elsewhere, but Roderick refused to hear a word of it.

“No. You are most welcome to stay. In the circumstances, there is little else we can do.”

Commandeering and precise. He applied the same principle to his grooming and appearance, it seemed, absurdly neat and tidy, slicked-back hair, apart from the day in his overalls at the tower where I rudely intruded, and a bleak rudimentary method of approaching life as a duty. He even walked with a purpose.

“Hope that Fernald chap gets to the bottom of this,” Sir Marcus said gravely.

Lord Rod inclined his head.

Collecting the books I intended to read, I escaped the halting uneasiness of the room and on my way out collided with Bella.

“Oh,” exclaimed she, “I didn't see you.” She appeared more angry than upset. “Is Roderick in there?”

I nodded, lingering awhile in the dullness of the hallway. She didn't say “my cousin,” but called him “Roderick.” It was almost as if she had chosen her words carefully. But, why? Was it to confirm a special understanding between them or was it meant to warn me of her prior claim? Or both?

 

Relieved to enjoy a reprieve before dinner, I tossed through the books and sketched some notes and scenes relating to my current work in progress, using, I am ashamed to admit, elements of the circumstances around me.

So I set to work on a short story. After the affair at Padthaway, I had written little but an account of my experiences in Windermere Lane. I intended to use those notes in a novel later, but the idea intimidated me. I knew once the seed started, it must grow, regardless of time, family, and friends. I needed complete solitude to write it.

Angela's noisy arrival into the room murdered my half-written story and, sighing, I tore up the papers and hurled them into the wastepaper bin.

“I'm so late; I shan't have time to set my hair. And Daphne,
do
try to make an effort this evening.”

“Effort?” Incredulous, I looked at her.

“Yes. For Kate's benefit.”

“How does arraying oneself with fine things soothe an anguished spirit?” I stopped short there, for guilty or no, Kate had her future without such finery to think of once the funeral and investigation business was over. “I think Kate might have killed her husband,” I blurted out.

“Kate? A suspect?” Angela rejected even the remotest possibility. “There's entirely no motivation,” she retorted, while tying the sides to her muted yellow dress. “Max was her whole source of…”

“Income? Living? Do those things mean a great deal to her? She might have wanted to be free of him.”

Angela did pause to consider this deduction. “She has expensive tastes, I must admit.”

“Do you know much about Mr. Lissot's finances?”

“Oh, don't talk to me about
him,
” Angela groaned. “I can't abide the man.”

I lifted a brow in question.

She squeaked at the time. “Gosh! And I wanted to wash my hands before dinner. I suppose that Bella creature is in the bathroom. What does she
do
in there? It's not as if the time spent shows. She's horribly ugly.”

I deemed Angela wrong in this assumption, confiding my private assessment en route to the dining room. A strange, nervy creature, yes, but not an ugly one. Behind those glasses, I gleaned a face of lean proportions, a curved short, straight nose, a well-shaped mouth crying for color, and eyes only requiring the merest enhancement. Out of her schoolmistress outfit and appropriately draped in a feminine gown, she'd certainly turn more than one head. But that certainly was not the vision that greeted me.

Standing at the darkened end of the room quietly talking with her cousin Roderick, she had donned an atrocious blue cardigan over a hospital nurse–style skirt, a white ribbon scraping her hair back from her face where a dull light shimmered across thick-rimmed spectacles.

On the opposing side of the room, Kate was a vision of
mourning glory. The starkest black dress failed to conceal her elegant frame, nor did the disorderly sweeping fashion of her hair detract from her composed, drawn beauty. Speaking in low undertones to Josh Lissot, she fingered the string of black beads around her neck. When Angela and I entered, she smiled faintly and promptly left Mr. Lissot, whose face exuded a furtive wariness as he shifted from side to side, not sure what to do.

The uncertain atmosphere deepened during dinner, with Sir Marcus atoning for the lack of conversation. Angela tried her best, helped a little by myself and, surprisingly, Roderick. Assuming his role as head of the household, he no doubt felt obliged to offer more than the usual perfunctory remark here and there.

“Mr. Fernald,” he announced later over coffee under the subdued lighting and at a morbidly quiet moment, “may return to question a few of us. I thought you should all know.”

“Murder,” Sir Marcus shook his head, appalled by the crime as much as the tepid coffee. “But why? Who would
do
such a thing. Did the man have any enemies on the island? Someone he'd threatened lately?”

Roderick's eyes shifted westward. He wished to avoid the specific inquiry.

“There is Jackson,” Kate began hopefully, appealing to Roderick.

Her brother-in-law frowned. “Jackson's a good man. I can't believe it of him.”

“But he is prone to violence,” Kate persisted, sharing a quick glance with Josh, who, in turn, bowed his head and inspected the contents of his cup.

Sir Marcus asked who Jackson was.

“The gardener,” Kate said in a small voice. “The man with the silver beard.”

I remembered the gardener from my walk around his domain. He seemed to treat the house and gardens as his own and probably had been working on the estate his whole life. If this Jackson fellow had respected Roderick and Max's father, could his feelings for the reckless son inspire him to murder? No…there had to be more motivation for Kate to mention the gardener than mere dislike. I wondered what it was.

“Well, whoever it is,” Arabella vowed, “he'll be brought to justice and punished.” She dipped her head, the corner of her right eye drifting toward Josh Lissot while I met Angela's gaze across the room. She, too, deciphered the “he” on Bella's sharp tongue and likewise cast a judicious brow in Josh's direction.

Etiquette thus dispensed, Roderick Trevalyan vacated his chair, acknowledged each of us with a curt nod, and left the room.

Kate followed soon afterward, Josh Lissot careful not to shadow her exit.

“Curious fellow,” Sir Marcus murmured, hunting for a divan to sprawl out upon. Snapping out a cigar from the inside of his coat, he freed his feet of his restrictive but highly polished shoes. “You don't mind, do you, ladies? I've no wish to go to sleep yet.”

Arabella cast one longing glance in the direction of her disappearing cousin before running after him. I remarked upon her hasty departure and Angela and Sir Marcus swooped upon it like two crows on a stone fence.

“Did you
see
her face? Same as when she arrived. She positively hankers after him like a dog,” Angela remarked.

“Perhaps you're missing something.” Sir Marcus struck his
match with the edge of his boot. “Perhaps it was
Max
she was in love with, and not Rod. Or perhaps she was in love with them both. Girl like her can't have had too many offers about. Lives inside a cottage with an old woman, you know. Not much chance for a social life, is it?”

“No,” agreed Angela.

Keeping my ear open to their musings, I went to peruse the paintings. So many scenes, mostly of the war time. What happened here at home, in the streets of London, the bombings, the nights of terror, what transpired over on the continent, our valiant men and women going off to fight in foreign lands…

I paused before the painting above the mantelpiece. A wintry tree opened the window to the canvas, snow-caked leaves mixed with blood trailing the dirty path to two fallen soldiers hiding beneath a hedge in the distance, one cradling the other's head.

I asked Sir Marcus about the painting.

“Know nothing about it. Bit dark, if you ask me. Should be paintings of flowers and animals, to go with the theme. I've told Katie, but you see it was her war time endeavors that launched her, so to speak. Difficult for an artist to break the mold of what's required of 'em.”

Indeed, but perhaps she'd done so having begun to work on a new project. Was it a project inspired by Josh Lissot, by any chance?

Sir Marcus had made the connection, too. “Poor pair. It's going to be tough for the both of them, for Fernald's got his hooks in there.”

“Not on Kate, I hope,” Angela said. “
She
is innocent, I swear.”

“I tend to agree with you.” Sir Marcus puffed away on the
divan. “For if she'd wanted Max out, she'd have done it blizzards ago.”

“Blizzards, Sir Marcus?” My lips curled in amusement. “You paint words so eloquently, yet you've failed to say why
you're
here at Somner.”

“I'm a pure laze-about,” he responded merrily. “Flitting from here to there. A passing wind, no more, no less.”

Angela made some sordid joke that would have shocked our mother's ears, but Sir Marcus laughed and shared one or two of his own.

I continued to look at the paintings. There had to be a clue hidden amongst each applied stroke, a clue as to why Kate chose to remain with her wastrel husband. Helen out of
Wildfell Hall
had done so out of duty, out of her own religious sense of propriety, but Kate Trevalyan? She was no innocent maid. She'd wed Lord Max knowing exactly who he was and what kind of husband he'd make her.

“I'm surprised both of you aren't wed and pregnant by now,” Sir Marcus dared to say.

Somewhat relieved he'd chosen Angela to interrogate first, I kept one ear attentive while studying the war tanks, the children of London running in terror from the bomb blasts…

“You ought to accept this Burke, y'know,” Sir Marcus advised, assuming the older-brother manner. “Heard of him. Fine fellow. Well set up.”

“We are not exactly
poor,
Sir Marcus.”

“Oh, indeed. The du Maurier clan. Famous! Spare me the drum. Notoriety and money don't buy happiness.”

“And you believe my marrying Burke will? I can't imagine anything more horrid—confined to the country, joining the knitting society and breeding little Burkes—”

“And going to church on Sunday,” Sir Marcus added, the terseness of her tone leading him to sit up and strike another cigar. “I must concur with you, I wouldn't want to be breeding little Burkes, either. Ghastly business, all of that.”

Angela brought up the necessity of Sir Marcus supplying an heir as well.

“Oh, done already. Sister. Nephew. No need for me to raise the flag.”

“But a man like you needs a wife.”

“Perhaps,” Sir Marcus considered. “I am fond of the shapely kind, like that saucy creature in the kitchen. What was her name, Daphne? You girls remember that sort of thing.”

The kitchen maid…and Max. “Yes!” I stared at both of them. “Perhaps that's it.”

“Queer kind of name, ‘Yes!'” drawled Sir Marcus. “No, truly, the saucy wench's name, Daphne?”

But I was already exploring the idea of a connection. “There has to be a connection between the gardener and the maid with whom Max was having an affair.”

“Jackson and the saucy kitchen wench? No, no, no, he's old enough to be her grandsire! Truly, Daphne, I can see why you took so long to sniff out the culprit in the Padthaway affair—”

My face reddened and I sent Angela a glare.

“I didn't tell secrets,” she promised, “just the facts.”

“A fantastic debacle.” Sir Marcus's commiserating tone failed to placate me. “And you and this Major fellow didn't do too badly…for a pair of amateurs.”

I was about to point out that the Major was certainly no amateur, but stopped just in time. I didn't know whether Sir Marcus was teasing me or in earnest, but how dare Angela
speak of my private life to strangers! I liked Sir Marcus. In fact, I liked him more than most relatives, but I protested when it came to my personal affairs. I certainly did not go around and dish out the details of Angela's
failed
romances or her
secret
trips to the country.