Take No Farewell - Retail (24 page)

To say that he was a changed man when his employer
was
not watching and listening to him would be an exaggeration. Certainly, however, he was a more relaxed and accommodating version of himself than I had previously encountered. He readily accepted my offer of a drink and needed no prompting to explain that he had been collecting medicine for Victor, whose digestion had yet to make a full recovery from the poisoning. With scarcely more prompting, he recounted finding Victor in agony in his room at Clouds Frome.

‘At one point I thought we were going to lose him, sir, I really did. It’s a great relief to see him looking as well as he does now. The climate here has done him good. And Miss Roebuck’s been a tower of strength.’

‘Miss Roebuck?’

‘She nursed him through the worst of his illness.’

‘Did she indeed? I didn’t know she was a nurse as well as a governess.’

He frowned at me for a moment, then said: ‘We all did what we could, sir.’

‘Naturally.’ I attempted a reassuring smile. ‘How long have you been Mr Caswell’s valet, Gleasure? I remember you as a footman.’

‘Since I came back from the war, sir, five years ago. Mr Danby valeted for Mr Caswell till then.’

‘You spoke up loyally at the hearing, I believe. About the anonymous letters, I mean.’

‘It wasn’t loyalty, sir. It was the truth.’

‘Of course.’

He leaned forward across the table. ‘Mr Caswell might well regard my talking to you now as disloyal.’

‘He might, at that. What you said when he asked you if you thought Mrs Caswell was guilty struck me as odd, you know.’

‘Did it, sir? Why was that?’

‘“The facts permit of no alternative.” Those were your exact words, as I recall. Hardly unequivocal, were they? What precisely is your opinion?’

‘I don’t have one, sir.’

‘You must have.’

‘Not one I wish to share.’

His expression was unyielding. And yet his reluctance was eloquent in itself. I tried a different tack. ‘Do you get on well with Miss Roebuck?’

‘Neither well nor badly, sir. We merely share an employer.’

‘I wondered if you thought she was perhaps, well, harbouring ideas above her station.’

Gleasure said nothing, but by his silence gave me a kind of answer. Then he swallowed the last of his beer and rose from the table. ‘I must be on my way, sir. Thank you for the drink.’

‘Do you think I’m wasting my time here?’

‘That’s not for me to say, sir.’

‘Does that mean yes or no?’

He hesitated, seemed for an instant about to smile, then said: ‘It means you must judge for yourself, Mr Staddon. It means that and nothing else.’

The following evening was set aside for our excursion to Monte Carlo. Turnbull had said he would collect us at eight o’clock. I waited for Angela in the salon of the hotel and watched as she emerged from the lift. She was as sumptuously dressed as I had anticipated, but in a gown I had not seen before. Its clinging, peach-hued silk showed off her figure to maximum effect. She must have bought it in Nice, I realized, with this occasion in mind. As she walked slowly towards me, she smiled, knowing what I must be thinking. She cast her wrap over the chair beside me, lit a cigarette and gazed about her. She said nothing and neither did I.

Turnbull arrived promptly at eight in a vast chauffeur-driven Lanchester. To my surprise, he had brought Imogen Roebuck with him. She too, he explained, was to be initiated into the mysteries of the casino. I detected in Angela’s tone as she spoke to Miss Roebuck a note of disapproval that
she
should be expected to socialize with a governess, but she was swiftly distracted from this by Turnbull’s flattering attentions.

During the drive, Turnbull sustained a stream of anecdotes, leaning back over the front seat to address us. Angela, to my left, was vastly entertained, whilst Miss Roebuck, to my right, said little. Whenever I glanced at her, she was looking out of the window, one hand held contemplatively to her chin whilst the other lay placidly on her knee. She seemed to me then that rarest of beings, one who literally did not care what others thought of her.

We dined at the Café de Paris, then joined the late-evening trickle towards the gaming rooms. The night was cold and still, but the domes and balconies of the Casino were bathed in warm, alluring light. Up its steps moved murmurous knots of the rich and idle, jewels glistening against fur stoles and sequined dresses. I could see the glint of pleasure in Angela’s eyes and the gleam of conquest in Turnbull’s. But Imogen Roebuck’s eyes were averted. They told me nothing.

We passed through the public rooms, where already the tables were busy. Above, cherubim frolicked across decorated ceilings. Below, silent vices were indulged to the incantations of the croupiers. Turnbull, needless to say, was a member of the
Cercle Privé
. Thus we gained admission to the yet vaster and more ornate private rooms, where gambling, it seemed, had attained a status midway between religion and art.

The black suits of the croupiers. The chequered whirl of the roulette wheel. The multi-coloured
jetons
scooped into piles. The green, disdainful baize. The varnished wood. The studded leather. The plumes of smoke, climbing towards icing-sugar ceilings. And everywhere, etched in the faces of the gamblers, bright in their lupine gaze, tight like a vice round their hunched, expectant shoulders as the wheel slowed and the ball fell, was greed – pure, refined and naked.

Turnbull vouched for us with an official, then summarized the rules of roulette and baccarat. Drinks were ordered,
jetons
obtained,
games viewed from a distance. Turnbull found two seats at one of the tables and invited Angela to join him. She eagerly accepted. Miss Roebuck wandered away. I laid a few pointless bets and lost, drifted off to the bar, then returned, bored and vaguely disgusted by all I saw around me.

I looked at the table where Angela and Turnbull were sitting, their backs towards me. The croupier was in the act of pushing a jumble of winnings in their direction. Angela’s shoulders were shaking with nervous laughter. Turnbull was grinning, his face suffused with self-confidence, his right hand holding a cigar aloft whilst his left snaked round Angela’s waist. Above their heads, a vast chandelier threw back their reflections in a thousand miniature fragments. I saw a scarlet smear of Angela’s lipstick on the rim of a glass near her elbow and followed a bead of sweat as it trickled down Turnbull’s temple. Suddenly, I felt physically sick. ‘
Faites vos jeux
’ pronounced the croupier as I hurried away.

Imogen Roebuck was watching me from one of the sitting-out benches in the corner of the room. It was as if she had been waiting for me and, obedient to the sensation, I walked over and sat down beside her.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ I lamely enquired.

‘Are you, Mr Staddon?’

‘Frankly, no.’

‘I think you should leave.’

‘Angela wouldn’t agree. The night is young and she seems to be winning.’

‘I mean that I think you should return to England as soon as possible.’

I looked round at her, startled by her directness. ‘Why?’

She nodded towards the table. ‘Because Major Turnbull is in the process of seducing your wife. And because she appears to be a willing victim.’

‘I really don’t think that’s—’

‘Any of my business – as a mere governess?’

‘Is that what you are, Miss Roebuck? It would be easy to mistake your role.’

‘In this case, my role is that of somebody who does not wish to see your marriage thrown away for the sake of a misguided pursuit of the truth. I know what has brought you here. Believe me, you are mistaken.’

‘About what?’

‘I am entirely in Victor’s confidence. You must understand that.’

‘Oh, I think I do.’

‘Consuela is guilty.’

‘I disagree.’

‘That is because you think of her as she was twelve years ago.’

‘How would you know what she was twelve years ago?’

‘I don’t claim to. I only claim to know what she is now.’

‘And that is?’

Her eyes moved at last from the middle distance to meet mine. ‘Insane, Mr Staddon. Consuela Caswell is insane.’

My immediate response to Imogen Roebuck’s statement lies now beyond my power to recall. It was probably she who suggested we leave the Casino and for that at least I was grateful. I doubt if Angela noticed our departure, though Turnbull may have brought it to her attention.

The terrace behind the Casino was empty, for the air was chill, our breath frosting as we spoke. The moon was high and full, bathing the palms and promenades in a frail and frozen light. We leaned against a stone balustrade overlooking the sea. Far out across its surface, a distorted twin moon quivered and kept watch. I lit a cigarette. And Imogen Roebuck told me what I did not want to hear.

‘I first met Consuela when she and Victor interviewed me for the post of governess last February. She said little on that occasion and, though she seemed somewhat highly strung, I was not unduly concerned. I spoke to my predecessor, Miss Sillifant, and she gave me no cause to think that I would find the position other than congenial and rewarding. Perhaps I should have enquired further into her reasons for leaving,
but
the attractions of the post were sufficient to put the idea out of my head. Jacinta is a charming and intelligent girl and Clouds Frome, as you know, is a beautiful house in a delightful part of the world. The salary and conditions were more than fair, so I accepted without hesitation.

‘Within a few weeks of my arrival, it became apparent to me that Consuela was not well. I have experienced many kinds of employer – the reasonable and the unreasonable – but never before had I been required to cope with somebody whose moods were so various and unpredictable. Days would pass in which she scarcely spoke to me. Then she would be animated, communicative, eager to involve herself in Jacinta’s upbringing. Then, with equal suddenness, she would accuse me of defying her orders, of undermining her standing in Jacinta’s eyes. She would demand that Victor dismiss me. When he tried to reason with her, she withdrew to her room, emerging days later quiet and subdued, unaware, it seemed to me, of her previous behaviour. And so the dreadful cycle would begin over again.

‘Victor refused to admit that she was ill. It was too much for his pride to bear. Besides, he had Jacinta to think of. She loves her mother dearly and would be horrified to think she was mad. Consuela was always the soul of sweet reason in her presence; she never had any cause to doubt her mother’s sanity. For her sake, I refrained from leaving straightaway. Later, Victor pleaded with me not to resign. He needed help to cope with Consuela, help to prevent the servants realizing what was wrong. So, I remained.

‘Consuela had no friends. Nobody visited her aside from Victor’s relatives and she never went anywhere. Apart from a weekly visit to the Roman Catholic church in Hereford, she seldom left the house. I attributed this to her Brazilian blood, to a sense of alienation from her surroundings, but Victor told me she had originally been carefree and gregarious; that her tendency to depression and isolation dated only from about the time of Jacinta’s birth.

‘I felt sorry for Victor and he, I know, was grateful for the
little
I could do to help him. Out of this, I will not deny, grew friendship between us and out of this in turn, I fear, grew Consuela’s belief that Victor was being unfaithful to her. The belief was groundless. You have my word on that. If it had not been, Consuela would not have written the letters. She would not have felt she needed to. I cannot prove she wrote them, of course. That is merely my opinion, a guess consistent with how she behaved. It is always possible that somebody else wrote them, but, in either event, the effect was the same. They gave her what her disturbed mind saw as justification for what she was probably already planning to do. That is why she kept them, you see, along with the packet of arsenic, where she knew they would be certain to be found. She wanted them to be found. They were her ready-made excuse.

‘In the days after the poisoning, when we were all still trying to believe that there was some innocent explanation for what had happened, Consuela would have seemed to some the calmest of us all. But it was not calm. She had merely lapsed into introspection. She was waiting patiently for her crime to be discovered, as she knew it would be, as she had planned that it would be. She had chosen Victor as her victim, but, when Rosemary took his place, she does not seem to have greatly cared. That, I think, is the true measure of her insanity. She was set upon a course as destructive of others as it was destructive of herself. Her intention was and is to bring about her own death. Murder was simply a means to an end.

‘I do not expect you to believe me. Even Victor prefers to think of his wife as a murderess rather than a madwoman. In time, however, you will both come to see that I am right. Consuela desires martyrdom and will insist upon having it.

‘Victor tells me you have concocted a theory to sustain your belief in Consuela’s innocence. This involves Victor having poisoned himself in order to dispose of Consuela, thus freeing himself to marry another. Well, you do not need me to tell you that the practical objections to this are
formidable.
He could not have known his sister-in-law and niece would call that afternoon. If you think he planned to consume sufficient arsenic to induce severe illness, you should remember that judging the quantity in a laced bowl of sugar would have been dangerously difficult. Moreover, the charge against Consuela would then have been attempted, not actual, murder, for which a term of imprisonment is the likeliest punishment. In that case, she would remain his wife. Your theory is, you see, self-defeating.

‘You are, besides, not the only theorist in this matter. I have asked myself what could have brought Consuela to such a pass. What could so have eaten away at her grip upon reality? She had a maid before the war called Lizzie Thaxter. Perhaps you remember her. She committed suicide, apparently, in the orchard at Clouds Frome, in the summer of 1911. She hanged herself from one of the apple trees. Nobody seems to know why she did it. I cannot help wondering if Consuela knows more of the event than she has ever revealed. After all, the punishment for murder – the charge she faces – is death by hanging, the same death as that suffered by Lizzie Thaxter. There is an association between them, a link, a connection I cannot quite explain but am sure, nonetheless, does exist.