The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes (4 page)

“It would be wonderful,” said Eirwen. She looked around nervously as she added, “But don't say anything for now, please—we haven't told the rest of the family yet. We want to be certain before we do. It would make a big difference to us.”

Idris also checked to see if anyone was in earshot before he spoke. “Yes, it could change things, for all of us, but Alice isn't good with change, so we'll have to manage it all very carefully. In fact, I think that the biggest problem might be that the episodes they want to film here are about hidden treasure. Not ours, of course, but a fictional one in their story, so we'll have to see if it's going to work at all. We really don't want the world and all their shovels to arrive one fine morning, as Eirwen said.”

Seemingly out of the blue Eirwen announced, “Come on, you two ladies, let Idris get you a drink. His grandmother will be here soon, so we'd better get you sorted before that.”

I said, “Thanks, a gin and tonic, please,” just as Siân said, “Fizzy water,” which resulted in a group grin, but before we had reached the drinks' table, the door to the drawing room was flung open. An ancient woman draped in velvet and sitting, very upright, in one of those motorized wheelchairs, rolled into the room. Although I'd never met her, I was sure this was the matriarch of the family. The impressive chair almost enveloped the tiny, wizened figure. It was bedecked with brocade bags, each stuffed with myriad items.

Having positioned herself in the center of the room, Alice Cadwallader said, “I see we have guests. Let's meet them, then.”

I moved closer to her, and she offered me the tips of her ancient fingers, which I squeezed gently. Her wrist didn't look as though it would survive my shaking her hand. She was a woman with a storied past, and I'd been looking forward to meeting her. Rheumy yet still-green eyes glittered in the firelight and examined me keenly. Crepe-like skin hung in folds beneath her chin and around her emaciated wrists, and her snow white hair was coiled in a fleecy bun. Lipstick the color of dried blood emphasized how narrow her lips had become. Despite all these signs of great age, she had an energy about her. I suspected she was used to getting her own way. And there was something else—what was it? Hunger. Yes, she was hungry for something—or maybe everything—and she wanted it now.

“Professor Cait Morgan, allow me to introduce my esteemed grandmother, Alice Cadwallader.” Idris spoke the name as though it were an incantation.

“Come closer, girl, I want to see you.” Her voice could have etched glass.

“Alice is a little deaf, and a little blind,” whispered Idris close to my ear.

“No, I'm not,” exploded the woman. She cackled a laugh. “I might be ninety-two, but I can see and hear as well as I ever could,” she shouted. “Not unless I want to be deaf and blind, and then I can put it on as I please. Ha!”

Her cold, dry, arthritically curled claw-hands pulled me toward her. She smelled of rose perfume and old age. It was an unpleasant, heady mix. As she peered at me, I peered back. Seemingly satisfied, she pushed my hand away.

“A professor? Of what?”

I replied, “I'm a criminal psychologist who specializes in building profiles of victims. I teach and carry out my research at the University of Vancouver, in British Columbia.” I made sure I spoke clearly, though I didn't raise my voice.

“I expect you're very clever. Are you? I hope you are,” she said.

I knew from my reading that Alice Cadwallader had been born and raised in Philadelphia, where she'd met and married Gryffudd Cadwallader when she was very young. She spoke with a very refined Welsh accent, the sort you might hear in the dress circle at a performance by the Welsh National Opera—from those who spoke English as a first language.

I was so taken aback I didn't say anything for a second or two, which is a long time for me. “It has been said that I am,” I replied. “Why do you hope I'm clever?” It seemed like a reasonable question, but it drew a sharp intake of breath from Idris. I was immediately on my guard. I probably should have been before I opened my mouth.

“You aren't pretty. If a girl isn't pretty, she should be clever,” she replied simply.

It took me a millisecond to reply, “Pretty isn't everyone's cup of tea, and beauty is subjective. If it's only external, it can fade. Quickly. Cleverness, insight, and an ability to be interesting, because you're interested, can linger, and even develop over the years.” This time I sensed the entire room take a breath.

“Not backwards in coming forwards, are you?” replied the woman.

No one breathed out.

“Good for you!” she added as she slapped the armrest of her wheelchair with surprising vigor.

I could have sworn I heard a collective sigh.

A SORT OF TRUCE HAVING
been established between Alice Cadwallader and myself, she once again took center stage.

“If you need proof that what you just said is true,” she announced, “take a look at the portrait of me above the fireplace. Stunning, wasn't I? Now, I'm this pile of skin and bones. But I was lucky, girl. Pretty
and
clever.”

I looked in the direction that Alice Cadwallader's talon indicated, and there it was, the only portrait in the room of a person with life in their eyes and blood in their veins. The artist had captured what I could see was still the spirit of the woman, as well as her undoubted good looks. Red locks lay tousled upon bare, milky shoulders, and green eyes were highlighted by a green velvet gown that draped around voluptuous curves. Her full lips were parted in delight, and her hands were elegant, almost animated—one laying, gloved, in her lap, the other pointing toward some distant object that had caught her attention. Her haughty, knowing expression challenged me from the canvas. It made me think of Rita Hayworth in her
Gilda
days.

The setting for the portrait was obviously a woman's bedroom. A large dressing table with an oval mirror was partially obscured by a screen, delicately painted with very realistic representations of a host of exotic animals. Over one of her milky shoulders was a window that allowed a vista of a bizarre landscape—flat and white, with little brown “islands” poking up out of it, it looked like something from a Salvador Dali painting, strangely surreal, and seemed out of place in a realistic portrait.

I turned to face the shriveled figure she had become. “I disagree, I don't think you were pretty, Mrs. Cadwallader.” Again I heard Idris inhale sharply. “You were a very beautiful woman, and your strength of character shines through in your portrait. Whoever painted it was a very talented artist.”

“Handsome devil, he was.” Alice smiled. “Irish. Younger than me. Not much more than a boy. But gifted. Gryffudd, my late husband, had it painted for my thirty-second birthday. By that time I'd been his wife for half my life. It was 1952, and we'd only been back in this place for a couple of years. The War Office took it over for The Duration, stayed longer, and left it in a terrible mess when they finally decamped. Gryffudd had to do a lot of work to the place to bring it back up to snuff. Something very hush-hush they did here during the war. The sort of thing no one would talk about. Gryffudd had moved me out to a cottage up in the Brecon Beacons in 1940, not far from Brecon itself. It was a lonely time for me, the war. I was very young, of course, and Wales and the Welsh still seemed alien to me. I did what I could, by way of mixing in, joining committees and so forth, but I wasn't able to really help, I felt. Gryffudd wouldn't let me.”

Alice Cadwallader was feeling the loneliness all over again, I could tell. Her gaze was looking back across the years, not across the room to her portrait.

She seemed to suddenly become aware of us and continued. “He wanted me to be safe, you see. We'd traveled so much after we married that I'd barely set foot in this place before I was packed off to the back of beyond, so it didn't become my home until afterwards. Of course, Gryffudd stayed on in Swansea through it all, managing his mines and his factories from his offices near the docks. He was nearly killed in the Swansea Blitz in '41. A lot of his friends, and many of his workers, were. It made moving back here a very sweet homecoming for him, and for me, because I felt I could finally make a home. He always liked that portrait. It was painted before the children came along, so I think I looked about my best.”

“Well, I might not have as much to lose as you did in the looks department, Mrs. Cadwallader, but I hope I end up as sharp as you, if I live as long as you have, and with a quarter the stories to tell.” I didn't mean to flatter her; I spoke the truth.

Alice Cadwallader said, “Firstly, it's Alice, and secondly, if that grandson of mine can't make you a drink, I'll get out of this chair all on my own and do it myself. Idris? What are you doing there, boy?”

“I was just about to check which gin Cait would like,” he replied sheepishly.

“My money's on Bombay Sapphire, right, Cait?”

“As it happens, you'd win your bet, Alice,” I said, glancing toward Idris. “Bombay and tonic, please, not too much ice, and with lemon, if you have it. Thanks. And while you're very kindly doing that for me, Idris, I'd like to introduce my sister, Siân, to you, Alice.”

Siân stepped into the aged woman's line of vision and reached forward to take her hand.

“G'day. A pleasure to meet you,” said Siân very politely, on the verge of curtseying.

Alice Cadwallader peered at Siân in the same way she'd peered at me. “So you got the looks in the family,” she said flatly. “How were the brains distributed? What do you do, my girl? One of those full-time helicopter mothers as they call them nowadays, like her?” Alice jerked her head toward Eirwen as she spoke. Eirwen stooped a little more.

Siân looked uneasy. “I chose to take a break from my career, as a nurse trained to work with surgeons, to raise my children,” she said defensively. “It was a rewarding career, but I believe that raising your children can be equally fulfilling. And while I can't claim to be a genius like my sister, I'm no slouch when it comes to learning and applying that knowledge.”

Alice nodded her head slowly and allowed Siân to remove her hand from her grasp. “You're lying about enjoying raising your children,” the woman observed, “and I bet you'll be back to work before long. I raised three children. One ran through money as though it were milk and he owned the cow, and then he died. The other two are in this room. Maybe meeting them will give you an idea of just how
un
fulfilling it can be to raise children.”

Siân had no response, and I noticed that Idris was avoiding making eye contact with his grandmother by busying himself at the drinks table.

“Owain, come here, boy,” called Alice. “Come and meet Siân and her sister, Cait. It's a shame Cait's here to marry someone else because she'd be just right for you. Brainy. Mind you, past her childbearing years, so not much use to you really. Siân, Cait, this is my son, Owain. Not much of a specimen, but he doesn't do anyone any harm, so I suppose I should be grateful for that. Owain, show yourself!”

At first, all I glimpsed was a long, white hand emerging from the shadows, but the rest of Owain Cadwallader soon followed. A wild and wiry full white beard covered the bottom half of the man's face. Thick-lensed spectacles, which reduced the size of his eyes to almost nothing, perched on his bulbous nose; his heavily tufted, still-dark arching eyebrows looked almost like wings. He was completely bald. His suit shone like anthracite in places, and I guessed it had seen many years of service. His beard hardly moved when he spoke.

“A pleasure to meet you . . . um . . .” He put out his hand toward me.

“Cait!” snapped his mother. “That one's name is Cait Morgan, Owain. It's no wonder women never take a second look at you if you can't even be bothered to remember their names.”

“Of course.
Cait.
I suspect that's an abbreviation of Caitlin. Means ‘pure.' Irish originally. Are you Irish?” Owain spoke quickly, his high register and rapid delivery making everything he said sound like it was of the utmost urgency.

“No, I'm Welsh. Through and through. As is Siân.”

“Ah, now very few people are that, Cait. Surprisingly few, in fact. What do you mean by that statement, exactly?” Like Idris, Owain's tone was clipped, informing me that the Cadwallader clan favored English public schools for its menfolk.

I decided to play along; after all, his nephew had finally handed me my drink, so I had to do something while I sipped it. “Well, Owain, what I mean is that our family tree was once traced back to the 1500s, and both of our parents' families were entirely Welsh, for all that time. They produced just us two sisters. I have no children, and Siân has married an Australian, so I'm afraid that the blood will be diluted for the next generation.” I felt I'd done all I needed to prove my point.

Owain looked excited. “I've put together a full genealogy for our family, you know. It's been fascinating work. I'd enjoy discussing it with you some time. Maybe tonight, over dinner?”

The woman who'd been standing with her back to me while talking to Bud beside the fire moved to shake hands with Siân and myself. “I'm sure Cait doesn't want to be bothered with all that, Owain. I'm sorry, my brother isn't terribly good at social interaction. He'll bore you to death with our family history, if you let him. I'm Mair, by the way. I'm Owain's little sister, Alice's youngest child. Her ‘spinster daughter,' as she likes to refer to me.”

“The one who nearly killed me,” said Alice, accepting a glass of something that looked like sherry from her grandson.

“Yes, Mother, the one who nearly killed you,” replied Mair with a terse patience I suspected was born of practice. “Mother was forty when I came along, and she's never really recovered. Though she's managed to linger on these past fifty-two years quite well.”