The Crimson Bed (41 page)

    She arose, her heart pounding, a sweat breaking out upon her face. Her whole body trembled as if with an ague. She walked down towards the river and going close to the edge, gazed over the thick reeds and rushes into the grey-green, swirling waters below. In her mind's eye, she saw poor, mad, forsaken Ophelia just as John Everett Millais had painted her. The gentle young girl floating down the stream, wild flowers and herbs gathered on her breast, dress billowing in the water, her mouth slightly open as she sang her swansong of farewell.

    How good it would be to end all her troubles like this. Dear Tippy Winstone had loved life and had so much to live for and yet in the end she too had been so weary and tired of the struggle and slipped away into a better world without pain and trouble...

    But as Ellie stared into the water and gathered herself for the plunge into Lethe, she seemed to see Tippy's wraith wavering before her, silvery-grey, insubstantial, her robe flowing as if in a soft breeze, her gentle eyes looking at her sadly and saying,
No,
no, Ellie, don't come and join me here where the shades live. Stay
in the bright and lovely world with your dear children and your
husband. Fred loves you, Ellie. Turn back.

    'Ellie, Ellie, turn back! Oh, Ellie – wait for me!'

    To her bemused senses, the call sounded real and came from behind her. She turned around quickly and saw Fred hastening towards her across the meadow, stumbling in the long grass, frantic with urgency.

    A strange sense of relief flooded over her. He had come for her after all.

    Turning, she ran towards him and they embraced, clinging to one another as if they would never let go.

    'Ellie, you frightened me so much. I couldn't let you go like this. For God's sake, Ellie! I don't care what happened with you and Dillinger, all I know is I want you and the children back home with me. I love you, I love you and want you with me. It's all over now. Come with me!'

    'I'm coming home with you, Fred,' she said. 'It
is
all over now. The ghosts are laid for me. I don't want to see Lord Dillinger ever again.'

    'You won't,' said Fred grimly. 'He shot himself after you left him.'

    Ellie stopped and stared at him in horror. She began to weep violently, 'Oh God! I drove him to it, Fred. I know I did. He asked for my love – not as you think. He told me he had loved my mother and that he was my father and I told him that he could
never
be that to me. Joshua Farnham was my father. Joshua, not him. I told him I hated him. I was so unforgiving! Poor Dillie – that was cruel of me. He was ill and would have died soon anyway. Now I shall always reproach myself for that. But – I was so horrified by what he said.'

    Fred digested this information in silence. Nothing surprised him any longer.

    'So
he
was your natural father,' he said, 'no wonder he loved you so much. Of course, I thought... oh, I was a fool, who cares what I thought! I didn't think sensibly at all. I too have much to regret and to reproach myself with. But Ellie, no more sadness. Better perhaps that Dillinger went quickly by his own hand than a long, drawn-out, painful illness. Who knows.'

    'Who knows,' she repeated sadly. Who knew where people went? She thought of Tippy and wondered if her grave was ever to be a quiet one and if she was truly at rest now.

    'Come, dearest. The police will want to speak to you. They are searching for you now.'

    'The children... .'

    'They are perfectly well and Mulhall is taking care of them. Let's get it all over and then go home.'

    'Home. Oh, indeed, Fred, let us go home. I shall never, ever return here nor think of it any more. It's all finished, all dead and gone. Memories, everything is memories. The past has to be put behind one some day and forgotten.'

    Fred thought briefly of Bessie and his dead daughter, of Sue and Jessaline.

    'You are right, Ellie, the past has to be forgotten,' he said.

    
And forgiven
, he added to himself.

Chapter 37

Charlotte and George, now the new Lord Dillinger, arrived at Oreton Hall the next day. Benjamin, who was staying with friends in Scotland, said he would come as soon as he could arrange transport. The police were still there to conduct their enquiries and Ellie and Fred perforce remained to greet them. Mulhall had been sent back to London with the children.

    Charlotte and Ellie hugged one another for a long time.

    'Oh, Ellie, this is the most terrible thing! How has it all come about? What could ever induce Papa to take his own life? He just wasn't that sort of person!'

    Lord Dillinger's body was now washed and prepared by the undertakers and lay in state in the withdrawing room. Charlotte went up to it and looked on his cold, pale face, stern and sad even in death. She drew back a little, shook her head, and began to sob. Ellie put a comforting arm around her and stifled the terrible feeling of pain that was gathering up in her own stomach like a huge dark ball of lead. She too gazed down at him and thought
this man is my father!
It was still impossible to believe.

    She had loved him so much but as a godfather, not a father. No one could be the father to her that Joshua had been. Now she had to bear the fact that Joshua Farnham was not her father after all. It was more than a blow – it was a deep, piercing wounding. Thank God, he had died without ever knowing the shocking truth of how his beloved wife and his best friend had cheated him and fooled him all these years. Thank God for that reprieve at least! However, she bent down and kissed the dead white cheek gently. In the end, Dillie and Maria had perhaps suffered the most of all, knowing what they knew, feeling such love for one another, bearing this terrible secret. Poor Dillie!

    'Goodbye. I forgive you, Dillie,' she whispered, 'please forgive me too.'

    Charlotte looked at her in wonder at these words.

    'I don't understand it at all. What happened, Ellie? What happened?'

    'Come into Dillinger's study,' said Ellie, 'and I will tell you and George what happened.'

    Then Ellie showed them Lord Dillinger's will and told them what had led to his taking his own life.

    They sat and stared her in disbelief. Ellie, sitting before them looking grave and beautiful with a slight air of defiance about her, made the three onlookers feel a certain sense of awe. Fred remained silent, seated next to Ellie to give her some moral support. She was grateful for this, as she had no idea how the Dillingers were going to take the news. Particularly the news that she was their halfsister.

    'Did you not know he was ill, George?' she said gently.

    George, a stolid and sensible young man of twenty-five, continued to look at Ellie with his wooden, expressionless manner.

    'Father never spoke of such things to us; you were always the privileged one and
now
I understand why,'

    There was resentment in his voice and Ellie shrank a little. His rancour was likely to be because his father had left so much money to her own children, she knew that well enough. He couldn't care less about how many sisters his father might have engendered. There was no love lost between Lord Dillinger and his children though Charlotte sobbed copiously.

    Dillie had been so right, no one had cared for him but herself and even she had turned against him. It was so dreadful; she felt she would never forgive herself. Oh, to have those moments back – how differently she would have spoken to him. He was sick, dying; she could at least have been there to comfort him in those last days of his life. She might have found out more about her mother and himself, understood them better as individuals, not as parents. Now she felt the regret of unanswered questions that would remain floating forever in her heart.

    'It is hardly my fault, George,' she said with spirit. 'How do you imagine I feel knowing that the father I adored is not my real father at all? How do you think that revelation must feel?'

    'Oh, my poor, darling Ellie... it has been so terrible for you. I am glad of one thing only from this tragedy... that you are truly our sister. George, think of it, .Ellie is our sister and we must make her welcome amongst us. How can you be so surly?'

    George repented a little and said, 'It's the shock... I apologise, Eleanor. You have always felt like a sister, that's the thing. It's almost no surprise... especially you and Alfie... brother and sister, everyone could feel that if they considered the matter. You even looked alike come to think of it. What worries me is the scandal of it all and how are we to hush it all up? I suppose the servants will know everything by now, somehow they always do. We must try to keep it quiet and not allow the papers to blow it out of all proportion. Do you want to make your relationship with Father public?'

    'No, I don't,' said Ellie. 'As far as I am concerned I am the daughter of Joshua Farnham and always will be. I loved Dillie dearly and he loved me but he was not the dear man who brought me up. I won't have Joshua made a fool of, even though he is dead and past caring, by making this public knowledge. It is between us here and no one else need know. I would be happy to forgo the share that his lordship leaves my children if it will make you happier.'

    George looked suitably abashed. 'Ellie, I didn't mean to imply any dissatisfaction over the will. If it was my father's dying wish, then it must be honoured. However, I am grateful that you will keep his love affair with your mother a secret. What is the point now of stirring up such old and forgotten things?'

    'I agree.'

    'You
will
be my sister now, Ellie, and I shall know that and be happy for it,' said Charlotte eagerly and Ellie smiled a little and took the young girl's hand.

    'Thank you, dearest Lottie. You are the kindest and best person I know. You could resent and hate me knowing that your father treated me as his favourite daughter all these years and yet you do not. '

    'I have always loved and admired you and wished you
were
my sister,' said Charlotte. 'You are so brave, Ellie. Look how well you bear this nightmare, the horror of it all. And the police have been questioning you, which would terrify me... I'd feel somehow guilty even if I hadn't been there. You are so brave.'

    'Am I?' said Ellie and Fred feeling some wave of pain from her took her hand in his and squeezed it tightly and she squeezed it back, staring straight ahead with a strange look on her face.

When the police had satisfied themselves that there had been no foul play, Ellie and Fred were allowed to return home. Ellie knew she had been under some suspicion, perhaps still was, but the evidence on her side was too strong. Too many people had seen her run out of Lord Dillinger's study and half way across the lawn before the shot rang out in the study. Reluctantly the police let her go though they would have loved to find a scapegoat rather than darken with suicide the name of a peer and a member of the House of Lords. When his illness became known, it put a more acceptable slant upon the matter that silenced and satisfied the curious.

    George insisted that they returned to Hampstead in the Dillinger's carriage. On the journey home Ellie looked pale and shaken and Fred was troubled by her silence and the fact that she seemed unable to weep or speak. She just clutched at her stomach tightly as if she was holding something in that threatened to blow her apart. If only she would just sob on his shoulder as she had done by the river.

    As they entered the door of their house, she suddenly collapsed in Fred's arms and was taken to her bed. For days, Ellie lay in a tormented fever, unable to speak, to move and scarcely to take any food. Mulhall, devoted and determined to make her better, fed her chicken broth as if she was a baby.

    It was a nervous collapse, Doctor Hake told them, and Ellie needed rest and peace. She didn't even want to see the children at first and they, poor mites, were puzzled and troubled by their mother's strange withdrawal. They came to the door of her room and wanted to run to her and jump up onto the bed beside her as they had always done but Mulhall guarded the door like an old dragon and shushed them, finger on lips, face serious and stern. They withdrew frightened, feeling abandoned by the one warm, loving, openhearted being of their life. Even Papa was not available now for he spent all his time in the room with Mama and hardly spoke to them.

    Ellie was so ill that she was unable to attend the inquest on Lord Dillinger's death and the coroner, despite his wish to help the family by returning a verdict of accidental death, could not in truth do so. He had to announce that it was suicide while Lord Dillinger's mind was disturbed by the news of his illness, an illness that would have meant a slow and painful deterioration of his faculties.

    Ellie knew nothing of all this. Fred lived in terror of her dying and hung over Ellie as if he was a mother at the bedside of a sick child. Mulhall had managed to feed her mistress some broth and had settled her back on the pillows.

    'I'll sit by her now. You go, Mulhall.'

    'Sir, you ought to take some rest yourself, you've been with her all night.'

    'How can I rest, Mulhall! How can I leave her side when she's like this? I want my Ellie back, my beautiful, cheerful, healthy wife!'

    Mulhall's private thought was that if that was the case, he would do better to leave her be for he kept talking to her, bothering her with all sorts of wild nonsense.

    'Well, she ought to sleep, sir... won't you let me stay by her for a couple of hours while you snatch a bit of rest.'

    Fred sent her away with a grim look on his face that worried Mulhall. Suppose he was to fall ill as well? What would happen to those two poor little mites? And the other one, little Eleanor Winstone whose father seemed to have abandoned her to her fate? What a dreadful scandal it all was, Lord Dillinger shooting himself whilst they were all there. She could almost hear the tongues wagging in the kitchen already but they dared not say anything when she was around, she made sure of that.