Chapter 28

 

Helen woke to bright sunshine, streaming in through the casement windows. She lay looking up at the unfamiliar bed hangings. It took her a moment to remember why she was in Paul Morrow’s bed.

The memory of the previous day came flooding back. Not the nightmare in the library, but those few moments with Paul. She screwed up her face as she remembered, she had practically thrown herself at him and he had pushed her away.

“You’re engaged to Tony Scarvell, Helen.”

Helen rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. She took a deep breath smelling a warm, male scent. Sighing, she sat up. The day had to be faced–Paul had to be faced.

She wandered into his sitting room, tying the belt on his dressing gown around her waist. For a moment she thought the room was empty but a shadow moved by the window and Paul turned to look at her.

She looked down at her bare feet and the enveloping dressing gown.

“I’m sorry, I must look a sight,” she said.

“I’m not exactly a ravishing beauty myself.” He gave her a rueful smile, touching the sticking plaster on his temple. As Sarah had rightly predicted he had the makings of a splendid black eye.

She flinched in sympathy. “Where did you sleep? Not on the day bed?” She glanced at the folded coverlet and pillow on the horsehair sofa that served as a daybed.

Paul gave the day bed a wry look. “I’ve slept on worse.”.

Helen ran a hand through her uncombed hair and shook her head. “It all seems unreal now, like some awful nightmare. Terrible while I was going through it, but gone in the daylight.” She shrugged and smiled at him. “I’ll go and have a bath and get dressed and then what do we do?”

 “We’ll start with breakfast. Can you face the library again?”

She nodded but didn’t move. Their eyes met. The library would be easy, there was so much else that needed to be said. “Paul, we have to talk about…about…”

He visibly stiffened, interrupting her. “If there’s there anything I might have said, or done, over the last few days...? If I’ve upset you in anyway…? Anything I said in that damn tunnel?”

She shook her head. “No, that’s not it. Paul, I’ve buried Charlie, I can let him go now. My questions are answered. I know now, he died in your arms and not alone but what happened that night is between you and him. I just want the answer to one last question. If Charlie had got back to the British lines that night, would he have lived?”

Paul shook his head. “No.”

She held up her hand. “Thank you. That’s all I need to know.”

He looked into her eyes for a moment as he said. “And thank you for understanding that there will be some things I can never talk about. I have learned to live with those years, Helen. While I saw things no man should ever see, I’m no different from any of the thousands of men who fought in the trenches. We just have different ways of dealing with what happened and I prefer to think about what is ahead, not what has been.”

She nodded and smiled. “I understand that. I suppose it depends what is ahead–for both of us.”

He paused for a moment before responding and, turned back to the window as he said, “The answer to that is quite simple. You’re going to marry a good and honorable man and I’m going back to an archaeological dig in Mesopotamia.”

Helen put her hand to her throat, focusing on his broad, straight back and willing him to turn and face her but he remained quite still, staring out at the Morrow inheritance. She resisted the urge to hit him.

* * * *

The devastation in the library was worse than they had imagined. All the library books that had been taken from the new bookshelf lay scattered on the floor, pages torn, spines broken, amidst broken china and shattered paintings. Those books still in the old bookcase were untouched, as were Pollard’s tools and the portmanteau.

“It looks like a battlefield. Do you suppose we won?” Helen observed.

“Lucky for me whatever it was didn’t touch the actual weapons.” Paul indicated Pollard’s tools.

She looked up at his bruised face. Or we could both be dead, she thought.

They stood at the table looking at the portmanteau. Helen viewed the object with revulsion. Just seeing it brought back the terror of the previous day.

Paul picked up a screwdriver from where Pollard had left it and forced the locks. They gave without too much effort and he pulled the bag open.

He looked into the bag and shrugged. “It’s only what I’d expect. Clothes.”

Helen took the bag from him and began to lay the contents out on the table. The ephemera of Suzanna’s life appeared to be in a good state of preservation, despite the damp tomb where the bag had lain.

“But this doesn’t make sense. This bag hasn’t been properly packed. Things have just been thrust in here without any order. For instance, why is her cloak in here?” Helen pulled out a sturdy blue wool cloak. “Wouldn’t she have been wearing it? And this?” She produced a squashed bonnet of matching blue velvet. “No lady, even one running away with her lover, would pack her bonnet in a valise. From what I could tell from the skeleton, she wore only a light dress and house shoes.”

She carefully emptied the bag of its several petticoats, a couple of dresses, walking boots, stockings, hairbrushes, a purse with some gold coins in it and, chillingly, a poker wrapped in a shawl.

They both stared at the last object. Paul picked it up and looked at it closely.

“Look at this, Helen.”

Helen’s eyes widened as he indicated a dark stain on the head of the poker. “Is that what I think it is?”

“There is hair imbedded in it. I am fairly certain that is blood,” Paul confirmed.

Helen took a step back from the table, her hand over her mouth.

“Are you all right?” Paul turned to her as she subsided into one of the chairs by the fireplace.

“Her skull had been smashed. I thought maybe she had slipped on the wall and fallen, hitting her head on the ledge, but that...thing...” she pointed at the poker, “that is a murder weapon.” Her eyes widened. “Paul, someone beat her to death with that poker.”

He walked over to the wall and swung the entrance open. He took one last look at the poker and threw it into the hole. Helen heard it hit the ledge and then a splash as it rolled off into the water.

“Why did you do that?”

He shook his head. “We don’t need it.”

Helen forced herself to return to the contents of the portmanteau spread across the table.

“Something puzzles me. If she were leaving, she should have been wearing boots and her cloak? It would have been cold in September.” Helen spread her hands over the blue cloak. “And why did she risk going by the tunnel again? She could have just walked out of the door with no one to stop her.”

Paul shrugged. “What are you thinking, Helen?”

She looked up at him. “I don’t think she was going to leave.” Helen said, running her hands over the contents of the portmanteau. “There’s something missing but I can’t think what it is.”

Paul picked up the blue velvet bonnet. “If you’re right and she was murdered, do you have any ideas about the murderer?”

“It has to be Robert,” Helen said. “He’d hit her once and if he found out about her affair, he could have turned violent again.” She paused and looked up at Paul. “There’s only one clue left, we haven’t explored. Those last entries in the diary. Paul, you must finish the diary.”

Paul set the bonnet down and glanced at his watch. “The diary will have to wait, Helen. I must go and see Evelyn. I haven’t been for days.”

“I went yesterday.”

He looked at her, one eyebrow lifted in surprise. “Did you indeed?”

“Despite everything she is still my mother-in-law, and she deserves a better daughter than I have been.”

“Then we’ll go together,” he said.

* * * *

Pollard drove them to the hospital in Birmingham. Evelyn had been moved to a private room and impulsively Helen bent over to kiss the alabaster flesh of her mother-in-law’s temple, appalled at how frail and old she looked.

The nurse picked up the chart at the end of the bed and flicked through it. “There’s been a big improvement, sir,” she said, addressing Paul. “She’s opened her eyes and seems more restless. I’ll leave you in peace. Visiting hours finish in thirty minutes.”

Paul crossed to the bed and picked up Evelyn’s hand. Helen drew up a chair and sat down.

“When I think of the hours she spent with me when I was in hospital,” Paul said more to himself than Helen. “She came every week without fail, even when I was in no condition to acknowledge her.”

“How long were you in hospital?”

He thought for a moment. “Hospital, rehabilitation, back to hospital again for more operations. Evelyn made sure I had the best doctors but it was nearly two years before I came back to Holdston. By then my uncle was dead, the war was over and Holdston had become my problem.”

“And she came every week?”

“Except for the month when my uncle died.”

“For someone who seemed not to care much for you, that seems strange,” Helen said.

 “I always thought she saw it as her duty.” He shrugged. “But then my relationship with Evelyn has always been complicated.”

“I suppose she is your only living relative.”

He looked up at her. “Evelyn and I are only related by marriage. I have only one living blood relative, your daughter, Alice. But you’re right. Despite everything, she is my responsibility as much as she saw me as hers and she will fight for those she loves. You know the story of my engagement?”

Helen nodded.

“Fi came to the hospital to tell me she was breaking off the engagement. It happened to be during one of Evelyn’s visits and she went for Fi in a fury. I’ve no idea what she said but it reduced Fi to tears.”

“Did you mind?”

“About Fi? No. She did write me a letter eventually. Quite a nice letter. Truth was she didn’t want to marry me, any more than I wanted to marry her. We only got engaged because it seemed the thing to do at the time. The war had just started and we were young. I was only twenty-one and she was seventeen.” He set his aunt’s frail hand back on the bedcovers and looked across at Helen. “There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s go home.”

* * * *

On their way, they stopped at the vicarage. They found Alice playing cribbage with Lucy in the drawing room and seemed quite happy to remain at the vicarage. To Helen’s relief, neither the vicar nor his wife asked about their battered appearances.

With a promise to collect Alice the following morning, Paul and Helen returned to the hall, where Sarah had supper ready. They all ate in the kitchen seated around the kitchen table.

“Poor soul,” Sarah said, pouring the tea. “Do you suppose she’s at peace now?” Helen asked.

Paul looked at Sarah. “Well, Sarah?”

“Why are you looking at me?” Sarah asked, bridling. “Do you want to know if I can still sense her?”

Helen nodded.

Sarah closed her eyes. “I can’t feel anything, but this is the wrong part of the house. I’ve never sensed ‘em down here.”

Helen looked up at the ceiling. “I think they’re gone. Although I feel we still have to find her murderer.”

Sarah shivered. “Imagine that poor thing down there all those years and no one knowing and the whole world saying she’d run off with another man. That’s the scandal, in my book.”

“I agree, Sarah,” Helen thought about the dreadful things that Lady Cecilia Morrow had written about her missing daughter-in-law.

“Do you want me to close off the ‘ole in the library again?” Pollard asked.

“I suppose so.” Paul picked up a piece of Sarah’s cherry cake. “Mind you, all that water can’t be doing the foundations any good. I should get it sealed.” He sighed. “God knows what that will cost.”

“I’ll have a good look tomorrow,” Pollard glanced at his wife. “You don’t think it will come back, do you?”

Paul shook his head. “Whatever it was, it was trying to stop us finding Suzanna.” He rose to his feet. “I’m going to have a look at that last diary entry. Helen?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want to join me?”

Helen nodded. “I’d better telephone Tony first.”

“I’ve laid a fire in your grate, sir,” Sarah said. “It’s chilly tonight.”

Helen rang Wellmore, telling Tony that while Evelyn still remained unconscious she felt she should remain at Holdston. While not exactly a lie, she still felt guilty about misleading him.

Upstairs in his room, Paul switched on his light and indicated the grate. “Can you manage the fire, Helen? I’ll pour us both a brandy. God knows we’ve earned it.”

Helen set the match to the kindling and sat back on her haunches, taking the proffered glass from Paul. He wandered over to his table, picked up the small leather bound book, and flicked through the pages to find the right spot.

Helen stared at him.

“That’s it!”

He looked up in surprise. “What is?”

“The thing that was missing from her bag. Her diary! She would never have left her diary.”

Paul looked down at the book in his hand.

“She wrote her last entry and secreted it back among her books, intending to return to it,” Helen continued. “Even if she didn’t intend to take it, she would have destroyed it, not left it in her room for anyone to find.”

“Anyone with a desire to read a commentary on one of the Saints,” Paul remarked drily. “Maybe she just forgot it? As you say, she packed in a hurry.”

Helen walked over to the table and took the book from him. “No, it would have been the first thing she packed.”

He took it back from her. “If you want me to finish it, I had better get on with it.”

Helen picked up the other book that sat on his table. “Is this your copy of Homer?” She flicked open to the first page and gasped. “This was Robert’s!”

He nodded. “It was a birthday present from my uncle.”

Helen turned the pages. “Where’s your translation?”

He handed her a bound notebook, the leather cover stained and creased. “Excuse its appearance. I had it with me when...I’m afraid some of the stains may be blood. I did try and clean it.”

Helen traced the dark stains on the cover. The price Paul had paid for his life.

“This is what you worked on in the trenches?”

“War is ten percent terror and ninety percent sheer boredom. Homer filled the boredom more than adequately.” He smiled. “I hope you can read my writing. It may be a bit shaky in bits. It’s hard to write when the shells are falling around you.”

Helen poured them both another brandy and settled down in the large chair by the crackling fire, and opened Paul’s notebook. He wrote in pencil, his hand firm and sure despite the conditions under which he had been working.

Taking a sip of brandy she abandoned herself to the conversations of the gods as they decide Troy’s fate. Another futile war in another time. Paul’s translation moved in a gentle rhythm, capturing the grace and beauty of the prose. “Paul, this is wonderful,” Helen said. “Are you going to have it published?”

He looked up and shook his head. “I’m glad you like it, Helen, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever finish it.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “It was a means to an end and I think, maybe, I’ve reached the end. Like Odysseus’ Penelope it is time to put the past away and concentrate on the present. Now let me finish this.”

* * * *

The clock on the mantelpiece showed nearly midnight before Paul straightened and pushed back his chair with a scraping noise that woke Helen, who had been dozing in the chair.

She sat up with a start. “Finished?”

Paul stretched, easing his left shoulder with a wince. Drawing a deep breath, he gathered up the papers on his desk. “I think we have our answer.”

She looked at him, fully awake and her eyes bright with curiosity. “Do we?”

“You read it and tell me what you think?”

He handed her the papers and she read aloud:

“September 9: Last evening Robert called me to sit with him before the fire. I took a seat and picked up a piece of needlework. ‘Put it down, Anna and come sit with me,” he said. ‘I have done you a great wrong and caused you great hurt.’ I did as he bid and he placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘Anna,’ he said softly. ‘I seek your forgiveness for what passed between us. I have been to hell and I hope my feet are now turned back on a path of righteousness.’

“ ‘What do you mean?’ asked I, seeing a new pain in his face. He buried his head in his hands and began to weep. ‘Ah Anna, such sights as no man should see...’

“ ‘You must not talk of it,’ I said, remembering Lady Morrow’s edict. He looked up at me. ‘Please let me talk,’ he said. ‘I must unburden myself.’ I took his hand and kissed it. ‘Then talk, if you must.’ And talk he did, until the small hours of the morning, of his time in Spain. Of the friends he had seen killed and of that fateful day before Badajoz. His tales were horrific and I began to understand the anger within him, the frustration of a man burdened with a terrible pain that those he loves cannot share. After a while the words ceased to have meaning, I watched just his face and his eyes, seeing for the first time since his return a certain peace and the shadow of the man I had once loved. When he was spent, he slept in his chair. I covered him with a blanket and stole away to my bed to toss sleepless with indecision.”

Helen looked up at Paul and he saw the empathy in her eyes. It would have taken enormous trust on Robert’s part to talk to her of his time in Spain. Helen understood that, just as she understood why Paul would never talk about what had passed between himself and Charlie in no man’s land.

“Go on,” he said.

“September 10: Last night I went to my husband. As I slipped into the bed beside him, he took me in his arms and held me close. We did not make love, just lay together in silence. He slept fitfully. His leg bothers him again and I was most concerned not to cause him more pain or distress. As the first light of the day began to break, he awoke and kissed me. At his direction we made love and when we were done, he wept, kissing my hair and calling me his ‘dearest.’ When I left him I called the maid for a bath. I lay in its steamy depths and wept as if my heart would break.

“Robert rose and dressed for breakfast and spent the day with us, laughing and teaching his son to play chess. In the evening, he insisted on taking a walk in the garden with his mother. My fear that it would overtax him has come to pass and tonight he seems tired and feverish.

“September 11: Robert is grievous ill. His exertions of the previous day have quite overdone his fragile strength. The doctor has attended and bled him. He says the wound in his leg has reopened and must be attended to. I fear this setback will mean Robert will once more be bedridden for the next few weeks. I sat with him in the afternoon and read to him from a most amusing novel by ‘A Lady’ called Sense and Sensibility which I obtained while I was in London. It was quite the talk of the salons. Her observation of life in country society are unerringly accurate and quite biting in their comment. Lady Morrow would disapprove, I am sure but it was nice to see him smile though he is so weak and in such great pain. He reached out a hand across the bedclothes and encircled mine, once more beseeching my forgiveness for the cruel way he has treated me these past weeks.”

Helen stared at the paper in her hand. “Robert was bound to his bed,” she said, looking up at Paul. “He could not have physically stopped Suzanna leaving.”

Paul nodded and she continued.

“September 12: It lacks but an hour until the appointed time when I am to flee with S. He will be waiting for me at the churchyard with a coach and our passage for Port Jackson. All that is left is for me to pack a portmanteau and slip away. In doing so I leave behind my two children and a husband that I see now loves me beyond measure and needs me. If I leave it will destroy him utterly. If I stay, what passed between us cannot be undone but it can be forgiven. What appeared such a simple decision but a few days previously now presents itself entirely differently. If I do leave, my husband and my children will be disgraced and I shall spend my life looking over my shoulder wondering when we shall encounter someone who knows us, knows our past and all the hurt and anguish I will have caused will be revealed. My clock has chimed twelve. My mind is certain. My decision sure. It is time to close this book and put it safely to one side and pen a note which I will leave safely with the first baronet. When I do not appear as arranged, S will know to look there. What I will do tonight will be for the best of reasons - for love of a man and that man is my husband.”

Helen looked up at Paul, her eyes misting with tears.

“You were right, Helen,” he said. “She was not going to leave him and Robert could not have been the murderer.”

“So what happened?” Helen frowned.

“She left her room, in her day clothes as you observed,” Paul said thoughtfully.

“She reached the library, opened the secret door and then...” Helen continued

“Go back,” Paul said. “Retrace her steps. She slept in the green bedroom. To reach the library she had to pass this room.”

“Where Robert slept?”

“Robert, who was grievously ill and incapacitated with his bad leg. As you said, even if he had heard her, I can tell you from experience he would have been in no position to follow her, let alone do her any harm.”

“She would have had to pass Lady Morrow’s bedchamber, your mother’s room.” Helen looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Cecilia. We have forgotten about Lady Morrow. Her room was above the library. Suzanna would have had to go past her door and down the stairs and then open the secret door. If Cecilia was still awake she would have heard everything.”

“But why not before?”

“Because Suzanna’s trysts were during the day or at times when Cecilia was otherwise occupied and Suzanna was thought to be ensconced in the library or on some other errand. It makes sense now. Can’t you see, Paul?” Helen felt the excitement rising.

Paul frowned. “If Cecilia heard her go past, she could have followed her down the stairs and–”

“Paul. Cecilia is our vengeful spirit who didn’t want the truth revealed. She heard Suzanna go past.” Helen’s hand went to her wrist. “Did she try to stop her? In the struggle did Suzanna fall down the stairs or was she pushed?” She frowned. “I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I think the evidence points to her pushing Suzanna down the stairs.”

“Do you remember if any of her bones were broken?”

Helen frowned. “She had a broken femur but I put that down to her falling off the ladder and then not being able to climb back up again.”

Paul’s lips tightened. “What if Suzanna fell down the stairs and broke her leg. As she lay on the floor, Cecilia picked up the poker from the fireplace and finished off her troublesome daughter-in-law with one quick blow to the head.”

Helen’s brow creased. “Oh Paul, how awful but it makes sense. Then all she had to do was dispose of the body down the hole and go to Suzanna’s bedchamber, pack her bag with what she thought an absconding wife would take with her and throw the valise down after her. She closed the wall up and went back to bed with no one being any the wiser. Only she missed the diary.”

“Cecilia may have had her suspicions about Suzanna and Stephenson for some time,” Paul observed. “Remember, she says in a letter that ‘there have been rumors’ about her daughter-in-law.”

“More than that. She’d disapproved of the marriage to Robert from the first. Suzanna’s flighty behavior only confirmed her worst fears. And Robert? Poor Robert who loved her? Did Cecilia think that by getting rid of Suzanna all would be well with her son?”

“I am sure she did,” Paul said. “But she didn’t understand what Robert had been through in Spain, the things he had seen, what he had suffered.”

Helen continued. “She didn’t understand and wouldn’t even try. Robert had come back from the Spanish Peninsula every bit as shell shocked as any soldier from the Great War.”

“And then to believe he had been abandoned by his wife, little wonder he took his own life,” Paul concluded.

“So Cecilia lost her son after all,” Helen said. “How sad.”

Paul refilled his glass and joined Helen beside the fire, taking the seat across from her. They sat in silence staring at the dancing flames and the glowing coals. Helen’s thoughts were of Paul and Charlie and how little difference there had been between their experiences and that long distant war that had sent the wounded and damaged Robert Morrow back home.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour jerking her out of her reverie. “Look at the time. I should go to bed.”

As she stood, he rose from his chair and took a step to her, putting a hand on her arm. “Don’t go, Helen. Stay with me tonight.”