A Dream of her Own (59 page)
John shook his head faintly and sat down on the other chair. He leaned back into the cushions until his face was in shadow and watched as Declan wolfed down the pie and then reached for another slice. At one point he paused and, with a scattering of flaky crumbs, he said, ‘Aren’t you going to have anything?’
‘I might ... later. But go on. I like to watch you enjoy yourself.’
‘Right. Suit yourself.’
John closed his eyes and tried to conjure up the little feasts that he and Matthew had shared together. Matthew had always provided them, bringing the delicious titbits from Moorside Towers. Sometimes there were things in his hamper that John had never seen, never tasted before. Had Matthew been trying to educate him just as he was trying to educate Declan now? He supposed he must have been but it had been done so subtly that John had never felt as though he were being patronized.
Declan was smart enough to know that he was. But he had obviously decided not to be offended. Why should he be? He’d done well out of John ever since the night they’d met in Pink Lane. John had been drawn to him immediately. Declan was tall and dark, just like Matthew, but there the resemblance ended. Matthew had been slim and elegant; Declan was burly and flashily dressed.
John was trying to do something about that too, and, if the truth were known, that was probably the reason that Declan was so compliant. Why should he argue if acquiescence not only meant fine food and wines but a whole new wardrobe?
And of course he was well paid for his services.
John felt the emotion well up and burn at the back of his throat: a mixture of grief and shame. Why had Matthew deserted him like that? If they had still been together he would not have had to go searching for relief and comfort from the kind of men who hung around the more questionable establishments. Men who were waiting for men like John, with plenty of money in their pockets.
He had been seen. There had been talk and it had got back to his uncle. He still burned with anger when he remembered the day that Walter Barton had called him into his office.
‘I always feared this day would come,’ he’d said sorrowfully, as if John had brought a plague of biblical proportions down on the family. ‘But I hoped that your marriage to Constance might have kept you on the straight and narrow. But now I see that it was all a sham. Poor Constance.’ His uncle had looked genuinely sad. ‘John, I do not hope for miracles but I can only urge you to be more discreet... to spend more time with your family. Would you not like a son to inherit your part of the business one day?’
How dare he talk to him like that? How dare he make him feel guilty because of what he had done to Constance? It hadn’t been a sham, had it? He had been attracted to her beauty; he had been genuinely fond of her, hadn’t he?
He had taken her from a life of poverty and hardship and given her a comfortable home, an allowance of her own, beautiful clothes, designed especially for her. And she had the girls, their daughters, to look after. Wasn’t that what women wanted? Babies to love and care for? Some wives were grateful if their husbands left them alone - why did Constance have to be one of those women who wanted more?
John heard a slight sound and he opened his eyes and looked up to find Declan standing over him, his right hand reaching out towards the watch chain looped across his waistcoat. He shivered. ‘What do you want?’
Declan straightened up and stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘Did I frighten you, darlin’?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You nearly jumped out of your skin. I thought you’d gone to sleep. Thought you was too tired for any fun. I was just going to check your watch. I was wondering whether I ought to scarper.’
John glanced quickly at the clock on the mantelpiece and away again. ‘No, don’t go.’ He was aware that he was gripping the arms of the chair ... the chair that had recently acquired a new loose cover.
Declan stepped back. ‘Go on then. I’ll sit down and have another glass of that wine while you get ready ... put your bonny frock on. That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one will it be tonight? The blue velvet or the green taffeta?’
‘I don’t know. Will you help me choose?’
‘Sure thing.’ Declan grinned salaciously and sipped his wine.
John stood up and took off his watch. He put the watch and the chain along with his pocket book on the mantelpiece next to the antique carriage clock that had been his father’s only gift to his mother. He was aware that Declan was watching him, slanting his gaze up over his wine glass. But that was part of the game, wasn’t it? The game he was playing with fate. He had not yet discovered how far he could go.
For a while Constance wasn’t sure whether the sobbing was part of her dream. What had she been dreaming about? She tried to hang on to the sounds, the images, but they curled away like snaking ribbons back into the shadows and they were gone. When she opened her eyes and sat up she could only remember that she had been frightened.
Now, with the morning sun streaming across her bed, she ought to have felt reassured. But she didn’t. Polly was standing over her with a face as white as paper - and she could still hear the sobbing although it had softened into a kind of stifled whimper.
‘The twins are still asleep, thank God,’ Polly told her before she could ask, ‘and so is Florence, although I don’t know how after the commotion Jane made.’
‘Jane?’
‘My sister. She works in this madhouse, remember?’
‘Polly, what is it? What on earth is the matter?’ Constance began to push the bedclothes aside.
Instead of answering, the maid went over to the door, which Constance noticed had been left ajar, and reached out to pull her younger sister, who was crying, into the room. She shut the door behind her and took hold of Jane’s shoulders. ‘Try to stop that,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve had a shock, but it isn’t over yet.’
By the time Constance had got out of bed and pulled on her robe, the girl was quiet.
‘Now be brave,’ her sister told her, ‘and tell Mrs Edington what you saw.’
‘Why can’t you tell her?’ the girl whimpered.
‘Because you were the first one to go into the sewing room and I want to be absolutely sure that we get it right.’
Jane turned to look at Constance but she still didn’t say anything.
‘Go on, pet,’ Polly said. ‘Look, I’ll start you off. You went upstairs to clean the hearth in the sewing room and you noticed the door was open ...’
‘... the door was open,’ Jane said in a thin childish voice as if she were repeating a lesson. ‘So I went in ... and I saw the lady on the floor ... and she had a bruise across her face and there was blood on the carpet ... and I think she’s hurt real bad ... and I screamed and I dropped the bucket - and there’s coal all over the floor, I’m sorry - and I ran back downstairs to the kitchen ... and I told Polly. Polly went up and had a look but I wouldn’t go in there again. That’s it.’
When she’d finished the litany she took a huge breath and immediately looked as though she were going to collapse like a rag doll with the stuffing knocked out of it.
Polly took hold of her shoulders again and looked her straight in the face. ‘Good girl. Now go downstairs as quiet as a mouse and make a pot of tea. Do you think you can do that?’
Jane nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t have to say anything more to anyone, ever.’
‘Don’t I? Not never?’
‘Not ever. Not even to our mam.’
Jane glanced at her sister gratefully and fled the room. Polly turned towards Constance. ‘Now you and me had better go upstairs.’
Constance followed Polly up to the top floor. Even though it was very early, the house was warm and the scents of the garden drifted in through the open windows of the upper floors of the house to mingle with the smell of lavender polish. She could hear a blackbird singing his heart out in the park nearby. She concentrated on enjoying all the signs of a beautiful summer’s day - anything rather than contemplate the horror of what she knew lay ahead.
The door was open but Polly stopped outside. She turned and faced Constance. ‘Two things,’ she said. ‘You know it’s not some lady, don’t you?’
‘Yes. And ...?’
‘And it’s not just a matter of being hurt real bad. I think he’s dead.’
He lay on his back on the fireside rug, his head turned to one side and his beautiful eyes wide and staring into the cold ashes in the hearth. Jane had been right. There was a terrible mark across his handsome face with trickles of dried blood running down from his brow on to his neck and his bare shoulders. A lace shawl had been pinned to his hair with a tortoiseshell comb, which now stood up at a cruel angle as if it were poised to pierce his skull.
This time her husband was dressed in emerald taffeta. What was it Matthew had said that day? That day which seemed so long ago now, when the three of them had been walking through the new arcade? John’s eyes had sparkled when he pointed to the display of fabrics in the shop window and said,
‘Whatabout the emerald taffeta?’
‘Whatabout the emerald taffeta?’
‘No. too bold ...’
Too bold,
Matthew had said.
Matthew had said.
Even though Constance had thought her husband and his friend had been discussing a new wardrobe for her, she had been aware of a sense of exclusion that day. They had been discussing their own plans, planning their own pleasure, and she was simply the means to achieve it. She had been used.
She sank to her knees beside her husband and Polly gasped. ‘Mind your robe,’ she said, and she pointed to a dark stain on the rug.
‘I think it’s wine,’ Constance said.
A wine bottle lay on its side not far from the body and another, nearly empty, stood on the low table beside two glasses and the remains of a pigeon pie.
‘I wondered where that pie had gone,’ Polly said inconsequentially. ‘And the cheese ... the cheek of it. Feedin’ his guttersnipe pals like that - and look where it gets him!’
Constance wondered how much Polly knew about the men that John had been bringing home and whether the tears that were coursing down her cheeks now were for John or for all of them, caught up in this nightmare.
‘It stinks in here!’ the maid said suddenly. ‘I’ll have to open the windows.’
She hurried over to the windows, still crying, and opened them wide to release the odours of tobacco, wine, stale food and ... what was the other smell? Was it blood, or fear? Had John been frightened before he died and did his terror linger?
Constance found herself looking around for the weapon. Some weapon must have been used to strike such a terrible blow. She saw that the poker had gone from the hearth.
‘The clock’s gone,’ Polly said suddenly. ‘The beautiful little carriage clock that Mrs Edington was so fond of.’ She had come back over and was staring at the mantelpiece. ‘What are we going to do? Call the police?’
Constance sat back on her heels and looked up at Polly. ‘I suppose we’ll have to,’ she said. ‘But I think Mr Barton should be here.’
Polly looked relieved. ‘Of course, John’s uncle. Do you want me to go for him? I can run. It should only take me about twenty minutes.’
‘Will Jane be all right?’
‘I’ll tell her that I’m going for the doctor. I think it’s best if she doesn’t know the truth of it - at least not until my brain can come up with some kind of explanation for what’s happened here tonight.’
‘I’m sorry, Polly. So sorry ...’ At last Constance began to cry.
The maid kneeled down beside her swiftly and took her in her arms. ‘There then,’ she said. ‘You haven’t got time for that, Mrs Edington, dear. Save those tears for later when we’ve got ourselves out of this awful muddle somehow.’
Constance moved back out of Polly’s arms and wiped her cheeks with her fingers. She smiled. ‘Go on, then. But don’t tell Mr Barton too much. Just say that there’s been an accident. I - I don’t want Mrs Barton and Esther to know.’
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