Hearts and Diamonds (26 page)

They were both too aroused for the sex to last long. A minute or so of low moans and ‘oh yeahs’ from Jason, and the two of them collapsed, sated and sweaty, on to the duvet.

‘Only one thing could have improved that start to the day,’ said Jason, once words returned to him.

‘Oh? And what’s that?’

‘Getting inside your sweet, tight little arse.’

He reached around to cup and squeeze it.

‘After all,’ he said, ‘it belongs to me.’

‘Does it now?’ Jenna wanted to argue, but in her heart, she couldn’t. She wanted to give him this gift.

‘You know it does.’ He kissed her parched lips. ‘So tell me, babe. Is it on the cards?’

‘I never say never,’ she said lightly.

‘Never’s a long time to be looking at your hot, smacked bum without being able to have it.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Here’s the deal. We work up to it, little by little, and if I’m ready by the day of the private view, you can do it that night.’

‘Are you serious? My own private view, after the private view?’

‘If you want to put it like that. But we’ll work up to it, remember. I’m not going into it cold.’

‘Cold is the last thing you’ll be,’ promised Jason. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stock up on lube and stuff. You’ll be good and ready by the time the show comes round. You might even want it sooner.’ He winked.

‘Don’t hold your breath. It’s a big idea to get used to. I’m not as grossed out by the thought as I used to be, though.’ She didn’t add that she was secretly highly aroused by it. Best to let him think she was nervous, so that he took it as slowly and gently as possible.

‘You won’t regret it,’ he said, drawing her into ecstatic kisses of gratitude.

Withdrawing, sleepy-eyed again despite their having only recently woken up, he said, ‘Speaking of regrets.’

‘Oh? What? What are you regretting?’ Jenna’s eyes opened wide from the near-slumber into which she was so pleasantly falling.

‘Not me. I’ve got no regrets, believe me.’ He kissed her again. ‘I was thinking of our ghost mate. Her from a hundred and fifty years ago. I’m going to be listening out for funny noises again tonight, now that I know a bit about her. We still don’t know how she ended up as a pile of bones in the cellar.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose
that’ll
be in her diary, unless the killer adds an entry of their own.’

‘No, but there’ll be clues. I mean, already she’s got a weirdo husband, two stepdaughters who hate her guts and none of the servants are very friendly either.’

‘I thought Lawrence Harville said it was a suicide.’

‘Well, if it is, the diary’ll let us know, yeah? She’ll sound all depressed and start talking about ending it all, I suppose. Give us a look. Did you unpack it?’

‘I think so.’ Jenna reached an arm over to the bedside table and scrabbled in the drawer until she found the fabric bag in which she kept the book.

‘So we’d got to the wedding night?’ she said, trying to chase away the blur in her brain and remember their last reading.

‘Yeah, and he was a bit weird and she felt weird about it too,’ contributed Jason.

‘So that was March . . .’ She flipped through the pages. ‘Oh. Nothing now until May. Here.’

May 3rd

I had resolved to keep this diary no longer. As a married woman, I thought it behoved me to make my husband my confidant and recipient of my deepest thoughts and feelings.

But there are things I cannot tell him – that he is deaf to – and so, with reluctance, I take up my pen once more.

I have done what I consider my best to please him and be a good wife. I have always been patient and considerate of him and the burden of responsibility he carries. I am highly sensible of my good fortune in being chosen as his bride.

But I can no longer remain silent on the subject of his daughters. My daughters, as I suppose I must call them. But their behaviour prevents it. I cannot see them as children of mine at all, for they are so filled with hate and spite that I make it my study to avoid them whenever possible.

They have cut up my dresses, filled my escritoire with worms and snails from the garden, emptied my scent bottle and refilled it with spirit vinegar. Yet I have shielded them on each occasion, telling myself that they are overset by the sudden change in domestic circumstances and are to be more pitied than censured.

Yesterday, however, I could no longer contain myself.

The day being sunny, I took myself into the garden with my needlework while D kept to his study, as he so often does. I had ordered a little tisane and some light sponge cake from the kitchen and the girls offered – unusually, but I took it as progress – to bring it up for me.

I promised them cake if they were kind enough to do this, and they went to the kitchen with a great show of enthusiasm. Before they left, Susannah even called me ‘Mother’. ‘We should be pleased to, Mother.’ I was as happy as I have ever been in these weeks since my marriage, wondering if at last the difficult days were past and we could look forward to peace and family unity hereafter.

You will perhaps have already grasped that this was not to be so.

The tray was brought out with great care and ceremony, the prettiest china plate used for the cake. My tisane, in its delicate bone cup, looked a little paler than I was accustomed to, but I supposed the infusion may have been more than usually hurried by the girls in their excitement.

They sat with me at the wrought iron table, watching eagerly as I divided up the cake and poured them pink lemonade from a jug they had asked to be made up whilst on their errand.

Then, as I raised my own cup to my lips, their eyes were avid, almost gleaming, and I felt suddenly rather disturbed.

‘What is it, girls?’ I asked.

They shrugged and looked impatient.

‘Take your tea,’ urged Maria. ‘Do not mind us.’

I raised the cup once more, but before it met my lips, I became aware that it smelled quite unlike my customary herbal blend. In fact, the smell was strong, and familiar, but for a moment I could not place it.

When I did, I dashed the cup down in horror.

The girls’ faces fell.

‘Why do you not drink?’ asked Maria belligerently.

‘Oh, you little monsters, is it really possible
. . .?
’ I could not believe two well-bred little girls were capable of such a thing at first, but their guilty demeanours confirmed my worst suspicions.

‘We have done nothing wrong!’ they protested.

‘Nothing wrong? You see nothing wrong in
. . .
in
. . .
what you have done?’

I had risen to my feet and my voice was sufficiently raised to draw the attention of my husband, who joined us on the patio with evident displeasure.

‘What have my daughters done?’ he growled. ‘Of what do they stand accused?’

‘My love, I can hardly say the words. It is too repulsive. Too indecent. Too altogether shocking.’

‘We have done nothing,’ the girls insisted.

‘Let us see if your father agrees,’ I said, handing him the teacup. ‘Look at this. Breathe in its scent. What do you think it is?’

He did as requested. His response to the final question was too coarse to reproduce here, but suffice to say that it was composed of four letters and referred to the natural waste liquid of the body.

‘Maria? Susannah?’ He sought an explanation.

‘Papa, we have done nothing wrong. We went to the kitchen, asked for the tray to be made up, and brought it. That was all we did.’

He turned to me, gruff, not meeting my eye.

‘You see. They are not guilty of any wrongdoing.’

I was speechless. I could do no more than look wildly from husband to stepdaughters until my neck began to ache with tension.

It has been useless to mention the subject to David ever since this scene was played out. He insists that somebody below-stairs was playing a prank, and he refuses to take the matter further. The girls, at least, have not been insufferable about it, but have kept away from me. Is this the most I can ask?

It is unfair. Unfair and unjust, and I feel like the enemy in my own home.

What am I to do? What could anybody do?

These unnatural children have had nothing but kindness from me, but I resolve from henceforth to have no more to do with them. I will leave them to their own devices and be a stranger to them until their father deigns to take my part, or they start at their new school in September.

What more can be done?

‘Shit,’ said Jason, apparently impressed. ‘They actually pissed in her teacup? That’s hardcore.’

‘They do seem awfully disturbed,’ said Jenna. ‘They need therapy. If only the Victorians believed in it. I feel sorry for them. And her. All of them. Except stupid Harville, of course, turning a blind eye. That won’t do anyone any favours.’

‘Who do you think kills her then? Surely not the kids. That’s crazy.’

Jenna shook her head. ‘You’re very convinced it’s murder. It could be an accident. It might not even be her.’

‘So what was the diary doing in the cellar then? She took it down with her. Perhaps she knew they were going to kill her and she left it there as evidence. Come on. What’s the next entry?’

May 12th

At last I have won out and persuaded David that the girls must be sent away to school sooner than the autumn.

I made no more mention of the last incident and all was quiet until two days since, when I joined David in the study after supper in order to speak seriously with him.

‘My love,’ I said, scarcely knowing how to say what was in my thoughts.

‘Do you care for brandy?’ he asked me, and I rather thought I did. Perhaps it would nerve me.

‘There is something I really must tell you,’ I continued.

He looked displeased, as if he expected me to launch into a diatribe against the girls again, but I waved my hand to show this was not my intention.

‘No, I have nothing to say about the girls, not on this occasion.’

‘Then what, my love? Have we received an invitation?’

‘No. It is simply that this month, that which I would normally expect to come has not come and
. . .
’

He looked more impatient still.

‘What do you expect to come? A letter? Some form of package?’

I laughed with frustration and relief.

‘No, no, I merely mean
. . .
I think I may be
. . .
That is I cannot be sure
. . .
but
. . .
’

At last his visage showed signs of comprehension.

‘Do you mean to tell me that
. . .?
’ He rose from his chair, and I rose to accept his outstretched hands. ‘A son?’

‘Well
. . .
a child,’ I said, laughing at his excitement.

‘Yes, yes, of course. What am I doing? What am I saying? Sit down, you must sit down, in your condition
. . .
’

‘Of course, it is very early yet. Probably too early even to call the doctor.’

‘Nonsense, I shall have him called at once.’ He rang the bell pull above the mantel and a servant was dispatched to fetch the doctor straight away.

‘Oh no,’ I protested. ‘He must not let us disturb his evening. Another day will do just as well.’

But David would not be dissuaded.

What a happy evening, what kisses and fond words, what talk of names and schools followed.

It was only interrupted by a loud crash from outside the door.

Upon investigation, a bust had fallen from its plinth on to the hall floor. The sound of scurrying footsteps on the stairs could be heard as we picked it up and replaced it.

‘Walls have ears,’ said David grimly.

‘Oh, leave them be,’ I said. ‘They are to be big sisters. It is exciting news for them as well.’

But the next day, after the doctor had been and gone and declared it too early to say for sure, but possible, if not even probable that I was expecting a baby, a terrible thing happened.

I walked out on to the patio for my customary hour of reading. Before I had gone two steps, a large, heavy item fell and hit me upon the shoulder, later shattering upon the paving stones beside me. It proved to be a large pitcher of the sort used to fill the washbasins in the bedrooms. It did not quite knock me out, but I fell to my knees, shocked, and there cut my hand on a shard of the pottery.

‘Oh help,’ I managed to cry, but nobody came to my relief for some time.

It was Eliza who found me, still on my hands and knees, bleeding on to the patio stones.

‘Gracious heavens, ma’am, whatever’s happened?’

She tore off a strip of her apron to bind my hand, then helped me to the patio chair.

‘Did you drop it?’ she asked, indicating the pitcher before going to clear up the worst of the breakage. ‘Why would you bring a thing like that out here?’

‘No, no,’ I said, once my breath had settled. ‘It fell. Or was thrown. From an upstairs window.’

I looked up, but whoever may have been there was long gone.

‘Thrown? Oh, who would be so wicked?’

She collected each shard in her apron and tied it tight.

‘Shall I bring you some water, ma’am? Or should I call the doctor? You look awful pale.’

‘Oh, I can’t disturb him again for nothing. He is already vexed with me for having him called out before.’

Eliza smiled at me – the first time I think she had ever shown me more than indifference.

‘Blow him,’ she said. ‘If you needs a medic, you needs one.’

‘I don’t need one. Could you
. . .
Could you find my husband, please?’