Mistress of Mellyn (34 page)

” Connan’s not back, I suppose?”

” No, I don’t think he can possibly be here before midnight. He wrote that he had business to attend to this morning. I expect he’ll arrive tomorrow. Won’t you come in?”

” Do you know, I rather hoped you’d be alone.”

” Did you?”

” I wanted to have a look at the chapel… that squint, you know.

Ever since you gave me Miss Jansen’s message I’ve been eager to see it. I didn’t say so in front of Peter. He’s apt to laugh at my enthusiasm.

”

” Do you want to have a look at it now?”

” Yes, please. I’ve a theory about it. There may be a door in the panelling which leads to another part of the house. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could discover it and tell Connan about it when he arrives?”

” Yes,” I agreed, ” it would.”

” Let’s go now then.”

We went through the hall and, as we did so, I glanced up at the peep, because I had an uncanny feeling that we were being watched. I thought I saw a movement up there, but I was not sure, and said nothing.

We went along to the end of the hall, through the door, down the stone steps, and were in the chapel.

The place smelt damp. I said; ” It smells as though it hasn’t been used for years.” And my voice echoed weirdly through the place.

Celestine did not answer. She had lighted one of the candles which stood on the altar. I watched the long shadow which the flickering light threw against the wall.

” Let’s get into the squint,” she said. ” Through this door. There is another door in the squint itself which opens on to the walled garden. That was the way the lepers used to come in.”

She carried the candle high and I found that we were in a small chamber.

” This is the place,” I said, ” which is bigger than most of its kind.”

She did not answer. She was pressing different parts of the wall.

I watched her long fingers at work.

Suddenly she turned and smiled at me. ” I’ve always had a theory that somewhere in this house there is a priest’s hole … you know, the hidy hole of the resident priest into which he scuttled when the queen’s men arrived. As a matter of fact I know that one TreMellyn did toy with the idea of becoming a Catholic. I’ll swear there is a priest’s hole somewhere. Connan would be delighted if we found it. He loves this place as much as I do … as much as you’re going to. If I found it it would be the best wedding present I could give him, wouldn’t it? After all, what can you give people who have all they want?”

She hesitated, and her voice was high with excitement. ” Just a minute. There’s something here.” I came dose to her, and caught my breath with amazement, for the panel had moved inward and shown itself as a long narrow door.

She turned to look at me and she looked unlike herself. Her eyes were brilliant with exdtement. She put her head inside the aperture and was about to go forward when she said: ” No, you first. It’s going to be your house. You should be the first to enter it.”

I had caught her exdtement. I knew how pleased Connan would be.

I stepped ahead of her and was aware of an unrecognisable pungent odour.

She said: ” Have a quick look. It’s probably a bit foul in there.

Careful. There are probably steps. ” She held the candle high, and I saw there were two of them. I went down those steps and, as I did so, the door shut behind me.

” Celestine!” I cried in terror. But there was no answer. ” Open that door,” I screamed. But my voice was caught and

I

was a prisoner too—Celestine’s prisoner.

The darkness shut me in. It was cold and eerie—foul, evil. Panic seized me. How can I explain such terror? There are no words to describe it. Only those who have suffered it could understand.

Thoughts—hideous thoughts—seemed to be battering on my brain. I had been a fool. I had been trapped. I had accepted what seemed obvious, I had walked the way she who wished to be rid of me had directed; and like a fool I had asked no questions.

My fear numbed my brain as it did my body.

I was terrified.

I mounted the two steps. I beat my fists against what now seemed to be a wall. ” Let me out. Let me out …” I cried.

But I knew that my voice would not be heard beyond the lepers’ squint.

And how often did people go to the chapel?

She would slip away . no one would know she had even been in the house.

I was so frightened I did not know what to do. I heard my own voice sobbing out my terror, and it frightened me afresh because, for the moment, I did not recognise it as my own.

I felt exhausted and limp. I knew that one could not live for long in this dark, damp place. I pulled at the wall until I tore my nails and I felt the blood on my hands.

I began to look about me because my eyes were becoming familiar to the gloom. Then I saw that I was not alone.

Someone had come here before me. What was left of Alice lay there. At last I had found her.

” Alice,” I screamed. ” Alice. It is you then? So you were here in the house all the time?”

There was no answer from Alice. Her lips had been silent for more than a year.

I covered my face with my hands. I could not bear to look. There was the smell of death and decay everywhere.

I wondered: How long did Alice live after the door had closed on her? I wanted to know because so long I might expect to live.

I think I must have fainted for a long time and I was delirious when I came to. I heard a voice babbling; it must have been my own because it could not have belonged to Alice.

I was mercifully only half-conscious. But it was as though a part of me understood so much.

During that time I spent in the dark and gruesome place I was not sure who I was. Was I Martha? Was I Alice?

Our stories were so much alike. I believed the pattern was similar.

They had said she ran away with GeofFry. They would say I had run away with Peter. Our departure had been cleverly timed. ” But why …” I said, ” but why….”

I knew whose shadow I had seen on the blind. It was hers . that diabolical woman. She had known of the existence of that little diary which I had discovered in Alice’s coat pocket and she was searching for it because she knew it could provide one of those small clues which might lead to discovery.

I knew that she did not love Alvean, that she had tricked us all with her gentle demeanour. I knew that she was incapable of loving anyone.

She had used Alvean as she had used others, as she was going to use Connan.

It was the house that she loved.

I pictured her during those delirious moments looking from her window at Mount Widden across the cove coveting a house as fiercely as man ever coveted woman or woman man.

” Alice,” I said. ” Alice we were her victims … you and I.”

And I fancied Alice talked to me . and told me of the day GeofFry had caught the London train and how Celestine had come to the house and told her of the great discovery in the chapel.

I saw Alice . pale, pretty, fragile Alice crying out in pleasure at the discovery, taking those fatal steps forward to death.

But it was not Alice’s voice I heard. It was my own.

Yet I thought she was with me. I thought that at last I had found her, and that we had comfort to offer each other as I waited to go with her into the shadowy world which had been hers since she was led by Cdestine Nansellock into the lepers’ squint.

There was a blinding light in my eyes. I was being carried.

I said: ” Am I dead then, Alice?”

And a voice answered: ” My darling … my darling … you are safe.”

It was Connan’s voice, and it was his arms which held me.

” Are there dreams in death then, Alice?” I asked.

I was conscious of a voice which whispered: ” My dearest … oh, my dearest….” And I was laid upon a bed, and many people stood about me.

Then I saw the light glinting on hair which looked almost white.

” Alice, there is an angel.”

Then the angel answered and said: ” It’s Gilly. Gilly brought them to you. Gilly watched and Gilly saw….”

And oddly enough it was Gilly who brought me back to the world of reality. I knew that I was not dead, that some miracle had happened;

that it was in truth Connan’s arms which I had felt about me, Connan’s voice I heard.

I was in my own bedroom from the window of which I could see the lawns and the palm trees and the room which had once been Alice’s, on the blind of which I had seen the shadow of Alice’s murderer who had sought to kill me too.

I called out in terror. But Connan was beside me.

I heard his voice, tender, soothing, loving. ” It’s all right, my love my only love. I’m here … I’m with you for evermore.”

Afterwards

This is the story I tell my great-grandchildren. They have heard it many times, but there is always a first time for some. They ask for it again and again. They play in the park and in the woods; they bring me flowers from the south gardens, a tribute to the old lady who can always charm them with the story of how she married their great-grandfather.

To me it is as dear as though it happened yesterday. Vividly I remember my arrival at the house and all that preceded those terrifying hours I spent in the dark with dead Alice.

The years which followed with Connan have often been stormy ones.

Connan and I were both too strong-willed, I suppose, to live in perpetual peace; but they were years in which I felt I had lived life richly, and what more could one ask than that?

Now he is old, as I am, and three more Connans have been born since that day we married our son, grandson and great-grandson. I was glad I was able to give Connan children. We had five sons and five daughters, and they in their turn were fruitful.

When the children hear the story they like to check up all the details. They want every incident explained.

Why was it believed that the woman who died in the train was Alice?

Because of the locket she wore. But it was Celestine who identified the locket as one which, she said, she had given Alice, but which, of course, she had never seen before in her life.

She had been eager that I should accept Jacinth when Peter had first offered the mare to me I suppose because she feared it was just possible that Connan might be interested in me and therefore she was ready to encourage the friendship between myself and Peter; and it was she who later, discovering the loosened boulder on the cliff, had lain in wait for me and attempted to kill or maim me.

She was the sender of the anonymous letters to Lady Treslyn and the public prosecutor, commenting on the suspicious circumstances of Sir Thomas’s death. She had believed that if there was a big enough scandal, marriage between” Connan and Lady Treslyn would have been impossible for years. She had reckoned without Connan’s feelings for me; thus when she knew that I was engaged to marry him, she immediately planned to remove me. She failed to do this on the cliff path;

therefore I was to join Alice; the fact that Peter was leaving for Australia on that day must have made her decide -on this method. The whole household knew that Peter’s attitude to me had been a flirtatious one, and it would appear that I had run away with him.

It was Celestine who had put the diamond bracelet in Miss Jansen’s room because the governess was learning too much about the house and the knowledge would inevitably lead her to the lepers’ squint and Alice. She had worked on Lady Treslyn’s jealousy of the pretty young governess for she had known Lady Treslyn to be a vindictive woman who, given the opportunity, would bring all her malice to bear on Miss Jansen.

She was in love passionately in love with Mount Mellyn and she wanted to marry Connan only because thus she would be Mistress of the house.

So in the first place, discovering the secret of the squint she had kept it to herself, and had chosen her opportunity to murder Alice.

She knew of the love affair between Alice and her brother Geoffry; she knew that Alvean was his child. It worked out so easily because she had waited for her opportunity. If it had not been possible to make Alice’s death appear to have occurred in the train accident she would have found some other way of. disposing of her as she had intended to dispose of me through Jacinth.

But she had reckoned without Gilly. Who would have thought that a poor simple child should play such a big part in this diabolical plan? But Gilly had loved Alice as later she was to love me. Gilly had known Alice was in the house for Alice had made a habit of coming to say good night to her when she did the same to Alvean; she had always done it before she went out to a dinner party. Because she had never forgotten, Gilly did not believe she had forgotten this time. Gilly therefore continued to believe that Alice had never left (he house, and had gone on looking for her. It was Gilly’s face which I had seen at the peep. Gilly knew all the peeps in the house and used them frequently, because she was always watching for Alice.

Thus she had seen Celestine and myself enter the hall from the solarium. I imagined her crossing the room and looking through the peep on the other side of the room so that she saw us enter the chapel. We crossed to the squint, but that side of the chapel could not easily be seen from the solarium peep, and so Gilly sped along to Miss Jansen’s room, where from that peep she could have a good view of the squint. She was just in time to see us disappearing through the door, and waited for us to come out. She waited and waited, for Celestine naturally left by the door to the courtyard and slipped away so that, since she believed that no one had seen her come into the house except myself, she could let it appear that she had not been there at all.

Thus, while I lived through that period of horror in Alice’s death-chamber, Gilly was standing on her stool in Miss Jansen’s room, watching the door to the lepers’ squint.

Connan returned at eleven and expected the household to give him a welcome.

Mrs. Polgrey received him. ” Go and tell Miss Leigh that I am here,” he said. He must have been a little piqued because he was—and still is—the sort of man who demands the utmost affection and attention, and the fact that I could be sleeping when he came home was inconceivable to him.