The House Above the River (24 page)

“Perhaps she never was,” said Susan. “Perhaps she was right about suicide.”

“Do you really think that?” he asked her.

“Not before. No. But perhaps now—after Miriam's accident. If it was an accident, and he never did anything at all to harm her. Or it could be remorse, I suppose.”

“It was no accident,” said Giles. “Let's accept that once and for all. Henry meant to kill her, and it looks as if he succeeded.”

“An empty success,” said Phillipa, “if he happens to die first.”

Susan shuddered.

“Was there anything we could have done to prevent it?” she asked. “Anything we might have said—to either of them?”

“No,” Giles answered. “Nothing would have made any difference in the end. It must all have started years ago. Long before any of us came on the scene, thank God.”

He did not yet know how right he was in this.

Miriam died three months later. Henry recovered. Only Susan, of Henry's English relations, went to the funeral. This was because the Brockley parents had prolonged their stay in the West Indies as soon as they heard of her engagement. In fact, they were thinking of settling there permanently, they wrote, since life was easier, with domestic help available, and the climate very pleasant. They were staying on to explore the possibilities, but would, of course, come back before Christmas to arrange for the wedding.

Susan showed the letter to Giles, who reflected that as his future in-laws thought only of themselves, he would miss very little if they made a new home out of England. The letter showed no interest in Susan's plans, and made only one reference to himself.

When Miriam died, the Brockleys were at sea, coming back to England. So Susan went alone to the funeral, refusing Giles's offer to go with her.

“I'll be all right, darling. I'm only staying one night. It seems so far away now; the accident, and what we thought must have happened. You don't really want to come, do you?”

“I should hate it. And so, I'm sure, would Henry. I only suggested it in case you had the wind up.”

“What about? Henry? I decided long ago that we shall never know what really happened.”

So Susan went to Brittany alone. She arrived at the château in the morning and the funeral took place at noon, in Tréguier, not Penguerrec. Miriam, it appeared, had been converted to the Catholic faith during her last illness. She was buried in a Catholic churchyard.

Henry, Susan, and Francine were the only mourners present at the ceremony. Afterwards they drove back to the house.

There was no gathering of friends and relatives, no distressing funeral feast, for which Susan was profoundly grateful.

Henry took her to the library, where a cheerful fire was burning, and Francine brought them lunch; hot soup, and cold chicken with salad. The house was very quiet. Too quiet.

“Marie and Lucette did not come—with us,” Susan began, following this thought.

“They are not here any longer,” Henry answered. “Now that the nurses have gone, it was not necessary to keep them.”

“Can Francine manage alone, in this big house?”

He hesitated, seemed about to break into some confidence, but changed his mind, and stared at the fire instead, aimlessly stirring his soup.

“Had Miriam no—parents—or anyone of her own—living?” she asked.

He looked up at her; dull eyes in an expressionless face.

“It was her last wish that none of them should know of her death until it was all over. She has written letters to them. She showed them to me. I was to send them today.”

He bent his head, to hide his face from Susan.

“She tells them that her death was a just punishment,” he said, very low. “A just punishment for her life. She became very religious towards the end. I think it helped her. There is nothing specific in the letters.”

Susan felt a wave of disgust sweep over her. Miriam's conduct showed little or no change in her character. The same heightened emotion, the same hankering after melodrama. This first reaction of Susan's was followed by a chill of fear. Such words from a proved murderer. She choked, and quickly swallowed another mouthful of soup to cover it. When she looked up she saw Henry's cold eyes on her.

They continued the meal. Susan wanted to ask about Miriam's last days, but she could not bring herself to break into Henry's strange control. His sole confidence had been too disconcerting. After that, anything she might ask would sound like morbid curiosity.

A watery November sun touched the bare branches of the trees outside the window.

“I think I will go for a walk to the village,” she said. “I want to send a telegram to my aunt.”

“You can send it over the telephone from here.”

“I know. But—I would like a walk. And you would rather be alone, Henry. Wouldn't you?”

He looked quickly at her and away again. In that brief moment she saw his unappeasable grief laid bare, and at the same time was deeply convinced of his guilt.

She took up the tray and carried it to the kitchen. Francine was sitting up to the kitchen table, eating heartily, the dishes spread in a semi-circle round her plate, the morning's newspaper propped up against them.

She did not get up when Susan came in, but nodded her thanks, and went on with her meal.

“I shall return tonight,” Susan began, suddenly making up her mind. “Monsieur Henri does not want me here. I can do nothing to comfort him.”

“It will pass,” said Francine, woodenly. “He is still very frail.”

“But surely—I thought he had quite recovered?”

“From poisoning, yes. But there is always his back. That does not improve. And then there is the deep impression on his mind of the attempt on his life. It is not funny, mademoiselle, to be attacked with poison. And by your wife.”

She said this in a hard, coarse way that shocked Susan profoundly. The girl went out of the kitchen without answering, put on her coat, tied a scarf round her head, and went out.

The drive was thick with fallen leaves, pressed into two muddy ruts where car-wheels had passed in and out. The low sun touched the trunks of the trees here and there with streaks of gold, but the air was dank and chill. Susan gave a sigh of relief as she came out on to the road. The fields were brown from the plough, with seagulls scattered over them searching for food. The village lay in the sun. The boats rocked gently in the harbour.

Susan rang up the airport at St. Malo and managed to change her flight. Then she sent off a telegram to her aunt, telling her she was coming back that evening. As she left the post office she saw the grocer's wife, standing at the door of her shop. The woman spoke to her in a friendly voice and asked her to come in and warm herself by the fire.

“I am quite alone,” she said, laughing. “My husband and my daughter have gone to the town. And besides,” she added, when they were in the warm room behind the shop. “I am curious to hear about poor Madame Davenport's funeral. How she suffered! It was unbelievable!”

And now Susan was thankful for Henry's reticence, if what the grocer's wife said was true. She did not understand all the detail, but gathered enough from the frank Gallic description to realise what Miriam's last weeks had meant, in pain and degradation.

“Whatever her sins, and they were great,” said the grocer's wife, piously, enjoying herself to the full, “she made a good end. Our curé was with her to the last.”

“She became a Catholic, didn't she?”

“She was a devout convert. Very sincere. A fortunate thing, for she could repent and gain absolution, and that would not have been possible if she had remained a heretic.”

“I see,” said Susan, happy to think that Miriam had achieved something, in her own eyes at least, to offset all she had lost.

“Will you be here long?” asked the grocer's wife, politely.

“No. I am going back tonight. I—they don't need me. My cousin is very unhappy, but I can do nothing to help him.”

The other nodded.

“I can understand that. Besides, he is well looked after. He has Madame.”

“Francine? Yes. But the two girls have left, I hear.”

The grocer's wife gave her a strange look.

“They were both of the—what shall I call it—the other faction.”

“I don't understand.”

“No, mademoiselle, you were not in France in the war. You English did not suffer occupation. I am not bitter myself, you understand? In Paris we were more philosophical. But here, there was a strong maquis. Madame was at the château all the time the Germans were there. She and her friends in the village killed five of them and stole many of their secrets. Hostages were taken from the village and shot, in revenge, but the maquis was not broken, and was not betrayed. They are tough, the Bretons!”

“They are, indeed!”

“But no one forgets the hostages; certainly not their families. And Madame Francine was never suspected by the Germans, though everyone here knew she was at the head of the maquis. She is formidable, amazing!”

“Yes.”

Susan got up to go. She thought the conversation had strayed too far from Henry and Miriam. There were enough painful memories at the château already, without adding to them Francine's lurid war-time past.

“My husband was in the Resistance,” said the grocer's wife, as they shook hands in the shop. “That is why I have heard so much about Monsieur Henri and the fishermen.”

“Thank you. You have been very kind,” Susan told her.

She walked slowly back to the house, but when she was going up the drive she turned off down the path to the creek. It was in the shelter of the trees, at the edge of the bank above the sand, that Giles had asked her to marry him. She would never again come with him to this place, so she wanted to see it once more and to sit down on the fallen tree trunk and think over, all the strange events of that tragic fortnight in August.

But she did not sit down. In the wood she had been able to imagine those days of summer and to bring back the first joy of her love. But not here. The tide was out. The flat stretch of sand, running down to foetid mud, rubbish-strewn, repelled her. Over the ruffled, iron-grey waters of the creek a biting wind from the east withered her romantic desires. She stood for a few seconds only, gazing on a scene of desolation unredeemed by any grandeur. The creek, like the house above, was a backwater, a repository of cast-off treasures, a harbour of imprisoned, festering, derelict hopes.

The place was quite deserted. She saw no footprints above the tide mark, no signs that anyone had come there since the equinoctial gales had washed away all the summer's litter and left a fringe of wrack close to where she was standing. As she began to turn away, she saw that Henry's notice board, the danger sign, had also gone. Not moved, this time; not fallen down and left on the ground; but taken away altogether.

She walked back towards the house, feeling more depressed than ever. But when she reached it she did not go in. Instead she walked on, finding her way round the outside of the walled garden to the path through the woods and the clearing with the view.

She found what she expected. The seat, Miriam's seat, had gone, too. The place where it had stood, over the cover to the hidden passage, was bare, though the grass had begun to spread over it. She moved away the damp soil at the edge with her foot, exposing a layer of cement that now held the cover in place. It would never be moved again.

Susan left the clearing. She walked on down the hill towards the river. As she came out of the trees she could not help giving a low cry of distress and astonishment. The whole scene immediately before her eyes was changed. The path no longer led to the landing-stage. It led nowhere. The whole stage had gone, and with it the launch, and the dinghy. The place where they had been was unrecognisable, for the bank had been cut back almost to where she stood. She looked down a muddy slope to the river below. It was some comfort to lift her eyes into the distance, and see the fishing boats at Penguerrec just as they had always been, and beyond to the west the dark hill at Pen Paluch.

She remembered that she had not yet told Henry she was flying back to England at once. She looked at her watch. If she did not hurry she would miss her train to St. Malo. Shaken at last from her deep sense of disillusion, she climbed the hill again to the house.

Henry listened to her halting explanation in silence, but seemed pleased with her decision. He carried her suitcase to the taxi himself and leaned into it when she was settled, to take her hand and thank her for coming.

“You
are
better, Henry, aren't you?” Susan asked, suddenly anxious, for his face looked so very pale and drawn in the half-light of the cab.

“If I could work,” he answered, in a low voice. “If I could only work … I might begin to forget. At least, for part of the time.”

“Forget what she did to you? Henry, I don't think she meant it. She was acting out one of her fantasies. She didn't really know what she was doing. She was so dreadfully afraid.”

“Yes,” he answered. “She was afraid. And her fear was justified. That is why I shall never forget, and never forgive myself. Day and night I shall never be able to stop thinking of it—her fear—and her death.”

He must have felt Susan's hand shrink in his, for his face changed at once, taking on its usual blank politeness. He drew back and spoke to the taxi driver, then said through the window, “Remember me to my aunt and uncle,” and turned away.

He was back in the house and closed the door before the taxi began to move.

Susan's parents arrived back in England the day after she returned from Brittany. She had begun to get the house ready a week before Miriam's death, so the interruption caused by this event did not mean any confusion. She had everything in order and ready for them; which, as usual, they took for granted.