The Shivering Sands (11 page)

Mrs. Rendall looked startled, which was a strange position for her to find herself in, I was sure.

“My word, Mrs. Verlaine,” she said with a touch of asperity, “you are a regular detective.”

I was sure in that moment that she suspected my motives for coming to this place were not solely to teach music.

“I was interested naturally to see anything connected with the family,” I said coolly.

“And I am sure it does you credit,” she replied. “I’ll tell you this: Lady Stacy was not buried in the vault. You probably know that suicides are buried in unconsecrated ground.”

“Suicides!” I cried.

She nodded gravely; then her lips formed into lines of disapproval. “Just after Beaumont’s death, she killed herself. It was most unfortunate. She took a gun into the woods…and died in the same way…only in her case the wound was self-inflicted.”

“What a terrible tragedy.”

“She couldn’t bear life without Beaumont. She doted on the boy. I think the affair turned her brain.”

“So it was a double tragedy.”

“It changed everything up at the house. Beaumont and Lady Stacy dead and Napier sent away. Everything was blamed onto Napier.”

“But it was an accident.”

Mrs. Rendall nodded mournfully. “He was always up to something. A bad boy…so different from his brother. It was almost as though they believed it wasn’t an accident after all. But blood’s thicker than water and Sir William didn’t want everything to go out of the family after all. Though at one time we thought he might disinherit Napier. However, he’s back now and married to Edith, which is what Sir William wanted, so it seemed Napier was ready to please his father at last…for the sake of the inheritance of course.”

“Well, I hope he’ll be happy,” I said. “He must have suffered a great deal. Whatever he did, he was only seventeen and to banish him in that way seems a terrible punishment.”

Mrs. Rendall sniffed. “Of course if Beau had lived Napier wouldn’t have inherited. It’s a consideration.”

I felt rather indignant on behalf of Napier—though I couldn’t think why I should feel so for someone whom I had disliked on sight, except for my sense of justice. I decided that Sir William was an unnatural father whom I was very ready to dislike as much as I already disliked his son.

I said nothing however and Mrs. Rendall remarked that I might care to come to the schoolroom and meet Mr. Jeremy Brown.

The vicarage schoolroom was a long room, rather low ceilinged. As in the big house, the windows had the leaden panes which, while they looked charming, let in little light.

It was a delightful scene which met my eyes as Mrs. Rendall threw open the door without knocking. I imagined she rarely warned people of her approach. There were the girls at the big table—Edith among them, bent over their work; there was a fourth member of the party: Sylvia. And seated at the head of the table a very fair, delicate-looking young man.

“I have brought Mrs. Verlaine to meet you,” boomed Mrs. Rendall and the young man rose and came toward us.

“This is our curate, Mr. Jeremy Brown,” went on Mrs. Rendall.

I shook hands with Mr. Brown, whose manner was almost apologetic. Another, I thought, who stood in awe of this formidable lady.

“And what is it this morning, Mr. Brown?” asked Mrs. Rendall.

“Latin and geography.”

I saw the maps spread out on the table and the girls’ notebooks beside them. Edith looked happier than I had so far seen her.

Mrs. Rendall grunted and said: “Mrs. Verlaine wants to take the girls through their music. One by one, I suppose, Mrs. Verlaine?”

“I think that would be an excellent idea.” I smiled at the curate. “If you are agreeable.”

“Oh yes…yes…indeed,” he said. Then I noticed the rapt expression in Edith’s eyes.

How the young betray themselves! I knew that there was some romantic attachment—however slight—between Edith and this Jeremy Brown.

As Mrs. Kendall had said, I was a detective.

In the next day or so I slipped into a routine. There were meals with Mrs. Lincroft when often Alice was present; there were the piano lessons for the girls and some of these were taken at the vicarage where it was often more convenient, as I was able to take the girls one by one while the others were at their lessons with the vicar or Jeremy Brown. There was also Sylvia to be considered. She was a very indifferent pupil but tried hard—I imagined because she feared her mother’s reaction to miserable failure.

The four girls interested me because they were all so different; and I couldn’t help sensing when they were all together that there was something exceptional about them. I was not sure whether it was in themselves or in their relationship toward one another. And I told myself that it was because of their unusual backgrounds—in fact the only ordinary one was Sylvia’s, and her overwhelmingly domineering mother could have an effect on a child.

Allegra and Alice left each morning at half-past eight for the vicarage to start lessons at nine o’clock; on some days I followed an hour later. Sometimes Edith walked over with me just, she said, for the walk, but I felt it was something more than the walk which attracted her. This gave me an opportunity of getting to know the young Mrs. Stacy.

She had a gentle and unsubtle nature and I often had the notion that she was longing to confide in me. I wished she would, but somehow she always seemed to draw back just as I thought I was going to hear something of importance.

I suspected that she was afraid of her husband; but at the vicarage with Jeremy Brown her manner underwent a change and she seemed happy in a furtive way, like a child who is snatching some forbidden yet irresistible treat. Perhaps I was too curious about the affairs of others; I made excuses for myself. I was here to discover what had become of Roma and I must therefore find out everything about the people around me. But what had the relationship between Edith and her husband and the young curate to do with Roma? No, it was plain curiosity, I warned myself, and no concern of mine and yet…

I can only say that the desire to know was too deep to be dismissed and I felt that Edith would be my best source of information for the reason that she was guileless and easy to read.

When she offered to take me into Walmer and Deal, the twin towns a few miles along the coast, I was delighted and we set out one morning as the girls were leaving for the vicarage.

It was a lovely April day with an opalesque sea and the lightest of breezes blowing off it. The gorse bushes were clumps of golden glory; and under hedges I caught glimpses of wild violets and wood sorrel. And because it was spring and I smelt the good scent of the earth and felt the gentle warmth of the sun I was elated. I didn’t quite know why, except that the budding shrubs and bushes and the birdsong and the gentle sunshine all seemed to offer some promise and I experienced that springtime fever which made me believe that there was something symbolic in all nature’s awakening to a new life. Every now and then the song of a bird was on the air—whitethroats and swallows, sedge warblers and martins. There was no sign of the gulls whose melancholy cries I had already noticed in gloomy weather.

“They come inland when it’s stormy,” Edith remarked. “So perhaps their absence means it’ll be a lovely day.”

I said that I had never before seen such a magnificent display of gorse to which Edith asked if I knew the old saying that when the gorse was out that meant it was kissing time.

She smiled rather charmingly and went on: “It’s a joke, Mrs. Verlaine. It’s because the gorse blooms all the year round somewhere in England.”

She had become animated and clearly enjoyed introducing me to the country. I realized more than ever that I was a town woman. The parks of London, the Tuileries and the Bois de Boulogne had been my countryside. But this was different and I was reveling in it.

She brought the trap to a standstill and told me that if I looked round I should see the battlements of Walmer Castle. “There were three castles,” she told me, “all within a few miles of each other, but only two of them remain. Sandown is a ruin. It was the encroaching sea which has taken it. But Deal and Walmer Castles are in perfect condition. If you could look down on them you would see that they are built in the shape of Tudor roses. They’re only small castles…fortifications really to protect the coast and shipping in the Downs which is the four miles between the coast and the Goodwins.”

I looked at the gray stone battlements of the castle—the home of the Warden of the Cinque Ports—and then back to the sea.

“You’re looking for the wrecks on the Goodwins,” said Edith. “You should be able to see them today. Ah yes…” She pointed, and I saw them—those pathetic masts no more than sticks at this distance.

“They call the sands the Ships Swallower,” said Edith and she shivered. “I saw them once. My…my husband took me out to see them. He thought I ought to…to overcome my fear of things.” She added half apologetically: “He’s right, of course.”

“So you’ve actually been out there!”

“Yes, he…he said it was safe enough…at the right time.”

“What was it like?”

She half closed her eyes. “Desolate,” she said. She went on hurriedly: “At high water the whole of the sands are covered with the sea…even the highest point when submerged is eight feet or so under the water. You simply would not know they were there. That is why they are so dangerous. Imagine in the past the sailors not suspecting that only eight feet under water were those terrible sands waiting to swallow them.”

“And when you saw them?” I prompted.

“It was at low water,” she said, and I sensed that she did not want to talk of this but could not stop herself. “That would be the only time to see them, wouldn’t it, because if they were covered you wouldn’t
see
anything, you’d only
know
they were there. It would have been more horrible, don’t you think, Mrs. Verlaine. Things you can’t see are more frightening than things you can.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “that’s true.”

“But…it was low water and I saw the sands…lovely looking clean golden sand, all rippled. There were deep holes and these were filled with water; and the sand moves as you watch and forms itself into strange shapes, like monsters some of them…with claws…waiting to catch anyone who wandered there and pull them down. There were gulls circling overhead. Their cries were so mournful, Mrs. Verlaine. Oh, it was frightening, so lonely, so desolate. They say the sands are haunted. I’ve talked to one of the men from the North Goodwins Lightship and he says that when he’s on watch he sometimes hears wild heart-rending cries from the sands. They used to say it was the gulls, but he wasn’t so sure. Terrible things have happened there, so it seems likely…”

“I suppose at a place like that one would have the oddest fancies.”

“Yes, but there is something so cruel about the sands. My husband told me about them. He said the more you try to extricate yourself the deeper you go. Long long ago there was no lightship. Now it’s there, and they say that the Goodwins’ lightship is the greatest benefit to sailors ever set on the seas. If you could see those sands, Mrs. Verlaine, you would believe that.”

“I believe it now.”

She pulled gently on the reins and the horse trotted on. I was thinking of Napier taking her out to see the Goodwins. I imagined her reluctance. He would laugh at her cowardice, and tell himself that he must teach her to be brave when all the time it was to satisfy some sadistic desire to hurt her.

She changed the subject and told me how when she was very young her father used to bring her to Lovat Stacy. In those days, it seemed, it had been a kind of El Dorado.

“Everything at Lovat Stacy seemed exciting,” she told me. “Of course Beau was alive then.”

“You remember him well?”

“Oh yes, you’d never forget Beau. He was like a knight…a knight in shining armor. There was a picture of one in a book I had and he really looked just like Beau. I was only about four years old and he used to put me on a pony and hold me there.” Her face hardened a little…“So that I shouldn’t be afraid. Sometimes he put me on his horse and held me. ‘Nothing to be afraid of Edith,’ he used to say. ‘Not while I’m here.’”

Poor Edith, she could not have said more clearly that she was comparing the two brothers.

“So…you were fond of Beau,” I pursued relentlessly.

“Everybody was. He was so charming…never cross.” Again her face puckered. So Napier was often cross, impatient with her simplicity and inexperience.

“Beau was always laughing,” she went on. “He laughed at everything. He seemed about ten feet tall and I was so little. Then suddenly I didn’t visit Lovat Stacy and I was very miserable. After that, when I did come here it was all changed.”

“But when you used to come here your husband was here too.”

“Oh yes, he was here. But he never took any notice of me. I don’t remember him very much. Then a long time after—it seemed a very long time after—my father brought me back and neither of them were here. It was all different. But Alice and Allegra were here and there were the three of as—although they seemed so much younger.”

“At least you had someone to play with.”