The Widow's Confession (20 page)

You asked me about Theo Hallam. I have known his family for many years. He went to Ceylon, as a very young man, and his naturally melancholy disposition has, I am told, yawned wider and
deeper than ever since his return. His family is concerned for him, though he shuns their aid. I thought the sea air would do you good – and I also thought your natural facility, in matters
of the mind, might prove helpful to this very dark and entangled case.

This very dark and entangled case,
thought Edmund. How strange it was that, since coming here to holiday, his letters to his old friend were no longer full of small
amusements and observations, the kind of chatter he would have enjoyed at his club. This morning he had stood outside Theo’s study, that shrine he could not enter, and wondered, with an
anxiety that seemed childlike to him, whether he should knock on the door. Then he had left the passageway, and when Theo had emerged, declaring himself ready for the Shell Grotto, his face was
flushed with a faintly dangerous animation. It had startled Edmund, for the evening before, Theo had sunk into a gloomy silence, and when Edmund had asked him what was wrong, he only said:
‘
I see the face of that girl, with all the bruises there, dealt her by the sea and the driftwood, and it reminds me of the past.’ But he would not say any more.

These worries displaced others. For days, when Edmund had picked up his pen, he only saw Julia, as she had stood in the doorway of the cottage parlour, so pale and tired in the lamplight, so
utterly dear to him. It was her name he wished to write in the lines to his old friend, for in the last few days it was her he had thought of; even the poor dead girls on the beach had taken second
place to her. He had never before felt so sickly over a woman, and he knew that a gentleman would not write this to another gentleman – especially not one of his advanced years –
without expecting ridicule in return. But he also knew that he could be accused of fickleness, for his good friend had witnessed his apparent partiality for Mrs Craven, had been present at their
conversations, which had shimmered with the suggestion of future plans. Even if Charles Venning did not say so, he could not bear for his friend to be disappointed in him; he even had the creeping
feeling that Charles might begin to find him truly dishonourable.

The rocking of the carriage brought him to; Alba was speaking, her voice rising and falling, bubbling with enthusiasm. Edmund heard a gentleman laugh, and realized it was Theo. He laughed, and
laughed again, and his face had that same flushed look, the kind of hard animation Edmund had only previously seen when Theo had spoken of his faith. He thought that he should write to Charles and
tell him that Theo had not asked for help, and that he could make no inroads on his melancholy without knowing Theo’s own thoughts, or speaking to him about it. He does not want to be helped
but by God, Edmund decided.

Still, he brooded on the case, and during the journey to the Shell Grotto, whenever his awareness popped up to the surface of the conversation, he noted with surprise that Theo was conversing in
an animated way with Alba and Miss Waring, negotiating the conversation with respect and even a certain amount of charm. It unsettled Edmund enough to keep him watching.

Delphine found herself seated alongside Mr Benedict. His appearance was as he had been the first day she had met him, as though it was a part he had chosen: dishevelled, the
bejewelled skull pin placed securely in his lapel, his glossy black hair a little longer, and a touch of sunburn on the edge of his cheekbones. She had never been so close to him before. The rough
road occasionally threw them together, and it was only this close that she noticed the faint grime in the pores of his skin, and the light occasional sighs which escaped from him. He was unusually
taciturn, answering questions about painting politely enough, but without his usual gusto.

‘How is Mrs Benedict?’ asked Delphine eventually, thinking that if they stayed silent with each other it would be just as damning as over-enthusiastic conversation. ‘I thought
she might be one of our party today.’

‘The good lady is occupied with our children,’ said Benedict, in a detached tone. ‘But she is well, thank you. Daisy, our youngest, has had a cold of late, and I have been a
little worried about her – you must forgive my quietness. She is such a good girl; she never complains, and is always full of sweetness. My wife has told me, with her usual good sense, that I
am of no use during the child’s sickness, and that she will send for me if there is any change in her condition. The best thing for me to do, she assures me, is to gather all my little
sketches together and begin the next painting that I have promised her. I slipped to London for a day or two, also, and my dealer grows impatient. London, Mrs Beck, do you miss it?’

Delphine heard Julia’s sharp intake of breath, and she knew that she had never mentioned their London house to the painter. ‘It is a fine city, just as New York is,’ she said,
‘but I would not say I miss it. Paris has more of a pull on my heart.’

‘How mysterious you ladies are,’ he said. ‘But I will not worry away at you. I am not like most men – I tire of a mystery, after a while.’

Delphine saw Julia’s questioning glance, but could give her no answer.

It made Edmund suffer to see Julia handed down from the carriage by Mr Benedict, who was playing at being the perfect gentleman, one arm folded behind him, his fingers curling
out to meet hers with elaborate affectation. But, to his relief, as the group merged and assembled, ready to descend into the Shell Grotto, it became clear that Mr Benedict only had eyes for Alba.
To Edmund, he seemed to watch her with the same hungry stare that he had once displayed when he had spoken of Delphine, and he wondered at the young man’s changeable nature.

The Shell Grotto was proudly announced in large letters on an arch over its gateway. They were greeted by a finely dressed and obsequious woman, who ushered them through a small parlour shop
into the darkness of the grotto. They descended one flight of stairs, then another, into the dense cold of the underground passageway. ‘The north passage,’ the woman said, her voice
echoing in the chamber.

For a moment Delphine felt as though the walls were closing in. They were rough, as yet undecorated – as far as she could see, a mix of dark rock and chalk, with patches of green where
algae was growing, nourished by the dampness of the air. The path was uneven, the passage winding. She felt Julia’s hand on her back. She was in the midst of the party, but in the sudden
darkness, breathing in the unfamiliar scent of the saturated air, she felt alone.

In a matter of moments, they had reached the rotunda, announced by the woman as ‘the place of birth’, for its decorative scheme seemed to indicate a preoccupation with the beginnings
of life, though the woman, with a polite cough, did not wish to indicate the exact images. It was, as promised, astonishing. The walls were studded with thousands of shells, formed into complex yet
strangely naïve motifs: a heart, a shield with a central shell, or grotesques that seemed to make no sense other than in the mind of the person who had put them there. The shells offered
texture to the eye – but it was still cold, and dark. In most areas the gaslight offered little relief, but there were also apertures from which pools of light fell and uncoiled, like white
liquid, on the floor.

‘Surely this is the work of a madwoman,’ whispered Julia, and Delphine knew immediately the image her cousin held in her mind: a mad gentlewoman, fixing tiny shell after tiny shell
to the wall in a mockery of the decoration that Alba would undertake on a little box with the shells she had gathered on the beach.

‘It is very strange,’ said Theo. Delphine heard his voice, soft and close. He moved past her, his eyes ranging over the walls. ‘It seems a kind of hallucination.’

‘It is a wonder,’ said the guide, her rich voice trained, it seemed, to fill the caverns of the grotto. ‘The shells are fixed with mortar; some of them are from the
Indies.’

‘The maker of this was no mere Broadstairs shell-picker like you, Miss Alba,’ said Benedict.

They moved around the rotunda, and Delphine looked up at a great shell-pocked blister of daylight, bluish-white to her eyes. She blinked, suddenly disorientated, and took a faltering step
back.

She felt someone’s hands on the top of her arms, hesitant, steadying her. The touch was such a gesture of intimacy that she thought it must have been Julia. But glancing back, she found
Theo there, his face barely two inches from hers. He should not have touched her; he should not have been standing so close, in the half-darkness. And she knew she should not have kept her face so
close to his; she should have sprung back, exclaiming, curtseying, brushing him away with all the weapons in the armoury of convention. Yet she did not; and their eyes remained locked until the
moment was broken.

‘Do not be scared, Miss Alba,’ cried Benedict, passing them, with a quick, cutting glance in the strange light. Miss Waring followed, chiding him strongly and holding on to her
niece’s hand, giving it the occasional strong jerk, as one would pull up a puppy on a lead. Neither of them noticed Theo and Delphine, for they had stepped apart immediately in the moment
Benedict had passed them, and Theo turned and followed the group. Delphine let everyone pass, then walked on. Wrapped in her thoughts, she jumped and cried out when a skeleton of white and cream
shells on a ground of black suddenly loomed out of the half-light at her. Regaining her composure, she hurried on.

‘And now the altar chamber,’ said the guide. ‘We have moved from birth, through life, through to the afterlife: see the stars.’

It was a rectangular room, lit by gaslight, the walls again completely ornamented, a small decorative altar built into the back wall. ‘Many spirits have been seen here,’ said the
guide, precipitating a few gasps. Theo shook his head disapprovingly.

A dark creature darted amongst them; Alba screamed.

‘Some trickery,’ said Miss Waring firmly. Delphine admired how the woman had not jumped; she kept her chin tilted up, but she had released her niece’s arm.

‘My cat,’ said the guide with an embarrassed laugh. ‘Please accept my apologies.’

‘She likes to be scared,’ said Benedict softly, watching as Alba, quickly recovered, moved along the walls of the altar room, running her hands along the shells, as though close
inspection would reveal something more.

With a smile, and a nod that showed understanding, Mr Benedict took the lantern from the guide and drew closer to Alba. Then, acting so quickly Delphine hardly saw what he did, he snatched at
Alba’s hand. ‘Come with me, Miss Peters!’ he said, and Miss Waring cried out in fury as her niece was pulled away. He did not lead her far, only up to one of the walls, and
trailed his lantern against it, watching the expression of fear on her face dissolve into wonder as the light lit up the shells at that particular place, forming a huge heart, surrounded by other
lines of colour.

‘A happy coincidence,’ he said, watching her eyes take in the pattern, then settle on his own. Alba laughed, a laugh of embarrassment, her gaze flitting away from his onto the
ground.

‘Can she do nothing but giggle?’ said Julia in a low voice. ‘She is such a fool.’

‘She can do nothing to please you, it seems,’ whispered Delphine. ‘Now she is too beautiful; now she laughs too much. She is merely young.’

‘Have you done anything with your shells, Miss Mardell?’ said Theo, approaching them, as Alba darted away from Mr Benedict and back to her aunt’s side. The painter retaliated
by placing his lantern on one of the altar room’s niches, taking out a small sketchbook and beginning to draw. The guide cleared her throat, clearly wanting to conclude the tour.

‘Nothing,’ said Julia, ‘and whilst I thought I might cover a box or two, it seems hopeless when I look around these walls.’

‘This, though,’ said Delphine, ‘is a cathedral of shells – you would not wish to recreate this. It tells of a strange mind to make such a place. I think a box or two
would be pretty, a keepsake of our days here.’

‘And what will
you
have as a keepsake?’ said Theo. There was no doubt that his words were directed at Delphine. His eyes had found her in the darkness, and his voice was
freighted with some nameless emotion, as it was when he read from Scripture.

‘I have my sketches,’ she said, feeling that he was trying to voice some other question, but unable to decipher his meaning. ‘That is all.’

Exhausted into silence by the emotional pitch of the visit and its strangeness, the group travelled back through the north passage. Before they left, Alba purchased a small sycamore box in the
shape of a shell, against the advice of her aunt. To take the focus from her, Delphine did the same, despite Julia’s evidently unimpressed roll of the eyes.

They came out into the daylight again, and it seemed to them all to be a hard climb out of the cold dark air of the grotto, into the sudden harshness of the summer light.

Mr Benedict approached Edmund and shook his hand. ‘I haven’t wished you good day yet, sir. I see the sea air has agreed with you.’

‘And you,’ said Edmund. ‘I hope your family are all well.’

‘Yes, well,’ said Mr Benedict. ‘But what of developments here? You will have noticed that I have changed my favour – from that dark widow to the haloed angel. I wonder
where Mr Hallam’s fancy will fall. He seems undecided at the moment.’ He gave a low laugh.

Edmund said nothing, and tried to indicate through his expression that he had no intention of remarking on it.

‘Everyone’s spirits seem a little depressed since I was last here,’ said Mr Benedict, unaffected by the silence. ‘Even Mrs Beck has lost a little of her shine.’

‘It is better that you do not mention it,’ said Edmund, trying not to sound stiff, and failing. ‘We have all been affected by the finding of another young girl’s body on
the beach.’

Benedict swung his gaze round to Edmund’s face. ‘Another? My God.’