The Widow's Confession (3 page)

‘Michael!’ Gorsey shouted. His voice quietened as he came nearer; it would be foolish to scare the horse more. ‘Damned idiot!’ He caught sight of Delphine. ‘Forgive
me, madam – Polly, see to the lady.’ He reached for the horse’s head, as its driver jerked viciously at the reins.

The girl who had followed him turned to Delphine, straightening her hair as she did so. The triviality of the gesture almost made Delphine laugh out loud. ‘I am unharmed, thank you,’
she said.

The door of the carriage opened. ‘Madam – are you hurt?’

It was the first man who climbed out of the carriage. He was at her side in two steps. Her shocked mind took in every detail of his appearance: a pallid wide face, black eyes, and lank black
shoulder-length hair. He was dressed in the finest of the London fashions, but in a dishevelled way, as though his clothes had been flung on rather than arranged. On his lapel a pin glittered: a
white enamelled skull, with ruby eyes. Delphine knew the price of many things, and she certainly knew Parisian jewels when she saw them. Before she could draw away, he had taken her gloved hand in
his.

‘Mr Dean lost control of his horses. Mr Ralph Benedict RA, at your service,’ he said, with a bow. She looked down; he was still holding her hand. ‘Madam, do speak to us, and
tell us you are not harmed. This young lady will find you some tea.’ He smiled briefly over Delphine’s shoulder at the young woman who worked in the hotel.

His touch had violated the space that Delphine normally kept around her, and she felt his gesture to be a mark of disrespect, an advantage taken of her shock. There was something else, too: a
fleeting irritation at his confidence. She withdrew her hand, saying coolly, ‘I am well,’ and turned to walk away.

‘And your name, so I may enquire after you?’ he said, with a quickness that irritated her further. She wondered how he could say it in such an unperturbed way, when she had her back
to him.

‘As I said, I am quite well,’ she replied, turning back. ‘There is no need to enquire.’

‘Will you come into the hotel, and rest for a moment?’ he said. But she merely curtseyed, and moved off.

She heard the uproar of Mr Gorsey’s rage begin again; the sounds of trunks being pulled down. She walked away as swiftly as was decent, keeping her head up, trying to quell the strange
emptiness of shock which was rising in her.

‘I know who she is,’ said Michael Dean, who had finally climbed down and seen off the admonishments of the hotel-keeper with a few swift curses. ‘Her name’s Mrs Beck. I
unloaded her trunks when she arrived the other day. She’s come here with another lady.’

‘I thank you,’ said Mr Benedict, with a glance at his ashen-faced servant, who had finally emerged from the carriage interior. ‘But that’s not quite enough to earn my
forgiveness for the ride you’ve just given us.’

As the others unloaded the carriage, he kept his eyes on the lady who was walking away from him, until she finally disappeared around a turn in the road. Then, and only then, did he turn and
smile at the young woman who was ushering him into the hotel.

Victory Cottage stood opposite Holy Trinity Church. It had been renamed forty-six years before, after the
Victory
at the Battle of Trafalgar, but was that
indeterminate age known as old, at least a hundred years, but probably more. It was built of the local flint; courses of circular stones hewn in two to reveal smooth dark grey or black with the
restrained, occasional glitter of polished jet. There was a naïve quality to the building. Three small panes of glass at the side of the front window were white, green and red for no apparent
reason, and the front wall was decorated with a square section of blue and white Delft tiles depicting ships at sea, in stark contrast to the dark flint around them. It had, unusually, a lantern
turret; a small watchtower piled on top of the cottage, as though it had been built to watch the sea.

Victory Cottage was dumb witness to Delphine’s distress as she hurried through its gate and opened the front door. She had believed the carriage would hit her, and was still shaking,
despite her resolution to be calm.

As she walked into the small hallway, she almost tripped over a large girl on her hands and knees, who was scrubbing the tiled floor.

‘I’m glad to see you again, Martha,’ said Delphine, putting her sketchbook on the hallstand and unpinning her cloak. With relief, she heard the timbre of her own voice: low and
firm, as though everything was normal.

The girl smiled broadly. ‘Of course, madam. I said I’d come, did I not? I’m happy to be of use to you for the season, or until my sister is well again. I have to go to the
parsonage first in the mornings, but they finished breakfast early this morning. Even if I can’t be here much, I’ll be sure to make you something cold for supper every day.’

‘Don’t exhaust your strength,’ said Delphine. ‘We are quite independent, you know; if you cannot cook for us, we can make other arrangements.’

‘There’ll be no problem, madam,’ said Martha, with the serious, direct stare Delphine had come to associate with her. ‘I’m as strong as an ox, that’s what Pa
says, and if you do not mind that I am not here often, I will char as best I can for you. My sister may be well again in a week or two, and then she will come and do it.’

‘As you wish,’ said Delphine. She walked into the back parlour, where her cousin was eating breakfast.

Julia said tightly, ‘I thought we agreed that I would go out with you in the mornings. I hardly need to point out to you how improper it is for you to be wandering around on your
own.’ Her blue eyes flashed as she poured the milk.

Delphine shuffled into a little space next to her. The round gate-leg table took up most of the room. They had fallen in love with the cottage and its small rooms, smelling of the sea, but they
had not yet adjusted to the lack of accommodation for their clothes and their belongings. Their trunks lay largely unpacked. The two ladies travelled alone and were used to hotels, so when Martha,
a local girl, had turned up on their first evening and said she had been sent to lay the fire in place of her sister, who normally cared for the cottage, they had engaged her for the season without
a moment’s hesitation. Delphine wondered whether she would have cause to regret it: the girl had proved to be far from the average servant, with her irregular attendance and cheerful
inquisitiveness.

‘Delphine?’ Julia put her cup down. ‘You are trembling. What has happened?’

‘Nothing of any consequence,’ said Delphine, with a laugh that sounded false, even to her own ears. ‘I was nearly run down on Albion Street by a carriage and a bolting horse. I
fancied for a moment that the estate agent might have hired someone to end my life.’

‘You poor thing.’ Julia put her hand over Delphine’s. She raised her voice. ‘Martha, fetch Mrs Beck a glass of Madeira – quickly, please.’

Martha did so, and Delphine drank it back swiftly under the concerned gaze of the two women.

‘It was nothing of consequence,’ she said.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, madam, did you say you had trouble with Mr Aiden?’ said Martha.

‘A little,’ said Delphine, ignoring Julia’s warning glance. ‘He struggled with the idea of renting a cottage to a lady. It mattered not that I had a letter in my hand
written by Mr Lock, my agent in London. I suspect also he did not like my accent; he mentioned an accident – I believe the word “lugger” was used?’

‘The
Mystery
,’ said Martha, pouring a second, healthy amount of Madeira into Delphine’s glass without asking. ‘One of our luggers, run down by a London-bound
schooner which was American.’

‘Ah,’ said Delphine, resisting the urge to light a cigarette. Julia had made her promise to smoke only when they were alone.

‘It’s hardly your fault what some other Americans did,’ said Martha. ‘Where in America do you come from, if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve been itching to
know.’

Delphine stared at the tablecloth, and the delicate sea knots worked into it in white embroidery silk. She wondered why she had not engaged a proper maid: silent, and discreet.

‘New York,’ she said.

‘New York!’ said Martha. ‘How I should wish to go there! And why would you choose to come here?’

‘By accident,’ said Julia, a little too quickly, though there was no sign of suspicion on Martha’s good-natured face. ‘We considered Margate first, and then thought
better of it.’

‘Margate is fine enough,’ said Martha.

‘I suppose it is,’ said Julia, ‘if you do not care whether you catch cholera or not.’

At that moment a gust of wind buffeted the house, setting the slates rattling, for it was as though the house, sturdy as it was, lived and breathed with the weather. Martha smiled at the look on
Delphine’s face. ‘No need to worry,’ she said. ‘This cottage has been here longer than you and me.’

‘Mrs Beck is not used to the elements,’ said Julia. ‘And I admit, last night, the sound of the sea seemed close to me, and the whisper of the wind almost ghostly. I even
thought I heard someone out there, and went to look.’

Julia’s remark lit a spark in Martha’s eye. ‘We are good at ghost stories, round here,’ she said. ‘But you must not go out, madam. When I was a girl my mother
always told me never to look from the window if I heard a horse and cart passing by in the early hours; that it would be the ghost of old Joss Snelling, the smuggler, bringing his contraband into
the town.’

‘And we thought this would be a sleepy place,’ said Julia.

‘This Joss Snelling interests me,’ Delphine said. ‘I have heard there are wild tales of smuggling on this coast. And we must have more ghost stories, please – are there
no wailing women, dressed in grey? Pale little wraiths, haunting the coastal caves?’

All of a sudden, all the cheerful pleasure Martha had taken in the conversation drained from her face. She looked suddenly sad, and stilled. Mutely, she shook her head. Julia raised her eyebrows
at Delphine, questioningly, but Delphine decided not to ask more, for she knew not to press a person in sorrow. She had spent years fending off questions from interested strangers, and had no
desire to inflict the same on this young woman.

‘I’d best be off, ma’am,’ said Martha. She went without a curtsey, suddenly preoccupied, and they let her go. When Delphine went out into the hall, she saw the girl had
left her straw bonnet behind.

The other visitors came slowly at first, like the warning drops of rain in a summer storm. And, like blotches of rain on a hot New York pavement, Julia and I noticed them
all the more.

Mr Benedict was the first. Our previous meeting, when his carriage nearly ran me down, seemed to convince him that we were somehow friends. One morning I found him at the place on the cliff
I had wished to use as my viewpoint, his easel set up. He sought to charm me, and asked to see my pictures. I held them close to me, and was blunt when he tried to insist. He woke a violent anger
in me; his unceasing persistence reminding me of that last meeting with the man I refer to as my husband. That persistence is a kind of violence, in its way; it pushes through everything and tires
its victim, forcing one to either surrender or angrily break away.

You will wish to know of that man Benedict reminded me of. The so-called husband I hide behind. I use the ugly remembrance of him to shield me. When creating a protective legend, it is best
to stick to the truth as much as possible. So I use his first name, and when occasionally someone has asked me to describe his looks, I use his looks. It is risky to do so, for I have never yet
learned to really control my features, and I cannot help the shadow of disgust which moves across my face at the thought of him. It is a puzzle to the asker, who thinks I have spent so many years
in mourning for that man.

I do not use his surname. I thought of Beck myself: a mountain stream, running clear and pure.

Edmund soon found that Broadstairs in daylight was not the mysterious place it had seemed to be on his first night in the parsonage. In the sunshine it appeared peaceful,
benign and a little old-fashioned, with no hint of danger. The dark thoughts which had troubled him on the evening of his arrival began to drift away in the purity of the sea air.

A few days after his arrival he went with his host to meet Mrs Quillian, Theo’s aunt, who had just arrived at the Albion Hotel. As they entered the coffee room, Edmund observed with
interest the world-weary grandeur of the place: the deep red carpet, the dark walls and the hundreds of knick-knacks which, Theo told him, the late Mrs Gorsey had put on the mantelpiece before she
had died. ‘Poor Polly, Gorsey’s daughter, is tasked with dusting them,’ said Theo. ‘At least I do not give Martha that burden, though the current fashion is for such
clutter.’ He looked around the room, acknowledging acquaintances here and there. ‘Let us go out into the gallery and take our tea there,’ he said. ‘You may look at the sea,
and it is much lighter and airier there.’

They passed out of the coffee room and crossed the dining room to reach the gallery. Polly was setting the tables, a sulky look on her pretty face, and the only other occupant of the room was a
young gentleman, seated in the far corner, looking out at the sea.

Theo and Edmund had settled on a table, and Mr Gorsey had delivered them a tray of tea, when Edmund observed the entrance of a man whose marine garb and weather-beaten face immediately
interested him. He was rather surprised to see him walking across the reception rooms of the hotel, and his presence awoke the disapproval of more than one grand lady he passed. Yet at the sight of
him Gorsey raised his hand in greeting and went to speak to the gentleman in the far corner with some urgency. The mariner paused near Theo and Edmund; Edmund had the sense of being watched by
keen, observant eyes.

‘Good morning, Solomon,’ Theo said. ‘Mr Steele, will you allow me to introduce you to Solomon Holbourn, the Harbour Master? Mr Steele is visiting from London, Solomon, and we
are attending my aunt.’ He gave a weak smile. ‘She is late, as usual, but that is her right.’