Wild Island (20 page)

CHAPTER
20

Before you die

'I'm so glad you managed to come,' continued Lady Edith, the gun unwavering in her hands. 'I've been waiting for this. You see I'm going to shoot you like the other one. Like my sister-in-law Leonie. Isn't it odd,' she said with a fleeting smile, 'that was on my birthday too. But I'd have done it anyway. I'm awfully determined when I set my mind to anything. You have to be, when you have a family like mine to look after. The maternal instinct, you know. No, of course you don't know, do you? And now you never will.'

The sinister phrase struck a reminiscent note. 'The instinct, being perfected, can go awry. It can be turned towards evil..." Mother Agnes's letter, which she could see still lying on her dressing-table where she had left it. Oh, Mother Agnes, you who can see into the human heart. Not Colonel Henry, not Ben, not Rory - but all the time Edith the mother, the centre of it all.

Jemima felt quite frozen, numb. For one thing Lady Edith continued to talk in her familiar nervous voice, as though apologizing for some fault of whose exact nature she was unaware, while accepting without reservation the fact of her own culpability. The whole situation remained quite unreal. How could Jemima reconcile the fussy, placating personality of Lady Edith with the extraordinary revelation which were now - without hesitation - pouring from her lips?

But even as these revelations were being made, Jemima's mind at least gradually unfroze, and a series of terrible and telling points occurred to her.

Lady Edith babbling on about Leonie Beauregard, horrible, mad:

'She tried to break up the family, you see, so I had to do it, didn't I? Getting hold of my Henry like that.' But then she turned on Jemima: 'And that's why I'm going to kill you too, We're such a happy, happy family, you see. And Henry and I were really the perfect couple, everyone says so. Of course he has to have his little bit of fun from time to time, I do realize that you have to let men enjoy themselves in their own way, which isn't ours, don't you ? You know what husbands are...'

She paused and gave a little laugh, apologetic as before.

'But how rude of me! You've never been married, have you. Miss Shore ? So you don't know what husbands are.' She sounded for one instant quite spiteful, like an unkind child. 'Ladies in London, oh yes, I know all about that. Their letters, sent to the Estate Office, their calls when they think I'm out, their assumed voices when they find I'm in. Silly creatures. I know it all.

'But she was different, Leonie was different. She wanted him to marry her. And so she died. And afterwards we had Kim. That just shows how happy we were really. And you're different too, Miss Shore, and so you will shortly die too.'

'Why am I different ?' whispered Jemima. She was ashamed to find that her voice had temporarily deserted her.

'Because you're so tempting, aren't you, Miss Shore ? To a man of his age; my Henry isn't young any longer. But you make him feel young, I can see it: he looks more vigorous, he's happier, he laughs, he's even less impatient with me and the boys. Oh, I know. And you're clever and witty and everything he likes, not like those other fools, married women indulging their stupid passions. Why, you're not even married! You're quite quite free. Father Flanagan pointed it out to me in one of his talks. Oh yes, Miss Shore, you're far too tempting to be allowed to stay in the path of my Henry.

'Besides,' Lady Edith's voice never lost its affability as she spoke; 'besides, you came here. You-came to Glen Bronnack. You came into our very own glen, I never allowed any of the others to come here. The glen belonged to us, to me, and the boys. But you brought it all here, your beauty and your brilliance, you polluted our beloved glen. You came to Eilean Fas on purpose. You wanted to seduce him. You could have had any man in the world, but you chose my Henry. It was all your fault. And I shall kill you here in the house where you did it.'

Jemima felt one single very strong pang of guilt.

Then she reminded herself that there had been other deaths. Ossian Lucas had spoken of the passions that she might stir up, as the waterfall stirred up the dark waters of Sighing Marjorie's Pool. But there had been other deaths before she arrived in the Glen to upset its primitive and precarious balance. Leonie Beauregard, Charles Beauregard...

Nevertheless, that single pang of guilt would remain with her, hidden but ineradicable: it was the voice of Mother Agnes, the voice of her conscience.

She turned her mind, deliberately, as coolly as she could muster, to investigate the truth of those other deaths. Charles Beauregard, drowned deep in the river, sucked down - what had happened to him, Jemima wondered, in cold appalled amazement. Tremble as she might, she noticed that Lady Edith's grip on the gun remained steady, even vice-like. Jemima made a very slight movement, hardly perceptible, in the direction of the door, still open behind her in the empty house where the mist was now beginning to float lightly in the very air of the interior. At once there was a furious growl, pronounced, minatory, from the dog beside her. She looked down.

'Yes, Jacko, hold her,' said Lady Edith sharply. 'Hold, boy. Now wait.' The dog obeyed her instantly. His teeth closed, without biting or tearing, on Jemima's jeans. He looked up at her, his eyes as soft, as brown, as apparently sympathetic as those of his mistress.

Jacobite. Not Flora but Jacobite. Not Clementina's dog, not Colonel Henry's dog, but Lady Edith's own dog. The well-trained dog; Duncan's words on their first meeting. 'She's wonderful with dogs, her ladyship, trains them herself.'

The details of another death came into her mind. Bridie Stuart, so devoted to Edith Beauregard - who suspected the murderer of Charles but said the truth would never pass her lips ... What had she seen, what had she known? The dog named by Duncan as Flora, seen near the bridge on the day of Bridie's death, the dog which might have knocked Bridie into the water. How easily that could have been Jacobite! The two dogs were identical, certainly at such a distance.

And Rory, the Chief of the Red Rose, trying to warn Clementina on the telephone. 'I'm in danger.' What had he known ? Jacobite the bad, Flora the good dog. She had once mistaken the respective characters of Charles and his Uncle Henry Beauregard, making the wrong one good, the wrong one evil. Now she had done the same with the dogs.

She felt she had to know the truth. Jemima Shore, Investigator, might be about to end her days, her pretty telegenic face blown to pieces by a madwoman armed with a shot-gun. But she had to know the truth of those deaths.

'The others,' she began, when Lady Edith had finished her fearful disquisition. 'Your nephew Charles, Bridie... ?' But Lady Edith was delighted to explain. Her characteristic anxiety, her air of wishing to justify herself, was macabre. She even managed to sound sincerely regretful about Bridie - 'I was awfully sorry about that, but you see it just had to be done to protect the family.'

She went on: 'My nephew Charles - well, you could hardly expect me to sit by, could you. while he inherited everything and my own lovely boys got nothing ? It was so easy; pretending to Charles that I wanted a rare bog plant growing just above the water line of the pool. I'm famous for collecting wild flowers round here: I knew he'd wade in and get it for me.

Charles, in spite of everything,' she said brightly, 'had awfully nice manners. Oh, I knew he'd fall into the trap. We watched. He waded in immediately. And then: so dangerous, those great boots-the times I've warned my boys to take care. We looked after him.' 'We?'

'Jacko and I. Didn't we, Jacko boy ? There's a good boy.' The great dog thumped his tail. 'A quick command, in he went, the good dog, swam out, and then so easy to pull a man down in those boots—*

'And Bridie saw you —'

'She saw the dog all wet and coming out of the river as she was bicycling over to Eilean Fas, from the bridge. She didn't know Charles was dead then. She thought it must be Flora. But she found Flora, dry, up at the house, waiting for Charles who never came back. Before she found the body in the river later Flora followed her down to the river and attacked her. So she knew the first dog must be Jacko. Where Jacko goes, I'm likely to be. And she began to put two and two together. She may even have seen me on the island. I was never sure.'

Jemima thought sadly: But Bridie would never have told what she knew. Lady Edith, after all those years, had not trusted her. How quickly evil - and madness - corrupts the mind.

'So I dashed out of the house on the afternoon of our little royal party, giving as an excuse that I needed Father Flanagan to make the numbers even. And good clever Jacko and I solved the problem of Bridie on that nasty slippery bridge.'

So many clues, thought Jemima. Jacobite - not Flora - seen by Duncan near the bridge on the afternoon of Bridie's death. Lady Edith apparently mismanaging the dinner party so that there was one man over, and actually coolly planning yet another murder, to cover her tracks.

'Rory and Hamish did see me training Jacobite, in the woods round Eilean Fas, when they were out pigeon-shooting. But they had their guns with them and were busy arguing about who had just shot what. You know what boys are,' she added indulgently. 'I don't think they suspected anything. Sport means so much to them: why should they bother about what their silly old mother was up to?'

It was not the moment, thought Jemima, to point out that on the contrary both Rory and Hamish had been separately worried - if disbelieving - about what they saw. Rory, in his capacity as Chief of the Red Rose, had imagined that Clementina might be in some kind of danger and had warned her on the telephone. Hamish had paid his inarticulate visit to Jemima, somehow trusting that the magic powers endowed by television would enable her to sort out this mute appeal. The trouble was that the brothers had not consulted each other. The suspicion in each case had been too horrible to be given tongue - to another member of the family.

Lady Edith moved a little. The gun now rested on the brass bedrail. Jemima moved too. The dog growled. Jemima stopped moving.

'Time for you to join the stalk, Jacko,' said Lady Edith in an indulgent voice. 'We don't want them to find you here, do we? That would give the game away. Go on, boy, find him, find him.'

Instantly the great golden dog rose and padded out of the room.Jemima could hear him padding down the stairs and out of doors, onto the gravel and away.

'Would you have killed Clementina too?'Jemima put it in the past tense.

Lady Edith smiled warmly. 'I may.' She spoke in the future. All that money. After all I've got six hungry boys to provide for. Five, if you don't count Ben, who's provided for now as the eldest. But on the whole, no. Enough is enough. There will have been enough deaths - including yours,' she added. Her tone was wise and compassionate. Jemima was reminded of
her
first sight of Lady Edith in the church, a face once pretty, blurred by time, the only one showing emotion over the death
of
Charles Beauregard. Under the circumstances, it was no wonder that she had appeared moved, except that she had been moved by exultation, secret glee, not compassion. But who could ever tell what went on in the crazed murderous mind which lurked beneath the disarming facade of Lady Edith?

'But just now Clementina was pushed. A log fell in. She herself nearly fell in.' Jemima was puzzled. She found it difficult to work out how Lady Edith had managed to get back from the falls in time to greet her.

'Nearly,' repeated Lady Edith with complacency. 'Then that wasn't me at work, was it ? I don't make mistakes, do I ? You can't make mistakes when you've got a family to look after. I dare say that naughty Kim was teasing her; he told me he planned to give her a good fright for being so awful to his father in the church. That was why he was so keen on the stalk. I knew I could safely pretend to try and stop it; I could even ask Kim to stay with me for safety's sake. I knew he would never agree. He's such a handful, that boy! Being the baby, I'm afraid he's got a tiny bit spoilt. Still, a miss is as good as a mile, as we used to say in the nursery.'

The silly catch-phrase galvanized Jemima from the strange lethargy into which she had fallen.

'Anyway, Colonel Henry will soon be here to rescue me!' she cried. 'Your husband. I'm expecting him. What are you going to do about that?'

'Oh, please don't bother yourself about Henry,' answered Lady Edith. 'You see I wrote both those little notes to you myself. I don't have your brains, Miss Shore - you couldn't imagine silly old me on television for one moment, could you ? - but one thing I can do is imitate Henry's writing quite well after all these years.'

A modest expression of satisfaction crossed her face. 'And I can even imitate your writing too. You wrote me such a
sweet note after our little royal party,' said-Lady Edith. 'So thoughtful. Such charming manners. It's ridiculous to say people in the press and television are always rude. I shall always remember how good your manners were. "Miss Shore had beautiful manners," I shall say. "Such a pity about her unfortunate death. Trying to handle a gun when she wasn't used to it. We shall never know quite how it happened, or why. We had all grown to love her - Henry, the boys and I. Such a lovely unaffected person."' Her tone changed abruptly.

'Look, here's the suicide note you've written.' Lady Edith threw it on the bed with her left hand. Her right hand did not leave the gun's trigger. 'I am sure you'd like to see it. Before
you
die.'