Menfreya in the Morning (33 page)

Bevil had to go back to London, and I was sorry I couldn’t accompany him. So, he said, was he; but he thought he would not be away for more than a week or so.

The weather turned stormy and my cold had left me with a cough over which Fanny shook her head and scolded me.

“It’s wise to stay in, dear,” said J-ady Menfrey, “until the gales die down. Going out in this weather’s no good for anybody.”

So I stayed hi my room, reading, going through letters which had come to the Lansella chambers and answering some of them. William told me that he was carrying on at the chambers in Lansella while Bevil was away, and it came out that Jessica was helping him.

I was astonished.

“But what of Benedict?”

“His grandmother takes charge of him while she’s away. She’s glad to, and I need help at the chambers. Miss Tre-larken has an aptitude for the work, and the people seem to like her.”

Occasionally during those days a feeling of dread would come over me. I felt threatened, but I could not be sure from which direction.

Fanny was aware of it Sometimes I would see her sitting at the window staring broodingly across at the island as though she hoped to find the answer there. I wanted to talk to Fanny, but I dared not Already she hated Bevil; I could not tell her of my vague fears; but her attitude did not help

me.

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Menfreya in the Morning

Victoria Holt

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1 woke up one night with sweat on my face, startled out of my sleep. I heard myself calling out, though I did not know to whom.

Something was wrong … terribly wrong. Then I knew. I was in pain and I felt sick.

“Bevil,” I called, and then I remembered that he was in London.

I got up and staggered through to Fanny’s room, which was just across the corridor.

“Fanny!” I cried. “Fanny!”

She started up from her bed. “Why, lord save us, what’s the matter?”

“I feel ill,” I told her.

“Here!” She was at my side. She was wrapping something round my shivering body. She got me into bed and sat by me.

After a while I felt better. I stayed in Fanny’s room, and although next morning I no longer felt ill, I was weak and exhausted.

Fanny wanted to send for the doctor, but I said no, I was all right now.

It was just weakness after the cold, Fanny said; but if I felt like that again she was going to have no more nonsense.

It was only a few days later when that incident, coupled with what happened to Fanny, took on an alarming significance.

It was Fanny’s custom to awaken me in the morning by drawing my curtains and bringing me my hot water. Therefore, I was surprised on waking and looking at the clock to see that it was half an hour later than my usual time for rising.

A terrible fear came to me then. There was only one thing which would stop Fanny coming, and that was that she was ill. Putting my feet into slippers and wrapping a dressing gown about me, I hurried across the corridor to her room.

The sight of her horrified me. She was lying in bed, her hair in two thin little plaits jutting out at the side of her head, her face a grayish color.

“Fanny!” I cried.

“I’m all right now,” she assured me. “I thought I was going to die.”

“What?”

She nodded. “The same,” she said. “I feel that weak I couldn’t get up to save my life.”

“You mustn’t, Fanny,” I said. “I’m going to send for the doctor.”

She gripped my wrist.

“Lovey,” she said earnestly, reverting to a pet name of my childhood, “I’m frightened.”

“Why, Fanny?”

“It was the lemon barley,” she said. “You haven’t been taking it lately.”

“No. I didn’t fancy it after that night I wasn’t well.”

“I saw it standing there. It had been there all day. I didn’t think I ought to waste it and I drank the lot”

“Fanny, what are you saying?”

“It was in the lemon barley. I was with your stepmother when she had a bad turn once. She said to me: ‘It’s all right, Fanny. I’ve taken an overdose of my medicine.’ You know what that medicine was? They told us at the inquest. It killed her hi the end.”

“Fanny!”

“It was meant for you. There’s something going on in this house.”

“You mean somebody’s trying to poison us?”

“They didn’t know / was going to drink it. It wasn’t meant for me.”

“Oh… Fanny!”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m frightened, I am.”

I was silent. Thoughts were crowding into my mind too jumbled … too horrifying to express. I kept seeing Jessica’s face with the unfathomable smile. And I thought: No. It’s impossible.

“Fanny,” I said, “what are we going to do?”

“We’ve got to catch them, that’s all. We’ve got to watch.”

**We must call in the doctor.”

Fanny shook her head. “No,” she advised. “Then they’d know we were on their track. They’d try something else, and we wouldn’t be prepared for it. They mustn’t. They’ll think you didn’t drink it and it was thrown away. Let them think that.”

Fanny’s eyes were wide and staring. I didn’t like the look of her at all and was in two minds about calling the doctor.

I told her so and she shook her head. “You must never take anything in your room. That’s the only way you’ll be safe.”

I said: “You could make more lemon barley. We could have it analyzed. That’s what we ought to do.”

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Menfreya in the Morning

Victoria Holt

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“No,” she said. “They’re cunning. While we’re doing that they’ll try something else.”

“Fanny, this is madness.”

“Who came into the room today, do you remember?”

“Everybody. William, with some papers from the chambers. Lady Menfrey brought in the flowers. Sir Endelion came to see how I was. Miss Trelarken came in and brought Benny to see me. Then there are the maids.”

“You see, it’s awkward and we don’t know, and they might not try it again. I feel better now although I believed I was near death in the night. Oh my little Miss, I don’t know what this means, but I don’t like it I never have liked it I feel as though something’s calling me to get away … that’s how I feel.”

“I’m sure we should do something, Fanny.”

“We must give ourselves a little while though … a little while to think.”

She was so distraught that I promised her to do nothing …yet

After the first shock I found myself disbelieving Fanny’s theory that the barley water had been poisoned. I had had a cold; perhaps it was a gastric chill. It had made me feel sick; Fanny had caught it; she certainly seemed ill after that bout in the night I said to myself: We’re hatching this between us. It’s suspicion and jealousy that haven’t any foundation in fact. Bevil said he wasn’t on the island; and even if he were unfaithful, he would never allow anyone to harm me.

Poison! It was impossible.

Fanny had changed; she had grown even thinner and her eyes seemed sunken; there was a wild expression in them which alarmed me; she was more possessive than ever and would scarcely let me out of her sight

About a week after Fanny’s sickness I went down to the Lansella chambers and there received another shock when I realized how insidiously Jessica was undermining my position.

One of the callers, when received by me, said as she sat down: “Last time I saw Mrs. Menfrey. Such a lovely ladyl So kind and gentle. Fm not surprised our Member is so proud of her—as I’ve heard he is.**

“I’m Mrs. Menfrey, the Member’s wife,” X said.

“Oh!” she cried, turning faintly pink. “Well, I must say I’m sorry … I thought, you see, from the way she was … er … and she didn’t say she wasn’t when I called her ‘Mrs. Menfrey’ … which I’m sure I did.”

When I next saw Jessica I said to her, “I hear you were mistaken for me at the chambers.”

She raised those perfectly shaped eyebrows to signify surprise.

“Yes,” I went on, “one of the callers said she had seen the Member’s wife last time she had come. It was you.”

Jessica shrugged her shoulders. “They form then- conclusions.”

“She was so certain because she’d addressed you as ‘Mrs. Menfrey,’ and you hadn’t corrected her.”

“Oh, they imagine these things.”

I looked into her face and noticed the calm, smiling mouth, the beautiful eyes which betrayed nothing, the perfection of her smooth, fresh-colored skin. In that moment I thought: If she wanted my place she’d be ruthless enough to do anything to get it.

Victoria Holt

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9

Bevil had returned and Christmas was upon us. I awoke early to the sounds of bustle, for the servants were all up at dawn to prepare pies, game and poultry. They were so excited that they couldn’t keep quiet, and on Christmas Day no one expected them to.

Bevil gave me a diamond bracelet, and Benedict came racing into our bedroom to show us what he had discovered in the stocking which Jessica had given him to hang on his bedpost

“Look, Uncle Bevil. Look, Aunty Harriet.”

We looked and admired, and I thought then how pleased Gwennan would have been if she could have seen him; she would smile ruefully though because by doing what she had wished for her son I had brought Jessica into the house.

When I heard Jessica calling him I took him by the hand and led him away; she was in the corridor, wearing a blue twill dressing gown, only elegant because she was wearing it; and her hair hung hi a thick plait down her back. She looked more beautiful every day.

Later in the morning Bevil and Sir Endelion went hunting; the sound of the horns echoed through the house, and when they returned, according to custom, the log fires were blazing —elm and oak, between which the very sweet-smelling bog turf had been spread.

The carol singers visited us, their voices untrained but enthusiastic.

As I sat on a sunny bank,

A sunny bank, a sunny bank,

As I sat on a sunny bank

A Christmas Day in the morning.

The sunlight filled the house, and through the open window came the soft southwest wind. There would be rain very likely before evening. It was typical Cornish Christmas

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f weather—no snow for us. We might see a few snowflakes during the New Year, but there was rarely enough to settle. t Our Christmases were warm and damp. PS We all gathered hi the hall—decorated with holly and ivy ; —fOT the wassailing, when the bowl of spiced ale was set .= on the table and Sir Endelion drank from it the health of all who lived in the house; and then passed it round so that we might all drink too.

Bevil held the bowl out to me, and his eyes were wide with affection.

: “Happy Christmas, Harriet,” he whispered; and I wondered whether I had been passing through a phase of madness to doubt him.

I wore my topaz gown that evening; and since it was Christmas Day we dined in the great hall, as had been done every Christmas since Sir Endelion and Bevil could remember.

When the guise dancers arrived we danced with them; then we sat and watched while the villagers crowded into the hall to see the guisards perform their play. We of the house handed round the spiced ale and punch, the saffron cake, potato cake, pasties and gingerbread, as Menfreya had been doing for generations. That was a happy day.

There was consternation at Menfreya a few days later.

Fanny told me when she brought up my breakfast tray. Her face was working oddly, so I knew she was upset.

“What is it, Fanny?” I asked.

“That clock’s stopped,” she said tersely. “That tower dock.”

“It’s impossible.”

“No. It’s happened. Stopped at twenty minutes to three.

* There’s a regular row going on downstairs, I can tell you.

* Dawney’s just come up to the house to see Sir Endelion and Wm. They’re in a nice rage, I can tell you. It’s never happened in a hundred years or more … so they say.” *”A great deal of fuss about a clock!” I replied. She gave me an odd glance and set the tray down on the bed. I looked at it with distaste. A boiled egg, thin bread and butter, coffee and marmalade. It was what I usually had since after my cold I took breakfast in bed, but I had little appetite for it this morning.

230 Menfreya in the Morning

She stood at the bottom of my bed. “You know what they’re saying. It means a death in the family.” “Old wives’ tale,” I said. “Still,” she added, “they’re in a state.”

When she left me I tried to eat a little, because I did not want anyone to know how upset I was. How had the clock stopped? It was Dawney’s first duty to see that it never did. It was oiled at the right time, watched over, tended with care just to make sure it continued to work.

It may have seemed foolish to pander to the superstition; but this was Cornwall, and the Menfreys were a Cornish family.

I guessed that the news was already over the neighborhood. Hie clock has stopped! It means one of the Menfreys is threatened.

They would watch us now; they would see death shadowing us. It was obvious that some portentous event was about to take place. We had had the ghost on the island; and now the clock was stopped. In these they would see omens,

It was unnerving to know that people were watching you expectantly. When Bevil or I came riding into the courtyards the grooms would come out to see if we were actually home. I was sure they expected us to be brought home on a stretcher. I had a strange feeling that they had selected me for the victim. Then the uneasy feeling came to me that they knew something which I merely suspected. Did they know more of the relationship between Bevil and Jessica? Was it true that when a man preferred another woman to his wife, everyone knew of this before the wife?

It was all very well to laugh at superstitions, but at heart most of us are susceptible to them. I was becoming nervous. I remembered the two incidents of the barley water, known only to Fanny and myself. But perhaps to others? Those who had tried to poison us? But that was absurd. No one had. It was Fanny’s ridiculous suspicions. Which I shared. Or did I? I was not sure.

Fanny didn’t help. She watched over me with persistence, and if I were home later than she expected me to be I would find her in a state of terrible anxiety. Once I heard her praying … to Billy. In moments of crisis nowadays she always turned to Billy.