Виктория Холт - The Black Opal

The best thing in the meantime is to keep well away from it. “

Tom arrived. He examined the balcony and agreed with Lucian. He said the best thing to do would be to put a new stake in. He’d get Blacksmith Healy to make one. He would have it shipshape in a few days. Meanwhile, he’d patch it up a bit.

While I was dressing for dinner that evening, I again had that feeling of being watched. This time I was not surprised to see Adeline at the balcony door.

“Hello,” she said.

“Are you having a nice time here?”

“Yes, thank you, Adeline.”

“You were away a long time.”

“Yes, I was.”

“Why did you come now? Was it to tell Kitty something?”

“Well, just to be with her again. We were always good friends. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes. I remember it all. Do you know about Lady Garston?”

“Only what I heard you say.”

“It was at Garston. Garston is a castle … very big. She used to walk along the battlements. Do you know what battlements are?”

“Yes.”

“It was dangerous there and they had put up a railing. People used to stand up there and throw boiling oil down on invaders.”

“My goodness! That must have been a long time ago!”

“One day Lady Garston went up there. She leaned over the railing and it broke. She fell down … down … and then she was dead.”

“Poor Lady Garston!”

“She didn’t know the railing was loose.”

“Well, we know ours is, so we have to be careful until it is mended.”

“It would kill us just the same.”

“Oh, let’s be more cheerful. That’s a pretty dress you are wearing.”

Her expression changed to one of pleasure.

“Kitty chose it for me.”

“It suits you.”

“Kitty says I ought to wear pretty clothes.”

I smiled at her.

“You love Kitty dearly, don’t you?”

“I love Kitty more than anything else in the world … more than anyone ever loved anyone. I love Kitty.” She looked at me very steadily.

“No one must ever take Kitty away from me.”

“I am sure no one would want to. Oh, look, it’s time we went down to dinner.”

After dinner, when Lucian and I were alone with Kitty and Jefferson, we returned to the subject which was uppermost in the minds of us all.

Jefferson had not changed his opinion. He still believed that at this stage the mixing of the pills should be kept to ourselves.

“I’d like to go on mulling it over,” he said.

“You don’t need to go tomorrow, do you?” he asked Lucian.

“Could you stay another day? There is nothing like talking something over, even if you do go over the same ground again and again. It helps one to come to a conclusion.”

Lucian said: “The offer is very tempting.”

“Sometimes it is good to give way to temptation,” said Kitty, ‘and I am sure this is one of them. “

“Well then, thank you for your hospitality and your interest in my problem.”

“It is also ours,” replied Kitty.

I lay in bed. Sleep was evasive. I was not surprised. I was thinking of Lucian and how much I loved him, and how wonderful it was to have made contact with Jefferson, who was so positive in his thinking and had already done a great deal to ease Lucian’s mind.

I heard a faint sound and opened my eyes. Adeline was at the door which opened on to the balcony.

“Carmel,” she cried in alarm.

“Come … quick … please hurry.”

I leaped out of bed.

“What is it?”

“Please … please come.”

I followed her on to the balcony. She stopped suddenly.

“It’s here,” she said.

She held my arm and was gripping it very firmly. She took me to the balcony railing. There was a wildness in her eyes.

I cried out: “Adeline! Be careful! Remember …”

She held me firmly by both my arms. Her face was distorted. She looked quite different from the Adeline I knew. She was forcing me against the balcony, and I knew then what she was trying to do. The balcony was faulty. The stake was loose. And she was trying to push me over! I felt the railing move. It had fallen. I heard it rattle to the stone patio below.

Now, I thought. Now! And with all my strength I tried to free myself.

But she was strong and her grip was firm. There was a menacing look in her face.

I was saying: “Why … why?”

She was still gripping me firmly and then she suddenly began to sob.

We swayed a little. In vain, I made every effort to free myself, and then suddenly she was pulling me away from the balcony.

She was still holding me in that vice-like grip while she went on sobbing bitterly.

“I can’t do it,” she was whimpering.

“I can’t kill Carmel. Not Carmel”

I felt this must be a bad dream. It could not be real. But she had meant to kill me. Why? It was for this reason that she had been obsessed by the faulty balcony. She had meant to push me over, and if she had . well, that would have been the end for me. What was in her poor troubled mind? Why had she turned against me?

She went on sobbing.

“Adeline,” I said, ‘what does this mean? What are you trying to do?”

“I couldn’t do it,” she said.

“I couldn’t kill you, Carmel. But I won’t let anyone take Kitty away from me.”

I managed to get her into my bedroom. We sat side by side on the bed and I put my arm round her.

“Adeline,” I said, ‘please tell me what is troubling you. I dare say it can be explained. “

“You hate me now,” she said.

“You know, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate you. I never could. I’m very fond of you. We were always good friends in the past, weren’t we?”

She nodded.

“You came to tell her,” she said.

“You know. I heard you talking. I know what it’s all about. It’s about her … my mother … my wicked mother. She was going to send Kitty away. She wouldn’t have let me see her any more.”

“Adeline,” I said, ‘suppose you tell me exactly what this is all about.”

“They’ll take me away from Kitty,” she said.

“They won’t. Kitty loves you. You’ll always be with her.”

“I won’t let them take me away from her. I won’t.”

“No, of course. But why did you want to hurt me’ ” You were going to find out. You brought Lucian down here. I heard you talking about it. You were going to tell Kitty to prove it all. You were going to tell them all . the newspaper men . the police . and all of them. “

Tell them what, Adeline? “

That I did it. I killed her. You came down to tell them. “

“You killed your mother?”

“She was going to send Kitty away. She was cruel. Nobody loved her. It was better without her. She frightened me. She caught me in her room.

I only wanted to show Lucian the opal when the drawer came out . and then Kitty came for me, and my mother was so angry she said Kitty was to go. I went into her room when she was lying in her bed. She was gasping and couldn’t breathe very well. She said: “Pills … pills.”

Just that. So I put a lot of them in a glass and gave them to her. She drank it. And then she was dead. But they took us off to Aunt Florence, and I wouldn’t stay there, and after a time they sent me to Kitty. Then I thought you had come to spoil it all. “

“Oh, Adeline, my poor, poor Adeline.”

She leaned against me, sobbing.

“I came back to Kitty,” she said.

“It was lovely here. It’s the best place in the world. I can’t go away from Kitty. And you came here, and I listened and you were always talking to them about … what you knew and you were going to tell them and when they knew they would take me away from Kitty. I can’t go away from Kitty. It’s safe here. It’s my home. I didn’t really want to hurt you … but I had to … and then I couldn’t do it, because I like you too much.”

“Adeline, I did not know what you thought I did. You didn’t get it right. I came to see Kitty and we did talk about that. Now, you must stop crying. I am going to call Kitty now. She will know what to do.

I’ll be back in a moment. “

She was quiet suddenly.

“Kitty,” she said.

“She’ll know … but now I’ve told … Kitty will know what to do.”

I left her. I ran to Kitty’s room. She was asleep and I roused her hastily. I told her she must come at once. There had been a scene with Adeline.

She was out of bed in seconds.

“What’s happened?” she said.

“She’s been talking about the past. Please come quickly. She frightened me.”

We ran to the bedroom. She was not there. Her balcony door was open, but she was not in her room.

Then I went to the edge of the balcony where the faulty stake had been.

I looked over. Adeline was lying on the patio below.

She was taken to the hospital and Kitty was with her all the time and she was happy.

She felt little pain, the doctor told us. Her spine was irrevocably injured. She was quite lucid at times and she talked of the past.

She told us all again and again including the doctor and nurses -how she administered the pills which had killed her mother and why she had felt it was necessary to do so. She knew about the pills because she had heard the district nurse talking about them to Nanny Gilroy and Mrs. Barton. She had listened a great deal. People thought she couldn’t understand, so they talked in front of her.

She knew that her mother was going to send Kitty away, and for that reason she, Adeline, had killed her. She had been sent to Aunt Florence, and had made them hate her so much that they begged Kitty to take her. Then everything was right and she was happy for a long time.

But now they knew she had killed her mother they would take her away from Kitty. She did not think they would hang her because they would say she was silly, but she would rather that than live away from Kitty. But this was the best way and Kitty would be with her till she died, which she knew would be soon.

She had told me she was going to kill me because she thought I knew she had killed her mother. But I had been her friend and she couldn’t do it after all, so she had tried to kill herself. Lady Garston had fallen from the battlements, so she fell from the balcony.

She lived for two days. She had made her confession not only to me but in the presence of several people and in doing so had banished the cloud which hung over so many of us.

As Jefferson had predicted, there was a great deal of publicity.

Adeline’s confession of guilt, the fact that an innocent man had been hanged for a crime he had not committed, had aroused public interest and for a few weeks there was comment throughout the press. Kitty, with Jefferson and Edwina, went abroad for a few months to escape attention. The case was closed, solved without a doubt. Adeline’s last dramatic act had settled that.

I felt sad when I thought of poor Adeline’s life, but I remembered the joy she had displayed when she and Kitty were together. Surely she had been happy then. I think her conscience had not worried her a great deal. Her mother was wicked, she would reason, causing unhappiness to many people. She had deserved to die. And her father? How had she thought of him? She had not known him well, but he had never been unkind to her. She had probably been able to put him from her mind.

Lucian and I were married three months later. Lady Crompton had insisted on making it a more grand affair than either Lucian or I wanted, but that was of small importance.

We were too happy to care.

Five years have passed since Adeline’s death. They have been five happy years.

A new century has come, and I think that the whole of Britain knows that this is the beginning of a new era. The Queen has died and the Court is plunged into mourning on this cold and wintry day. They have buried her beside the husband she adored in her ‘dear mausoleum’ at Windsor.

I stood at the window, looking over the lawn where so long ago I had had tea with Camilla and Lucian, Estella, Henry and Adeline, and I thought: This is my home. Lucian is my husband, and all that happened has brought me to my present happiness.

Lady Crompton is an invalid these days, but her life has considerably brightened. I have a son, Jonathan, aged four, and a two-year-old daughter, Catherine, who is equally dear to her. There is also Bridget. Jemima Cray is no longer with us. I was greatly relieved when we were finally rid of her. I had steeled myself for the ordeal. I offered her an annuity, implying that she should only have it if she left without fuss and stopped her ridiculous fabrications. I also hinted that such monstrous untruths amounted to slander and she had better take care. I was delighted when she decided to go quietly.