Philippa Carr - Voices in a Haunted Room

“Billy too…” she murmured and she picked up the gun, and pointed it at me.

“There’ll be blood,” she said. “There is blood. Poor Billy. I don’t like blood.”

Then she dropped her gun and covered her face with her hands. “I can’t do it,” she said. “I thought I could but I can’t. I couldn’t kill the little baby.”

“Of course you can’t do it, Dolly. I understand everything. I know how you felt. Help me now. Untie these ropes. Let’s go and see them. Perhaps they’re not dead.”

She looked at me and I saw the timid girl I had always known.

“They are dead,” she said.

“They might not be. Perhaps there is something we could do.”

She hesitated. I felt then that my life was in the balance. Everything depended on the next few seconds. Suddenly she nodded. She felt in the pocket of her gown and brought out a knife. She looked at it for a moment and paused. I thought she was going to change her mind. Then she cut the ropes.

I stumbled out of the boat house. I saw Billy Grafter first. He was lying on the sand, which was dyed red all around him.

He was undoubtedly dead.

And there was Jonathan.

I had never thought to see him so. He lay limply and his face was the colour of ivory. He looked like a different person… so quiet… so still. His horse was standing patiently by. He must have dismounted before he was shot.

I leaned over him. I thought I detected a faint flutter of breath.

“Jonathan, my love, don’t die. Please…”

Dolly was standing beside me.

Hope had come to me. He was not dead. He might yet be saved.

“Dolly,” I said. “Ride back to Eversleigh. Get help. Tell them there’s been an accident. Tell them that Mr. Jonathan is very seriously hurt. Promise me you will do this. I will stay here with him.”

She said: “I can’t. What will they say?”

I took her arm. I wondered whether I should go. But I did not want to leave her here with him. I was still unsure of her. I kept telling myself that there was hope and I was desperately afraid to leave him.

I said very seriously: “This is a terrible thing, Dolly. We’ve got to save them if possible… him and Billy. You have played a part in this, but you are no murderess. If we can save their lives you’ll feel so much better. You’ll forget that you lured him here. Tell them quickly and get a doctor and a stretcher and bring them here quickly… Please, Dolly.”

“I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll go.”

And I believed her.

I knelt beside him. “Jonathan,” I said. “Oh… Jonathan. Please don’t die. You mustn’t leave me, you mustn’t…”

His eyes flickered for a moment and his lips moved. I bent low to hear what he said. It was: “Claudine.”

“Yes, Jonathan, my dearest. I am here with you. I am hoping to take you back to Eversleigh. You’re going to recover. Yes, you are. I promise you.”

“Finished,” he whispered.

“No… no. You’re too young. Nobody could do this to you. Not to you… Jonathan Frenshaw. You’ve always been the one who succeeded. You’re not finished. Your whole life is before you.”

His lips formed my name again.

“Remember…” he murmured. “Live… happily, Claudine. Don’t look back. Secrets… best kept. Remember. For Amaryllis… remember. Ours…”

I kissed his forehead. He seemed to be aware of me, for something like a smile touched his lips.

He was still trying to say something. “Be happy…” I think it was, and I knew he was reminding me of his philosophy. I was to be happy, to make David happy. I was to keep our secret. Dolly shared it, but I had a feeling that she would never betray it. There were many things which she would want to forget.

“Don’t go, Jonathan,” I said.

“Do you love me?”

“I do… with all my heart.”

His eyes flickered and there was that smile again.

“Jonathan,” I pleaded. “Jonathan…”

But he was unaware and he spoke no more.

When they arrived he was dead.

IT WAS A LONG TIME since those agonizing moments on the beach when I had watched Jonathan die. Amaryllis and Jessica were now eleven years old. We had celebrated their birthdays this year—as we always did—simultaneously. They were growing up together, close—perhaps closer than sisters would have done. They were so different—Jessica a dark flamboyant beauty with a temper to match her looks; Amaryllis, fair as an angel with the sweetest of natures. They were the darlings of our household.

I had enjoyed a happiness with David such as I had not believed possible. It was not complete happiness, of course. How could it be? There were dreams when I thought I was in that room and I heard voices telling me that I had sinned—sinned against the one who had loved me so dearly, so tenderly. Sometimes during the day when I was laughing and so intensely happy, the voices would intrude, shattering my pleasure and my peace of mind. Then I thought of Jonathan and found a certain comfort in remembering his words. I must never make David unhappy by letting him guess that ours had ever been anything but the perfect marriage. My punishment was to live with my secret, and I would never be completely rid of my guilt. Always there would be the reminder like voices in a haunted room.

Life at Eversleigh goes on much the same as it ever did.

It could no longer be kept secret that Billy Grafter had been a spy for the French and that Alberic had worked with him; and this was why they had met their deaths. Jonathan was the hero who had brought them to justice—and lost his life in doing so.

I often wondered about Dolly. I saw her frequently and she seemed to have become quite fond of me. She was happier than she had been for a long time, and I think it was due to her grandmother. Evalina Trent had changed. I never knew how much she had been aware of, but she ceased to mourn so desperately for Evie and gave herself up to the care of Dolly. I think in a way she saw that her ambitions for Evie had been one of the main causes which had led Evie to take such drastic action. It must have been a sobering thought that she preferred a watery grave to her grandmother’s wrath.

Neither Dolly nor I would ever forget that dramatic event in which we had taken part. Once I talked to her of Jonathan and told her how he believed that it was better to keep secrets rather than make confessions which were going to hurt people.

“I don’t know whether he was right or not,” I said. “Perhaps before I die I shall find out.”

Millicent had been stunned by Jonathan’s death. She had truly loved him.

She talked to me of him.

“I once thought there was something between you and him,” she said.

“Oh?” I replied. “But David is my husband.”

“That is not always a deterrent. I don’t think it would have been with Jonathan. I was not sure with you. Jonathan was the most attractive man I ever knew… or ever will. He was perhaps irresistible. He was not a good man… as David is. There was adventure in him. He would have his way, and he didn’t always consider other people. But he died for his country.”

I agreed with her—and so we accepted our lives, as we needs must.

When her child was born she became absorbed in him. He was her delight. She called him Jonathan, and that other Jonathan lived again for her in him.

She was happier now—and so was I. I had David; I had Amaryllis; we were a united family and I was grateful to be a member of it.

One day we had an unexpected visitor who came from the Continent. He had met Charlot, who had begged him, if he returned to England, to take a message to my mother. Both Charlot and Louis Charles had married and left the Army. They now had their own vineyard in Burgundy; and the message was that when there was peace between England and France we should all meet again. My mother’s happiness was great. Only then did I realize how deeply saddened she had been by the loss of her son.

We had lived through stirring times. We had seen Napoleon become the Emperor of the French, with almost the whole of Europe under his control.

We had shivered with apprehension when he had turned his acquisitive eyes on our island. We were to be the next, and the threat of invasion by those seemingly unconquerable armies hung over us.

But we had our great men. Lord Nelson was one of them. We had just had the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Trafalgar Bay, and there was a lightness in the air; bonfires were blazing from one end of England to the other.

Nelson, the national hero, had died on his flagship and that flagship was symbolically called the Victory.

We were a large party that night and the conversation was all of the victory at Trafalgar, which had removed the threat of invasion and stopped the conqueror in his uninterrupted progress through the world.

My mother proposed a toast to Lord Nelson, the dead hero.

“And there is another I should like to include,” she went on. “Jonathan Frenshaw. It is because of men like these, who give themselves, that we may enjoy our peaceful lives. They are the real heroes.”

And we drank to that, for it was true.