‘There is one thing I can tell you,’ said Maria, regaining control over her voice and her facial expression. ‘To begin with, how old are you?’
‘I think you know that I am twenty.’
‘Quite so. Well, Maybury has been employed here for the past eleven years. My father has been dead for twenty-four.’
‘I’m sorry for my thoughts and hopes, Maria.’
‘Accept what you have been given and are to go on being given, and abstain from wild speculation. It does no good and may create a great deal of mischief.’
‘I’ll remember that, Maria. When you come to London to hear me sing in public, you will notice what a good stage-presence I have. Other things run in families besides twins and illegitimacy.’
Her listener walked out of the room.
‘I shall buy Antonia the flat she wants,’ said Maria to Fiona.
‘Really? But I thought the terms of madre’s Will—’
‘I don’t want Antonia in this house.’
‘You must have a reason for saying so, I suppose.’
‘Certainly I have, but I shall not disclose it, even to you. Sufficient to say that I do not want her here now my mother has gone. You and I are sufficient company for one another.’
‘It will be nice to have the house to ourselves; not that she comes all that often.’
‘No, but she comes when she thinks she will and without giving previous notice. My mother put up with it, but I shall not. Fiona, I think I will tell you the truth, after all. I can trust you not to pass it on.’
‘Don’t say something you may regret later on, Maria.’
‘It is better that someone else should know. I shrank at first from telling you because I suppose I have old-fashioned ideas about these things, but nobody thinks anything of them nowadays. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether it isn’t rather a mark of distinction to be the result of an illicit love-affair.’
‘If it is a love-affair.’
‘Oh, well, an outsider can hardly know about that. Antonia began by pretending that she thought herself to be my father’s child. That notion I disposed of very easily, but it did not represent her true thoughts.’
‘I suppose it’s terribly frustrating to be brought up in an orphanage and not know anything about your origins,’ said Fiona, envisaging what she would feel in such a case.
‘I make all allowance for that. What I don’t understand is how Antonia knows she is my husband’s daughter. In fact, she cannot know. It was just a wild shot in the dark.’
‘But is she?—how can you be sure that she is right?’
‘I am not sure, but it is possible.’
‘Well, anything is possible; not so many things are likely. I would put this one clean out of your mind, if I were you, but I think you are right to close your doors to her if she has made that kind of allegation.’
‘My late husband was on the stage, you know, and, as the wretched girl says, some things do run in families.’
‘I see that poor Margaret Denham is to be sent for trial,’ said Fiona, thinking it best to change the subject.
‘Do you think they will find her guilty?’
‘Well, anything would be better than having the crime brought home to one of your family.’
‘Whatever can you mean?’
‘I am naming no names.’ The women eyed one another. Fiona was the first to drop her eyes. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought perhaps your mind marched with mine. There are cuckoos in the nest, more than one of them.’
‘Oh!’ said Maria, her face clearing. ‘So that is what you think! It is more than likely, but, for the sake of all of us, the name must not be breathed.’
‘So what can be done?’ asked Bluebell. ‘Of course, Margaret Denham may be guilty, but I think the police have gone too far in arresting her so soon. As it’s a charge of murder, the poor thing can’t even get bail.’
She was speaking to Dame Beatrice, having walked down to the hotel immediately after breakfast to seek an interview. She was accompanied by Gamaliel, who had his own views and expressed them freely.
‘They have arrested this girl because she is poor and obscure and frightened. The person to arrest is this girl we have to call Antonia. It was easy to see that she was more upset than anybody over my great grandmother’s Will. The one most upset is the guilty party. That is my opinion.’
‘Don’t be silly, Gammy,’ said Bluebell. ‘You are putting the cart before the horse and talking from hindsight. Antonia did not know the contents of the Will before your great grandmother died. Nobody did. Somebody may have thought she did, but even if she had been right (and we know now that she was not right) she had nothing to gain by the death. She would get her training whether she was to be left the money for it or whether one of us legatees was to pay for it, as has turned out to be the case. You must not talk so wildly and unfairly.’
‘He is right about one thing,’ said Dame Beatrice, gazing with benign admiration at the beautiful youth. ‘If Margaret Denham is to be exonerated, another culprit must be found, for of one other thing we can be sure; Mrs Leyden undoubtedly was poisoned and, on the face of it, by somebody’s wilful act. The charge, however, may turn out to be one of manslaughter.’
‘Not murder?’ asked Gamaliel, not at all put out of countenance by Bluebell’s censure. ‘But that is not so interesting, is it?’
‘No, it is not,’ Dame Beatrice agreed. ‘Nevertheless, the accused person may well prefer it.’
‘Would it help this girl if I went to the police and confessed to a practical joke?’
Bluebell gazed at him with horror and told him, with some abruptness, not to show off. Dame Beatrice surveyed him with kindly interest.
‘I hardly think it would help matters at all,’ she said. ‘You base your suggestion, no doubt, on the theory that, at your age, not only could you plead that a practical joke went wrong and was followed by circumstances which you did not intend, but also that you would get off far more lightly if you were convicted than this unfortunate girl may find is the case.’
‘You are talking sense, my dear old lady,’ said Gamaliel cordially. ‘That is the way I see it.’
‘If you followed out your idiotic suggestion,’ said Bluebell, recovering herself, ‘you would fail to qualify for election as head boy next term. The school would hardly choose one who was a candidate for a reformatory. I think you had better return home and leave me to consult Dame Beatrice in private.’
‘Is that your opinion, too, dear old lady?’ asked Gamaliel, favouring Dame Beatrice with his wide smile.
‘Yes, dear young man, I rather think it is,’ she replied, ‘so off you go.’
Gamaliel took himself off quite cheerfully and Dame Beatrice led the way through the empty bar to its narrow balcony, where she and Bluebell seated themselves. For some moments they gazed out over the beautiful little cove in silence.
Then Bluebell said: ‘If this girl didn’t do it, then one of us did, and although I rebuked Gamaliel for suggesting it, Antonia is as good a candidate as any other except that, as I pointed out, even if she did think she had seen a draft which left her money, it made no essential difference to her future. Even five thousand pounds would not be too much to pay for another few years’ training, keep her in rent, food and clothes and maintain her until she could get a sufficient number of engagements to allow her to fend for herself. The path of the artist is hard and stony.’
‘Is there any chance whatever that the police would take your son’s suggestion seriously, were he rash enough to go to them with it?’
‘I suppose they would consider it. Gamaliel, like all the rest of us, is perfectly capable of murder if the motive were strong enough. However, he would not have committed this particular murder. It would have been much more effective, from his point of view, to have followed my grandmother on one of her cliff walks and pushed her over the edge, and that is what he would have done.’