“Tonight?”
“Aunt Sophie, I can’t go through the night not knowing. I have to find out now if you were right.”
“I shouldn’t have told you. I knew I shouldn’t.”
“You should. It is better for me to know. I am going now.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No. No, I must go alone. I must see him. I must know.”
I went to my room and put on boots and a heavy coat. Then I ran downstairs and out into the night, through the rain to St. Aubyn’s. I rang the bell and, late though it was, a manservant opened the door.
“I want to see Mr. St. Aubyn,” I said.
He looked amazed.
“Come in. Miss Hammond,” he said, as Crispin came into the hall.
“Frederica!” he cried.
“I had to come,” I said.
“I had to see you.”
It’s all right. Groves,” said Crispin to the servant, and to me: ” Come in here. “
He took me into a small room leading from the hall and attempted to take off my coat, but I kept it on. I had not waited to dress properly.
“I had to come,” I burst out.
“I had to know if this is true. I could not wait.”
He was looking at me in alarm.
“Tell me what it is,” he said.
“Aunt Sophie was in Devizes today. She is very upset. She said she saw you there with Kate Carvel.”
He turned pale and I knew in that moment that Aunt Sophie had not been mistaken.
I said: “It was true, then?”
He seemed to be grappling with himself.
I went on: “Please, Crispin, I must have the truth.”
He said: “It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right. We’re going to be married. I tell you, it will be all right.”
I knew he was not telling the truth. I thought: He tells me what he wants me to believe. A great fear came to me then.
“Everything is settled,” he went on.
“I have arranged everything. It is all going to be just as we planned.”
“You said you were going to Salisbury,” I reminded him.
“Yet Aunt Sophie saw you in Devizes.”
He was silent and I knew that he had been to Devizes to meet Kate Carvel and there was no doubt now that Aunt Sophie had seen them together there.
He laid his hands tenderly on my shoulders.
“Look,” he said.
“There is no need for you to worry about any of this. I have arranged it all.
You and I are going on as we planned. I could not endure it otherwise.
Nor will I. I am determined on that. “
“If you are going to have secrets from me, Crispin, if I am not to be told what I know affects you deeply, there can never be true closeness between us. I must know the truth. Aunt Sophie saw you coming out of the hotel with the woman whom you married. She is supposed to be dead. How can she be if she were with you in Devizes? “
His arms slipped round me and he held me tightly.
“I will tell you what happened, but it isn’t going to make any difference. She is silenced. I could arrange that, and I did.”
“Silenced!” I cried in horror.
“I see I must tell you everything. A few days ago I had a letter from her.”
“I knew something had happened,” I cried.
“Oh, Crispin … why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t. I feared what this would mean. I am determined that at all costs I will not lose you. Frederica, you must not leave me. She wanted money. She always wanted money. That is why it is an easy way out … to silence her, to keep her quiet … to stop her preventing us”
“But she is there. She is your wife.”
“She read the announcement of our engagement. That is what started it.
But for that she would never have known. I would have gone on believing her dead. None of this would have happened. When I received the letter I did not know what to do. “
“Why did you not tell me? I want to know everything.”
“I couldn’t tell you. I had to make sure that everything could go ahead as we planned. It was a mistake on my part to see her in Devizes. It was too near here. I ought to have thought of that. I arranged to meet her in that hotel. It was terrible. I hated her. I hated myself for ever being involved with her. I was so thankful when she left me, and when I heard she was killed I naturally thought I would never see her again. It was the end of the most idiotic mistake a man ever made.”
“But she was not dead.”
“No. She explained all that.”
“But you had identified her after the accident.”
“There was a ring and a fur stole which I had given her.
The girl I saw was badly injured facially. I could not have said she was really Kate, but the ring and the stole seemed to clinch the matter. They were considered adequate identification. “
“Crispin, was it because you wanted to be sure?”
“I felt certain. The ring and the stole … they were enough. She told me she had sold the ring and the stole to a fellow actress. A girl who had left home a year or so before to try her luck in the theatre. It seemed that either she had no family or they lost touch.
Her death was unnoticed. Kate had seen the account of the death of my wife in the newspaper and had decided to do nothing about it. No doubt she thought she might make profitable use of it at some time. That was the way her mind worked. So when she saw the announcement of our engagement in the paper she decided to use the situation to her advantage. “
“And you, Crispin?”
“One thing I was certain of. I was not going to let her spoil my life again. I arranged to meet her at the hotel in Devizes. She was there.
God, how I hated her! She laughed at my dismay. She had a way of laughing which made me want to kill her. She thought she had caught me. She said she would never agree to a divorce and that if I tried that line, she would fight with all her might against me. I saw that there was only one way to deal with her. I would give her money to go away and never come near me again. “
“You believed she would do that!”
“I told her that if she ever came back I would call the police and she would be charged with blackmail.”
“And you really thought that would stop her?”
“I think it might.”
“But if you are ready to submit to blackmail once, why should you not be again?”
“I know how to deal with her.”
“Crispin, don’t you see, this is wrong?”
“What else is there to do?”
“To accept the truth, I suppose.”
“You know what that would mean?”
“Yes, I do. But it is here. It is no use pretending it isn’t. She is not dead. You have actually seen her.”
“She has gone away. She assures me she is going to Australia She says I shall never hear from her again.”
“You believe that!”
“I want to.”
“But you can’t believe it because you want to. She’s a blackmailer and you have given way to blackmail. Don’t you see, if you went through a form of marriage with me it could be no true marriage. She would know it. She would be back … with an even greater reason for black mail.”
“I’ll deal with her if she does. I have found you. For the first time in my life I have been happy. I know what I want for the rest of my life. I love you, Frederica, and I will do anything just anything to keep you.”
I was shaken by the violence of his emotion. I was bemused by what I had heard. I rejoiced in the power of his love for me but I felt more strongly than ever that I did not know him. He was revealing a side of his character which I had not known. I felt now, as I had before, that much was hidden from me.
I said: “You were going through with our marriage in spite of this?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you were not going to tell me?”
“I could not risk telling you. I could not be sure what you would do.