Patricia Wentworth - Out of the Past

Echoes of an old musty scandal dead and gone for a generation-heartbreak and pain, shame and sin and suffering, buried now beneath the indifferent years. Carmona tried to look as if she was listening. It was all so far away and long ago.

Adela Castleton swept her cards together as she had done the night before. The heat, the lights, the voices, Maisie Trevor’s voice and her interminable stories! She stood up.

“Will you forgive me if I go off to bed? I was stupid to be out in the glare for so long. It has brought my headache on again.”

Carmona was all solicitude.

“Can I get you anything?”

Adela looked vague.

“I don’t think so. I have some very good tablets. I’m just not sure-where I put them. Perhaps if you-will come up with me-”

Her face was stripped of life and colour. Difficult to recognize the assured Lady Castleton. As they went out of the door, Carmona slipped an arm about her, and had the impression that it was welcome.

The tablets were in a drawer of the old-fashioned mirror. Yellow curtains, a shiny yellow eiderdown, and Adela sitting on the side of the bed and saying,

“Somewhere on the dressing-table, I think. Yes, that’s the bottle. I don’t take them once in a blue moon, but when I do it means at least eight hours of good deep sleep-and I feel I need it tonight. Perhaps you would give me a glass of water from the washstand.”

She tipped two of the tablets into her hand, lifted it to her lips, drank the water Carmona brought, and thanked her.

“Would you be very kind and just look in on your way to bed? Once I’m off nothing wakes me, but it would be nice to know that you would just look in. I haven’t had a head like this since-oh, I can’t remember!”

Carmona saw her into bed and went down to the others.

The longest evening ends. This had not been so long as counted in time, but there are other factors. Endurance is one of them. Just how much strain can anyone endure? The Victorian drawing-room with its garlanded carpet, its gold and white overmantel, its china cabinets, and its brocaded chairs, held more than one who might have been asking that question.

Perhaps no one was sorry when the evening drew to an end. Goodnights were said, and the women went up the stairs, their murmur of conversation dying away as they receded. Doors closed. Carmona, left to the last, crossed over to Adela Castleton’s room and turned the handle gently. Two windows open to the cooler north, and a breeze coming in- the vague outline of the bed. At first no sound, but as she took a step forward and then stood to listen, the regular rise and fall of Adela’s breathing. She waited until she could be quite sure of it, and then went out and closed the door again.

Downstairs James poured drinks, and presently went to latch the windows. He stood for a moment at the long glass door of the terrace. There was a cool air coming in from the sea. The water was dark and the sky luminous. The old figureheads stood up black and strange. He said,

“It seems a shame to shut out the air, but Beeston would certainly expect us all to be murdered in our beds if we didn’t.”

“Your uncle had him a long time?”

“Oh, ages. I used to be sent down by myself, you know. There was a deadly feud between my aunt Mildred Wotherspoon and the Hardwicks. I don’t know what it was about, and it had been going on for so long that I don’t suppose they even knew themselves by then, but they wouldn’t meet. I used to be sent down with a label sewed inside my pocket from the time I was about seven, and the Beestons looked after me. Uncle Octavius used to pat me on the head and tip me- half a crown to start with, rising to a fiver at twentyone, where it stopped dead. He used to mutter, ‘Poor Henry’s boy,’ and go away, to our mutual relief. It was Beeston who provided the statutory bucket and spade and showed me the best places for prawns. And Mrs. Beeston let me have a glass bowl with sea anemones in it, and bring in seaweed, and shrimps and winkles and any old thing.”

Colonel Trevor finished his drink and set down the glass.

“You’re not thinking of staying on here, are you?”

James turned from the window.

“Oh, no, it can’t be done. This kind of house just isn’t possible any more.”

They parted on the wide upstairs landing with its tall ebony clock ticking in a staid old-fashioned way and the crimson carpet giving out a faint musty smell. James knocked on the door of what he still could not help remembering as Uncle Octavius’ bedroom and went in.

Carmona was sitting on the edge of the bed. She had got through the evening, and she had been glad that it was over and glad to be alone, but as one moment after another went by, her courage ebbed. She still wore the pale yellow dress and the pearl brooch. Her hands were clasped in her lap. They were clasped so tightly that James’ wedding-ring was cutting into her finger. But she did not feel it. With the sound of his step and the opening of the door she had begun to feel too many other things, and to feel them too intensely. There could be no more putting off. They had come to the place where they must speak the truth to each other and take what came of it. And she was afraid. Not of James, but of what she might be going to find out about him. She thought that he would tell her the truth-she did think that. But she didn’t know what that truth was going to be. He had bought her from Alan Field. He had paid five thousand pounds for her. She could still raise the hot flare of anger when she pressed this home, but it failed again and left her shaking with an inward cold, because if James wasn’t James at all, but someone she had never known, then where was she to turn, and what was she to do? Just for a moment it came to her that there wasn’t anyone she could turn to- except James himself. And if there wasn’t any James, then there wasn’t anyone at all.

He shut the door and came over to her.

“Well, my dear, I suppose we have got to talk this out.”

She said, “Yes.” That is to say, her lips made the right movement, but there wasn’t any sound.

He sat on the bed beside her.

“Do you mind so much?”

Her lips said, “Yes,” again, but there was still no sound. She sat there, not looking at him, not really looking at anything.

His heart wept for her. Well then, they must get on with it. How did one begin? Now that he had to talk to her about it, all the words which would have to be used were coarse and crude. He said,

“You don’t want me to touch you, do you?”

A long shudder went over her. He said quickly,

“All right, I won’t. But it would be easier if you would let me put my arm round you.”

The shudder came again.

He said, “Very well, I’ll tell you.”

It was quite extraordinarily hard to begin. His mind went back to seeing her that first time in her white dress with her birthday pearls at her throat, and Alan Field smiling beside her, leaning over to whisper in her ear. As the scene sprang into memory, all light and colour, he began to bring it back to her in words. Once he had started, the words came. He told her about sitting there in the box with the Trevors and seeing her like that. He said,

“I fell in love with you then, and I planned to meet you between the acts. The Trevors would have introduced me- they were talking about you a lot-but Maisie turned faint and we had to take her home. I was due in Cairo next day and no getting out of it. It was fifteen months before I could get away, but I heard about you in a letter from Maisie, and from Mary Maxwell who had been staying in the same house. I ran across her and her husband in Alexandria and she used to talk about you, so I knew that you weren’t married or engaged. As soon as I got home I went down to see the Trevors, and they told me you were marrying Alan Field in a week’s time. Maisie was all for it, but Tom said he would break your heart and that he would give his right hand to prevent it. I would have given more than that, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do.”