The Secret Woman

1

When my Aunt Charlotte died suddenly many people believed that I had killed her and that if it had not been for Nurse Loman’s evidence at the inquest, the verdict would have been one of murder by some person or persons unknown; there would have been a probing into the dark secrets of the Queen’s House, and the truth would have come out.

“That niece of hers obviously had the motive,” it was said.

The “motive” was Aunt Charlotte’s possessions which on her death became mine. But how different everything was from what it appeared to be!

Chantel Loman, who had become my friend during the months she lived with us at the Queen’s House, laughed at the gossips.

“People must have drama. If it isn’t there they invent it. Sudden death is manna from Heaven. Of course they talk. Take no notice of them. I don’t.”

She did not have the same need to do so, I pointed out to her.

She laughed at me. “You’re always so logical!” she said. “Why, Anna, I do believe that if those wicked old gossips had had their wish and you had stood in the dock you would have got the better of the judge as well as the jury and counsel for the prosecution. You can look after yourself.”

If only it were true! But Chantel did not know of those sleepless nights when I lay in my bed making plans, trying to work out how I could dispose of everything and start a new life in a new place and so free myself from this haunting nightmare. But in the morning it would be different. Practical considerations forced themselves on me. I could not go away; it was not financially possible. Little did the gossips know the true state of affairs. Moreover I was not going to be a coward and run away. As long as one was innocent what did it matter what the world thought of one?

A foolish paradox, I told myself immediately, and an untrue one. The innocent frequently suffer when they are suspected of guilt, and it is necessary not only to be innocent but to prove that one is.

But I could not run away; so I put on what Chantel called my mask and turned a face of cold indifference to the world. No one was going to know how deeply I cared about the slander.

I tried to see everything objectively. In fact I could not have endured those months if I had not looked upon what happened as an unpleasant fantasy like a drama being played out on a stage, the chief characters being the victim and the suspect — Aunt Charlotte and myself — and in the minor rôles, Nurse Chantel Loman, Dr. Elgin, Mrs. Morton the cook-housekeeper, Ellen the maid, and Mrs. Buckle who came in to dust the cluttered rooms. I was trying to convince myself that it had not really happened and one morning I should wake up to find it was nothing but a nightmare.

So I was not logical but foolish and even Chantel did not know how vulnerable. I dared not look back and I dared not look forward. Yet when I saw my reflection in the mirror I was aware of the changes in my face. I was twenty-seven and looked it; before, I had appeared young for my age. I imagined myself at thirty-seven … forty-seven … still living in the Queen’s House, getting older and older, haunted by the ghost of Aunt Charlotte; and the gossip would go on, never to be entirely forgotten and those not yet born would one day say: “That’s old Miss Brett. There was some scandal long ago. I never heard quite what. I believe she murdered someone.”

It must not come to that. There were days when I promised myself I would escape, but the old stubbornness returned. I was a soldier’s daughter. How many times had my father said to me: “Never turn your back on trouble. Always stand and face it.”

That was what I was trying to do when once more Chantel came to my rescue.

But the story begins before that.

When I was born my father was a Captain in the Indian Army; he was Aunt Charlotte’s brother; there was a great deal of the soldier in her. People are unpredictable. They appear to conform to patterns. Often you can say he or she is such and such a type, but people are rarely types, or not completely so. They conform up to a point and then they diverge wildly. So it was with both my father and Aunt Charlotte. Father was dedicated to his profession. The Army was more important than anything in the world; in fact little else existed for him. My mother often said that he would have run the household like a military camp if she had let him and treated us all as though we were his “men.” He quoted Queen’s Regulations at breakfast, she said mockingly; and he would grin sheepishly at her for she was his divergence. They had met when he was on his way home on leave from India. She told me about it in what I called her butterfly way. She never kept to the point and she would stray off so that one had to guide her back to the original theme if one were interested in it. Sometimes it was more intriguing to let her run on.

But I was interested to hear about my parents’ meeting so I kept her to it.

“Moonlit nights on deck, darling. You’ve no idea how romantic … Dark skies and the stars like jewels … and the music and the dancing. The foreign ports and those fantastic bazaars. This heavenly bracelet … Oh the day we bought that …”

She would have to be led back. Yes, she had been dancing with the First Officer and she had noticed the tall soldier, so aloof, and she had made a bet that she would make him dance with her. Of course she had and they were married two months later in England.

“Your Aunt Charlotte was furious. Did she think the poor man was a eunuch?”

Her conversation was light and frothy — racy even. She fascinated me as she must have fascinated my father. I was far more like him, I feared, than like her.

In those early days I lived with them though I was more often in the company of my ayah than in theirs. There are vague memories of heat and brilliantly colored flowers, of dark-skinned people washing their clothes in the river. I remember riding in an open carriage with my ayah past the cemetery on the hill where I was told the bodies of the dead were left out in the open that they might become part of the earth and air again. I remember the wicked-looking vultures high up in the trees. They made me shiver.

There came the time when I must return to England and I traveled back with my parents, and myself experienced those tropical nights at sea when the stars seemed to have been placed like jewels on dark blue velvet as though to show off their brilliance. I heard the music and saw the dancing; and for me everything was dominated by my mother, the most beautiful being in the world, with her long draperies, her dark hair piled high on her head, and her incessant, inconsequential chatter.

“Darling, it will only be for a short time. You have to be educated, and we have to go back to India. But you’ll stay with Auntie Charlotte.” It was typical that she should call her Auntie. Aunt Charlotte was always Aunt to me. “She’ll love you darling, because you’re named after her — well, partly. They wanted Charlotte for you, but I wasn’t going to have my darling daughter called that. It would remind me of her …” She caught herself up sharply, remembering she was trying to put Aunt Charlotte in a good light. “People always like those who have their names. ‘But not Charlotte,’ I said, ‘That’s too severe …’ So you were Anna Charlotte to be known as Anna and so avoid having two Charlottes in the family. Oh, where was I? Your Auntie Charlotte … Yes, darling, you have to go to school, my precious, but there are holidays. You can’t come all the way out to India in the holidays can you? So Auntie Charlotte will have you at the Queen’s House. Now doesn’t that sound grand? Queen Elizabeth slept there, I believe. That’s where it gets its name. And then … in no time … my goodness how time flies, you’ll be finished with school and you’ll come out to us. I can’t wait, my darling, for the day. What fun I shall have launching my daughter.” Again that attractive grimace which I believe is called a moue. “It will be my compensation for getting old.”

She could make anything sound attractive by the way she spoke of it. She could dismiss years with a flick of the hand. She made me see not school and Aunt Charlotte but the days ahead when the ugly duckling I was would be transformed into the swan, looking exactly like my mother.

I was eight years old when I saw the Queen’s House for the first time. The cab which had brought us from the station took us through streets very different from those of Bombay. The people looked sedate, the houses imperious. Here and there was a touch of green in the gardens, such green as I had not seen in India, deep and cool; there was a light drizzle in the air. We caught a glimpse of the river for the town of Langmouth was situated on the estuary of the River Lang and it was for this reason that it had become the busy port it was. Scraps of my mother’s chatter lived on in my mind. “What a big ship! Look darling. I suppose that belongs to those people … what’s their name, darling? — those rich and powerful people who own half Langmouth and half of England for that matter?” And my father’s voice: “You mean the Creditons, my dear. They do in fact own a very prosperous shipping line but you exaggerate when you say they own half Langmouth, although it is true that Langmouth owes a certain part of its growing prosperity to them.”

The Creditons! The name stayed with me.

“They would have a name like that,” said my mother. “The creditable Creditons.”

My father’s lips twitched as they did for my mother; it meant he wanted to laugh but felt it was undignified for a Major to do so. He had gained his majority since my birth and extra dignity with it. He was unapproachable, stern, honorable; and I was as proud of him as I was of my mother.

And so we came to the Queen’s House. The carriage drew up before a high red brick wall in which was a wrought-iron gate. It was an exciting moment because standing there looking up at that ancient wall one had no idea what one would find on the other side. And when the gate was opened and we went through it and it shut behind us, the feeling came to me that I had stepped into another age. I had shut out Victorian Langmouth, made prosperous by the industrious Creditons, and had stepped back three hundred years in time.

The garden ran down to the river. It was well kept, though not elaborate and not large either — I should say perhaps three quarters of an acre at most. There were two lawns divided by a path of crazy paving, and on the lawns were shrubs which would doubtless flower in spring or summer; at that time of year they were draped with spiders’ webs on which globules of moisture glistened. There was a mass of Michaelmas daisies — like lovely mauve stars, I thought them — and reddish and gold-colored chrysanthemums. The fresh smell of damp earth, grass and green foliage and the faint scent of the flowers was so different from the heavy frangipani perfume of the blooms which grew in such profusion in the hot steamy Indian air.

A path led to the house, which was of three stories — wider than it was tall; it was of the same red brick as the wall. There was an iron-studded door and beside it a heavy iron bell. The windows were latticed, and I believed that I was aware of a certain air of menace, but that may have been because I knew that I was to be left here in the charge of Aunt Charlotte while my parents went away to their gay and colorful life. That was the truth. There was no warning. I did not believe in such things.

Even my mother though was a little subdued on that occasion; but Aunt Charlotte had the power to subdue anyone.

My father — who was not nearly such a martinet as he liked to pretend — may have been aware of my fear; it may have occurred to him that I was very young to be left to the mercy of school, Aunt Charlotte and the Queen’s House. But it was no unusual fate. It was happening to young people all the time. It was, as he told me before he left me, a worthwhile experience because it taught one to be self-reliant, to face up to life, to stand on one’s own feet; he had a stock of clichés to meet occasions like this.

He tried to warn me. “This is reckoned to be a very interesting house,” he told me. “You’ll find your Aunt Charlotte an interesting woman. She runs this business … she’s clever at it. She buys and sells valuable old furniture. She’ll tell you all about it. That’s why she’s got this interesting old house. She keeps the furniture she buys here and people come here to see it. She couldn’t keep it all in her shop. And of course this sort of business is not ordinary business, so it is quite proper for Aunt Charlotte to do this. It is not as though she were selling butter or sugar over a counter.”

I was puzzled by these social differences but too overawed by my new experiences to bother with such trifles.

He pulled the rope, the old bell clanged and after a wait of some minutes the door was opened by Ellen who dropped a flustered curtsy and bade us come in.

We stepped into a dark hall; odd shapes loomed up all about us and I saw that it was not so much furnished as full of furniture. There were several grandfather clocks and some elaborate ones in ormolu; their ticking was very audible in the silence. The ticking of clocks was something I would always associate with the Queen’s House. I noticed two Chinese cabinets, some chairs and several small tables, a bookcase and desk. They were simply put there, not arranged.

Ellen had run off and a woman was coming toward us. I thought at first she was Aunt Charlotte. I should have known that her neat white cap and black bombazine dress indicated the housekeeper.

“Ah, Mrs. Morton,” said my father who knew her well. “Here we are with my daughter.”

“Madam is in her sitting room,” said Mrs. Morton. “I will inform her that you have arrived.”

“Pray do,” said my father.

My mother looked at me. “Isn’t it fascinating?” she whispered, half fearfully, which told me she didn’t think so but wanted me to. “All these priceless, precious things! Just look at that escritoire! I’ll bet it belonged to the King of the Barbarines.”

“Beth,” murmured my father in indulgent reproof.

“And look at the claws on the arms of that chair. I’m sure it means something. Just think, darling, you may discover. I’d love to know all about these lovely things.”

Mrs. Morton had returned, hands neatly folded over bombazine stomach.

“Madam wishes you to come at once to her sitting room.”

We ascended a staircase lined with tapestries and a few oil paintings which led us straight into a room which seemed to be filled with more furniture; another room led from this and from that another and this third was Aunt Charlotte’s sitting room.

And there she was — tall, gaunt, looking I thought like my father dressed up as a woman; her mid-brown hair with streaks of gray in it was pulled straight back from her big strong face and made into a knot at the back of her head. She wore a tweed skirt and jacket and a severe olive green blouse, the same color as her eyes. I knew afterward that they took their color from her clothes; and as she usually wore grays and that dark shade of green they seemed that tinge too. She was an unusual woman; she might have lived on her small income in some quiet country town, genteelly calling on her friends, leaving cards, perhaps having her own carriage, helping to organize church bazaars, doing charity work, and entertaining in a modest way. But no. Her love of beautiful furniture and porcelain was an obsession. Just as my father had stepped out of line to marry my mother, so had she with her antiques. She had become a business-woman — a strange phenomenon in this Victorian age: a woman who actually bought and sold and who knew so much about her chosen subject that she could compete with men. Later I was to see her hard face light up at the sight of some rare piece and I have heard her talk with passion about the finials on a Sheraton cabinet.

But everything was so bewildering to me on that day. The cluttered house was not like a house at all: I could not imagine it as a home. “Of course,” said my mother, “your true home is with us. This is just where you will stay during holidays. And in a few years time …”

But I could not think of the passing of the years as lightly as she could.

We did not stay overnight on that occasion, but went straight down to my school in Sherborne, where my parents put up at a hotel nearby and they stayed there until they returned to India. I was touched by this because I knew that in London my mother would have led the kind of life that she loved. “We wanted you to know we weren’t far off if school became a little trying just at first,” she told me. I liked to think that her divergence was her love for my father and myself, for one would not have expected a butterfly to be capable of so much love and understanding.

I think I began to hate Aunt Charlotte when she criticized my mother.

“Feather-brained,” she said. “I could never understand your father.”

“I could understand him,” I retorted firmly. “I could understand anyone. She is different from other people.” And I hoped my withering look conveyed that “other people” meant Aunt Charlotte.

The first year at school was the hardest to endure, but the holidays were more so. I even made plans to stow away on a ship that was going to India. I made Ellen, who accompanied me on my walks, take me down to the docks where I would gaze longingly at the ships and wonder where they were going.

“That’s a ship of the Lady Line,” Ellen would tell me proudly. “She belongs to the Creditons.” And I would gaze at her while Ellen pointed out her beauties to me. “That’s a clipper,” she would say. “One of the fastest ships that ever sailed. It goes out and brings back wool from Australia and tea from China. Oh, look at her. Did you ever see such a beautiful barque!”

Ellen prided herself on her knowledge. She was a Langmouth girl and I remembered that Langmouth owed its prosperity to the Creditons; moreover she had an added distinction: her sister Edith was a housemaid up at Castle Crediton. And she would take me to see that — but only from the outside of course — before I was many days older.

Because I dreamed of running away to India I was fascinated by the ships. It seemed romantic that they should roam round the world loading and unloading their cargoes — bananas and tea, oranges and wood-pulp for making paper in the big factory which the Creditons had founded and which, Ellen told me, provided work for many people of Langmouth. There was the grand new dock which had been recently opened by Lady Crediton herself. There was a “one,” said Ellen. She had been beside Sir Edward in everything he had done and you would hardly have expected that from a lady, would you?

I replied that I would expect anything from the Creditons.

Ellen nodded approval. I was beginning to know something of the place in which I lived. Oh, it was a sight she told me to see a ship come into harbor or sail away — to see the white canvas billowing in the wind and the gulls screaming and whirling around. I began to agree with her. There were Ladies — she told me — Mermaids and Amazons in the Lady Line. It was Sir Edward’s tribute to Lady

Crediton, who had stood with him all the time and had a business head which was remarkable for a woman.

“It’s really very romantic,” said Ellen.

Of course it was. The Creditons were romantic. They were clever, rich, and in fact superhuman, I pointed out.

“And don’t you be saucy,” said Ellen to that.

She showed me Castle Crediton. It was built high on the cliff facing out to the sea. An enormous gray stone fortress, with its battlemented towers and a keep, it was just like a castle. Wasn’t this a little ostentatious, I asked, because people did not build castles now, so this was not a real castle. It had only stood there for fifty years. It was a little deceitful, wasn’t it, to make it look as though the Normans had built it?

Ellen looked about her furtively as though she expected me to be struck dumb for uttering such blasphemy. It was clear that I was a newcomer to Langmouth and had not yet discovered the power of the Creditons.

But Ellen it was who interested me in Langmouth and to be interested in Langmouth meant to be interested in the Creditons. Ellen had heard tales from her parents. Once … not very long ago, Langmouth had not been the grand town it was today. There was no Theatre Royal; there were no elegant houses built on the cliffs overlooking the bridge. Many of the streets were narrow and cobbled and it wasn’t safe to wander out to the docks. Of course the fine Edward Dock had not been built then. But in the old days the ships used to sail out to Africa to capture slaves. Ellen’s father could remember their being auctioned in the sheds on the docks. Gentlemen came all the way from the West Indies to bargain for them and take them off to work on their sugar plantations. That was all over. It was very different now. Sir Edward Crediton had come along; he had modernized the place; he had started the Lady Line; and although Langmouth’s very situation and its excellent harbor had given it some significance, it could never have been the town it was today but for the magnificent Creditons.

It was Ellen who made life bearable for me during that first year. I never could be fond of Mrs. Morton; she was too much like Aunt Charlotte. Her face seemed like a door that was kept tightly shut; her eyes were windows — too small to show what was behind them and they were obscurely curtained — inscrutable; she did not want me in the house. I quickly learned that. She complained of me to Aunt Charlotte. I had brought in mud from the garden on my boots, I had left the soap in the water so that half the tablet was wasted (Aunt Charlotte was very parsimonious and hated spending money except to buy antiques), I had broken the china teacup which was a part of the set. Mrs. Morton never complained to me; she was icily polite. Had she raged at me or accused me to my face I could have liked her better. Then there was plump Mrs. Buckle who mixed the beeswax and turpentine, polished the precious pieces and kept a watch for that ever threatening enemy: woodworm. She was talkative and I found her company as stimulating as that of Ellen.

I began to have odd fancies about the Queen’s House. I pictured how it must have looked years ago when it had been treated as a house. In the hall there would have been an oak chest, a refectory table and a suit of armor at the foot of the beautiful staircase. The walls would have been decorated with the family portraits, not the occasional picture, and those enormous tapestries which were hung irrespective of color — sometimes one over another. I used to fancy that the house resented what had been done to it. All those chairs and tables, cabinets, bureaus, and clocks ticking away sometimes fussily as though exasperated with their surroundings, sometimes angrily so that they sounded ominous.

I told Ellen that they said “Hurry up! Hurry up!” sometimes to remind us that the time was passing and we were growing older every day.

“As if we need reminding of that!” cried Mrs. Buckle, three chins shaking with laughter.

Ellen jerked a finger at me. “Missing her Ma and Pa, that’s what. Waiting for the time when they come and get her.”

I agreed. “But when I haven’t done my holiday task they remind me of that. Time can remind you of quickness and slowness but it always seems to warn.”

“The things she says!” commented Ellen.

And Mrs. Buckle’s plump form shivered like a jelly with secret mirth.

But I was fascinated by the Queen’s House and by Aunt Charlotte. She was no ordinary woman any more than the Queen’s House was an ordinary house. At first I was obsessed by the idea that the house was a living personality — and that it hated us all because we were in the conspiracy to make it merely a store for goods — precious as they were.

“The ghosts of people who lived here are angry because Aunt Charlotte has made their home unrecognizable,” I told Ellen and Mrs. Buckle.

“Lord a’ mercy!” cried Mrs. Buckle.

Ellen said it wasn’t right to talk of such things.

But I insisted on talking. “One day,” I said, “the ghosts of the house will rise up and something fearful will happen.”

That was in the first months. Later my feelings toward Aunt Charlotte changed and although I could never love her, I respected her.

Practical in the extreme, down to earth, unromantic, she did not see the Queen’s House as I saw it. To her it was rooms within walls — ancient it was true and the sole virtue in this was that it made an appropriate setting for her pieces. There was only one room in the house which she allowed to keep its character and she had even come to this decision for business reasons. This was the room in which Queen Elizabeth was reputed to have slept. There was even the Elizabethan bed, reputed to be the bed itself; and as a concession to this legend — if legend it was — everything in the room was Tudor. It was for business, she said hurriedly. Many people came to see this room; it put them in the right “mood”; they were fascinated and because of this prepared to pay the price she asked.

I often went to that room and found some comfort there. I used to say to myself: “The past is on my side … against Aunt Charlotte. The ghosts feel my sympathy.” That was my fanciful notion. And during those months I needed sympathy.

I used to stand in that room and touch the bedposts and think of the famous Tilbury speech which my father had often quoted to me. “I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king — and of a king of England too …” And then I was as certain that I would come through this unhappy period as she had been of victory over the Spaniards.

So it was understandable that the house offered me compensation and I began to feel that it was alive. I became familiar with its night noises — the sudden inexplicable creak of a floorboard, the rattle of a window, and how when the wind moaned through the branches of the chestnut tree it sounded like whispering voices.

There were days when Aunt Charlotte went away to buy. She would visit sales at old houses sometimes quite far away and after she returned we would be more cluttered than ever. Aunt Charlotte had a shop in the center of the town and there she displayed certain pieces but most of the goods were in the house and strangers were constantly visiting us.

Miss Beringer spent all her time at the shop to allow Aunt Charlotte to absent herself, but Aunt Charlotte said the woman was a fool and had little appreciation of values. That was not true; it merely meant that Miss Beringer lacked Aunt Charlotte’s knowledge. But Aunt Charlotte was so efficient herself that she thought most people fools.

For at least a year I was what Aunt Charlotte would call “a cross,” in other words a burden; but that changed suddenly. It was a table which caught my attention. I was suddenly excited merely to look at it and I was crouching on the floor examining the carvings on the legs when Aunt Charlotte discovered me. She squatted on the floor beside me.

“Rather a fine example,” she said gruffly.

“It’s French, isn’t it?” I asked.

Her lips turned up at the corners which was as near to a smile as she could get.

She nodded. “It’s unsigned but I believe it’s the work of René Dubois. I thought at first his father Jacques was responsible for it, but I fancy it’s a year or two later. That green and gold lacquer on the oak carcase, you see! And look at those bronze mounts.”

I looked and found myself touching it reverently.

“It would be the end of the eighteenth century,” I hazarded.

“No, no.” She shook her head impatiently. “Fifty years early. Mid-eighteenth century.”

After that our relationship changed. She would sometimes call me and say: “Here! What do you think of this? What do you notice about it?” At first I felt a certain desire to score over her, to show her that I knew something about her precious goods; but later it became a great interest to me and I began to understand the difference between the furniture of various countries and to recognize period by certain features.

One day Aunt Charlotte went so far as to admit: “You know as much as that fool Beringer.” But that was when she was particularly incensed by that long suffering lady.

But as far as I was concerned the Queen’s House took on a new fascination. I began to know certain pieces, to regard them as old friends. Mrs. Buckle dusting with deft but careful hands said: “Here, are you going to be another Miss Charlotte Brett, Miss Anna?”

That startled me; I felt then as though I wanted to run away.

It was one morning in the middle of the summer holidays, about four years after my parents had brought me to England, when Ellen came to my room and told me that Aunt Charlotte wished to see me at once. Ellen looked scared and I asked if anything was wrong.

“I’ve not been told, miss,” said Ellen, but I was aware that she knew something.

I made my way — one made one’s way in the Queen’s House — to Aunt Charlotte’s sitting room.

There she was, seated with papers before her, for she used the place as her office. Her desk on that day was a sturdy refectory table — sixteenth-century English, of a type that owed its charm to its age rather than its beauty. She sat very upright on a rather heavy chair of the Yorkshire-Derbyshire type of carved and turned oak, of much later period than the table, but as strong and sturdy. She chose these strong pieces for use while they were in the house. The rest of the office did not match the table and chair. An exquisite piece of tapestry hung on the wall. I knew it to be of the Flemish school, and guessed it would not be there for long; and crowded together were heavy oak pieces from Germany side by side with a delicate French eighteenth-century commode and two pieces in the Boulle tradition. I noticed the change in myself. I could sum up the contents of a room, date them and note their qualities even while I was eager to know what this summons meant.

“Sit down,” said Aunt Charlotte, and her expression was more grim than usual.

I sat and she went on in her brusque way. “Your mother is dead. It was cholera.”

How like her to shatter my future with two brief sentences. The thought of reunion had been like a lifebelt, which had prevented my being submerged in the misery of my loneliness. And she said it calmly like that. Dead … of cholera.

She looked at me fearfully; she hated any display of emotion.

“Go to your room. I’ll send Ellen up with some hot milk.”

Hot milk! Did she think that could console me?

“I’ve no doubt,” she said, “your father will be writing to you. He will have made arrangements.”

I hated her then, which was wrong for she was breaking the news in the only way she considered possible. She was offering me hot milk and my father’s arrangements to console me for the loss of my beloved mother.

2

My father did write to me. We shared our grief, he said; he would not dwell on that. The death of his beloved wife and my dear mother had meant his making great changes. He was thankful that I was in the hands of his dear sister, my Aunt Charlotte, on whose good sense and great virtue he relied. It was a great comfort to him to know that I was in such hands. He trusted I was suitably grateful. He thought he would be leaving India shortly. He had asked to be transferred and he had good friends at the War Office. He had received the utmost sympathy and as there was trouble brewing in other parts of the world, he believed that very soon he would be doing his duty in another field.

I felt as though I were caught in a web, as though the house was laughing at me. “You belong to us now!” it seemed to say. “Don’t imagine because your Aunt Charlotte has filled the house with these alien ghosts you have ousted us.” What foolish thoughts. It was fortunate that I kept them to myself. Only Ellen and Mrs. Buckle thought me an odd child, but even Mrs. Morton had some sympathy for me. I heard her say to Miss Beringer that people shouldn’t have children unless they could look after them. It wasn’t natural for fathers and mothers to be on one side of the world and their children on another in the hands of those who knew nothing of them and paid more attention to a piece of wood — and often riddled with the worm at that! As for me I had to face the fact that I should never see my mother again. I kept remembering scraps of her conversation; I idealized her beauty. I saw her in the figures on a Grecian vase, in the carving of a tallboy, in the gilded beauty supporting a seventeenth-century mirror. I would never forget her; the hope of that wonderful life she had promised me had gone and I was certain now that the ugly duckling would never turn into a swan. Sometimes when I had looked into old mirrors — some of metal, others of mottled glass — I had seen her face, not my own rather sallow one with the heavy dark hair which was the same color as hers. My deep-set dark eyes were like hers too; but the resemblance ended there for my face was too thin, my nose a little too sharp. How was it that two people who were fundamentally alike could look so different? I lacked her sparkle, her gaiety, but when she was alive I could imagine myself growing like her. After she was dead I could not.

“It’s a long time since you’ve seen her,” soothed Ellen, seeking to offer comfort with the hot milk.

“Children forget, quick as lightning,” I heard her say to Mrs. Buckle.

And I thought: Never. Never. I shall always remember.

Everyone tried to be kind — even Aunt Charlotte. She offered me the greatest consolation she could think of.

“I have to go along to see a piece. I’ll take you with me. It’s at Castle Crediton.”

“Are they selling something?” I stammered.

“Why else should we go there?” demanded Aunt Charlotte.

For the first time since my mother’s death I forgot her. I was sorry afterward and apologized to my reflection in the mirror where instead of my own face I made myself see hers, but I could not help the excitement which came to me at the prospect of visiting Castle Crediton. I remembered vividly the first time I had seen it and my mother’s comments and I wanted to know more about that important family.

It was fortunate that I had learned to hide my emotions and that Aunt Charlotte had no notion of how I was feeling as we drove under the stone gatehouse and looked up at the conical turrets.

“Fake!” snapped Aunt Charlotte. It was the biggest insult she could offer.

I wanted to laugh when I entered that house. The inside of Castle Crediton should have been the inside of the Queen’s House. The Creditons had made a great effort to produce a Tudor interior and had succeeded. There was the big hall with long refectory table on which stood a large pewter bowl. There were firearms on the walls and the inevitable suit of armor at the foot of the staircase. Aunt Charlotte saw only the furniture.

“I supplied the table,” she said. “It came from a castle in Kent.”

“It looks very well here,” I commented.

Aunt Charlotte did not answer. The manservant returned to say that Lady Crediton would receive Miss Brett. He looked at me questioningly and Aunt Charlotte said quickly: “You may wait here for a while!” in such a manner as to defy the servant to object.

So I waited in the hall and I looked at the thick stone walls partially covered with tapestries — lovely French Gobelin type in beautiful blues and stone color. I went up and examined one. It depicted the labors of Hercules. I was studying it intently when a voice behind me said: “Like it?”

I turned and saw that a man was standing close to me. I was startled. He looked so tall and I wasn’t quite sure what he was thinking of me. The color heightened in my cheeks but I said coolly, “It’s beautiful. Is it really Gobelin?”

He lifted his shoulders and I noticed the interesting way his eyes seemed to turn up at the corners when his lips did. He was scarcely handsome but with the blond hair bleached by sun at the temples and blue eyes that were rather small and crinkled as though he had lived in brilliant sunlight, his was the sort of face which I felt I would not easily forget.

“I might ask,” he said, “what you are doing here. But I won’t … unless you want to tell me.”

“I’m waiting for my aunt, Miss Brett. She has come to see some furniture. We’re from the Queen’s House,” I said.

“Oh, that place!”

I fancied there was a hint of mockery in his voice and was warm in its defense. “It’s a fascinating house. Queen Elizabeth once slept there.”

“Such a habit that lady had for sleeping in other people’s houses!”

“Well, she slept in ours, which is more …”

“Than you can say for this one. No, we’re imitation Norman, I admit. But we’re firm and solid and this is the house that will withstand the winds of time. We’re built on a rock.”

“Ours has proved it could do that. But I find it very interesting here.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“Do you live here?”

“When I’m ashore. Mostly I’m not.”

“Oh … you’re a sailor.”

“How discerning you are.”

“I’m not really about people. Though I am learning about some things.”

“Tapestries?”

“And old furniture.”

“Going to follow in Auntie’s footsteps?”

“No. No!” I spoke with great vehemence.

“I expect you will. Most of us go where we’re led. And think what you already know about Gobelin tapestry.”

“Did you … go where you were led?”

He raised his eyes to the ceiling in a manner which, for no reason I could think of, I found very attractive. “I suppose you could say that I did.”

I was filled with a desire to know more about him. He was just the sort of person I should have expected to meet in Castle Crediton and he excited me as though he were an unusual piece of furniture. “What should I call you?” I asked.

“Should you call me?”

“I mean … I should like to know your name.”

“It’s Redvers Stretton — usually known as Red.”

“Oh!” I was disappointed and showed it.

“You don’t like it?”

“Well, Red is not very dignified.”

“Don’t forget it is really Redvers which you must admit is more so.”

“I’ve never heard that name before.”

“I must say in its defense that it’s a good old West Country name.”

“Is it? And I thought it should go with Crediton.”

That amused him secretly. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said.

I had a notion that he was laughing at me and that I was being very naïve.

He said: “I must ask yours, mustn’t I, otherwise you may think me impolite.”

“I shouldn’t but if you really want to know …”

“Oh, I do.”

“It’s Anna Brett.”

“Anna Brett!” He repeated it as though memorizing it. “How old are you, Miss Anna Brett?”

“I’m twelve.”

“So young … and so knowledgeable.”

“It’s living in the Queen’s House.”

“It must be like living in a museum.”

“It is in a way.”

“It makes you old before your time. You make me feel young and frivolous.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be. I like it. I’m seven years older than you.”

“So much?”

He nodded and his eyes seemed to disappear when he laughed.

The manservant had come back into the hall.

“Her ladyship is requesting the young lady’s presence,” he said. “Will you follow me, miss?”

As I turned away Redvers Stretton said: “We’ll meet again … less briefly, I hope.”

“I shall hope so too,” I replied sedately and sincerely.

The manservant gave no indication that he considered Redvers Stretton’s behavior in the least strange and I followed him past the suit of armor up the wide staircase. I was almost certain that the vase at the turn of the staircase was of the Ming reign because of the rich violet color of the porcelain. I could not prevent myself gazing at it, then I turned and saw Redvers Stretton standing looking up at me, legs slightly apart, hands in pockets. He bowed his head in acknowledgment of the compliment I had paid him by turning round and I wished I hadn’t because I felt it showed a rather childish curiosity. I turned away and hurried after the servant. We came to a gallery hung with oil paintings, and I felt a little impatient with myself because I could not assess their value. The largest of the pictures in the center of the gallery was of a man and I was able to guess that it had been painted some fifty years before. I was certain it was Sir Edward Crediton, the founder of the shipping line, the dead husband of the woman I was shortly to see. How I wished I might have paused longer to study it; as it was I caught a fleeting glimpse of that rugged face — powerful, ruthless, perhaps yes, and with a slight tiptilt of the eyes which was so pronounced in the man I had met a few minutes ago. But he was not a Crediton. He must be a nephew or some such relation. It was the only answer.

The servant had paused and tapped on a door. He threw it open and announced: “The young lady, my lady.”

I entered the room. Aunt Charlotte was seated on a chair, very straight-backed, expression grim, in her best bargaining mood. I had seen her like this often.

Seated on a large ornamental chair — Restoration period with the finely scrolled arms and the crown emblems — sat a woman, also large but scarcely ornamental. She was very dark, her skin sallow and her eyes looked as black as currants and as alert as a monkey’s. They were young eyes and defied her wrinkles — young and shrewd. Her lips were thin and tight; they reminded me of a steel trap. Her large hands, quite smooth and white were adorned by several rings — diamonds and rubies. They lay on her voluminous lap and from the folds of her skirt jet-beaded satin slippers were visible.

I was immediately overawed and my respect for Aunt Charlotte rose because she could sit there looking so unperturbed in the presence of this formidable woman.

“My niece, Lady Crediton.”

I curtsied and Lady Crediton gave me the full attention of her marmoset eyes for a few seconds.

“She is learning to know antiques,” went on Aunt Charlotte, “and will be accompanying me now and then.”

Was I? I thought. It was the first time it had been stated, although I realized that for some time it had been implied. It was enough explanation of me. They both turned their attention to the escritoire which they had evidently been discussing when I entered. I listened intently.

“I must call your attention, Lady Crediton,” Aunt Charlotte was saying almost maliciously I thought, “to the fact that it is only accredited to Boulle. It has the richly scrolled corner pieces, true. But I am of the opinion that it is of a slightly later period.”

It was a beautiful piece, I could recognize that, but Aunt Charlotte would not have it so. “It is definitely marked,” she said. Lady Crediton had no idea how difficult it was to dispose of furniture that was not in first class condition.

Lady Crediton was sure that any defects could be put right by any man who knew his business.

Aunt Charlotte gave a hoarse cackle.

The man who knew that business had been dead more than a hundred years — that is if André-Charles Boulle was really responsible, which Aunt Charlotte gravely doubted.

And so they went on — Lady Crediton pointing out its virtues, Aunt Charlotte its defects.

“I don’t think there is another piece like it in England,” declared Lady Crediton.

“Would you give me a commission to find you one?” demanded Aunt Charlotte triumphantly.

“Miss Brett, I am disposing of this one because I have no use for it.”

“I doubt whether I could find an easy buyer.”

“Perhaps another dealer might not agree with you.”

I listened and all the time I was thinking of the man downstairs and wondering about the relationship between him and this woman and the man in the portrait in the gallery.

Finally they came to an agreement. Aunt Charlotte had offered a price which she admitted was folly on her part and Lady Crediton could not understand why she should make such a sacrifice.

I thought: They are two of a kind. Hard both of them. But the matter was completed and the escritoire would arrive at the Queen’s House in the next few days.

“My patience me!” said Aunt Charlotte as we drove away. “She makes a hard bargain.”

“You paid too much for it, Aunt?”

Aunt Charlotte smiled grimly. “I expect to make a fair profit when the right buyer comes along.”

She was smiling and I knew she was thinking that she had got the better of Lady Crediton; and I wished that I could have crept back to Castle Crediton and heard Lady Crediton’s comments.

The man I had met in the hall of the Castle would not be dismissed from my mind so I judiciously set about discovering if Ellen knew anything about him.

When we went for our walk I led the way up to the cliff top facing the Castle and we sat on one of the seats which had been put there by something called the Crediton Town Trust, the object of which was to add amenities to the town.

The seat was one of my favorites because I could sit on it and gaze across the river at the Castle.

“I went there with Aunt Charlotte,” I told Ellen. “We bought a Boulle escritoire.”

Ellen sniffed at what she called my “showing off” so I came quickly to the point which was not on this occasion to show my superior knowledge.

“I saw Lady Crediton and … a man.”

Ellen was interested.

“What sort of man? Young?”

“Quite old,” I replied. “Seven years older than I am.”

“Call that old!” laughed Ellen. “Besides, how did you know?”

“He told me.”

She looked at me suspiciously so I decided to come straight to the point before she accused me of doing what she called “playing the light fantastic.” She used to say: “The trouble with you, miss, is I never know whether you’ve dreamed half you tell me.”

“This man was in the hall and saw me looking at the tapestry. He told me his name was Redvers Stretton.”

“Oh him,” said Ellen.

“Why do you say it like that?”

“How?”

“Scornfully. I thought everyone in that place was a sort of god to you. Who is Redvers Stretton and what’s he doing there?”

Ellen looked at me obliquely. “I don’t think I ought to tell you,” she said.

“Whyever not?”

“I’m sure it’s something Miss Brett wouldn’t want you to know.”

“I’m fully aware it’s not connected with Boulle cabinets and Louis Quinze commodes — and that’s the only thing Aunt Charlotte thinks I should concern myself with. What is it about that man that mustn’t be talked of?”

Ellen looked over her shoulder in that now familiar fearful way, as though she believed the heavens would open and dead Creditons would appear to wreak vengeance on us for having committed the sin of lese majesty — or whatever one would call showing lack of respect to the Creditons.

“Oh come on, Ellen,” I cried. “Don’t be silly. Tell.”

Ellen pressed her lips tightly together. I knew this mood and had never so far failed to wheedle from her what I wanted to know. I cajoled and threatened. I would betray her interest in the man who came with the firm of furniture movers and who often conveyed pieces to and from the Queen’s House; I would tell her sister that she had betrayed certain Crediton secrets to me already.

But she was firm. With the expression of a martyr about to be burned at the stake for her faith she refused to talk of Redvers Stretton.

If she had it would have been easier perhaps to forget him. But

I had to have something to stop my brooding on my mother’s death. Redvers Stretton supplied that need; and the fact that his presence at Castle Crediton was a mystery helped in those weeks to lighten the melancholy caused by my mother’s death.

The escritoire was put in the large room at the top of the house which was even more overflowing than the rest. This room had always fascinated me because the staircase leading to it was one of those which opened into the middle of it; the roof sloped at each end so that the ceiling was only a few inches from the floor. I thought it was the most interesting room in the house and tried to imagine what it had looked like before Aunt Charlotte had turned it into a store room. Mrs. Buckle always complained about it. How she was expected to keep that lot free from dust, she did not know. When I had come home from school last holidays Aunt Charlotte told me that I should have to sleep in the room which led off this top room because she had bought a new tallboy and two very special armchairs which had to be kept in my old room, so that I would not very easily be able to reach my bed. At first I had felt it rather eerie up there, but later I had begun to like it.

The escritoire was put between a cabinet full of Wedgwood china and a grandfather clock. When a piece came it was always thoroughly cleaned and I asked Aunt Charlotte if I could do this. She gruffly said I might and although it was against her principles to show pleasure she could not hide that this was how she felt about my interest. Mrs. Buckle showed me how to mix the beeswax and turpentine which we always used and I set to work. I polished that wood with extra loving care and I was thinking about Castle Crediton and chiefly Redvers Stretton and telling myself that I must find out from Ellen who he was when I was suddenly aware that there was something unusual about one of the drawers in the escritoire. It was smaller than the others and I could not understand why.

Excitedly I ran down to Aunt Charlotte’s sitting room where she was busy with her accounts. I said I thought there was something rather strange about the escritoire, and that brought her up to the top of the house at great speed.

She tapped on the drawer and smiled. “Oh yes. An old trick. There’s a secret drawer here.”

A secret drawer!

She gave me the benefit of her grim mirthless laugh. “Nothing extraordinary. They had them made to conceal their jewelry from casual burglars or to put in papers or secret documents.”

I was so excited that I could not restrain my feelings and Aunt Charlotte was not displeased.

“Look here, I’ll show you. Nothing very special about this. You’ll often come across them. There’s a spring. It’s usually about here. Ah, there it is.” The back of the drawer opened like a door and displayed a cavity behind it.

“Aunt, there’s something there.”

She put in her hand and took it out. It was a figure, about six inches long. “It’s a woman,” I said. “Oh … it’s beautiful.”

“Plaster,” she said. “Worthless.”

She was scowling at it. Clearly it had no value. But to me it was intensely exciting, partly because it had been found in a secret drawer but chiefly because it had come from Castle Crediton.

She was turning it over in her hand. “It’s been broken off from something.”

“But why should it have been in the secret drawer?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not worth much,” she repeated.

“Aunt, may I have it in my room?”

She handed it over to me. “I’m surprised you are interested in a thing like that. It’s of no value.”

I slipped the figure into my apron pocket and picked up my duster. Aunt Charlotte returned to her accounts. As soon as she had gone I examined the figure. The hair was wild, the hands were outstretched, and long draperies were molded to look as though they were blowing in a strong wind. I wondered who had put it there in the secret drawer and why, if it were of no value. I also wondered whether we ought to take it back to Lady Crediton, but when I suggested this to Aunt Charlotte she pooh-poohed the idea. “They’d think you crazy. It’s worthless. Besides I overpaid her anyway. If it had been worth five pounds it would have been mine … for the price I gave her. But it’s not. It’s not worth five shillings.”

So the figure stood up on my dressing table and comforted me as I had not been comforted since my mother’s death. I very quickly noticed the half obliterated writing on the skirts and with the aid of a microscope I made out the inscription: The Secret Woman.

My father came home that year. He was changed, more remote than ever without my mother’s softening influence. I realized that the future I had looked forward to could never be. I had always known it could not be ideal without her but I had had dreams of joining my father, becoming his companion as she had been; I saw now how impossible that was.

He had become very silent and he had always been undemonstrative, and I had not the power to fascinate him that my mother had had.

He was leaving India, he told me, and was going to Africa. I read the papers and would know that there was trouble out there. We had a large Empire to protect and that meant that there would always be trouble in some remote spot on the globe. He had no desire now for anything but to serve the Queen and the Empire; and he was grateful — as I must always be — to Aunt Charlotte, for making it possible for him to feel at ease as to my welfare. In a year or so I should go to Switzerland to finish my education. It was what my mother had wished. A year there, say, and then we would see.

He went off to join his regiment and take part in the Zulu War.

Six months later we heard that he had been killed.

“He died as he would have wished to die,” said Aunt Charlotte.

I did not mourn as I did for my mother. By this time he had become a stranger to me.

I was seventeen. Aunt Charlotte was now my only relative, as she was fond of telling me, and I relied on her. I was beginning to think that to some extent she relied on me; but this was never mentioned.

The household seemed to have changed little in the ten years since I had first walked through that gate in the red wall, but life had changed drastically for me, though not for the inhabitants of the Queen’s House. They were nearly all ten years older, it was true. Ellen was now twenty-five; Mrs. Buckle had had her first grandchildren; Mrs. Morton looked almost exactly the same; Miss Beringer was now thirty-nine. Aunt Charlotte seemed to have changed less than any of us, but then I had always seen her as the grim old woman she appeared to be at that time. There is something timeless about the Aunt Charlottes of the world; they are born old and shrewd and stay so until the end.

I had discovered the reason why Redvers Stretton was at Castle Crediton. Ellen had told me on my sixteenth birthday because I was, as she said, no longer a child and it was time I started learning something about life which I couldn’t from a lot of worm-eaten old furniture. This was because I was increasing my knowledge considerably and even Aunt Charlotte was beginning to have a mild respect for my opinions.

“He’s got a sort of right to be up at the Castle,” Ellen told me one day when we were sitting on the seat looking across the river to that pile of gray stone, “but it’s what you might call a left-handed right.”

“What on earth is that, Ellen?”

“Ah, Miss Clever, you’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

I said humbly that I would. And I heard the story. You had to learn about men, Ellen informed me. They were different from women; they could do certain things which while deplorable and not exactly right were to be forgiven if performed by men, whereas if a woman had done the same thing she would have been cut off from society. The fact was that Sir Edward was a very manly man.

“He was very fond of the ladies.”

“The ships you mean?”

“No, I don’t. I mean flesh and blood ladies. He’d been married to Lady Crediton for ten years and there was no child. It was a blow. Well, to cut a long story short. He took a fancy to his wife’s lady’s maid. They say he wanted to know whose fault it was, his or his wife’s that there weren’t any children, because what he wanted most of all was a son. It was a bit comic in a way … if you can think of anything so sinful as being comic. Lady Crediton found that at long last she was going to have a child. So was the lady’s maid.”

“And what did Lady Crediton say to that?” I pictured her seated in her chair, hands folded on her lap. Of course she would have looked different then. A young woman. Or comparatively young.

“They always said she was a clever woman. She wanted a son the same as he did, for the business, you see. And she was nearly forty. It was the very first and that is not the best time for having children, not first ones at least.”

“And the lady’s maid?”

“She was twenty-one. Sir Edward was cautious. Besides he wanted a son. Suppose Lady Crediton was to have a girl and the lady’s maid a son. You see, he was greedy. He wanted them both. And Lady Crediton, well, she’s a strange woman and it seems they came to terms. The two babies were to be born at about the same time and they were both going to be born in the Castle.”

“How very strange.”

“Well, there’s nothing ordinary about the Creditons,” said Ellen proudly.

“So the babies were born?”

“Yes, two boys. I reckon if he’d have known Lady Crediton was to have a boy he wouldn’t have had all the scandal. But how was he to know?”

Even Sir Edward didn’t know everything, I pointed out ironically, but Ellen was too carried away by the story to complain of my disrespect this time.

“So the two boys were to be brought up in the Castle and Sir Edward claimed them both. There was Rex.”

“He was to be the King.”

“Lady Crediton’s son,” said Ellen, “and Valerie Stretton’s was the other.”

So he is the other.

“Redvers. Valerie Stretton had the finest red hair you’ve ever seen. His turned out fair but he’s more like Sir Edward than like his mother. He was brought up with Master Rex; the same tutors, same school, and both brought up for the business. Young Red, he wanted to go to sea; perhaps Mr. Rex wanted it too, but he had to learn how to juggle with the money. So now you know.”

Ellen then went on to talk of something of greater interest — to her — than the Creditons’ “goings-on”: her own relationship with the fascinating Mr. Orfey, the furniture remover who would one day marry her, when he could offer her the home he considered worthy of her. Ellen sincerely hoped he would not wait too long for she was no longer so young and she would be content with one room and as she put it “Mr. Orfey’s love.” But Mr. Orfey was not like that. He wanted to be sure of what he called a settled future; he wanted to put the money down for a horse and cart of his own from which he would expand.

It was Ellen’s dream that one day a miracle would happen and the money would come from somewhere. Where did she think? I asked her. You never knew, she replied. Aunt Charlotte had once told her that if she was still in her employ at the time of her death there might be a little something for her. That was when Ellen had hinted that she might find more congenial employment elsewhere.

“You never know,” said Ellen. “But I’m not one to like waiting for dead men’s shoes.”

I listened half-heartedly to an account of the virtues of Mr. Orfey and all the time I was thinking of the man I had met — long ago now, the son of Sir Edward and the lady’s maid. I could not understand why I continued to think of him.

I was now eighteen.

“Finishing schools,” snapped Aunt Charlotte. “That was your mother’s nonsense. And where do you think the money would come from for finishing schools? Your father’s pay stopped with him and he saved nothing. Your mother saw to that. When he died I believe he was still paying off the debts she incurred. As for your future — it’s clear that you have a flair for this profession. Mind you, you have a lot to learn … and one is always learning, but I think you might be fairly promising. So you’ll leave school after next term and begin.”

That was what I did and when a year later Miss Beringer decided to get married, the arrangement from Aunt Charlotte’s point of view was ideal. “Old fool,” said Aunt Charlotte. “At her time of life. You’d think she’d know better.” Miss Beringer might have been an old fool but her husband wasn’t and, as Aunt Charlotte told me, Miss Beringer had put a little money into the business — that was the only reason why Aunt Charlotte had taken her in — and now that man was making difficulties. There were visits from lawyers which Aunt Charlotte did not like at all, and I supposed that they came to some arrangement.

It was true that I had a flair. I could go to a sale and my eyes would alight as if by magic on the most interesting pieces. Aunt Charlotte was pleased, though she rarely showed it; she stressed my errors of judgment which were becoming rarer and lightly passed over my successes which were growing more and more frequent.

In the town we became known as Old and Young Miss Brett and I knew that it was said that it was somehow not nice for a young girl to be involved in business; it was unfeminine and I should never find a husband. I should be another Miss Charlotte Brett in a few years time.

And it was borne home to me that that was exactly what Aunt Charlotte wanted.

3

The years were passing. I was twenty-one. Aunt Charlotte had developed an unpleasant complaint which she called “rheumatics”; her limbs were becoming more and more stiff and painful, and to her fury her movements were considerably restricted.

She was the last woman to accept illness; she rebelled against it, was impatient with my suggestion that she should see a doctor and did everything she could to continue with her active life.

Her attitude was slowly changing toward me as she relied on me more. She was constantly hinting at my duty, reminding me how she had taken me in, wondering what would have become of me if when I was orphaned she had not been at hand. I became friendly with John Carmel, an antique dealer who lived in the town of Marden some ten miles inland. We had met at a sale at a manor house and become friendly. After that he was constantly calling at the Queen’s House and inviting me to accompany him to sales.

We had not progressed beyond an interested friendship when his visits ceased abruptly. I was hurt and wondered why until I overheard Ellen say to Mrs. Morton, “She gave him the order of the boot. Oh yes, she did. I heard it all. I think it a shame. After all Miss has her life to lead. There’s no reason why she should be an old maid like her.”

An old maid like her! In my cluttered room, the grandfather clock in the corner ticked maliciously. Old maid! Old maid! it jeered.

I was a prisoner in the Queen’s House. One day it might all be mine. Aunt Charlotte had hinted as much. “If you’re with me,” she had said significantly.

“You’ll be here! You’ll be here!” Why did I imagine the clock said these things to me? The date on the old grandfather was 1702, so he was old already. It was unfair, I thought, that an inanimate piece of furniture made by a man lived on and we had to die. My mother had lived for thirty years only, yet this clock had been on earth for more than a hundred and eighty years.

One should make the most of one’s time. Tick, tock! Tick, tock! All over the house. Time was flying past.

I did not believe I should ever have wanted to marry John Carmel, but Aunt Charlotte was not going to give me the chance to find out. Strangely enough when I thought of romance a vision of a laughing face with tiptilted eyes came to my mind. I was obsessed by the Creditons.

If the time came, I promised myself, that I wanted to marry, nothing and nobody should stop me.

Tick, tock! mocked the grandfather clock, but I was sure of this. I might be like Aunt Charlotte but she was a strong woman.

I was in the shop and on the point of fixing the notice on the door “If closed call at the Queen’s House”, when the bell over the door tinkled and Redvers Stretton came in. He stood smiling at me. “We’ve met before,” he said, “if I’m not mistaken.”

I was embarrassed to find myself coloring. “It was years ago,” I mumbled.

“You’ve grown up in the meantime. You were twelve at the time.” I was ridiculously delighted that he remembered. “Then it must be nine years ago.”

“You were informative then,” he said, and briefly he looked round the shop at the circular table inlaid with ivory, and the dainty set of Sheraton chairs and the tall slender Hepplewhite bookcase in a corner. “And you still are,” he added looking back at me.

I had recovered my calm. “I’m surprised that you remember. Our meeting was so brief.”

“But you are not easily forgotten, Miss … Miss … Miss Anna. Am I right?”

“You are. Did you come in to see something?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps I can show you.”

“I’m looking at it now, although it’s extremely uncivil of me to use that word when describing a young lady.”

“You cannot mean that you came to see me.”

“Why not?”

“It seems such an extraordinary thing to do.”

“It seems to me perfectly reasonable.”

“But suddenly … after all these years.”

“I am a sailor. I have been very little in Langmouth since our last meeting or I should have called before.”

“Well, now you are here …”

“Should I state my business and depart? Business? Of course you are a businesswoman. I must not forget that.” He wrinkled his eyes so that they were almost closed and gazed at the Hepplewhite bookcase. “You are very direct. So I must be. I’ll confess that I did not come in to buy those chairs … or that bookcase. It was merely that as I was driving past that long red wall of yours I saw the inscription on the gate, The Queens House and I remembered our meeting. Queen Elizabeth once slept over there, I said to myself, but what is far more interesting is that Miss Anna Brett sleeps there now.”

I laughed. It was a high-pitched laugh — the laughter of happiness. I had sometimes imagined I should see him again and that it would be something like this. I was becoming speedily fascinated by him. He did not seem quite real; he was like the hero of some romantic tale. He might have stepped out of one of the tapestries. He was, I was sure, a bold adventurer who roamed the seas; he was elusive for he disappeared for long periods. He might walk out of the shop and I might not see him for years and years … not until I had become Old Miss Brett. He had that quality which Ellen would describe as “larger than life.”

I said: “For how long will you be in Langmouth?”

“I sail next week.”

“For what part of the world?”

“To Australia and the Pacific ports.”

“It sounds … wonderful.”

“Do I detect signs of the wanderlust in you, Miss Anna Brett?”

“I should love to see the world. I was born in India. I thought I should go out again but my parents died and that changed everything. I came to live here, and it looks as though this is where I shall stay.”

I was surprised at myself offering so much information for which he had not asked.

He took my hand suddenly and pretended to read my palm. “You’ll travel,” he said, “far and wide.” But he wasn’t looking at my hand; he was looking at me.

I was aware of a woman standing at the window. She was a Mrs. Jennings who often came to the Queen’s House and bought very little. She was an inveterate looker-round and an infrequent buyer. I suspected it was curiosity to get her nose into other people’s houses rather than an interest in antiques which made her visit us. Now she would have seen Redvers Stretton in the shop. Had she seen him holding my hand?

The bell tinkled and she came in.

“Oh, Miss Brett, I see you have someone here. I’ll wait.”

Such alert eyes behind her pince-nez! She would be asking whether that Miss Brett had an admirer because Redvers Stretton was in that shop with her and did not appear to be buying.

Redvers looked momentarily dismayed, then with a faint lift of the shoulders said, “Madam, I was on the point of departure.”

He bowed to me and to her, and left. I was infuriated with the woman, for all she wanted was to ask the price of the bookcase. She stroked it and commented on it and hunted for signs of woodworm merely to chatter as she did so. So Redvers Stretton from the Castle was interested in an antique. He was only home for a short time she believed. There was a wild one, very different from Mr. Rex who must be a great comfort to his mother. Redvers was another kettle of fish.

“Anyone less like a kettle of fish I never saw,” I said with asperity.

“My dear Miss Brett, a figure of speech, but that young man is by all accounts wild.”

She was warning me. But I was in no mood to be warned. I was late back at the Queen’s House and Mrs. Morton told me that Aunt Charlotte was waiting to see me. I found her peevish. She was lying on her bed; she had had a sip of laudanum to bring her relief. I was late, she reminded me, and I told her that Mrs. Jennings had been to inquire about the Hepplewhite and had kept me.

“That old busybody. She’ll never buy it.”

But she seemed satisfied, which was more than I was.

I was becoming obsessed by that man.

Two days later Aunt Charlotte announced her intention of going off to a sale. It was too good to be missed and although she was scarcely fit for it she decided to dose herself liberally and set out. She would take Mrs. Morton with her for she would need someone in attendance as she was to be away for two nights; travel for one afflicted with her infirmity in addition to the discomfort of hotel bedrooms was well-nigh intolerable. It would have been far more satisfactory if I could have accompanied her, but obviously we could not both be away … for business reasons. If that absurd Beringer had not made such a fool of herself by getting married I could have gone and Beringer have been left in charge. Aunt Charlotte disliked Miss Beringer more since her marriage even than before.

She left in due course and I continued to hope that Redvers would call in again at the shop. I wondered why he did not because he had come in for the purpose of seeing me and had seemed to take the excuse of leaving with alacrity. Why, since he had come in in the first place.

Perhaps he had already sailed.

It was the evening of that day after Aunt Charlotte had left. I had shut up the shop, come back to the Queen’s House and I was in my room when Ellen came running up to say that a gentleman had called and was asking to see me.

“What does he want?”

“To see you, miss,” Ellen smirked. “It’s Captain Stretton from the Castle.”

“Captain Stretton from the Castle!” I repeated her foolishly. I looked at my reflection in the glass. I was wearing my gray merino which was not very becoming, and my hair was untidy.

“I could tell him you’ll be with him in ten minutes, miss,” suggested Ellen conspiratorially. “After all you wouldn’t want him to think you were rushing.”

I said rather tremulously, “Perhaps he has come to see some piece of furniture.”

Ellen said: “Yes, miss. I’ll tell him.”

She was gone; and I rushed to the wardrobe I was using and took out the light navy silk which my father had brought me from Hong Kong. It had been made up by the local dressmaker and was certainly not in the latest style — for I had had it some time — but the material was lovely; it had a ruching of velvet at the neck which I had always thought becoming.

So I hastily changed, straightened my hair and ran downstairs.

He took my hands in his free and easy way which might have been unconventional but which I found charming.

“Forgive my calling,” he said, “but I had to come to say goodbye.”

“Oh … you are going?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I can only wish you bon voyage.”

“Thank you. I hope you will think of me while I’m away and perhaps pray for those in peril on the sea.”

“I hope you won’t need my prayers.”

“When you know me better you’ll realize that I need them more than most.”

When you know me better! I should have guessed at the state of my feelings when a simple phrase like that and its implication could delight me. He was going away, but when I knew him better …

“You strike me as being very self-sufficient.”

“Do you think any of us really are that?”

“I think some of us may be.”

“You?” he asked.

“I have not yet had the time to discover.”

“You have always been cosseted?”

“Hardly that. But you have just made me realize that I have never exactly been on my own. But what a profound conversation! Won’t you sit down?”

He looked round him and I laughed. “That’s how I felt when I first came here. I used to sit on a chair and say to myself, Perhaps Madame de Pompadour once sat here, or Richelieu or Talleyrand.”

“Being less erudite such a thought would not occur to me.”

“Let us go into my aunt’s sitting room, that is more … habitable. That is if you have time to stay for … a little while.”

“I’m sailing at seven in the morning.” He gave me that quizzical look. “I should leave before that.”

I laughed as I led the way up the stairs and through our cluttered rooms. He was interested in some of the Chinese pieces which Aunt Charlotte had recently bought. I had forgotten how she had to make room for them in her sitting room.

“Aunt Charlotte bought rather lavishly on this occasion,” I said. “They belonged to a man who had lived in China. He was a collector.” I felt I had to go on talking because I was so excited that he had come to see me. “Do you like this cabinet? We call it a chest-on-chest. The lacquer is rather fine. See how it is set with ivory and mother-of-pearl. Heaven knows what she paid for it. And I wonder when she will find a buyer.”

“How knowledgeable you are.”

“Nothing compared with my aunt. But I’m learning. It takes a lifetime though.”

“And,” he said gravely studying me, “there are so many other things in life to learn.”

“You must be an expert on … the sea and ships.”

“I shall never be an expert on anything.”

“Who is? But where will you sit? This is perhaps more comfortable. It’s a good sturdy Spanish chair.”

He was smiling. “What happened to the desk you had from the Castle?”

“My aunt sold it. I don’t know who was the buyer.”

“I did not come to talk about furniture,” he said.

“No?”

“But to talk to you.”

“I don’t think you’d find me very interesting … apart from all this.”

He looked round the room. “It’s almost as though they’re trying to make a period piece of you.”

There was a moment’s silence and I was suddenly aware of all the ticking clocks.

I heard myself say almost involuntarily: “Yes, I think that is what I fear. I see myself living here, growing old, learning more and more until I know as much as Aunt Charlotte. As you say, a period piece.”

“That mustn’t happen,” he said. “The present should be lived in.” I said: “It was good of you to call, on your last evening.”

“I should have called before, but …”

I waited for him to go on but he had decided not to.

“I heard about you,” he said.

“You heard about me?”

“Miss Brett the Elder is well-known in Langmouth. I heard that she drives a hard bargain.”

“Lady Crediton told you that.”

“She was under the impression that she drove a harder one. That was the occasion when we first met.” And then: “What do you know about me?”

I was afraid to repeat Ellen’s story in case it was wrong.

“I had heard that you live at the Castle, that you are not Lady Crediton’s son.”

“Then you will understand that I was in a somewhat invidious position from the beginning.” He began to laugh. “I can talk to you of this somewhat indelicate matter. That is why I find your company stimulating. You are not the sort of woman to refuse to discuss a subject simply because it is … unconventional.”

“It is true?”

“Ah, so you have heard. Yes, it’s true. Sir Edward was my father; I was brought up as a son of the house, and yet not with the same status as my half brother. All very reasonable, don’t you think? It’s had its effect on my character, though. I was always trying to outdo Rex in everything, as much as to say, ‘See I’m as good as you are.’ Do you think that excuses a boy for being shall we say arrogant, eager to attract attention, always wanting to win? Rex is the most patient of fellows. Far more worthy than I but then I always say he didn’t have to prove he was as good. He was accepted as being better.”

“You aren’t one of those tiresome people with a chip on your shoulder, I hope?”

He laughed. “No, I’m not. In fact trying so hard for so long to convince people that I was as good as Rex meant that I succeeded in convincing myself.”

“That’s all to the good. I could never bear people who are sorry for themselves, perhaps because there was a time when I started to feel life had treated me rather harshly. That was when my mother died.”

I told him about my mother, how beautiful she was, how enchanting, her plans for my future, how my father and I had doted on her; and then I went on to speak of his death and how I was left, an orphan, at the mercy of Aunt Charlotte.

I was unusually animated. He had that effect on me. I felt I was being amusing, interesting, attractive and I was happier than I had been since my mother died. No, I was happier than I had ever been in my life. I wanted this evening never to stop.

There was a gentle tap on the door and Ellen came in, bright-eyed and conspiratorial.

“I was going to say, miss, that there’s supper nearly ready and if Captain Stretton would be joining you for it, I could serve in fifteen minutes or so.”

He declared his delight in the suggestion. His eyes rested on Ellen and I noticed that the color deepened in her cheeks. Could it be that he had the same effect on her as he had on me?

“Thank you, Ellen,” I said, and I was ashamed that I had felt a little jealous. No, it was not really that, but the thought occurred to me that his charm was not for me alone; he possessed it in such abundance that he could afford to squander it so that even a maid announcing a meal was aware of it. Was I attaching too much importance to his interest?

Ellen had set a meal in the dining room and had, greatly daring, put two lighted candles in the lovely carved gilded seventeenth-century candlesticks and had set them at either end of the Regency table; she had placed two Sheraton dining-room chairs opposite each other and the table looked delightful.

About us loomed the bookcases and chairs and two cabinets filled with porcelain and Wedgwood pottery, but the candles lighting the table shut off the rest of the room and the effect was charming.

It was like a dream. Aunt Charlotte never entertained. I wondered fleetingly what she would think if she could see us now, and I thought too how different life here would be without Aunt Charlotte. But why think of her on such an evening?

Ellen was in high spirits. I imagined her giving an account of it all to Mr. Orfey the next day. I knew she believed — for she had told me often — that it was time I had “a bit of life.” This would be in her opinion a very delectable slice of life, not just a bit.

She brought in the soup in a tureen with deep blue flower decorations and the plates matched. I caught my breath with horror that we should be using such precious plates. There was cold chicken to follow and I was thankful that Aunt Charlotte was to be away another day which would enable us to replenish the larder. Aunt Charlotte ate little herself and kept a very meager table. But Ellen had worked wonders with what she had; she had turned cold potatoes into delicious sauté and had cooked a cauliflower which she served with a cheese and chive sauce. Ellen seemed to be in possession of new powers on that night. Or perhaps I imagined that everything tasted different from what it had before.

We talked and every now and then Ellen would come in to serve, looking very pretty and excited; I was sure there had never been a happier scene in the Queen’s House, even when Queen Elizabeth was entertained here. I was full of fancies. It was as though the house approved and the alien pieces retreated as I sat in the dining room at the Regency table entertaining my guest.

There was no wine — Aunt Charlotte was a teetotaler — but that was of no importance.

He talked about the sea and foreign places and he made me believe I was there, and when he spoke of his ship and his crew I could guess what it meant to him. He was taking out a cargo of cloth and manufactured goods to Sydney and when he was there he would do a certain amount of trading with the Pacific ports before bringing wool back to England. The ship was not big; she was under a thousand tons but he would like me to see how she could cut through the water. She was in the clipper class, and you couldn’t find anything speedier than that. But he was talking too much about himself.

I protested. No. I wanted to hear it. I was fascinated. I had often been down to the docks and seen the ships there and wondered where they were going. Were they entirely cargo ships, I wanted to know.

“We take some passengers, though cargo’s the main business. As a matter of fact I have a very important gentleman sailing with me tomorrow. He’s primarily a diamond merchant and going out to look at Australian opals. He has quite a conceit of himself. There are one or two other passengers too. Passengers can present problems on ships like ours.”

And so we talked and the clocks ticked on furiously and maliciously fast.

And as we talked I said: “You haven’t told me the name of your ship.”

“Haven’t I? It’s The Secret Woman.”

“The Secret Woman. Why … that’s what it said on the figure which was in the desk we bought from Castle Crediton. It’s in my room. I’ll go and get it.”

I picked up the candlestick from the table. It was heavy and he took it from me. “I’ll carry it,” he said.

“Be careful with it. It’s precious.”

“Like everything in the house.”

“Well, not everything.”

And I turned and side by side we went up the stairs.

“Be careful,” I said, “as you see we’re very cluttered.”

“I understand it’s the shop window,” he replied.

“Yes,” I chattered. “I found this figure in the desk. I suppose we should have returned it to you but Aunt Charlotte said it was worthless.”

“I’m sure Aunt Charlotte, as usual, was right.”

I laughed. “She almost always is, I have to admit.” And thinking of Aunt Charlotte I marveled afresh that I could have dared to invite him to supper as I had — although Ellen had made that inevitable. But I was very willing, so it was no use blaming her. I refused to think of Aunt Charlotte at such a time; she was safely out of the way in some dingy hotel bedroom — she would never stay at the best hotels and poor Mrs. Morton was no doubt having a very trying time.

We stepped up into the room above. I always thought the house was eerie in candlelight because the furniture took on odd shapes — some grotesque, some almost human, and as they changed constantly they rarely became familiar.

“What an odd old house!” he said.

“Genuinely old,” I told him. And I laughed aloud to think of Aunt Charlotte’s verdict on Castle Crediton: Fake! He wanted to know why I laughed and I told him.

“She has the utmost contempt for fakes.”

“And you?”

I hesitated. “It would depend on the fake. Some are very clever.”

“I suppose one would have to be clever to be a successful faker.”

“I suppose so. Oh mind this, please. See how that edge of that table juts out. I didn’t see it in the shadow. It’s rather dangerous there, so near the stair.”

We had reached my bedroom.

“Miss Anna Brett slept here,” he said with mock reverence.

I was very lighthearted. “Do you think we should fix a plaque on the wall? ‘Queen Elizabeth and Anna Brett …’ Perhaps they ought to call it Anna Brett House instead of the Queen’s House.”

“It’s an excellent idea.”

“But I must show you the figure.” I took it from the drawer in which I kept it. He put down the candlestick on the dressing table and took it from me. He laughed. “It’s the figurehead of The Secret Woman,” he said.

“A figurehead.”

“Yes, no doubt there was a model of the ship and this was broken off.”

“It’s of no value?”

“None whatever. Except of course that it represents the figurehead of my ship, which might give it a little value in your eyes.”

“Yes,” I said. “It does.”

He handed it back to me and I must have held it somewhat reverently, for he laughed.

“You can take it up now and then, look at it and think of me on the bridge as it plows through the waves.”

“The Secret Woman,” I said. “It’s a strange name for a ship. Secret, and Woman. I thought all the Crediton ships were ladies.”

At that moment I heard the sound of a door being shut; I heard voices below and felt the goose pimples rise on my flesh.

“What’s wrong?” he asked and he took me by the arms and held me close to him.

I said weakly: “My aunt has come home.” My heart was beating so wildly that I could scarcely think. Why had she come home so soon? But why not? The sale had not been so interesting as she had hoped; she hated hotel bedrooms; she would not stay in one longer than she could help. It didn’t matter for what reason she had come. The point was that she was here. Perhaps at this moment she was looking at the remains of our feast … the lighted candle — only one because we had the other here — the precious china. Poor Ellen, I thought. I looked wildly about the room — at my bed, the here-today-and-gone-tomorrow pieces of furniture, and the candlelight throwing elongated shadows on the wall, the tallboy and … ourselves.

Redvers Stretton was actually alone with me in my bedroom and Aunt Charlotte was in the house! I must at least go downstairs as quickly as possible.

He understood and picked up the candle which he had put on the dressing table. But we could not hurry of course; we must pick our way carefully. As we came to the turn of the staircase and looked down at the hall, Aunt Charlotte saw us. Mrs. Morton was standing beside her; Ellen was there too, white-faced and tense.

“Anna!” said Aunt Charlotte in a voice which reverberated like thunder. “What do you think you are doing?”

The Queen’s House could never have known a more dramatic moment: Redvers towering above me — he was very tall and he was standing one stair up; the candlelight flickering; our shadows on the wall; and Aunt Charlotte standing there in her traveling cloak and bonnet, her face white with the strain of fatigue and pain, looking more than ever like a man dressed up as a woman, powerful and malevolent.

I walked down the stairs and he kept close to me.

“Captain Stretton called,” I said trying to speak naturally.

He took the matter out of my hands. “Perhaps I should explain, Miss Brett. I had heard so much of your wonderful treasure store that I could not resist coming to see it for myself. I was not expecting such hospitality.”

She was a little taken aback. Was she, too, susceptible to that charm?

She grunted and said: “You can scarcely judge antiques by candlelight.”

“Yet it must often have been by candlelight that those wonderfully wrought pieces were shown in the past, Miss Brett. I wanted to get the effect by candlelight. And Miss Brett kindly allowed me to do this.”

She was assessing his possibilities as a buyer. “What are you particularly interested in, Captain Stretton?”

I said quickly, “Captain Stretton was greatly impressed by the Levasseur cabinet.”

Aunt Charlotte grunted. “It’s a fine piece,” she said. “You’d never regret having it. It would be very easy to place if ever you wanted to pass it on.”

“I am sure of it,” he said earnestly.

“Have you seen it in daylight?” Her voice was ironical. She didn’t believe for one moment in this act. To her it was an absurd charade.

“No. That’s a pleasure in store for me.”

Aunt Charlotte was staring at the candlestick in his hand.

“Aunt Charlotte,” I said, “you must be very tired after your journey.”

“Then I should take my leave,” said Redvers. “And thank you for your kind hospitality.”

“And the Levasseur?”

“In daylight,” he said. “As you tell me I should.”

“Come tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll show it to you myself.”

He bowed.

“Ellen will show you out.”

But I was not having that. I said firmly: “I will.”

And I went with him to the door. I stood in the garden with him. I was talking wildly about the cabinet. “That marquetry of brass on the tortoiseshell background is really very beautiful. There is no doubt that it is genuine Levasseur …”

“Oh, no doubt at all,” he said.

It was autumn and I could smell the peculiar odor of chrysanthemums and the dampness of the ground and the mist on the river. Whenever I smell those smells I remember that night. My enchanted evening was over; and he was going away. I was shut in my prison; he would leave me for his life of adventure and I would go back to my infuriated jailer.

“I think she is a little put out,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I thought she would be away another night.”

“I meant I’m sorry I’m going away. I’m leaving you to face that …”

“I could face it if …”

He knew what I meant. If he were there to face it with me, if I could see him now and then, even if they were stolen meetings, I would not care. I was twenty-one years of age. I did not have to be Aunt Charlotte’s slave forever.

“I wish it had been different,” he said, and I wondered what he meant by that. I waited for him to go on, and I knew I could not stay long. Inside the Queen’s House Aunt Charlotte was waiting. “Different?” I insisted. “You mean you wish you hadn’t come?”

“I couldn’t wish that,” he said. “It was a wonderful evening until the ogress returned. She didn’t believe me, you know, about that … thing.”

“No,” I said, “she didn’t.”

“I hope it is not going to be … disagreeable.”

“But the evening before she came was so very agreeable.”

“You found it so?”

I could not hide my feelings. “The most agreeable evening I have …” No I must not be so naïve. I finished, “That I have spent for a long time.”

“I shall be back,” he said.

“When?”

“Perhaps sooner than you think.”

He took my face in his hands and looked at me; I thought he was going to kiss me, but he seemed to change his mind and suddenly, he was gone and I was alone in the autumn-scented garden.

I went back into the house. Aunt Charlotte was not there. Ellen was clearing the table.

“Your aunt’s gone to bed,” she said. “Mrs. Morton’s helping her. She’s worn out. She says she’ll see you, and me, in the morning. Oh miss — we’re in for it, we really are.”

I went back to my room. Such a short time ago he had been there with me. He had brought a magical touch to my life and now he was gone. I had been foolish to imagine … What had I imagined? What did a young woman who was not outstandingly attractive have to interest a man who must surely be the most charming in the world?

And yet … there was something in the manner in which he had looked at me. Had I shown too clearly my feelings?

I took out the figurehead and set it on the dressing table. Then I undressed and when I got into bed I took the figurehead with me — a foolish childish gesture, but I found it comforting.

It was a long time before I could sleep but at last I dozed. I awoke with a start. It was the creak of a floorboard — the sound of a footstep on the stair which had disturbed me. Someone was coming up to the top of the house … footsteps and the tap-tap of Aunt Charlotte’s stick.

I sat up in bed; I stared at the door which slowly opened and she stood there.

She looked grotesque in her camel’s-hair dressing gown with the military buttons, her long gray hair in a coarse thick plait, and in her hand the ebony-topped stick which she used since her arthritis made it difficult for her to walk about. She carried a candle — in a plain wooden stick, not one of our valuable ones.

She glared at me. “You may well look ashamed of yourself,” she said. Her laughter was horrible, sneering and in a way coarse. “I couldn’t sleep for thinking of what happened tonight.”

“I have done nothing of which to be ashamed.”

“That’s what you tell me. So you waited until I was out of the way before you brought him in. How often has he been here? You’re not telling me this was the first time.”

“It was the first time.”

She laughed again. She was angry and frightened. I didn’t know it then but she needed me far more than I needed her. She was a lonely old woman who had to rely on people like Mrs. Morton; but I was to be her salvation. I was going to look after her and the business; she had trained me for just that. And what she feared was that I would marry and leave her — as Emily Beringer had.

She looked round the room. “You’re feeling lonely now he’s gone, I daresay. Don’t tell me he wasn’t up here. I saw the light from the garden. You ought to have thought to draw the curtains. But then you weren’t expecting to be seen, were you? You thought you had the place all to yourself and that Ellen, she was in it, too. A nice example to her, I must say.”

“Ellen was not to blame.”

“She served your supper on the Delft, didn’t she?”

“That was foolish but …”

“But not so foolish as bringing him up here to your bedroom.”

“Aunt Charlotte!”

“Don’t play the innocent with me. I know you were up here. I saw the light. Look. There’s candle grease on the dressing table. Didn’t I see you come down together? Oh, I wonder you can lie there, so brazen. You’re another such as your mother, you are. I said at the time it was a pity your father ever took up with her.”

I said: “Be silent, you wicked old woman.”

“That sort of talk will get you nowhere.”

“I won’t stay here,” I said.

It was the worst thing I could have said.

She turned her rage on me. “You ungrateful girl! I did everything for you. What would have happened to you if I hadn’t taken you in, eh? It would have been an orphanage, I can tell you. There was nothing, nothing left for you. I kept you. I’ve tried to make you useful. I’ve taught you all you know … to give you a chance of paying me back and this is what you do. Bring strange men into the house as soon as my back’s turned. Your mother all over again … I shouldn’t wonder.”

“How dare you say such things. My mother was good, better than you could ever be. And I …”

“And you are good, too? Oh, very good. Very good to young men who visit you when my back’s turned.”

“Stop it! Stop it!”

“You dare to order me in my house.”

“I’ll go if you like.”

“Where to?”

“I’ll find some post. I know something about antiques.”

“Which I have taught you.”

“I could be a governess or a companion.”

She laughed. “Oh yes, you’re very clever. I know. Has it occurred to you that you might owe me something? You might think about that. A fine fool you are. Making yourself cheap to the first man who comes along. And from that place too. I should have thought you would have known better where someone of that reputation is concerned.”

“What reputation?”

She chuckled. “You ought to select with more care. I can tell you that Captain Redvers Stretton has not a very good name in this town. He’s the sort who’s going to take his fun where he finds it. And I’ll daresay that he’s ready to try all sorts.”

I could only cry: “Go away. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I’ll leave here. If you want to get rid of me, if I’m such a burden …”

“You’re a rash and foolish girl,” she said. “You need me to look after you. Your father was my brother and I’ve got my duty. I’ll have a good talk to you in the morning. I’m worn out … and my pain is terrible. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you. I thought I’d speak to you tonight. But tomorrow perhaps you’ll be in a more contrite mood.”

She turned and went out. I stared at the door. I was hurt and angry; the evening had changed. She had smirched it with her evil thoughts and her talk of his reputation. What did she mean by that? What did she know?

And then suddenly there was a piercing scream and the heavy thud of something falling. I got out of bed and ran to the stairs.

Aunt Charlotte was lying at the foot of that flight, groaning.

I ran down. “Aunt Charlotte,” I said. “Are you hurt?”

She did not answer; she was breathing heavily.

I called Mrs. Morton and Ellen. Foolishly I tried to lift my aunt; I couldn’t, so I found a cushion and put it under her head.

Mrs. Morton came hurrying. With her fine hair in curlers under a net she looked different, grim, excited.

“My aunt must have slipped coming down the stairs,” I said, I remembered warning Redvers.

“At this time of night,” said Mrs. Morton. She picked up the candle which Aunt Charlotte had dropped. There was the faintest moonlight shining through the window. Aunt Charlotte began to groan again.

I said: “Put on your cloak, Ellen, and go and ask Dr. Elgin to come.”

Ellen ran off and Mrs. Morton and I stayed with Aunt Charlotte.

“How did it happen?” asked Mrs. Morton. She looked rather pleased, I thought, and I imagined what it had been like traveling with Aunt Charlotte.

“She came to my room to talk to me and fell on the way back to her own.”

“She was in a rage, I daresay,” said Mrs. Morton.

She looked at me obliquely; I realized that I had never understood Mrs. Morton at all. She seemed to be shut in with some secret life of her own. I wondered why she endured Aunt Charlotte’s tantrums. Surely she could have found more congenial employment elsewhere? I could think of no reason for her staying but that of Ellen: that she would be remembered in my aunt’s will if she were still in her employ.

It seemed a long time before Ellen returned. Dr. Elgin would be with us shortly, she said.

When he came he said we should get Aunt Charlotte to bed at once. I was to make hot sweet tea for her because she was suffering from shock. He thought she had been lucky for no bones were broken.

As I made the tea Ellen said: “What a night this has been! Do you know, I reckon this could knock years off her life. A fall like that, at her age …”

And I knew that she was thinking of taking her legacy to Mr. Orfey.

Life changed after that. It was the beginning of the disastrous period. Aunt Charlotte had injured her spine in the fall and this had aggravated her arthritis. There were days when she could not walk except to potter about the house and sometimes she could not even do that. She could not always go to sales; I had to go. I became a well known figure at them. At first I was treated with mild contempt; but this so angered me that I determined not to miss anything and I became more and more knowledgeable, so that they had to respect me. “She’s her aunt all over again,” it was said. And I was rather pleased because the only way in which I could bear to resemble Aunt Charlotte was in her knowledge.

More than anything Aunt Charlotte had changed. I made excuses for her in the beginning. A woman with her energetic mind must find it tragic to be physically incapacitated. It was small wonder that she was irritable and bad tempered; she had never been convivial but now she seemed to hate us all. Continually she reminded me that I was responsible for her condition. It was her concern for me that had made her come to my bedroom; it was because she was so upset by my conduct that she had carelessly walked into the edge of that table and tripped. I had cost her her health and vigor; I owed it to her to repay her in any way I could.

The household had never been gay; it now became grim and melancholy. She would sit propped up in her chair in her sitting room on her good days and go through the accounts. She never allowed me to see them; she herself did most of the buying. She would allow me no authority although my knowledge was growing and was not far behind her own.

I began to experience once more that feeling that the Queen’s House was a prison; and just as in the old days I had dreamed of reunion with my mother as my means of escape, now I thought of that evening with Redvers and I told myself: He will come home from his voyage and when he does he will come to see me.

The months passed and I heard nothing of him. The autumn was with us — the smell of dahlias and chrysanthemums in the garden; the damp mist was rising from the river and it was the anniversary of that evening and still I heard no news of him.

Aunt Charlotte was getting more crippled, more irritable. Scarcely a day passed during which she did not remind me where my duty lay.

I went on waiting and hoping that one day Redvers would seek me out, but he never did.

It was Ellen who brought news to me. Her sister still worked for the Creditons. She had married the butler and had come up in the world. Lady Crediton was pleased with her and although she was not exactly a housekeeper, she was in charge of the maids which, being the butlers wife, was very convenient.

Ellen said to me one day when she was helping me to take some Ferrybridge pottery from one of the cabinets and pack it for a customer: “Miss Anna, I’ve been wondering whether to speak to you since yesterday morning.”

I looked at her in some alarm; she was clearly distressed and I wondered whether Mr. Orfey had grown tired of waiting for her legacy and turned to someone else.

“I went up to the Castle yesterday to see our Edith.”

I avoided looking at her; I must handle the pottery very carefully. “Yes,” I said.

“There’s news of the Captain.”

“The Captain,” I repeated foolishly.

“Captain Stretton. Something awful’s happened.”

“Not … dead?”

“Oh no, no … but some awful disgrace or something. He lost his ship.”

“You mean it was … sunk.”

“Something like that. They’re all talking about it up at the Castle. It’s something dreadful. And he’s miles away. And it’s some disgrace, but there’s something else, Miss Anna.”

“What, Ellen?”

“He’s married. He’s been married some time. He’s got a wife in foreign parts. He must have been married when he came here that night. Who’d have thought it!”

I didn’t believe it. He would have said so. But why should he discuss his private affairs? I must have misunderstood bitterly. I had thought … What had I thought? I was a simpleton. I was all Aunt Charlotte said I was. That evening had meant nothing to him. Two people could see the same event entirely differently. He had called on me because he had nothing else to do before he sailed. Perhaps he knew how I felt about him and was amused. Perhaps he had told his wife about that last evening. The meal by candlelight, the arrival of Aunt Charlotte. I suppose it could be seen as comic.

“How interesting,” I said.

“I had no idea, had you, miss?”

“Of what?”

“That he was married of course. He kept it dark. There’s trouble about that, too. Whoops! You nearly dropped that. There would have been trouble if that had been broken.”

Broken, I thought dramatically, like my dreams, like my hopes. Because I had been hoping. I had really believed that one day he would come back to me and then I would begin to be happy.

Captain Redvers Stretton was married. I heard it from several sources. He had married somewhere abroad, married a foreigner, so they said. He had been married for some time.

When Aunt Charlotte heard, which she did inevitably, she laughed as I had rarely seen her laugh before. And from that day she taunted me. She never lost an opportunity of bringing his name into the conversation. “Your Captain Stretton. Your evening visitor. So he had a wife all the time! Did he tell you that?”

“Why should he?” I asked. “People who come to look at the furniture don’t feel it necessary to acquaint one with their family history, do they?”

“Perhaps people who come to look at Levasseurs might.” She laughed. She was better tempered than she had been for a long time, but spiteful and malicious.

He came home I believe but I didn’t see him. I heard from Ellen that he was there. And the time passed — one day very like another, spring, summer, autumn, winter; and nothing to make one week different from another except perhaps that we sold one of the Chinese pieces which nobody seemed to want, for what Aunt Charlotte called an excellent price but which I believed was what she had paid for it. She was relieved to see it go. “You wouldn’t find another like that,” she said. “Carved red lacquer. Fifteenth century of the Hsüan Te period.”

“And you wouldn’t find another buyer either,” I retaliated.

We were like that together, constantly bickering; I was getting old and sour and so was everyone in that house. Ellen had lost some of her exuberance. Mr. Orfey was still waiting. Poor Ellen, he wanted the legacy she would get more than he wanted her. Mrs. Morton was more withdrawn than ever; she went off on her free days once a fortnight and we never knew where she went. She was mysterious and secretive in her ways. I was twenty-five — no longer young. Sometimes I thought: It is four years since that night. And it meant nothing to him because all the time he was married and he didn’t tell me. He implied … But had he implied or had I imagined it? Aunt Charlotte never forgot. She was constantly reminding me that I had behaved like a fool. I had been an innocent and he had known it. It seemed amusing to her; she would titter in an infuriating way when she spoke of it. It was the only subject she ever found amusing.

Oh, the dreariness of the Queen’s House with four women growing old and sad, all waiting for something to change their drab and dreary lives. I knew what it was: Aunt Charlotte to die. Ellen could marry Mr. Orfey. Mrs. Morton was no doubt waiting for what she would get. And I … At least I thought I should be free. Why didn’t I go away? Could I have found a post? Perhaps somewhere in England there must be an antique dealer who could make use of my services; and yet much as I hated her — for hate her I did at times — I felt a responsibility toward Aunt Charlotte. If I went she would be bereft. I was doing more and more of the essential work. I could run the business alone — except of course that I was never allowed to see the accounts. But in my heart I believed that I had a duty to her. She was my father’s sister. She had taken me in when my parents left me in England; she had looked after me when I became an orphan.

The clocks ticked on. There was a very special significance in their ticking now.

Aunt Charlotte had grown worse; she could not move from her bed. The injury to her spine had aggravated her complaint, said Dr. Elgin. Her bedroom had become an office. She still kept a tight hold on the books and I was never allowed to see them; but I was taking over all the selling and a great deal of the buying, though everything had to be submitted to her first and accounts passed through her hands. I was very busy. I devoted myself passionately to my work and if ever Ellen or Mrs. Buckle started to talk about what was happening up at Castle Crediton I implied that I was not interested.

One day Dr. Elgin asked to see me; he had just come down from Aunt Charlotte’s room.

He said: “She’s getting worse. You can’t manage her without help. There’ll come a time very soon when she’ll be completely bedridden. I suggest you have a nurse.”

I could see the point of this but it was, I said, a matter I should have to discuss with my aunt.

“Do so,” said the doctor. “And impress on her that you can’t do all that you do and be an attendant in the sick room. She needs a trained nurse.”

Aunt Charlotte was against the idea at first but eventually gave in. And then everything changed because Chantel Loman had arrived.

4

How can I describe Chantel? She was dainty and reminded me of a Dresden china figure. She had that lovely shade of hair made famous by Titian, with rather heavy brows and dark lashes; her eyes were a decided shade of green and I thought her coloring the most arresting I had ever seen. She had a straight little nose and a delicately colored complexion which, with her slender figure, gave her the Dresden look. If she had a fault it was the smallness of her mouth but I thought — and this had occurred to me with some of the finest works of art I handled — that it was the slight imperfection which added something to beauty. Perfect beauty in art and nature could become monotonous; that little difference made it exciting. And that was how Chantel seemed to me.

When she first came into the Queen’s House and sat on the carved Restoration chair which happened to be in the hall at that time, I thought: “She’ll never stay here. She’ll not come in the first place.”

But I was wrong. She said afterward that the place fascinated her, as I did. I looked so … forbidding. A regular old maid in my tweed skirt and jacket and my very severe blouse and my really lovely hair pulled back and screwed up in a way which destroyed its beauty and was criminal.

Chantel talked like that — underlining certain words and she had a way of laughing at the end of a sentence as though she were laughing at herself. Anyone less like a nurse I could not imagine.

I took her up to Aunt Charlotte and oddly enough — or though perhaps I should say naturally enough — Aunt Charlotte took a fancy to her on the spot. Chantel charmed naturally and easily, I told Ellen.

“She’s a real beauty,” said Ellen. “Things will be different now she’s come.”

And they were. She was bright and efficient. Even Aunt Charlotte grumbled less. Chantel was interested in the house and explored it. She told me later that she thought it was the most interesting house she had ever been in.

When Aunt Charlotte had been made comfortable for the night Chantel would come and sit in my room and talk. I think she was glad to have someone more or less her own age in the house. I was twenty-six and she was twenty-two; but she had lived a more interesting life, had traveled with her last patient a little and seemed to me a woman of the world.

I felt happier than I had for a long time and so was the entire household. Ellen was interested in her and I believe confided in her about Mr. Orfey. Even Mrs. Morton was more communicative with her than she had ever been with me, for it was Chantel who told me that Mrs. Morton had a daughter who was a cripple and lived with Mrs. Morton’s unmarried sister five miles from Langmouth. That was where she went on her days off; and she had come to the Queen’s House and endured the whims of Aunt Charlotte and the lack of comforts because it enabled her to be near her daughter. She was waiting for the day she would retire and they would live together.

“Fancy her telling you all that,” I cried. “How did you manage to get her to talk?”

“People do talk to me,” said Chantel.

She would stand at my window looking out on the garden and the river and say that it was all fascinating. She was vitally interested in everything and everybody. She even learned something about antiques. “The money they must represent,” she said.

“But they have to be bought first,” I explained to her. “And some of them have not been paid for. Aunt Charlotte merely houses them and gets a commission if she makes a sale.”

“What a clever creature you are!” she said admiringly.

“You have your profession which is no doubt more useful.”

She grimaced. At times she reminded me of my mother; but she was efficient as my mother would never have been.

“Preserving lovely old tables and chairs might be more useful than preserving some fractious invalids. I’ve had some horrors I can tell you.”

Her conversation was amusing. She told me she had been brought up in a vicarage. “I know now why people say poor as church mice. That’s how poor we were. All that economy. It was soul-destroying, Anna.” We had quickly come to Christian names, and hers was so pretty I said it was a shame not to use it. “There was Papa saving the souls of his parishioners while his poor children had to live on bread and dripping. Ugh! Our mother was dead — died with the birth of the youngest, myself. There were five of us.”

“How wonderful to have so many brothers and sisters.”

“Not so wonderful when you’re poor. We all decided to have professions and I chose nursing because, as I said to Selina, my eldest sister, that will take me into the houses of the rich and at least I can catch the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.”

“And you came here!”

“I like it here,” she said. “The place excites me.”

“At least we shan’t give you bread and dripping.”

“I shouldn’t mind if you did. It would be worth it to be here. It’s a wonderful house, full of strange things, and you are by no means ordinary, nor is Miss Brett. That is what is good about this profession of mine. You never know where it will lead you.”

Her sparkling green eyes reminded me of emeralds.

I said: “I should have thought anyone as beautiful as you would be married.”

She smiled obliquely. “I have had offers.”

“But you’ve never been in love,” I said.

“No. Have you?”

That brought the color flooding my cheeks; and before I could prevent myself I was telling her about Redvers Stretton.

“A roving Casanova,” she said. “I wish I’d been here then. I would have warned you.”

“How would you have known that he had a wife abroad?”

“I would have found out, never fear. My poor dear Anna, you have to see it as a lucky escape.” Her eyes shone excitedly. “Think of what might have happened.”

“What?” I demanded.

“He might have offered marriage and seduced you.”

“What nonsense! It was all my fault really. He never gave the slightest indication that he was … interested in me. It was my foolish imagination.”

She did not answer but from that moment she became very interested in Castle Crediton. I used to hear her talking about it and the Creditons with Ellen.

My relationship with Ellen had changed; Ellen was far more interested in Chantel than in me. I could understand it. She was wonderful. By a deft touch of flattery she could put even Aunt Charlotte in a good mood. Her charm lay in her interest in people; she was avidly curious. After Ellen’s day off she would go to the kitchen to prepare a tray for Aunt Charlotte and I would hear them laughing together.

Mrs. Buckle said: “That Nurse Loman’s a real bit of sunshine in the house.”

I thought how right she was.

It was Chantel who had the idea about our journals. Life, she said, was full of interest.

“Some people’s,” I said.

“All people’s,” she corrected me.

“Nothing happens here,” I told her. “I lose count of the days.”

“That shows you should keep a journal and write everything down. I have an idea. We both will and we’ll read each other’s. It’ll be such fun because, you see, living as close as we do we shall be recording the same events. We’ll see them through each other’s eyes.”

“A journal,” I said. “I’d never have time.”

“Oh yes, you would. An absolutely truthful journal. I insist. You’ll be surprised what it will do for you.”

And that was how we began to keep our journals.

She was right, as she always seemed to be. Life did take on a new aspect. Events seemed less trivial; and it was interesting to see how differently we recorded them. She colored everything with her own personality and my account seemed drab in comparison. She saw people differently, made them more interesting; even Aunt Charlotte emerged as quite likable in her hands.

We had a great deal of pleasure out of our journals. The important thing was to put down exactly what one felt, said Chantel. “I mean, Anna, if you feel you hate me over something, you shouldn’t mince your words. What’s the good of a journal that’s not truthful?”

So I used to write as though I were talking to myself and every week we would exchange our journals and see exactly how the other had felt.

I often wondered how I had got through the days before Chantel came. She was as much a nurse to me in a way as she was to Aunt Charlotte only I didn’t need the physical attention.

It was only ten months since Chantel had come and the autumn was with us again. The autumn tints and smells still filled me with sorrow but my heart was considerably lightened. That summer had been a wet one and the damp atmosphere had had its effect on Aunt Charlotte; she was still unable to leave her bed. How right Dr. Elgin had been when he said she needed a nurse. The ease with which fragile Chantel was able to lift her up with the help of Mrs. Morton, always astonished me. Aunt Charlotte’s disease had moved into an advanced stage and the doctor gave her opium pills to make her sleep. She fought against what she condemned as drugs but finally she gave in.

“One a night,” said Dr. Elgin. “At most two. More would be fatal.”

The pills were always kept in a cupboard in the anteroom as I called it which adjoined her room. The doctor said it was better not to have the pills near her bedside in case she was tempted to take more than the prescribed dose if her pains were acute, for the drug could become less effective after too frequent use.

“Nurse Loman, you will see to that.”

“You can trust me, Doctor,” said Chantel.

And of course he did. He talked to me about Aunt Charlotte. How wise I was to have brought in Nurse Loman. My aunt was a very strong woman. There was nothing organically wrong with her. But for her arthritis she would be absolutely healthy. She could go on for years in her present state.

The night after Dr. Elgin had told me that, I had a strange experience. I awoke in the night to find myself standing by my bed. I was not sure what had happened to me. That I had had a strange dream I was sure, though I could not remember what. In my mind was the thought of us all growing old, waiting on Aunt Charlotte — Ellen, Mrs. Morton, myself, and Chantel. All I could remember from that dream were the words which were still ringing in my mind: “for years …” And I was not sure how I came to be out of bed. At one moment I thought I remembered getting out of bed; and the next I was sure I did not.

It was a frightening experience.

I went to the door of my room and stood there listening to the sounds of the house. Had something happened to disturb me? I could only hear the faint soughing of the wind through the trees outside my window, the sudden creak of a floorboard. Then I was aware of the clocks ticking all over the house.

What had happened? Nothing but that I had been disturbed by a dream.

The weeks passed. The winter was a hard one; the east wind penetrated the house and as Aunt Charlotte said “stiffened up her bones” and made it painful even to move. She was resigned now to being completely bedridden. Her feet were swollen and misshapen and she could not stand on them. She relied completely on Chantel and Mrs. Morton.

I was away from the Queen’s House for whole days at a time, visiting sales, though I never went so far that I had to spend the night. A woman could not very easily travel alone. Besides I curtailed my trips as much as possible because it was difficult for business as there was no one to attend to customers while I was away.

I had begun to suspect that Aunt Charlotte had often bought unwisely. The Chinese goods were still hanging fire. Her expert knowledge had often carried her away and she would buy a piece because of its rarity rather than salability — all very well if one were a collector; but our business was buying and selling.

During that long hard winter I kept my journal up to date; and so did Chantel. I learned all that was happening at home, all the little details, made amusing and lighthearted by Chantel; and in more heavy style I wrote about my visits to sales and customers.

And then one morning when I awoke to find a crisscross of frosty pattern on the windows it was to learn that Aunt Charlotte was dead.

Chantel had gone in as usual at seven o’clock to take a cup of tea. She came running to my room. I shall never forget the sight of her standing there — her green eyes enormous, her face unusually pale, her titian hair falling about her shoulders. “Anna … she’s gone! I don’t understand it. We must send for Dr. Elgin at once. Ellen must go.”

So he came, and we were told that she had died from an overdose of her opium tablets which were always kept in the anteroom. How then had she been able to take them? The inference was obvious. Only if someone had given them to her. The Queen’s House had become not only a house of death, but a house of suspicion.

We were questioned, all of us. No one had heard anything during the night. My room was immediately above Aunt Charlotte’s, Chantel’s was on the same floor, Ellen’s and Mrs. Morton’s were together on the other side of the house.

I cannot remember details of those days now for I did not write in my journal until after the inquest. Somehow I could not bring myself to do so. It was a nightmare; I would not believe it was real.

But there was one question which must be answered because the law demanded it. How had Aunt Charlotte taken sleeping pills which were kept in the next room when she could not walk? The inference was: Only if someone gave them to her. And the inevitable question was: Who?

Who had something to gain? I was her main beneficiary. The Queen’s House and the antique business would be mine on her death. I was her only surviving relative; it was a foregone conclusion that everything would be mine. I had been trained with that object. The suggestion was there right from the start. Before anyone mentioned it: Had I become tired of waiting? It hung about the house like some miasma, horrible, insinuating.

Ellen was struck dumb, but I could see the speculation in her eyes. Had she got her legacy? Would it satisfy Mr. Orfey? Mrs. Morton seemed almost relieved. Life in the Queen’s House had not been what Mrs. Buckle would call a bed of roses. Mrs. Buckle was too simple to hide her excitement. To be connected with a house in which sudden death had occurred had raised her prestige enormously.

It was exhausting — the questions, the police, the inquest.

What would have happened to me then but for Chantel? I often wondered. She was like my guardian angel; she was with me constantly, assuring me that all would be well. Of course Aunt Charlotte had taken the pills herself. It was just what she would do.

“She never would take her own life,” I cried. “Never. It would have been quite against her principles.”

“You don’t know what pain can do to people … pain that goes on and on and can only grow worse. I’ve seen it happen. At first she did not want the opium pills at all and then she took them and was constantly asking for more.”

Oh yes, Chantel saved me. I shall never forget how valiantly she did battle for me at the inquest. She looked lovely, yet so discreet in her black nurse’s cloak and her green eyes and reddish hair so strikingly attractive. She had more than beauty; she had that power to win confidence and I could see that she carried everyone in the court along with her, as she had in the Queen’s House. She gave her evidence clearly and composedly. It was true that Aunt Charlotte had been unable to walk across the room in ordinary circumstances. But she had seen her achieve the seemingly impossible and not only Aunt Charlotte but another patient she remembered had done the same. She would explain. A piece of furniture had been put into Miss Brett’s room; it was a piece which her niece wanted her to buy and although Miss Brett was so crippled and suffered such pain she kept an alert eye on the business. She had actually left her bed to examine the small cabinet. Nurse Loman had been astonished because she had believed her patient could not walk. But in certain circumstances patients such as Miss Brett could summon up special powers. She believed Dr. Elgin would confirm this and in any case she had found Miss Brett beside the cabinet. It was true she had had to be almost carried back to bed but she had walked to the piece of furniture unaided. Nurse Loman believed that this was what had happened during that night. The pain was intense; the dose she had already taken had given her only a short sleep; so she had decided to take more. Close to the chest on the top of which the opium pills were kept Nurse Loman had found a button from Miss Brett’s bedjacket, and she knew that button had not been missing when she had given Miss Brett her pill and said goodnight.

The bedjacket had been produced; the button examined; water had been spilled on the table close to Aunt Charlotte’s bed.

The verdict was that Aunt Charlotte suffered great pain and had taken her own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed.

But the matter did not rest there. The will was read. The business and the Queen’s House were for me; there was two hundred pounds for Mrs. Morton and — this was a surprise — two hundred for Chantel; one hundred for Ellen and fifty for Mrs. Buckle.

Chantel wrote in her journal: “What a surprise! Although I knew she was a little fond of me. She must have added the codicil that day when the two important-looking gentlemen came to see her. I suppose they were lawyers. But fancy her including me. Money is always comforting though. But I do wish it hadn’t happened as it did. Poor poor Anna! She’s really very vulnerable. As for the others — particularly Ellen — they can’t quite hide their jubilation.”

Change had certainly come to the Queen’s House. Mrs. Morton wanted to leave at once and she did. Ellen said Mr. Orfey had no objection to her staying until I found someone else to suit. Chantel asked if she could stay on for a while although there would be no need for her services.

“Please stay,” I begged, and she did.

We used to sit in the Queen’s room — Chantel’s favorite room — and talk about the future. Sometimes she would lie on the Queen’s bed, very gingerly, always aware of its age and the need to preserve it, and say that she felt like the Queen. She tried to be lighthearted, but I found that difficult. I knew that people were talking. I had inherited so much, they said. And Mrs. Buckle had often talked about the trouble that always seemed to be brewing between myself and my aunt, although everything did run more smoothly since Nurse Loman came.

Chantel helped me sort things out. I soon learned that what I had inherited was mostly debts. What had happened to Aunt Charlotte? In the last two or three years she had lost her judgment. No wonder she would not let me look at the books. I was horrified at the price she had paid for those Chinese pieces. There were other pieces too. Beautiful in themselves, but more suitable for museums than for private buyers. She had borrowed from the bank at a high rate of interest. I quickly realized that the business was on the edge of bankruptcy.

Sometimes I would wake in the night and think I heard Aunt Charlotte’s mocking laughter. And then one night I woke with a horrible thought in my mind. I remembered the night when I had found myself standing in my room; and I visualized myself going down in my sleep to Aunt Charlotte’s room and taking six of these opium pills, dissolving them in water and putting them at her bedside. She often drank water during the night. There was some spilt on the bedside table. Suppose …

“What’s the matter?” demanded Chantel. “You look as though you haven’t slept a wink.”

“I’m terribly afraid,” I said, and she insisted on my telling her.

“You didn’t write in your journal about that dream you had some time ago.”

“No, I thought it was too trivial.”

“Nothing’s too trivial. And we promised to tell all.” She was mildly reproachful.

“Is it important?”

“Yes,” she said, “everything is important. That’s what I’ve learned in my profession. But never mind that now. Anna, you must get this suspicion out of your mind.”

“I can’t. I think I’m suspected. People have changed toward me. I’ve noticed it about the town.”

“Gossips. They must have something to talk about. I found the button from her bedjacket, didn’t I?”

“Did you, Chantel?”

“Did I? What do you mean?”

“I wondered whether you were trying to save me.”

“Listen,” she said, “I’m sure it happened the way it did.”

“Did you really see her get out of bed to look at the cabinet?”

“I don’t think we should talk about it. People can do these things. I tell you I’ve seen it. And quite clearly it’s what she did.”

“Chantel,” I said, “I believe you’ve saved me from something … very unpleasant. Perhaps it might have been proved … Suppose I walked in my sleep …”

“What nonsense. You don’t walk in your sleep. You were half awake when you got out of bed. You were upset about her. I expect she had been particularly beastly that day. Listen to me, Anna. You’ve got to put the whole thing out of your mind. You’ve got to concentrate on pulling the business together. You’ve got to forget the past. It’s the only way to go on.”

“Oh Chantel, the best thing that has happened to me has been your coming here.”

“I’ve enjoyed the job,” she said. “You’ll be all right. You’d have stood up to them all if it had come to the court. I know you would. But you have to stop working yourself up about the whole thing. It’s over. Finished. You’ve got to start living now. Something wonderful might be happening in a few weeks’ time.”

“To me?”

“That’s the wrong attitude. Wonderful things can happen to us all. That’s how I’ve lived my life. When I’ve had the most horrid cases I’ve said to myself: It won’t last. Soon it’ll be over.”

“What should I do without you?” I asked.

“You don’t have to … yet.”

She was right when she said that nothing remained static. She came to me one day and told me that Dr. Elgin had a post for her. “You’ll never guess where. Castle Crediton.”

I felt stunned. First she was going to leave me and secondly she was going to the Castle.

“It’s good news,” she said. “I have to work for my living and just think we shan’t be far apart. I’ll be able to see you … frequently.”

“Castle Crediton,” I repeated. “Is someone ill there? Lady Crediton?”

“No, the old lady’s as strong as a horse. It’s Mrs. Stretton I’m going to nurse. The Captain’s wife.”

“Oh,” I said faintly.

“Yes, she’s delicate. Our climate I expect. Some lung infection. It wouldn’t surprise me if she is going into a decline. There’s a child, too. I couldn’t resist the job when Dr. Elgin suggested it.”

“When do you … start?”

“Next week.” She leaned over and taking my hand pressed it firmly. “I’ll be near at hand. We’ll see each other often. And don’t forget there are our journals. Have you written in yours recently?”

“I couldn’t, Chantel.”

“You must start at once. I’ll tell you all about Castle Crediton and the strange life of its inhabitants and you must tell me everything that happens here.”

“Oh Chantel,” I cried, “what should I do without you?”

“To repeat oneself is a sign of encroaching age, I’ve been told,” she said with a smile. “But I must say I found such repetition endearing. Don’t be morbid, Anna. You’re not alone. I’m your friend.”

I said: “Everything has changed so abruptly. I have to make plans. The business is rocky, Chantel. I shall have to see so many people — Aunt Charlotte’s lawyer and the bank manager, among others.”

“It’ll keep you busy. Write it all in your journal. I’ll do the same. We’ll make a pact, we’ll tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And we’ll both have the comfort of knowing we are not alone. We can live our own lives and that of the other.” Her green eyes were enormous. “You must admit, Anna, that that is a very exciting state of affairs.”

“We must never lose sight of each other,” I said.

She nodded. “And we’ll exchange journals so that even when we can’t see each other as often as we’d like to, we shall know everything that is happening.”

“I shall know everything that is happening to you in Castle Crediton.”

“Everything,” she declared solemnly. “Anna, have you ever felt you would like to be a fly on the wall to hear and see everything and no one be aware of you there?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Well, that’s how it is going to be. You’re the fly on my wall.” She laughed. How she lightened my spirits! And how I was going to miss her!

Ellen, married to Mr. Orfey, came back to say that he had no objection to her coming in in the mornings to give a hand; Mrs. Buckle continued to come in to dust and polish, but she left at four o’clock, and from then on I was alone in the Queen’s House.

It was when the shadows fell that I would find myself brooding on Aunt Charlotte’s death.

I would wake up suddenly from a dream in which I walked down to her room and took the pills from the bottle, to hear myself crying out: “No. No. I did not do it.” Then I would lie still listening to the clocks and it would seem as though they soothed me. It must have happened as Chantel said. There was no other explanation.

I should not brood on the past. Goodness knows the future was stark enough. How was I going to pay Aunt Charlotte’s debts? Many of the pieces which I believed were hers had not been paid for. She had spent far too much of her capital on the Chinese collection; during the last years the business had not been paying its way. Alarming as this was it gave credence to Chantel’s theory. Obsessed by ever-increasing pain, always impatient of inactivity, seeing her debts rising and eventual bankruptcy, she had forced herself — and I knew the extent of her will power — to get out of bed and seek oblivion.

I should have to make some decision. I could not allow things to drift. Indeed I should not be allowed to do so. I formed all sorts of plans. To advertise for a partner with money? To sell out and see what remained? Enforced sales often meant cut prices. If I realized enough to pay my debts I should be lucky. There would be nothing left but the house. I could sell that perhaps. That was the answer.

So my mind raced on during the sleepless nights and in the mornings when I looked at my face in the mirror I would murmur to myself: “Old Miss Brett.”

Chantel came and left her journal for me while she took mine away. She would return with it the next day.

That night I took it up to bed with me and the thought of reading it brought me out of my melancholy. My life was drab, and even frightening, but Chantel as before was my savior. To look in on what was happening at Castle Crediton would give me the respite I needed. Besides I would always be particularly interested in anything that happened in Redvers Stretton’s home.

I felt my spirits lighten a little as I lay back on my pillows and brought the oil lamp — which I had carried up from downstairs — nearer to my bed and started to read Chantel’s journal.