‘I haven’t yet. I was about to. Would you be an angel and turn on the lights?’
Again Colville did as asked. ‘Better hurry up and do it before she comes back.’ He glanced at the clock on the mantel. ‘Remember what happened the other day?’
‘I certainly do.’ Beatrice took a sip of tea and grimaced. ‘Darling – sugar. Why is it that you always forget?’ She looked at Antonia and said gravely, ‘I owe you an apology, Antonia. May I call you Antonia?’
‘Of course you may.’
‘And you must call me Bee. Well, I have a confession to make, Antonia. I detest fibbing, I really do – but I did tell you a fib the other day when I spoke to you on the phone.’ ‘About the letter?’
‘Yes.’ Beatrice picked up one of the two books that lay on the little table beside her. From between its pages she drew out an envelope. ‘I meant to tell you the truth – but Ingrid came into the room just then, so I couldn’t. I didn’t want her to know who the letter was from, so I told you I didn’t know the man from Adam.’
‘You said his name was Ralph.’
‘Yes. Ralph Renshawe.’ Beatrice pronounced ‘Ralph’ over-emphatically as Rafe. ‘Many years ago he and I were engaged to be married. I was extremely young. Practically a child. It turns out he lives at a big house not so very far from here, can you imagine? A place called Ospreys. It’s a listed house. There is a wishing well in the back garden that goes back to the seventeenth century, apparently. I read a piece about it in Homes and Gardens. We’ve been practically neighbours all this time and neither of us the wiser! Life is so strange. Anyhow. I want you to read the letter. I rely on your wise counsel.’ She handed it over to Antonia. Payne moved closer. He thought he detected a slight medicinal smell emanating from the envelope.
The letter was written in a faint, shaky, hardly legible hand. It began:
This is a communication from the past you never expected and almost certainly did not want. I hope you will read it. And before you rip it up and drop it in the bin, I must tell you that I am dying. This is the literal truth: I have been given a month at the most. I do not deserve any sympathy and I do not expect any…
It was not a long letter. Eventually Antonia looked up.
‘What do you think?’ Beatrice held her hand at her bosom. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’
Antonia said slowly, ‘You and Ralph Renshawe were engaged to be married. He was driving you in his car. There was an accident. It was entirely his fault. He had been drinking. You had a head-on collision with another car. He wasn’t hurt but you were. Your injuries were extremely serious. You became paralysed from the waist down. You spent a very long time in hospital.’
‘Six months,’ Beatrice whispered.
‘Ralph visited you only once, then disappeared. You never saw him again. That happened thirty years ago. He went to Nova Scotia, then to Calgary, where he married a very rich woman -’
‘He married an oil heiress,’ Colville said stiffly. ‘There was something about it in the paper – years ago. She must have left him all her money. The price tag put on Ospreys was just over eight million pounds.’
‘Len knows all about houses. If you are interested in buying or renting a house, he is your man,’ Beatrice said. ‘All right, darling, I won’t embarrass you, I promise. Oh, how I wish we weren’t so worried about money! Sorry, darling!’ Colville had harrumphed again. ‘Well, nobody believes me when I say we are as poor as the proverbial church mice.’
She really was most indiscreet. Must be a nightmare, being married to her, Antonia thought, shooting a sym-pathetic glance at Colville.
‘I suppose appearances can be jolly deceptive,’ Payne murmured, glancing round the comfortable room with its crackling cosy fire.
Beatrice laughed exuberantly once more – as though he had made some risque joke. ‘Honestly,’ she breathed. ‘I am afraid Daddy’s money is running out – and poor Len’s come an ugly cropper in his business dealings -’
‘Bee,’ Colville said warningly.
‘Well, I admit I am scared,’ she declared. ‘Honestly! I think I might end up like some sort of an Emma Bovary of the impoverished squierarchy! I know I am being silly.’
Antonia went on, ‘Soon after he inherited his late wife’s fortune, Ralph Renshawe came back to England and bought Ospreys. He was then diagnosed with cancer. He has been told it is terminal, inoperable. He is dying. He is consumed by guilt. His reason for writing the letter is to beg your forgiveness.’
‘It’s all so – so operatically melodramatic, isn’t it?’ Beatrice rolled up her eyes. ‘I can’t imagine Ralph filled to the brim with remorse and shaking in fear of eternal damnation. I simply can’t. Thirty years ago he was completely different – hard as nails. Now he mentions God in every sentence he writes.’
‘He mentions a priest,’ Antonia said.
‘Yes. His very own personal padre, it seems.’
‘He is a Catholic then?’
‘He wasn’t a Catholic when I knew him. He wasn’t any-thing. He looked down on all religions. He said there was no God. Do you think there is God, Hugh?’
‘Yes,’ Payne said. ‘Indubitably.’
‘When I hear a person of subtle intelligence express such positive views, I feel terribly encouraged. But sometimes I do wonder.’ Beatrice gave a mournful sigh.
Payne had been examining the envelope. He tapped the letter with his forefinger. ‘Renshawe asks you to visit him. Says it would mean a lot to him if you did.’
‘Oh dear, yes. I have no idea what I should do about it. I haven’t written back or anything. I thought you might be able to give me some advice. I am in a quandary. Len thinks I shouldn’t.’
‘You shouldn’t,’ Colville said. ‘Let him rot. He wrecked your life.’
Payne looked at him. ‘Did you know him, Colville?’
‘I did. Not at all well. Long time ago.’ There was a silence but Colville said no more.
‘How does Ingrid come into this?’ Antonia asked with a frown.
‘Well, she came into the room that day.’ Beatrice lowered her voice. ‘Just as I’d started telling you about the letter. I couldn’t possibly give you any details with her in the room. I lost my nerve. Ingrid would flip if she knew that Ralph is not only alive but living just round the corner from here as well. She’d go and – I don’t want to think what she might do. I really don’t.’
‘She’d kill him, that’s what she’d do,’ said Colville.
‘Why should she want to do that?’
‘Well, you see, Antonia, I told her that Ralph had left for Nova Scotia, which was true, but I also said he’d died there,’ Beatrice started explaining. ‘I told her I’d read his obituary in the paper. She seemed frightfully disappointed. She said he’d had an easy escape. So much hatred! It can’t be good for her, can it? I read somewhere if you hate too much, you develop cancer. Ingrid still flies into rages at the mere mention of his name! Honestly.’
She loves that word ‘honestly’, Payne thought. Was there an antigram? He did some quick mental arithmetic. There was. Honestly – on the sly! How very interesting.
‘I personally don’t bear Ralph any grudges. I honestly don’t,’ Beatrice went on. ‘I did suffer, I know. I suffered awfully. My life was turned upside down by the accident, but it’s never occurred to me to want to kill him. Not even in my darkest hour.’
‘You are easily the nicest person who ever lived,’ Colville said.
She shook her head resolutely from side to side. ‘No, I am not.’
‘Yes, you are.’
No, she is not, Antonia thought. You fool.
‘I happen to be well adjusted, that’s all. Ingrid is not. Ingrid has always inhabited an agitated universe. Awful things keep happening to her. Let me give you an example. When she was a girl she had a pet owl called Cassandra and she doted on it, but one day the poor wretched thing swallowed the end of the cord for the window blinds. It was found swinging in the breeze upside-down – hanged! Can you imagine? Ingrid was distraught.’
‘I think she killed that bird,’ Colville said. ‘The way she killed those two bitches.’