‘You were a long time passing,’ I said. ‘How did you manage to see so much!’
‘Well, I stopped a little while.’
‘And spied on her.’
‘I am a sort of spy. That’s my job. I discover things. But you wait and see what I’ve found. I waited until she had gone out and then I went to her room. I saw where she had put this thing she was looking at. You know the secret drawer? You have to take out one drawer and there’s another drawer behind it. That is where she had put it… in the secret drawer, so it must have been a secret. So I went in and found… guess.’
‘You tell me.’
She put her hand in her pocket and when she withdrew it she was holding something in the palm of her hand. It was the bezoar ring.
I was so startled to see it that I gasped. She watched me with satisfaction.
‘He gave it to her. He gave her your ring.’
‘No… he lost it at the tables.’
‘That was what he told you.’ Sabrina spoke scornfully. ‘She wanted it. She said, “Get me the bezoar ring and I’ll be yours.” So he just gave it to her.’
I shook my head, but of course I half believed what she was telling.
I sat staring at the ring. I was wretchedly unhappy, for I felt in that moment that there was more than a pinch of reality in Sabrina’s wild imaginings.
She was watching me intently. ‘They took it away,’ she said darkly, ‘because it was taking the poison out of the tisane
I laughed a little unconvincingly. I didn’t want her to know that I was worried. I think that at times Sabrina herself did not believe in these accusations. It was a game to her, like charades and I Spy. She had always loved treasure hunts and games of detection.
‘You won’t need a taster now,’ she said. ‘You have the ring.’
I said thoughtfully: ‘I think the best thing you can do is take it back and put it where you found it.’
She was astounded and I went on slowly, playing her game: ‘It is best for them not to know that we know where it is.’
She nodded darkly.
I sat still, watching her speed across the grass to the house.
Was it possible? I asked myself. Was he in love with my sister? It was feasible enough. She was attractive and she shared that all-consuming passion. They were together a great deal. She was often invited to accompany him to gambling parties. I was left out because people knew I did not care to play. How often had I heard them laughing together or growing excited as they discussed the manner of some past play.
Was it so absurd? Was I wilfully blind to what was happening about me? Did I need the awareness and the possessive love of a child to make the picture clear to me?
After that I seemed to become conscious of a certain menace all about me. At times I thought it must be due to my condition. Women had strange fancies at such times. Sabrina had planted suspicion in my mind and it grew.
There was Lance. What did I know of Lance? He was in a way a secret person and this was all the more alarming because he showed no signs of secrecy. He appeared to be light-hearted in all ways, reckless, even careless, but always kind… avoiding trouble or any form of unpleasantness. How could he be capable of intrigue, of plots to be rid of me—for that was what it amounted to. I looked for motive. He had been both passionate and tender, a lover and a friend; but I had always known that his real passion was for gambling, and it had made a barrier between us. I had made it clear that I thought his gambling foolish; and there was Aimée, pretty enough and very elegant, with a love of gambling which almost equalled his own. They were together a great deal. There was one other dark thought. I guessed that there were debts and they might be enormous ones. He was constantly staving off his creditors. If I died, my fortune would be his… except the Hessenfield inheritance which had so rapidly increased at the time of the South Sea Bubble. But Aimée would have that because my money was to go to her and hers to me in the event of either one of us dying.
So there was a motive.
I wondered about the extent of Lance’s debts, but he would never tell me. He would always shrug the matter aside if I raised it, as though debt were a natural sequence in the life of a gentleman. Then it occurred to me that he might be in dire financial straits in which case my death would be a necessity to him for it would give him escape from his creditors and, at the same time, Aimée, if it were true he was in love with her. How could I be sure? He was charming to her, but he was charming to everyone and it was his nature to pretend that people were of the greatest importance to him. My death might even have meant to him escape from a debtors’ prison… and marriage with Aimée.
No, I could not believe it. There were times when my doubts seemed to have grown out of wildest imaginings and to be quite absurd.
Oh Sabrina, I thought, I am as bad as you are!
I found a certain pleasure in escaping to the woods which I loved. I found them enchanting, and different every day. I liked to watch the leaves change and to listen to the birds’ song. There was peace there and when I was among the trees everything seemed natural and normal, and my doubts faded away.
Of course, I would say to myself, it must have been Eddy who gave the bezoar ring to Aimée. She had been intrigued by it from the time she had first seen it and knowing how I felt about it she did not want me to know that it was in her possession. She probably felt she ought to hand it back to me and I could understand that she wanted it for herself. As for the suggestion that she and Lance were lovers, it was too ridiculous to stand up to credulity. He was my devoted husband; and I did not believe that he had ever been unfaithful to me either in thought or deed.
So I went to the woods in the late afternoon of each day; that was when Sabrina was having her riding lesson, and it was something she would not willingly give up. She was learning to jump now and was very excited about it.
I had returned from the woods that afternoon and was resting, as was my custom, when I heard Madame Legrand in the corridor outside my room talking excitedly to Aimée.
I rose and looked out.
‘Has something happened?’ I asked.
‘Oh dear,’ said Madame Legrand raising her hands and looking extremely annoyed with herself. ‘Now I have awakened you, which is méchante of me. Oh, but the ’eart it go pit-pat, pit-pat. I think it burst from the bosom.’
‘Maman had a shock near the common,’ Aimée explained. ‘There were gipsies there a day or so ago. One of them was lurking in the bushes. He called out to her as she passed… something about telling her fortune.’
‘He look… evil,’ said Madame Legrand. ‘I begin to run…’
‘And he ran after her, or so she thought,’ went on Aimée. ‘Poor Maman, rest a while and I will bring you one of your tisanes.’
‘And now we have return and disturb poor Clarissa. See to her, Aimée. I will go to my room. Clarissa, you must forgive.’
‘Oh it was nothing,’ I assured her. ‘I wasn’t asleep. I’m so sorry you’ve had a fright.’
‘Maman is nervous by nature,’ whispered Aimée, ‘but she will be recovered in half an hour.’
I went back to bed and shortly afterwards Sabrina came in to tell me how high her horse had jumped and how Job, the groom who was teaching her, had said he had never had as good a pupil as she was.
She was so proud of her achievements that she could think of nothing else and was not even very interested when I told her how Madame Legrand had been frightened by a gipsy.
It was a few days later when I took my usual walk in the woods. My favourite spot was a little clearing among the trees. There was an old oak there under which I liked to sit. From there I could just glimpse the dene hole between the trees. I would sit there and wonder about it and imagine for what it had been used in prehistoric days. I would dream too of my baby, who had now become alive to me. I could feel its movement -and I longed above everything to hold it in my arms.