Drop of the Dice (39 page)

‘And look what I made for you.’

‘You did not make it. I made it by my good sense in putting an end to the gamble. I forgave you that, but this is too much. The ring was my special property.’

‘You did not seem to care so much when you lost it before.’

‘I cared deeply.’

‘That was because Jeanne stole it.’

‘You are as bad as Jeanne. You have stolen it, too. I see no difference in you. She at least had the sense to steal it for a sensible purpose. You… just to satisfy your lust for gambling.’

‘Clarissa, I swear I’ll get it back.’

‘Yes,’ I retorted. ‘Stake the house against it… all you possess. You might lose that too. Stake me, perhaps. Please go away now. I’m tired and I want to be alone.’

He tried once more to cajole me, sitting on the bed, looking at me with wistful appeal, bringing out all his considerable charm, but I wanted him to know how deeply upset I was, and that I no longer accepted this gambling when he so wantonly risked what was mine. I could not and would not forgive him for taking my bezoar ring.

Lance had always hated trouble and escaped from it as soon as possible, and when he saw that I was adamant, he did that now.

He sadly rose from the bed and opened the door of the powder closet. He would go there and spend the night on that uncomfortable couch, hoping that I would soften towards him.

I stayed in bed next day for I was feeling unwell. My condition, together with last night’s shock, had upset me so much that I felt too ill to get up. Moreover, I wanted to shut myself away, to consider Lance and my feelings for him.

I loved him in a way. His charm was undeniable. He was always gracious and kind, and very popular in society, and there had been many an occasion when I had felt proud to be his wife. And yet sometimes, and this was particularly when the gambling fever was on him, I felt I did not know him. I thought of Elvira. How deeply did his feelings ever go? He must have been fond of her, albeit in a light-hearted way. Why had he not married her? I suppose because she would not have been a suitable wife, so their relationship had been a casual one. I
was
a suitable wife. Why? Because I came from a good family background, or because I had a fortune? Had that been the reason?

I was thinking now of Dickon. Our relationship had been strong and firm in spite of the fact that everything was against it. It had been young and innocent and beautiful even though the feud between our families was as fierce as that between the Montagues and Capulets. I wandered back to the old familiar theme; what would have happened to us if Dickon had not been sent away; and I dreamed of an ideal.

It was then that I felt that life had cheated me.

Sabrina came to see me. She was always uneasy when I was not well. It was touching to see how much I meant to her. I believe I stood for security and that was what Sabrina, in common with most children, wanted most in life.

She climbed on to the bed and studied me closely.

‘You’re ill,’ she said. ‘It’s that silly baby.’

‘People often feel slightly less well when they are going to have babies.’

‘Silly to have them, then,’ she said scornfully.

She studied me again. ‘You look a bit angry, too,’ she commented.

‘I’m not angry.’

‘You look sad and angry and ill.’

‘Whatever else you are, Sabrina,’ I said, ‘you’re frank. I’m all right, though.’

She said: ‘I don’t want you to die.’

‘Die? Who says I’m going to die?’

‘Nobody says it. They only think it.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

She put her arms round my neck and held me tightly. ‘Let’s go away from here. You and me… We can take the little baby with us. I’ll look after it. I’d like there to be just the three of us. No Aimée. No Jean-Louis. No
her
.’

‘And no Lance?’ I asked.

‘Oh, he’d rather stay with them… now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He likes her, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘Aimée,’ she replied with conviction. ‘He likes her better than you.’

‘I don’t think he does.’

She nodded vigorously.

One of the servants came in with a dish of chocolate. It was steaming hot and smelt delicious.

Sabrina looked at it suspiciously. ‘Where is the ring?’ she asked.

‘The ring?’

‘Your bezoar ring.’

‘I haven’t got it any more,’ I told her.

‘Has it been… stolen again?’

‘In a way.’

Her eyes were round, and on impulse I said: ‘Lance gambled with it and lost it.’

‘It’s yours,’ she cried. ‘It’s wicked to take it.’ I was silent and she suddenly clung to me, her eyes round as saucers.

‘Oh Clarissa,’ she said fiercely, ‘you mustn’t die. You mustn’t.’

‘What are you talking about? You are a funny girl, Sabrina.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I know I’m frightened… a bit.’

I held her tightly to me for a moment. Then I said: ‘What about a game of I Spy?’

‘All right,’ she answered, brightening.

As we played I thought what a strange child she was, and how dear to me, as I knew I was to her. There was an intimacy between us. It had been there from her birth. She was more than a cousin; she was like my own child. I loved her dearly. I loved her strangeness, her waywardness, her love of the dramatic and what seemed like a determination to create it when it was not there—all that made up Sabrina.

Sabrina was now caught up in an intrigue of her own imagining, and it concerned Lance, Aimée and myself.

It was difficult for me to know how much to suspect, or how much had been planted in my mind by my own observations or by Sabrina’s suggestions.

Sabrina wanted me to herself. She was ready to accept the new baby but she wanted us to be alone. She resented the others, and now Lance more than any. She saw him as the real barrier, and with characteristic determination she was doing her best to remove that barrier.

She had made up her mind that Aimée and Lance were the enemies and that Madame Legrand was their ally. In her mind, she, with myself, stood against them. As Lance was my husband she thought there should be another woman, for she was very knowledgeable about such matters, having listened avidly to servants’ gossip. Sometimes I wondered whether the servants were gossiping about Lance and Aimée.

Eddy Moreton was still paying attention to Aimée. He had a small house not far from Clavering Hall. His family’s ancestral home was in the Midlands but he hadn’t a chance of inheriting that. Aimée did not exactly encourage him. I think my sister was far too practical to enter into a marriage which would bring her no financial advantage.

Sabrina watched them cautiously. I wondered whether anyone would notice her absorption, but the manner in which she sought to protect me was touching.

Sometimes in life there appears to be a special bond between people; it is almost as though their lives are entwined and therefore they are of the utmost significance to each other. I often thought of that afterwards.

She was now having a deep effect on me. She was sowing seeds of suspicion in my mind. She was creating in me an atmosphere which I told myself had grown entirely out of her imagination, and yet at the same time I was not sure that this was so. Sometimes I wondered whether she had an extra sense; at others I dismissed her insinuations as childish nonsense. She was possessive and she wanted me for herself; moreover, she had an insatiable desire for drama. Her great interest now was to protect me from some impending evil, and whether she actually sensed it or built it up out of jealousy of Lance, I could not be sure.

I often thought of the bezoar ring and I wondered if it had more magical qualities than those assigned to it. Through it I had learned of Jeanne’s frailty, and I would have sworn her loyalty was unshakeable and perhaps the most important emotion in her life. And through it the fact that Lance would stop at nothing in his mad passion for gambling had shown itself.

Sabrina’s study of Lance and Aimée was becoming noticeable. She was very watchful. I was sure they would notice and I told her so.

She said cryptically, ‘I have to watch them. How would I know what they will be doing next if I didn’t?’

She was firmly convinced that Lance and Aimée were lovers. There had been a case in the village when one of the farm labourers had come home suddenly and caught his wife in bed with another man—one of his fellow workers. He had strangled him and later been hanged for murder. Everyone talked of it for weeks, and Sabrina, of course, listened with the utmost interest.

One day when she was sitting by my bed, because I had stayed there, having felt ill in the morning, she narrowed her eyes and said: ‘Perhaps you are being poisoned.’

‘My dear Sabrina, what notions you get! Who would want to poison me?’

‘Some,’ she said darkly. ‘They put things in people’s food.’

‘Who?’

‘People who want to get rid of someone. The Borgias were always doing it.’

‘But we have no Borgias in this house, darling.’

‘It’s not only them. Other people do it too. Kings and Queens used to have tasters, just to make sure their food wasn’t going to poison them.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘It comes in history. You ought to have a taster. I’ll be your taster.’

‘Then if there was poison, you’d take it.’

‘I’d save you, and that is what tasters are for.’

‘Dear Sabrina, it is sweet of you, but really I don’t think I need a taster.’

‘You’re going to have one,’ she said firmly.

That evening when my meal was served she insisted on being with me and tasted everything before I ate it. She enjoyed it, being rather fond of food.

My tisane came up and when one of the servants brought it to my bed, Sabrina looked at it suspiciously.

‘Do you remember how we used to put the ring in it?’ she asked.

‘You did,’ I reminded her.

Her eyes grew round with horror. ‘You haven’t got the ring any more. Perhaps they took it away from you because… because…’

‘Sabrina, my ring was lost in a gamble.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It was stolen because it was taking the poison out of your food.’

She picked up the tisane and took a gulp. She grimaced. I went to take it from her and in doing so it was spilt over the counterpane.

I laughed at her. ‘Oh, Sabrina,’ I said, ‘I do love you.’

She flung her arms about me.

‘I’m going to keep you,’ she told me. ‘We’re going to catch the murderers and they’ll be hanged like poor old George Carey who was hanged because he killed his wife’s lover. I wouldn’t have hanged him, but I would anyone who hurt you.’

‘Dearest Sabrina, always remember that there is a special bond between you and me. Promise me you’ll never forget that, and won’t be jealous if there is someone else I love besides you.’

‘I’ll remember, but I might be jealous.’

This ten-year-old girl was half child, half woman; at times she seemed merely her age and at others much wiser than she could possibly be. She was passionately interested in everything that went on around her. She listened unashamedly at doors; she watched people, and followed them; the role of spy-protector was one after her own heart. Once she said she saw Lance and Aimée kissing and when I pressed her admitted that they had just stood close together talking. If anything did not happen as she wanted it to, she tried to make it do so, and sometimes imagined it had. She did not exactly set out to tell lies, but her imagination ran away with her. When I said that she must not say they had been kissing if they had not been, she replied: ‘Well, they might have been when I wasn’t looking.’ That was her reasoning. She was obsessed by the idea of saving my life.

So when next day she was ill, I was not sure whether the illness was… well, not exactly faked, but whether her strong imagination had willed her into sickness because she so wanted to prove her point about the tisane.

I went up to see her at once. She was lying very still, her eyes raised to the ceiling. I was concerned as I knelt by the bed; then I saw the smile of satisfaction steal across her face.

‘Sabrina,’ I whispered, ‘you’re pretending.’

‘I did feel sick,’ she said. ‘I had cramping stomach pains.’

She had heard that was a symptom of poisoning, I realized at once. ‘Where?’ I asked.

She hesitated for a moment and then placed her hands on her stomach.

‘Sabrina,’ I said, ‘are you sure you didn’t imagine it?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘It’s what happens to tasters,’ she whispered. Her eyes grew round with excitement. ‘Last night I tasted the tisane,’ she said. ‘Just one sip was enough.’ She threw up her hands dramatically.

I pretended to laugh, but a terrible uneasiness persisted. ‘You’re romancing,’ I said.

‘I’d die for you, Clarissa,’ she said fiercely.

‘No you won’t,’ I retorted sharply. ‘You’re going to live for me.’

‘Oh, all right,’ she said almost grudgingly.

‘Now what about getting dressed and coming for a stroll in the wood? Be ready in half an hour.’

‘Can I have my breakfast first? I’m starving.’

I laughed and, bending, kissed her.

We walked through the woods to the dene hole.

‘Do be careful, Sabrina,’ I said. ‘If ever you come to the woods alone, don’t go too near.’

‘All right. I won’t. I don’t care about the old dene hole now, anyway.’

I could see that she thought our domestic drama was far more interesting than the dene hole.

A few days later I was seated in the garden on the wooden seat close to the shrubbery when Sabrina came out and sat beside me. She looked both secretive and triumphant so that I knew something she considered important had happened.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘I’ve found something. I think it could be an important clue.’

‘Well, tell me:’

‘You’ll think I was wrong to do this. Promise you won’t.’

‘How can I, until I know what it is?’

‘I’ve been watching them…’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, you know. Lance and Aimée. I’ll catch them, then we’ll know for sure. But this is even better. Her door was open when I went past, so I looked in. She was sitting at her dressing-table and I saw her take something out of a drawer. She kept looking at it and I wondered what it was.’