The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes (12 page)

I was pretty sure Bud had noticed that my knuckles had begun to turn white as I gripped my cutlery. He stepped in to defuse the explosive atmosphere that was beginning to encircle the breakfast table. He's good at that.

“Any idea what will happen with David Davies's body?” he asked.
Way to go, Bud!

“NO NEWS THAT I KNOW
of,” replied Mair, “but maybe Idris would be more likely to know. Or Rhian, of course. Though I don't expect we'll see much of her today.”

Owain had lost interest in the rest of us humans and had escaped to his own little world again. I tucked into my food with relish, while Siân nibbled at her tiny piece of toast. I wondered why she was acting so belligerently toward me. I wasn't aware I'd done anything to deserve it. I'd been nothing but supportive and helpful the night before.

Finally Siân broke the silence and said, more to Mair than anyone else, “Sorry it all got a bit weird last night. It must have been the jetlag. To be honest, I should have stayed in my bed in the first place and not tried to keep going. But I wanted to make the effort.”

Owain re-engaged. “No worries, Siân, as I said last night, I absolutely understand how taxing a journey it can be from Australia.”

“Did you?” asked Siân. “Have you been there then?”

Owain looked mildly confused. “I believe I mentioned that I've been there to study some unique geological sites, which led you to explain that your husband is in mining. I'm guessing he's an engineer, rather than someone who works in the mines themselves?”

It was Siân's turn to look confused. “Oh, that's right, I remember the part about your liking geology, but not about visiting Australia, or about Todd being in mining. I told you that? I don't remember that at all. But I must have told you, because he is in mining, though he's not even in engineering any more. Management now. He's good at it, they say. Highly valued.”

“You mentioned last night that Todd travels a lot,” I said quietly.

Siân shrugged. “Yes, he does, but then he always has. It goes with the job. It's the norm for us.”

It was interesting to note that Siân's angry and dismissive comments about her husband of the night before seemed not only to be forgotten, but to have been made due to jetlag. I suspected that she was hiding her true feelings at the breakfast table, and that we'd caught a glimpse of her real emotions the night before. I chose not to pursue the matter, and I could feel Bud become less tense as I said, “Well, that was last night, and that's over now. So, did you sleep well, sis?”

Siân smiled as she sipped what was, as far as I could see, little more than steaming water, then said, “I don't know. I suppose I must have done.”

I nodded. I'd hoped we'd share a conspiratorial smile, but none was forthcoming.

My sister simply said, “And what were you up to when you came into my room?”

I was puzzled. “I didn't come into you room. You must have dreamed it.”

Siân nibbled at a corner of her toast, swallowed, then said calmly, “No, I know I was awake, because we spoke to each other. When I asked you what you wanted you said it was a secret. You were wearing a black sweat suit. You had a flashlight.”

It's very unusual for me to be lost for words, but, at that moment, I was. I knew what I wanted to say, and I knew what I should say, but what I decided to say was, “I really think you must have dreamed it, Siân. For a start, I don't own a black sweat suit, and I certainly didn't come into your room last night. Dreams can seem very real, especially when we're in an altered state. And jetlag can do that to you. The same type of thing can happen when you suffer with an elevated temperature, or are under the influence of certain opiates. It's a sort of hallucination, but it's a dream. It was probably your brain's way of filing away being here, seeing me again, and knowing there's a treasure hidden here.”

Siân brightened. “And we're back to the Cadwallader Cache. A coincidence, Cait, or did you mean to return to the question of the clues painted on the plate so quickly?”

“Ha ha,” I pantomimed across the table, just as we were joined by Eirwen and Idris, who rushed into the dining room and made a beeline for the food.

“I hope Uncle Owain isn't boring you to death with more of his stories about that plate,” said Eirwen nervously as she spooned eggs onto a small plate. “None of us believe it's real, do we, Idris?”

“If only it were,” said the young man heartily. “It would make life so much easier if we only had a big cash injection from . . . somewhere.” He stopped short, encouraged to do so by a dagger stare from his wife.

I noticed that Eirwen was less stooped than she had been the night before. I wondered if that was because she knew that Alice wasn't due to join us. Whatever the reason, there was a slight spring in her step. It couldn't have been the weather, because we could all see, only too clearly through the tall windows that surrounded us, that the rain was pelting down, and the thick cloud cover didn't suggest it was going to stop anytime soon.

Dilys Jones marched into the dining room, set down two large hot water jugs, and refreshed the teapots and the coffee. “The police and an ambulance will be here by about ten, they said,” she announced to the wall as she poured hot water. “Then he'll be gone. Rhian's having breakfast in her rooms, and Gwen is going to go with the body. Rhian's not up to it.”

I wondered if, given the circumstances, I'd see Rhian before our wedding, or even during or after it. I dug into my black pudding as I began to wonder how everything we'd planned was going to be achieved, but I tried to not let the panic I could feel put me off my food.

“How will they get here?” asked Siân.

Dilys was just about to leave the dining room when she answered dismissively, “There's only one way onto this headland, if you don't count the path down the cliff to the beach. Over the bridge. The way you came in yesterday. You remember that, don't you?”

Siân paused with her last morsel of toast hovering in mid-air. “But the bridge has been washed over by the river. I was just up there, and it's all but collapsed. Didn't you know?”

Everyone, except Bud and me, responded the same way—using different levels of politeness—essentially telling Siân that she didn't know what she was talking about. Siân took it all in her stride.

“I understand that I'm only a visitor, but, unless you have two different bridges, all I can tell you is that there's a short, wide bridge, with crenellations, over which I drove yesterday to get here. Today it doesn't have crenellations any more. They've been washed away by the river, which is still running so high that it's rushing over the bridge itself.”

“But it's a
Roman
bridge,” said Idris in disbelief. “It's been there for almost two thousand years. It can't have collapsed. It's never collapsed before.”

“Now that's not one hundred percent accurate,” interjected Owain. “When my great-grandfather decided to build the first part of this castle, he significantly reinforced the bridge that was already in place—the bridge the Romans built to gain access to the headland and their temple to Neptune. He added the crenellations, to match those he built on the original castle. But it suffered under all the heavy traffic it took during the next fifty years or so that they spent building the original house, then the two additional wings. By the early 1900s the bridge was in danger of total collapse. My grandfather reinforced the sides, resurfaced it, and put some extra work into the anchors to the river banks.”

Idris almost shouted, “We had it all thoroughly examined before they'd allow tourist coaches to drive over it. I can't believe it. How will we manage? It'll cost a fortune to repair. And we'll have to do it ourselves. It's on our land. It'll be all down to us.” He was close to tears as Eirwen rubbed his back, trying to comfort him. “And you say the river is running so high it's actually inundating the road on the bridge, Siân?”

Siân nodded as she sipped her tea. The huge impact of what she'd told us didn't seem to have dawned on her at all, which annoyed me a great deal. She could see Idris's distress, and she should have been able to understand my own.

Bud must have sensed my growing concerns, which had even prevented me from clearing my plate, because he said quietly, but firmly, “How about you and I take a walk up to the bridge after breakfast, Idris, and we can see how it looks.”

“I'd like to come too,” I piped up.

“Why on earth do you want to go tramping about out there?” asked Siân sharply. “You're not exactly Little Miss Outdoors, are you?”

I did my best to ignore her manner and replied, as calmly as I could, “Because if no one can get over the bridge, then how are the registrars going to get here tomorrow morning to perform our wedding?”

Siân put down her cup and her expression showed me that the penny had finally dropped. “Right. Of course. Sorry, sis.” To be fair, she looked genuinely concerned.

“And I'm due my deliveries for the lunch you ordered. And the cake. That's not here yet,” added Dilys.

“And there are the floral arrangements,” added a small voice from the doorway.

All heads turned. It was Rhian Davies. Red-faced, with greasy hair pulled into a ponytail, she'd pulled on a worn but serviceable navy pantsuit and a white shirt. It was tight on her flabby body. She looked as though she'd gained the twenty pounds I'd lost in the past few months, and it was obvious that she'd stopped having her hair highlighted some time ago—two inches of roots were much darker than the rest of her lank locks. Her mother's sharp features were softened on Rhian's face; despite her grief, hers was an expression of sensitivity, not spite.

Her mother stood beside her daughter and said, “What do you think you're doing out of bed? This is no place for you, child. Get back into your room.”

There wasn't a shred of pity in Dilys's voice; she simply sounded annoyed. My heart went out to poor Rhian. She'd lost her husband and wasn't getting any sympathy from her one remaining parent.

I leapt to my feet and approached her. Although we'd met in October, and we'd communicated dozens of times by email, I didn't feel it appropriate to give her the hug I felt she deserved. I put my hand gently on her arm and said, “Your mum's right. You don't need to be here. And please,
please
don't give our wedding plans another thought. If we can just get the registrars here, somehow, that'll be enough. We don't need flowers, or food, or music to be married.”

As I realized what I'd said, I could have kicked myself.

“That's lovely, mentioning music like that.” Dilys's tone was cutting. “She doesn't need reminding.”

I felt myself blush, even as I acknowledged that, for once, Dilys was doing something to defend and protect her daughter.

“But I
need
to be here, Mam. I smelled the food, and I'm starving. I know you said you'd bring me something upstairs later on, but I can't just sit about crying. That won't do anyone any good at all. So I've got myself cleaned up, and I told Gwen to do the same. She'll be here in a minute. So please don't fuss, Mam. I'll have something to eat here, we'll all be civil, and we'll wait to hear what the authorities say when they see the bridge.”

Rhian glanced at the grandfather clock that stood beside the doorway, then said, “I don't know where they'll be coming from,” she said. “Swansea, I expect. Singleton probably. So they might be on their way already. If they said they'd be here at ten, then I'd like to be up at the bridge myself at that time, and we can all see what's what.”

I knew that Rhian was forty years old, because she'd told me, but at that moment she looked ten years older. She forced a smile, patted her mother on the arm, and headed for the food. I resumed my seat, because I didn't know what else to do. Idris and Eirwen seemed to be having something of a heated conversation—about how to pay for repairing an ancient bridge, I gathered from their whispers—and Mair sat eating toast in silence, staring at Rhian's back with a peculiar expression on her face. I wanted to believe it was pity, but it seemed closer to anger.
Odd.

At that moment a little mouse of a woman rushed into the dining room. Not quite five feet tall, she wore brown, wooly everything.
Not another knitter?
She had poorly dyed brown hair arranged in a dreadful bubbly perm and wore not a scrap of makeup. She'd clearly spent the night crying. I put her age around the mid-forties. Her hands fluttered constantly, even when the rest of her body was still, and her little brown eyes darted about, her tongue constantly licking her lips.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said. “Oh, no, it's not really ‘good,' is it? I don't know why I said that. Sorry, Rhian, I didn't mean to say ‘good.' Hello, everybody. For those of you who don't know me I'm Gwen. Gwen Thomas. David's accompanist. The choir's accompanist. Oh dear, I'm saying everything wrong. I'd better shut up now.”

Instead of doing just that, she rushed toward Rhian and continued to fuss. “Can I help you to something, some food from there, Rhian?” I noted a North-Walian accent, which differs from that of South Wales. It's a very nasal accent, set at the back of the mouth. Once, while at university in Cardiff, I shared a flat with a girl for two weeks before I realized she wasn't from Liverpool, as I'd thought, but from a little village near Rhyl, in North Wales, and she hadn't even learned to speak English until she was sixteen.

“Thanks, Gwen, but I'm quite capable of serving myself. Introduce yourself properly to Cait, Bud, and Siân, alright?” Rhian didn't snap or dismiss the overly attentive Gwen, but I didn't get the impression that she felt warmly about her. I wondered why Gwen had been accepted as an overnight guest by the grieving widow, and why on earth Rhian would allow her to be the one to accompany her husband's remains when they were taken away.