The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes (16 page)

Bud nodded as the three of us wandered back to the drawing room to look for Mair. “Yes. Too dangerous for vehicles, certainly, but it might be okay for pedestrians. We won't know until tomorrow, at the earliest.”

“So no one's coming or going by that route then,” noted Siân. “Sorry, sis.” She shook her head. “I apologize for being a bit crotchety. I don't know what's up with me. Everyone seems to be so cutting toward each other here, and it's like an infection. I do understand, sis. You must be worried about the wedding.”

I nodded.

Siân put her arm around my shoulders. “Come on, buck up, it'll work out alright. No point brooding on it. Let's do what we can to find out about David's death, like we agreed last night. Have you done anything about it yet? I was pumping Mair about him, but then there was all this kerfuffle about the painting. And what about the riddle on the puzzle plate that his mother-in-law said he was fascinated by? I've been thinking about that, and I've been wondering if the two things could be linked in some way. Should we follow up on that?”

It seemed as though Siân had returned to her old self. She was bright and energetic, and I couldn't imagine what was going on with all the mood swings. She interrupted my thought process by grabbing my arm and hissing, “Look, there's Mair. Okay, I'm going to get everything she knows out of her—it should be easy enough . . .”

I was about to tell her that she should take things gently, but she was gone.

“Mair—there you are, we wanted a word,” Siân called toward Mair's back as the woman was disappearing through a door that led off the drawing room toward the back of the castle.

Mair stopped, holding the doorknob. “Hullo, Siân. I wondered where you'd got to, though I often don't know where anyone is in this place. I'm just going to sit in the music room and knit for a while. The light's better there—such as it is with this horrendous weather. Mother has gone for a lie down, which is the best thing for her, so I thought I'd get on with the socks I'm working on. Want to join me?”

Siân looked gleeful. “Absolutely yes. I've got another shawl I'm working on. We can knit together. We all wanted to talk to you about something else too—but I'd love to see the music room. That piano you talked about earlier must be quite something.”

Mair walked through the door and ushered us in. “Welcome to the music room,” she announced. We all thanked her politely, then marveled, in chorus, at the sights that met our eyes.

The room was gold. The carpeting shone with gold thread; the walls were upholstered with gold brocade; the windows, which ran from floor to ceiling, were framed with gold and decorated with gold ormolu swags and crests; and gold-framed mirrors all but covered the wall that faced the windows, and bounced the light around. It meant that even on such an exceptionally dark day, the room felt light and airy. Several upholstered chairs dotting the room looked as though they'd been imported to this magical land from a much dourer place, because they weren't gold at all, but dark wood, and a bit knocked around the edges. Each was paired with an occasional table. As I wandered around the room I also noticed that it wasn't just the furniture that had seen better days—the mirror frames, the woodwork at the windows, even the ormolu, were all marked, scratched, and worn in places.

At the far end of the room, close to a wall with no windows and just one small door, sat the undoubted star of the room: an ornate rosewood piano, with turned legs and a highly decorative fretted music desk. It was open and ready to be played.

“It's beautiful,” cooed Siân.

“It's a Blüthner, isn't it?” I said.

Mair nodded. “You know pianos?” She sounded surprised.

I couldn't resist. “It looks like a Blüthner style 7 grand. The lyre-shaped pedal suggests it's an early one. About 1887? Before 1900, I'd say. Do you play, Mair?”

Mair shook her head. “I had lessons, for years, but I never found it easy, so I let others do that for me nowadays. David would play for me sometimes. Gwen came here yesterday to tune it for the performance on Monday. Tomorrow. Oh dear . . . your wedding. It's not sounding too hopeful, is it? Idris was telling me about the bridge. I'm so sorry for you both. Well, all three of you, of course. You've come such a long way for this, Siân, and you've left your poor children behind, and everything. What will you do? Do you know yet?”

I jumped right in. “In all honesty, Mair, we don't think there's anything we can do until tomorrow at the earliest, so we thought we'd try to ignore it, and just throw ourselves into life at the castle. Of course, we didn't expect to return to such an unpleasant occurrence. Your mother must have had a nasty shock. Was she the one who first discovered the damage to the portrait?”

“Yes,” replied Mair. “Mother very rarely comes down from her apartment until dinner time, but today she insisted upon coming down early. As I said, Gwen was here to tune the piano yesterday, and she kindly offered to play for Mother before lunch today. Mother used to play, you see, but she can't anymore because her hands are in such a terrible state, so it's always a special treat for her when there's someone here who can play for her. Mother would always ask her to play the same piece, ‘Trois Gymnopédies' by Satie, and Gwen would do it for her. Happily. She is really very good. Even I could tell she had a lovely touch. Good control.”

“So your mother was heading here when she found the painting?” asked Bud.

Mair nodded sadly. “Yes. Of course it shocked her. It shocked us all. Mother's always been very fond of that painting. As you saw last night, Cait, she's very proud of her youthful self. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, as she's aged, the painting has become even more important to her. But there, I suppose it's the same for all of us when we see photos of our younger selves, isn't it? We don't all have larger than life oil paintings of ourselves hung about the place, though, do we?”

I smiled and recalled the photo of me holding my baby sister. I looked across the room at Siân and struggled with my feelings toward her. Surely feeling affection for your little sister shouldn't be so difficult?

“It begs the question, who do you think might have done such a thing?” I said quietly.

Mair shook her head. “I can't think that it could be one of us,” she said flatly.

So there we were again.
Not one of us.

Despite my natural reluctance to countenance a nomadic stranger as being a possible culprit, I allowed myself to consider whether there might, in fact, be someone secreted in the castle after all. Then I wondered if I could come up with an excuse to have a good hunt about.

“THE STYLE AND ATMOSPHERE OF
this wing is very different to the wing housing my bridal boudoir and the dining room.” I wanted to begin to build a better mental map of the castle, so I thought I'd take advantage of Mair's knowledge.

“Very much so,” replied Mair. “Don't tell Owain, but I actually find the history of this place fascinating,” she whispered. “If I let on, he'd never shut up about it. Besides, I'm interested more in the artistic aspects than the historical ones. I mean, given that we've got a prehistoric stone circle and a Roman temple in the middle of our driveway, and a medieval basement, this building is so new, by comparison.”

I knew I had her, so I allowed myself to settle into a surprisingly comfortable battered old armchair. “I've read what's on the website, about your great-grandfather and your grandfather building the place, but it would be so much more fun to hear it from a family member. How's the place to live in? Did you grow up here, hunting through secret passages and so forth?”

We'd all taken seats, and, if you'd peeped through the window into the music room at that moment, you'd have been forgiven for thinking we were a nonchalant group of friends idling away the time, with Mair and Siân both knitting almost absentmindedly. I, however, knew I was investigating, so I was on full alert. I felt safe in the assumption that Bud would have the same perspective.

Mair looked wistful. “I'll be honest and admit that my childhood here was anything but happy. Mother decided I should be homeschooled, so with Owain and my late brother, Teilo, away at boarding school, I was the only child in the house. I had my very own tutor, who also pretty much parented me. You see, although Father didn't die until I was sixteen, he was seventy when I was born, so I didn't mix much with him.”

“Your father was seventy when you were born?” exclaimed Siân in disbelief.

Mair nodded. “Yes. When Mother goes on about the fact that I was a late baby and I nearly killed her, she has a point. She's told me the story over and over again, though, to be honest, I only have her word for it all. Of course, Dilys backs her up. But then she always does. Dilys was about ten when I was born, and I think she always was a little girl who listened at doors and so forth, so I suppose she'd know. Mother says she didn't even know she was pregnant with me until she was about five months gone. At forty she thought her ‘symptoms,' as she refers to them, as though I were some sort of illness, were just signs that her body was changing.”

“Was it a difficult birth?” asked Siân. “At that age they can be tough.”

“Who knows,” replied Mair. “Mother speaks of near-death experiences and thirty hours of labor, but I believe she's exaggerating for effect. In any case, I was born healthy, which they were relieved about, and they decided to keep me, for which I suppose I should be grateful. No, that's not fair, I am grateful, because however odd my so-called ‘family life' has been, I am sure it was a lot better than it would have been if I'd been handed off for adoption.”

“Why on earth do you think they might have put you up for adoption?” asked Siân. I'd been about to ask that myself.

Mair looked evasive, then made an internal decision and told us, “It's another one of Mother's little weapons. She frequently mentioned it when I was a child—that she and my father were far too old to have a baby about the place, and that they should have handed me off to someone for them to raise. I was constantly made to feel as though I was in the way. Sometimes Mother isn't aware of how hurtful she can be.”

I suspected that Alice Cadwallader had a very good idea about the effect her words had, and chose to use them anyway. Once again I began to wonder at how we human beings can be so disconnected from those we are supposed to love.

We all held our silence and allowed Mair a moment or two, which she took. As she dwelt on the fortune of her upbringing I wondered about Dilys Jones's early life.

When a smile crossed Mair's face, I judged it time to prompt her more. “Did you and Dilys mix as children?” I asked.

Mair laughed. “Ten years is a big gap, Cait. By the time I was running about and more than a baby, she was a teen. Besides, I wasn't allowed to mix with the servants. There were many more of them in those days, of course. There were Dilys's parents—Mrs. Jones did what Dilys does now, she was the cook; her husband did what David has been doing, you know, general stuff around the place. But we had a chauffeur, a housekeeper, three women—or girls probably—who cleaned and waited on us, four gardeners, and, of course, there was Miss Williams, my tutor.”

A shadow darkened Mair's expression. I read regret and sadness there as she spoke again. “She died a few years ago. She was only sixty. So young. It wasn't until I was grown up that I realized we were so close to each other in age. We'd kept in touch all that time. I suppose you could say she was my only real friend. I miss her terribly.”

“It's such a different upbringing to the one we had, isn't it, Cait?” said Siân thoughtfully. “You just take it all for granted. The normality of your childhood. But who's to say what ‘normal' is?”

I sensed a maudlin moment that I wanted to avoid. “Did you use the castle as a playground, Mair? I've got some idea of the layout, but there must have been lots of places to have as hidey-holes and so forth.” I wondered if Mair might give us an insight into places where an interloper might be hiding.

Mair rallied. “I wasn't encouraged to run about the place. The only time I had fun was when Owain and Teilo came home for the holidays. As boys, they were expected to go clambering about the place, but Teilo was seven years older than me, and Owain is five years my senior, so they sometimes allowed their baby sister to tag along, but they largely ignored me.”

“Like you ignored me when we were growing up, Cait,” said Siân wistfully. “I suppose it was to be expected, given our age difference, but I always felt as though I was being left out of something exciting.”

“There you go,” said Mair, jumping on Siân's point, “that's it exactly. I'm not sure how much fun the boys really had, but I always imagined it was lots. I think that was when Owain decided he wanted to find out all about the castle's ancient history. Teilo once got lost for a day and a night, and I remember the panic. After that, he and Owain used to go off on secret exploring trips. They wouldn't let me join them then. It was like being invisible. To everyone. Except Miss Williams, of course. She would always play with me. Up on the floor above your rooms, that's where I used to have my room, with Miss Williams next door. This wing is very elegant, very smart, as you can see,” she waved at the golden womb about us, “but the Gothic wing is a bit gloomy, I've always thought.”

“What's through that door?” I asked, pointing to the surprisingly small door beside the piano.

“That's the library,” replied Mair. “It's in the original part of the castle that my great-grandfather built—the Norman-style part, modeled after the Norman Keep at Cardiff Castle, but made of the stones that gave this castle its name, Castell Llwyd—Gray Castle. Of course, with browner stones having been used for the Gothic wing, and sandstone and terracotta for this wing—the ‘Jacobethan' wing, as I'm sure our late poet laureate John Betjeman would have referred to it—the name seems a bit silly, but they never changed it. If you go through there, you go down a couple of steps to the library, which faces the sea. The original castle structure was built in the shape of an open arrow, pointing out to sea, so they just added one wing onto each side. Grandfather built the Gothic one because he so admired the new buildings at Cardiff Castle and wanted to outdo the Marquess of Bute who built it.”