in Treasure Island looked different, didn’t they? But they were special ones. Oh, Cranny, I shouldn’t have told you really.”
“It was good to tell me. Now we understand so much about each other.
We’ve found out that we are real friends. We’re going to help each other all we can. Tell me what happened when the man was found on the rocks. “
“Well, he was just found. They said he was a sailor and he didn’t live here. He came from London. He’d been asking for someone … some relation. That was what they said in the papers.”
“And you’d told your grandfather that you thought he was your father.”
“Gramps said it wasn’t my father and I had to stop thinking he was. My father was dead and I didn’t belong to that place where we used to live any more. My home was with him and my mother in our nice Seashell Cottage by the sea.”
“There was quite a fuss when the man’s body was found, wasn’t there?
Where did they find it? “
“On the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. The tide might have carried him out to sea, they said, but it didn’t.”
“What will you do now, Kate? Shall you go on putting flowers on his grave?”
I saw a stubborn look on her face.
“Yes,” she said.
“I don’t care about Littleton’s old roses.”
She laughed and for a moment was her mischievous self.
“I’ll take some more if I want to. They’re not his. They’re old Stepper’s really … and my mother’s because she married Stepper and what is his is hers.”
I thought: In her heart she believes the man in that grave is her father; and I was becoming more and more sure that I had made an important discovery.
Some Discoveries
My thoughts were preoccupied with what I had learned from Kate and I had a conviction that it must have some bearing on the mystery I was trying to solve.
I had made up my mind that the drunken sailor was Mirabel’s first husband and since she had been contemplating becoming the mistress of Perrivale Court, it was imperative to her that he should not find her.
A husband would ruin all her chances. And then he had conveniently been found at the bottom of a cliff. She would be the one. who wanted to be rid of him. What if she had wanted to be rid of Cosmo as well?
Why? She was to have married him. But she married Tristan immediately afterwards.
Of course, the man who had died might have nothing to do with Mirabel.
There was only Kate’s evidence to suggest this. I knew how imaginative she could be. She had been very young when she had last seen her father and this man who looked like him. She mentioned the way he walked as one of the reasons why she recognized him. Many sailors had that rolling gait. It was acquired through constantly adjusting their balance on an unsteady ship.
It was all very vague and I did not know what to believe, but on the other hand I felt I had taken a little step forward, if only a short one.
The very next day Lady Perrivale sent for me. She was very affable.
She looked so feminine that it was impossible to imagine her luring her first husband to the cliff edge and pushing him over. That was too wild a conjecture. I felt sure that the man was a stranger. Thomas Parry. How could he be the husband of Mirabel Blanchard? It was possible that she could have changed her name. And so ran my muddled thoughts.
“I believe you met your friend Mr. Lorimer the other day,” she said.
“Oh yes.”
“Kate told me. She missed you very much.” She smiled at me benignly.
“There is no need for you to have to meet in The Sailor King, you know. He would be very welcome to come here to see you. I don’t want you to feel you can’t have visitors.”
“That is most kind of you.”
“As a matter of fact, I was thinking of asking him and his brother over to dine soon.”
“I think his brother is. too shocked at the moment to want to pay visits. It has been such a terrible blow to him.”
“Oh yes, indeed. However, I shall invite them both and perhaps Mr. Lucas Lorimer will accept.”
“I feel sure he will be happy to do so.”
“You will join us, of course. There won’t be many guests. It will be just an informal occasion.”
“It sounds very pleasant.”
“I am sending a note over to Trecorn Manor today. I do hope they will accept.”
I had an idea that she was arranging the party to show me that, although I was the governess, she did not regard me as such. I remembered so well, when Felicity came to us, that my parents had been anxious that she should not be treated like a servant because she had come to us through the recommendation of a man who could have been one of my father’s colleagues but then ours was not a conventional household.
I was pleased that Lady Perrivale should have been so sensitive of my feelings; but all the time she was talking to me I was seeing her in
three sordid little rooms, escaping from them when Thomas Parry went to sea. I imagined his coming back and finding her and his little daughter flown from the nest. and setting out to look for them.
I wanted so much to talk to Lucas. How I wished that I could tell him all I knew. Perhaps I should. If Thomas Parry had been murdered by someone who was living in the neighbourhood today, why should that person not have treated Cosmo in the same way? And what could Simon have to do with Thomas Parry? I needed advice. I needed help. And Lucas was near.
I longed to see him and I was so anxious that he should accept this invitation to dinner that when I saw the messenger leave with the note for Trecorn Manor I hung about waiting for his return. I managed to be in the courtyard when he came back.
“Oh hello, Morris,” I said.
“Have you been over to Trecorn Manor?”
“Yes, Miss. No luck, though. They were out both Mr. Carleton and Mr. Lucas Lorimer.”
“So you couldn’t deliver your note to them?”
“No. I had to leave it. Someone will bring the answer over later. A pity. Makes two journeys instead of one.”
It was the next day when the answer came. I went down because I thought Dick Duvane would bring it, but it was not Dick. It was one of the Trecorn stable men.
“Oh,” I said.
“I thought Dick Duvane would come. He usually does these things for Mr. Lucas.”
“Oh, Dick’s not there now, Miss.”
“Not there?”
“He’s gone abroad.”
“Without Mr. Lucas!”
“Seemingly. Mr. Lucas, he be at the Manor and Dick Duvane, he be gone.
I did hear to foreign parts. “
“Mr. Lucas will miss him.”
“Aye, that he will.”
“Shall I take the note to Lady Perrivale?”
“If you’d be so good. Miss.”
I took it to her.
She said: “Mr. Carleton declines. He doesn’t feel up to it. Poor man.
