‘I’ll be with my stepmother and young Charlie-Boy. Wherever they are.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘It’s nearly ten o’clock and master Charles has been in bed for some hours.’
‘In that case I shall see Julia on her own.’
‘Again, I’m afraid that’s also out of the question. Mrs Devereux is in her parlour. She’s not receiving guests.’
He laughed. ‘I’m not a guest; I’m her stepson.’
The woman was not to be put off. ‘Mrs Devereux left instructions that she wasn’t to be disturbed.’
You mean Mr Devereux left instructions, more like it, thought Ralph.
Determined to have his way, he moved towards the stairs. ‘I’m sure Julia will make an exception for me,’ he said. ‘You can bring my whisky up there, Miss Casey. Oh, and I’ll have a sandwich too. Ham, cheese, or whatever else is to hand. I’ll have my usual room, please.’
He took the stairs swiftly, two at a time. When he was on the landing, he looked back the way he’d come and saw Miss Casey down in the hall picking up the telephone receiver. The telephone hadn’t rung, so who was she ringing? His father? Alerting the old man that Ralph had shown up unexpectedly?
Having earlier thought the house would make an ideal set for a horror film, Ralph suddenly felt like he was in one of Hitchcock’s psychological thrillers. His stepmother certainly had all the makings of a victim at the mercy of a cruel husband and a scheming housekeeper.
He knocked on her door. There was no reply, so he knocked again, this time louder.
‘Julia. It’s me, Ralph.’
‘Ralph?’
‘May I come in?’
‘Is Arthur with you?’
‘No. It’s just me.’
He heard the handle turn and then the door slowly opened, but for no more than a couple of inches. Julia’s eyes darted over his shoulder, then back to his face. ‘Has your father sent you?’
‘No. Why would he?’
She put a hand to her mouth. ‘I’ve . . . I’ve done something which he won’t like. He’ll be furious with me. I had to do it, though. It was only right. But now I’m scared.’
With no idea what she was talking about, but seeing how anxious she was, Ralph looked over his shoulder to see if Miss Casey was on the warpath. She wasn’t. ‘Julia,’ he then said, ‘why don’t you let me in and tell me what you’ve done. It can’t be all that bad, surely?’
He had never before seen himself in the role of knight in shining armour, but there was something about the desperation in Julia’s voice that stirred him to help. For once in his life he was compelled to do something good. Perhaps it was a guilty conscience from what he’d done the night of the Meadow Lodge party. Or maybe it wasn’t so much an act of kindness he wanted to perform, but an act of revenge on his father?
She opened the door just enough to let him in, then quickly shut it.
‘What are you so scared of?’ he asked. ‘And why the hell is it so cold in here?’ He looked at the empty grate where a fire should have been burning.
‘I’m used to the cold,’ she said.
‘Well, I’m not. I shall insist that Miss Casey provides you with some coal and logs. Now sit down and tell me what’s going on.’
With the blind obedience of a dutiful child, she sat in an armchair to one side of a table on which stood an open sewing box. He sat opposite and gave her an encouraging smile.
‘It’s your aunt Hope,’ she said.
‘Hope? She hasn’t died has she?’
Julia shook her head and fiddled with a pair of sharp pointed scissors from the sewing box. ‘Not that I know of.’
‘So what does my aunt have to do with why you look so . . . so fraught?’
Before she could get the words out, there was a knock at the door and Julia, her eyes wide with fright, jumped to her feet and dropped the scissors.
‘Let me deal with this,’ he said. ‘It’ll be Miss Casey, I asked her to bring me something to eat and drink.’
‘Don’t let her in,’ Julia whispered.
‘I won’t.’
True to his word, he opened the door just enough so that he could take the tray the housekeeper had brought up for him. She tried to step into the room, but he deftly blocked her way. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘that’ll be all.’
She stood before him seemingly as resolute to defy him as he was to repel any advance on her part. ‘It’s colder than a morgue in here,’ he said, ‘will you bring up some logs and coal for my stepmother, please?’
‘I’ll see what I can do in the morning,’ she replied stiffly.
Beginning to shut the door, he added, ‘By the way, when is my father expected home? Presumably he is returning from London to spend Christmas in the bosom of his loving family?’
‘He’s due to arrive tomorrow afternoon.’
‘I can’t wait! Don’t forget to make up my room, will you?’
Ralph decided to watch her walk away down the corridor before closing the door. When he was satisfied that she really had gone, he shut the door and placed the tray on the table. He urged Julia to stop pacing the room and sit down again. She looked a bag of nerves.
‘Now start at the beginning and tell me what it is that’s reduced you to this state of . . . ’ he wanted to say paranoia, but settled on, ‘alarm.’
Her voice low, as though she feared Miss Casey was hovering outside with her ear pressed to the door, she said: ‘It was your father who ran Hope over. It was dark and raining and he swears he did no such thing, that what he hit was a deer. But I know what I saw. I was in the car with him.’
Ralph couldn’t believe his ears. His first thought was that Julia was quite mad, that his father had pushed her over the edge. But then he remembered the cold-blooded manner in which his father had informed him of Hope’s accident. He had implied Hope had brought the accident on herself by being careless.
No, thought Ralph, Julia wasn’t mad; she was speaking the truth. If anyone was mad, it was Arthur Devereux.
‘Have you told anyone?’ he asked. ‘Like the police?’
‘Yes. But not the police. I wanted to, to explain it was a terrible accident, but your father said if I so much as breathed a word of it to them, he’d say it was me driving and I’d go to prison and never see Charles again. And who would believe my word against his?’