"Where is ... Jamie?" I stammered.
"Jamie has gone."
"But where . . . where? I came to see Jamie."
I moved backwards. From the corner of my eye I measured the distance to the door.
"I'll come back . . . when Jamie's here. I came to see him. Will you tell him I called?"
He just repeated: "You know, don't you?"
"I knew that Donald came."
"You know she's dead. You know where she is. She's down the mine shaft. That's where she is. I killed her. I hit her on the head." He started to laugh and took a step towards the fireplace. Hanging beside it were a brass poker and bellows. He took the poker and looked at it. "I killed her with this," he said. "I hit her on the head and then I took the trap and drove with her to the mine. There was no one about so I pushed her down."
"You can't mean this. You've only just arrived."
"I've been coming here . . . off and on . . . for some time now."
He laid down the poker. "I did it with Effie and I did it with her. Effie drove me mad. She went on and on. She ought not to have married me. She would have been better off if she'd married Jack Sparrow. He got on, he did. It would have been a different life with him. I let her go on and on and then I couldn't stand any more . . .
"And Mrs. Landower . . . She was too nosey . . . She pried. She went to Edinburgh and found out things . . . She was going to talk. Soon it would have been all over the place. It wasn't fair for Jamie. Jamie liked it here . . . He'd worked hard to get it as he wanted. He wanted it to stay as it was . . . and she was going to stop it."
"Did Jamie tell you all this?"
"Jamie tells me everything. I know Jamie . . . and Jamie knows me. We're different, but we are one ..."
"I know you are twin brothers, but you haven't seen each other for years. I must go now. I'll come back later and see Jamie."
"You know now . . . don't you?"
"I know what you have told me."
"I've told you about her . . . and you've come here with that comb. It was found in the trap. I was careless, wasn't I ... not to have seen it. It gave it away. No one would ever have known. They would have thought she was playing a game. She'd tried it once before."
"I must go . . ."
He was before me and he had his back to the door.
"But you know," he said. "She had to go because she knew . . . and now you know."
"I don't believe a word of this. I don't see how you can be aware of all this. You don't live here."
He took a step towards me and I noticed afresh the strange glitter in his eyes.
"I've got to save all this ... for Jamie," he said. "Jamie is happy here. You're going to make trouble for Jamie."
"I would never make trouble for Jamie."
"You came here with that comb. You came to accuse Jamie of killing her. Jamie wouldn't hurt a moth. Jamie loves all living creatures. Jamie wouldn't have touched her, no matter what she'd done. It had to be Donald. And now . . . there's you."
He was quite close to me. I was in the presence of a madman. I could already feel his hands about my throat.
I tried to speak firmly: "I'm going now."
"You'll have to go down the shaft with her . . . with that nosey woman who spoiled everything with her prying ways. You shouldn't have come here accusing Jamie . . ."
I could see his hands. They looked thick and strong. I tried to cry out but my voice was hardly above a whisper and it would be little short of a miracle if anyone was near enough to hear me.
I felt his hands on my throat.
I thought: This can't be happening. Why . . . ? What does it all mean?
His face puckered suddenly. "Miss Tressidor was good to Jamie," he said. "Miss Mary and Miss Caroline . . . Nobody was as good to Jamie as Miss Caroline and Miss Mary."
And then in a blinding flash of clarity, I knew. I saw him clearly as he had been in the gardens with the bees buzzing round him and I cried: "Jamie. You're Jamie."
He dropped his hands and stared at me.
"I know you're Jamie," I said.
"No ... no. I'm Donald."
"No, Jamie, the bees have told me."
He looked startled.
"They've told you."
"Yes, Jamie, the bees have told me. You're Jamie, aren't you? There is no Donald. There never was a Donald. There is only one of you."
His face crumpled suddenly. He looked gentle and helpless.
"Jamie, Jamie," I cried. "I want to help you. I know I can."
He looked at me in a dazed fashion. "So it was the bees . . . they told you."
He sat down at the table and put his hands over his face. He spoke quietly. "It's all clear now. There is only one of us. Donald James McGill. But sometimes it seems to me that there are two of us. Jamie that was the real self . . . and Donald ... he was the other. He did wicked things . . . and Jamie hated it. There were two of us in a way . . . but in the same body."
"I think I understand. One part of you killed those little animals whom the other part loved. The impulse came over you suddenly to kill . . . and you felt that was not really you, for you were Jamie, quiet, gentle Jamie, wanting to live in peace with the world."
"I loved Effie," he said slowly, "but she went on and on making me feel that I ought never to have married her, reminding me that I couldn't give her the things that she wanted. And then . . . one night when she was going on and on ... it was too much. I picked up the poker and hit her. We were standing at the top of the stairs and she fell. I told myself she tripped . . . but I knew I'd done it. Then it seemed it was Donald and they brought in Not Proven . . . and there was a chance to get away."
"I understand, Jamie. I understand now."
"And Mrs. Landower ... I always hated her. She wanted to spoil everything . . . not only for me but for everyone else. She was always asking questions and going on and on. She's a natural spoiler. And then she went to Edinburgh and she'd gone on asking questions there and she'd seen it in the papers. Then she came to see me and she said she thought I ought to tell the whole story. She said it wasn't right to have secrets ... So ... I took the poker and I hit her ... just like I'd hit Effie. And then I took her out in the trap and put her down the mine shaft."
"Oh, Jamie," I said. I was shivering.
"It's the end, I know," he said. "And you know now ... so the only thing I can do if I want to live in peace is to send you with her."
"But you couldn't do that, Jamie," I said. "Jamie is back now.
Jamie would never do it. Donald has gone . . . and now that you've told me, Donald will go forever."
He covered his face with his hands. "What will become of me?" he asked.
"I think you'll go away from here. You're sick, I think. It isn't the same ... if you're sick you're not to blame."
"And Lion and Tiger and the bees . . . what would become of them?"
"There'd be someone to take care of them."
"I couldn't hurt you, Miss Tressidor. No matter what . . ."
"I know. As soon as I knew that, I knew who you really were. And you were out there with the bees when I came. Only Jamie could have stood among them. They wouldn't have allowed anyone else to go unprotected into their midst."
"What can I do, Miss Tressidor?"
Again he covered his face with his hands. Lionheart came up to him and leaped onto the table. He began to lick his face, and Tiger came and rubbed himself against his legs.
"Oh, Jamie," I said. "My poor, poor Jamie."
I went to the door. There was no one there. I stood there for ten minutes before I heard someone in the road.
It was one of the grooms from Landower.
I called: "Will you ask Mr. Landower to come to the lodge immediately. Tell him he is wanted . . . desperately."
When Paul came I clung to him. I was a little incoherent as I tried to tell him what had happened.
He put his arms round me and said: "Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid any more."
Then we went in
to the lodge together.
DIAMOND
JUBILEE
I sat in the big bow window of one of the most successful fashion houses in London to watch the procession pass by, and my thoughts must inevitably go back to that other occasion, ten years before, when I had sat at a window near Waterloo Place and watched another Jubilee.
It was so similar, but it was a woman who had taken the place of the innocent girl. It seemed incredible that so much could have happened in ten years.
The sun shone brilliantly—just as it had on that other day. Royal weather, they called it. The little old lady in her carriage did not look much different. There was a feeling of tremendous excitement in the air just as there had been that other time. On the previous day I had driven through the city and seen some of the triumphal arches, the decorations and in the evening the gas jets had been lighted and there were even some of the new electric light bulbs which were coming into use.
"Our Hearts Thy Throne," said one inscription. "Sixty Glorious Years," said another; and yet another, "She Wrought Her People Lasting Good."
And as the procession passed along, it was not so much the magnificent uniforms and all the brilliance of the royal gathering of princes and notables from all over the world that I saw. It was the passing cavalcade of the last ten years during which I had ceased to be an innocent young girl and had become a mature woman. It was not the bands and the martial music that I heard but voices from the past.
I could cast my mind back to the day when I had sat with my mother, Olivia and Captain Carmichael and watched that other Jubilee. It was then that life had taken its dramatic turn and I had a strange feeling that I had lived through the turbulent years to come not only to happiness but to a greater understanding.
I was no longer hasty in my judgements. I saw what happened through different eyes. I was mellow. I did not judge harshly now. I had learned to accept the frailties of human nature and to understand that people are not divided into the good and the evil.
My mother, pleasure-loving butterfly, yet brought happiness to her Alphonse, for the marriage had been a great success. She was content and she made those around her content. I had despised Robert Tressidor as a hypocrite with his outward show of virtue and his secret prurience. But perhaps I had judged him harshly. I was sure he had wished to be a pillar of virtue. He had had to fight his human sensuality and he could not resist the temptation to indulge it; and when he was discovered, he fought desperately to cover it and doubtless the strain had something to do with his early death. And Jeremy, the fortune hunter? Had he been born rich he might not have been forced into mercenary calculation. He had charm, good looks; if he had not had that urgent need to find a means of living in luxury he might have been quite a worthy young man. And Paul, my Paul, who sat beside me now, what a temptation he had faced when it was incumbent on him to save Landower. I had bitterly criticised him for marrying to save the house for the family, but I now saw how easy it had been for the most honourable of men to succumb to that need.
In my youthful innocence I had endowed those I admired with godlike qualities. But they were not gods. They were men.
I came across some lines of Browning's the other day and I shall always remember them.
"Men are not angels; neither are they brutes; Something we may see, all we cannot see."
I wish I had understood that earlier, for to understand the motives of others is surely the greatest gift one can have—and to understand is not to judge and to blame.
I think often of Gwennie . . . Gwennie who wanted to be happy, and did not know how to. She wanted to bargain all the time; she could not understand that money could buy her a great mansion but it could not buy love. Poor Gwennie, if only she had known that one must give willingly and without thought of recompense, and only then does one reap the rewards of love.
I am sermonizing to myself, but I know I should be grateful for having lived through such experiences which have taught me so much.
I often think of Gwennie, whose insatiable curiosity brought her to her death. "Curiosity killed the cat." I remembered her saying that. Curiosity killed Gwennie. They found her body in the mine shaft, just as Jamie had said. The story came out at the inquest. She had discovered the truth which he had been trying to hide. The great task of Jamie's life was to keep up the myth that Donald and Jamie were not the same person. There were two sides to his nature. He saw himself as two people in one body. There was Jamie, the gentle lover of animals, the man who wanted to live at peace with his neighbours; but there was Donald who could be swayed by uncontrollable urges to destroy; and the two natures had warred together in Jamie's childhood; and Donald James McGill, unable to live with the murderous instincts which came over him at times, had come to terms with life by dividing himself into two personalities. While he could live as Jamie he was safe. But Donald came back when Gwennie threatened to betray him.
He was judged clearly insane and was "detained during Her Majesty's pleasure." I was relieved that he passed into good hands. One of the greatest doctors who specialized in mental disorders was interested in his case which he called one of split personality. He arranged for Jamie to go to a special institution of which he himself was in charge. I went to see Jamie now and then. He worked in the gardens. He had his hives. I think that he often believed they were his bees and he was able to forget what had happened and imagined himself back at the lodge.
Soon after the discovery of the body I came to London to be with Jago and Rosie. I brought Livia and Julian with me—and Nanny Loman, Miss Bell and Julian's nanny, of course. Julian was so fond of Livia and as he was of an age to take note of what was happening around him, we thought it best for him to be away from home.
Rosie was wonderful to be with—so sane, and so was Jago. I was amazed really at the success of their relationship. They were really devoted to each other and theirs was fast becoming known internationally as one of the great fashion houses of the world.
I brought my attention back to the procession. Julian was pointing something out to Livia. The friendship between those two was a great delight to me. I thought: Perhaps one day they will marry. Who could say? Tressidor would go to Livia. I had made up my mind on that. Great houses should remain in families. I was not a Tressidor, but Livia was, and Tressidor should go back to Tressidor.
I knew that Paul would make Julian his heir no matter what children we should have. Julian was half Arkwright and it must not be forgotten that it was the Arkwrights who had saved Landower from destruction.
Why was I thinking all this as I sat there looking down on the Queen's Diamond Jubilee from this elaborate bow window of Rosie's and Jago's grand establishment?
Paul was looking at me quizzically. I think he read my thoughts. His hand closed over mine and I knew he shared my view that we should put behind us all the hazards through which we had passed but which had brought us to this happy state—and rejoice and be thankful.
Victoria Holt, The Landower Legacy
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends