Florence put a finger to her lower lip and pressed it pensively. ‘Before I went into the tent, I’d remembered something about my mother that I hadn’t thought of in a while. The memory of it was as clear as you and me sitting here.’
‘Even more reason to conclude that what you heard from the gypsy was no more than a case of autosuggestion,’ said Romily.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Basically you heard what you wanted to hear. Even if it was only on a subconscious level.’
‘That’s the second new word I’ve learned today,’ Florence said with a smile.
‘Oh, what was the first?’
‘Mrs Meyer taught me the word eaglet … egalitarian.’
‘Did she indeed? Well good for her.’
Florence rose from the ottoman. ‘I knew you’d help settle it all in my mind. Thank you so much. I’d better get back down to the kitchen before Mrs Partridge blows a gasket.’
When the girl was at the door, Romily said, ‘Florence, any time you have anything on your mind, you know you can come to me. By the way, Annelise isn’t proving too much of a burden, is she?’
‘We can cope. And it’s only for a few days more, isn’t it? Although how we’ll manage if we’re landed with a couple of evacuated children as well is anybody’s guess.’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we need to.’
Once Florence had closed the door after her, Romily poured herself another cup of tea, and pondered on what the girl had said about their house guests only remaining for a few more days. She wasn’t altogether convinced that was what would happen. If Hope hadn’t managed to finish the sketches for her publisher by then, she might want to stay on for a few more days to make use of the help available here with Annelise. And where would Allegra go if she left? Surely not back to Italy, not when the situation in Europe was so precarious. To London, then? Did she have friends or professional contacts there?
One thing was certain in Romily’s mind: she would not turn either of them away if they needed help. She found them both oddly likeable, in very different ways. She admired Hope for her stoicism, while in Allegra she saw a passionate and fiercely stubborn and proud young woman who imagined offence at every turn. Her stormy paranoia was understandable; Romily could see how the girl had fought tooth and nail all her young life to gain the respect she felt she’d been denied as a child.
Before Roddy had left for London, he had confided in Romily that recently life in Italy had not gone too well for Allegra. ‘I don’t want to break a confidence,’ he’d said, ‘but I’m concerned about her. There’s something troubling her, and I believe it’s more than what she shared with me.’
Romily was inclined to agree. Allegra did seem troubled. She had seen the girl looking thoughtfully out of the window many times, chewing her lip or wringing her hands, as if trying desperately to resolve something in her mind. Was it to do with her career? Had she hit a difficult time and the singing engagements just weren’t coming her way? Life on the stage was notoriously fickle, with its many ups and downs.
Something that had struck Romily as strange was that she had not heard Allegra singing since arriving here; not a single note, or even a casual little hum. It was possible, of course, that she was under doctor’s orders to rest her voice; singers had to do that sometimes. Perhaps that was what was troubling her, a perfectly understandable case of anxiety that her voice might fail her.
Her tea finished, Romily picked up her pen and returned her attention to answering the remaining letters from her readers. She had just signed the last one when something down in the garden caught her eye. It was Allegra, appearing at the furthest end of the garden through a small gateway. The gate led to a private path that curled round the other side of the pond, hidden from sight by dense undergrowth and rhododendron bushes. Leaving the boundary of Island House, it eventually looped its way round to the church, and then on down to Clover Woods. So where had Allegra been so early in the morning? To church perhaps?
Or … but surely Romily was mistaken. Yet it looked very much as though the girl was wearing the same pretty floral dress she had worn last night to the village dance.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Arthur had slept badly. Not surprising, given the pain he was in. But he’d sooner rip out his tongue than admit that to anyone else. His plan for the day was to brazen it out, to shake off yesterday’s incident as nothing more than a tiresome village fracas with a tiresome village nobody.
Brazening things out was his stock in trade. That and biding his time to plot his revenge. In his experience there was nothing quite like getting even. But unusually for him, he wasn’t much in the mood for revenge this morning. He ached in too many places to summon the necessary energy to devise a way to get his own back. What energy he possessed currently he would need to put on a convincingly indifferent front.
Dr Garland had declared nothing actually broken, something Arthur could have told him himself, and had recommended he call in at the surgery tomorrow for a check-up. Arthur had no intention of doing that. What was the point?
Right now, his immediate concern was rousing himself from his bed and dressing to go down for breakfast. He had eaten supper in his room last night, but he wasn’t going to repeat that and allow anyone to think he was hiding, too embarrassed to show his face. No, let them all wince at the sight of him across the table.
Wince was precisely what he did himself when he ventured into the bathroom across the landing from his room and looked into the mirror. Not since his days on the school rugby pitch had he looked such a mess. Back then, each cut and bruise had been a badge of honour. Less so on one particular occasion, however. He’d injured his arm in a scrum, and a zealous matron had ordered him out of her sickroom on the grounds that he was a malingerer. Two days later, when he’d still been in abject pain, one of the masters had had the sense to realise that the arm was broken and he needed immediate treatment. To get his own back on the matron for her total disregard for his well-being, Arthur had lured the woman’s tortoiseshell cat away from her quarters and taken it down into the woods. He’d locked it inside an abandoned groundkeeper’s hut, strung up by one of its legs. It was found a week later, dead.
After he’d gingerly washed himself, forgoing a shave, he left the bathroom to go back to his room to dress. At the other end of the landing, presumably coming out of her own room, he saw Romily with a stack of envelopes in her hand. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘Never better,’ he replied.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘Will you be joining us for breakfast?’
‘Of course. And then I thought I’d go to church.’
‘Really?’ she asked, an eyebrow raised.
