A rustle of movement had Romily turning. It was Dr Longman. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to you again, Mrs Devereux-Temple,’ he said.
Romily followed him out of the room. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘Allegra thinks she’s dying. Is she?’
‘I’m afraid she is,’ he replied gravely.
‘But she can’t be!’
He said nothing.
Shock and anger combined to fuel Romily’s next question. ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘What the hell went wrong? And why couldn’t you stop it?’
‘We did our best, but Mrs Hartley’s body just wasn’t prepared for the fight it faced. Once she started to haemorrhage, there was nothing we could do.’
Unable to believe she was uttering the words, Romily said, ‘How long does she have?’
‘I doubt she’ll last the night.’
Her eyes filling with tears, she turned away. With one hand clenched into a tight fist, she pressed it hard against her mouth to stop a cry escaping. Oh God, this couldn’t be happening. Not Allegra. Not dying.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Allegra’s funeral took place on a bright and sunny spring day, just as the first of the daffodils burst into flower. Reverend Tate took the service and droned on in his monotonous, self-satisfied voice about the renewal of life and how Allegra’s indomitable spirit would live on through her child. And what would he know about Allegra’s spirit? Florence wanted to know.
Those closest to Allegra were now gathered around the grave, a small, mixed group of mourners – Miss Romily, Hope, Miss Flowerday, Mrs Partridge, Mr Fitzwilliam, Dr Garland back from his holiday, Wing Commander Abbott, and the biggest surprise of all, Arthur Devereux. Nobody had expected to see him today, but here he was, large as life and just as unpleasant. Florence wanted to think well of him for coming, but somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to believe that he had done it for an unselfish reason.
The casket was now being slowly lowered into the gaping hole. Florence couldn’t bear to look at the wooden box that contained the body of a young woman who had been so vibrantly full of life. What a dreadful waste. And what of poor Elijah? God only knew how he had taken the news.
Miss Romily had volunteered to be the one to write and tell him what had happened. How she had found the right words was beyond Florence. She had found it hard enough telling Billy, even though he didn’t really know Allegra. All her letters to him so far had been written with the sole purpose of keeping his spirits up and to let him know that she loved him and was planning for their future when the war was over. Not one word of complaint or pessimism had she written, not even when his mother had been so rude to her.
In so many ways Allegra had been an enigma to Florence. In the blink of an eye she could switch from being full of fiery temper to being funny and warm and gentle. Many a time she had reminded Florence of a cat – purring contentedly one minute, but when provoked, showing her claws. Life had never been dull with her around, that much was true.
To the left of Florence was Hope. She had cried when Miss Romily had returned from the hospital in the early hours of the morning with the awful news. They had all waited up for her to come back, eager to hear that the baby was born safely. Never had it crossed Florence’s mind that Miss Romily would come home to tell them Allegra was dead.
And now there was a motherless baby to care for. One thing Florence knew for sure, the child would not be short of love and attention here at Island House. The infant was now installed in the bedroom next door to Stanley’s old room. The arrival of a baby confused Bobby at first, and then he adopted the air of a protective guard dog and patrolled the landing outside her door. If she so much as whimpered, Bobby barked and came looking for someone to see to her.
Mrs Bunch had offered to mind the infant along with Annelise while the rest of them attended the funeral today, but she had made it clear that she couldn’t take on any regular sort of commitment to looking after either child.
Last night and unable to sleep, Florence had padded quietly down the stairs to make herself a drink and had found Miss Romily in the kitchen, Isabella in the crook of her arm taking milk from a bottle. ‘I was just thinking how like Allegra she looks,’ she’d said to Florence. She’d stroked the baby’s cheek tenderly. ‘Whatever am I going to do with you?’ she’d murmured.
Those words had stayed with Florence, and she thought of them now as the mourners took it in turns to throw a handful of earth onto the coffin. Whatever am I going to do with you? Had it been no more than a turn of phrase, or did it mean more: that Miss Romily would take on the full responsibility of the child?
The funeral over, and back at the house, Roddy still couldn’t believe that Allegra was gone. How could anyone so vital and full of promise be dead?
It pained him that for so much of her young life the poor girl had experienced more than her fair share of unhappiness and disappointment, and that when finally she had found contentment in marrying Elijah, a happy ending was to be denied her.
She had actually said on her wedding day, when Roddy had been alone with her preparing to walk her into the church, that ever since she was a child she had somehow believed she wasn’t worthy of knowing real happiness. ‘It’s my fate,’ she’d said, ‘to be denied a happy ending.’
At the time he had dismissed her comment as nothing but an example of her characteristically Latin melodramatic nature, but it had remained with him for days and weeks afterwards. Then last month, when Allegra had contacted him to request he draw up a will for her, that conversation had returned to haunt him. He’d told himself that he was overreacting, that she was only doing what was sensible now that she was married and had a child on the way, as well as an inheritance to safeguard. Yet now, as he sat in the drawing room with Romily and Hope to explain the contents of Allegra’s will, he couldn’t help but believe she’d had a genuine premonition of her death.
Arthur hovered outside the closed door of the drawing room. Had it really been necessary for Roddy to exclude him from the reading of Allegra’s will? Fair enough, it was unlikely his cousin would have left him anything, but Roddy had been gratuitously high-handed in his manner, treating Arthur like a badly behaved schoolboy instructed to wait outside the headmaster’s study.
With one ear listening out for Florence or Mrs Partridge, he kept the other to the door, hoping to catch the gist of what was being said. To be honest, he wouldn’t have guessed at Allegra being sensible enough to put a will together, but then neither had he imagined her dying so young.
Other than surprise, he had felt scant emotion when he’d heard from Hope that their cousin was dead. He’d made all the right noises, of course he had, had even said he would come for the funeral, but he’d merely applied himself to going through the motions of what he knew was expected of him. Had he behaved differently, Irene might have made a fuss. While his wife accepted there was no real bond between the members of his family, she still favoured an old-fashioned approach of upholding the pretence that one cared, no matter how superficially. In actual fact it suited Irene perfectly that their involvement with his family was so cursory, as she would forever be tainted within the Devereux clan – what was left of it – as the girlfriend who had treated Kit so badly by jumping ship to attach herself to Arthur.
Understandably, Irene had been alarmed at the news of Allegra’s death – dying in childbirth was a subject she did not want to dwell on – and for some unaccountable reason she had declared that she would accompany Arthur to the funeral. He’d vetoed that at once. ‘I don’t want you putting yourself, or the baby, through any unnecessary strain,’ he’d said, brooking no argument. ‘A funeral’s no place for a woman in your condition.’
‘I’m beginning to think you intend to keep me a prisoner in a gilded cage until the child is born,’ she’d responded with a sharpness to her tone he didn’t recognise. He’d noticed also that she had taken to looking at him oddly these days, as though trying to figure him out. And what would you think if you knew you were married to a cold-blooded killer? he often found himself thinking when she asked him to pass her the marmalade at breakfast, or enquired over dinner how his day had gone.
