Her face was so alight with life and health and radiance. And that gay voice of hers reciting plans for the future.
This sounds as though I was eavesdropping, but that is not so. I was perfectly visible to Elsa. Both she and Amyas knew I was there. She waved her hand at me and called up that Amyas was a perfect bear that morning—he wouldn’t let her rest. She was stiff and aching all over.
Amyas growled out that she wasn’t as stiff as he was. He was stiff all over—muscular rheumatism. Elsa said mockingly: “Poor old man!” And he said she’d be taking on a creaking invalid.
It shocked me, you know, their lighthearted acquiescence in their future together whilst they were causing so much suffering. And yet I couldn’t hold it against her. She was so young, so confident, so very much in love. And she didn’t really know what she was doing. She didn’t understand suffering. She just assumed with the naïve confidence of a child that Caroline would be “all right,” that “she’d soon get over it.” She saw nothing, you see, but herself and Amyas—happy together. She’d already told me my point of view was old-fashioned. She had no doubts, no qualms—no pity either. But can one expect pity from radiant youth? It is an older, wiser emotion.
They didn’t talk very much, of course. No painter wants to be chattering when he is working. Perhaps every ten minutes or so Elsa would make an observation and Amyas would grunt a reply. Once she said:
“I think you’re right about Spain. That’s the first place we’ll go to. And you must take me to see a bullfight. It must be wonderful. Only I’d like the bull to kill the man—not the other way about. I understand how Roman women felt when they saw a man die. Men aren’t much, but animals are splendid.”
I suppose she was rather like an animal herself—young and primitive and with nothing yet of man’s sad experience and doubtful wisdom. I don’t believe Elsa had begun to think—she only felt. But she was very much alive—more alive than any person I have ever known….
That was the last time I saw her radiant and assured—on top of the world. Fey is the word for it, isn’t it?
The bell sounded for lunch, and I got up and went down the path and in at the Battery door, and Elsa joined me. It was dazzlingly bright there coming in out of the shady trees. I could hardly see. Amyas was sprawled back on the seat, his arms flung out. He was staring at the picture. I’ve so often seen him like that. How was I to know that already the poison was working, stiffening him as he sat?
He so hated and resented illness. He would never own to it. I dare say he thought he had got a touch of the sun—the symptoms are much the same—but he’d be the last person to complain about it.
Elsa said:
“He won’t come up to lunch.”
Privately I thought he was wise. I said:
“So long, then.”
He moved his eyes from the picture until they rested on me. There was a queer—how shall I describe it—it looked like malevolence. A kind of malevolent glare.
Naturally I didn’t understand it then—if his picture wasn’t going as he liked he often looked quite murderous. I thought that was what it was. He made a sort of grunting sound.
Neither Elsa nor I saw anything unusual in him—just artistic temperament.
So we left him there and she and I went up to the house laughing and talking. If she’d known, poor child, that she’d never see him alive again…Oh, well, thank God she didn’t. She was able to be happy a little longer.
Caroline was quite normal at lunch—a little preoccupied; nothing more. And doesn’t that show that she had nothing to do with it? She couldn’t have been such an actress.
She and the governess went down afterwards and found him. I met Miss Williams as she came up. She told me to telephone a doctor and went back to Caroline.
That poor child—Elsa, I mean! She had that frantic unrestrained grief that a child has. They can’t believe that life can do these things to them. Caroline was quite calm. Yes, she was quite calm. She was able, of course, to control herself better than Elsa. She didn’t seem remorseful—then. Just said he must have done it himself. And we couldn’t believe that. Elsa burst out and accused her to her face.
Of course she may have realized, already, that she herself would be suspected. Yes, that probably explains her manner.
Philip was quite convinced that she had done it.
The governess was a great help and standby. She made Elsa lie down and gave her a sedative, and she kept Angela out of the way when the police came. Yes, she was a tower of strength, that woman.
The whole thing became a nightmare. The police searching the house and asking questions, and then the reporters, swarming about the place like flies and clicking cameras and wanting interviews with members of the family.
A nightmare, the whole thing….
It’s a nightmare, after all these years. Please God, once you’ve convinced little Carla what really happened, we can forget it all and never remember it again.
Amyas must have committed suicide—however unlikely it seems.
End of Meredith Blake’s Narrative.
Narrative of Lady Dittisham