Circles of Fate Read online

Anita realized that before her holiday was over, a meeting with Claude Perryman was inevitable. She had told Cathy that she had shared a teacup gossip session with Monica Perryman, without saying what they had talked of. Cathy, not knowing she was doing anything wrong, had told Claude Perryman. Naturally enough, he wanted to meet the person who had shared not only his wife’s last hours on earth, but also her last thoughts.

  When he invited Edward, Cathy and herself to his house for dinner, she accepted helplessly, because she couldn’t think up a kind reason for refusing.

  “It’s going to be a hellish evening,” she confided sourly to Edward.

  He frowned over her choice of adjective, and then he said blandly:

  “Ticklish. Whatever is required of you, I’m sure you will do it beautifully.”

  “I might have to lie,” she said, smiling over his choice of words, which conveyed a certain sensitivity and also knowledge. Perplexing, because Edward couldn’t know, and the other was something she did not associate with him. His air of waiting told her he expected her to say more. She considered her last words. Keeping someone else’s secret was a tricky business. She decided she had already said more than she should.

  For obvious reasons she felt very nervous about the visit. To give herself courage, she put on her prettiest dress and took extra care with her make-up. She thought it must be a primitive instinct to want to put on war paint before going into battle.

  The road they took curved out of town, meandered on a lonely course, skirting rough outcrop that yielded occasional, skittish glimpses of sea curling sweetly into pebble-strewn coves. All the while they were gaining height and, although the road narrowed fiercely, Edward maintained a steady speed. He drove the hired car with native aplomb, gritting his teeth and sighing gingerly past the odd, speeding oncoming vehicle.

  The air softened and the shadows quietened in the swiftly falling dusk, and now they were never very long out of sight of the sea, and when they couldn’t see it they could hear its soothing, slapping motion. Cathy indicated that Edward should take the next right fork.

  An avenue of trees swept them into almost complete darkness, jealously protective, standing guard over the house on its lofty, remote, secluded hill setting.

  Edward parked the car and they got out. Far below them the sea rose and fell on the gentlest breath, a pattern of soft jewel colours: jade and amethyst, with a deeper bluish violet rimming the horizon.

  Cathy and Edward were already making tracks over the trodden-down pebble chippings to the door which bounced open as they approached. Reluctantly, Anita followed.

  Although he employed a housekeeper and two maids, Claude Perryman provided a welcoming homely touch by personally opening the door to greet them. Her adversary, as Anita thought of him, was a deceptively mild-looking man of average height and looks. His hair was sandy and very lightly flecked with grey, and she didn’t find him at all alarming because, through Monica, she knew him so well. That in itself produced an element of danger. She would have to step carefully.

  “So good of you to come,” he said.

  “Good of you to ask us,” responded Edward.

  “Before we settle down to a drink, perhaps you’d like to see over the house?” His eyes – the pale brown of a very dry sherry – fixed on Anita.

  “That would be nice,” she managed, feeling her smile stiffen on her lips. And yet it was a lovely house and in happier circumstances she would have welcomed this rare opportunity to explore, and probe, and delight in the way natural materials had been used: pine and local stone.

  All the downstairs rooms, including the patio, radiated from the huge L-shaped living-room. Upstairs, each bedroom had its own private bathroom. The one desolate note was the unused nursery wing. Perhaps that was the reason ...

  The rest of the thought trailed away as her eyes unexpectedly locked with her host’s. Oh, yes, she must tread carefully.

  SIX

  Claude, as he asked to be called, provided them each with a drink. Talk was general. After a while a pretty sloe-eyed girl came in to shyly announce that dinner was ready. Again talk flowed easily, through the first two courses. Just when Anita was beginning to feel as contented as a supine kitten, her host pounced.

  “Tell me, Miss Hurst, what brings you to Leyenda?”

  “Oh, please,” she said, “if I’m to call you Claude, you must call me Anita.”

  “I was hoping you would say that,” he said.

  A pause.

  “The usual reason, I suppose. I’m on holiday.”

  “That’s not a usual reason, Anita.” He seemed to linger over her name, paw it about almost, then he went on : “We don’t attract tourists – yet.”

  “I see one cannot dissemble with you, Claude. It is my holiday, but I do have an ulterior motive for choosing Leyenda.”

  She knew her real reason for coming would mystify him. He wouldn’t understand the strange urge that had made her want to visit her mother’s island, an urge that had a frightening dark side which she was almost afraid to explore. The feeling that she had had no hand in this, but had been made to come ... to find out. And then it, whatever it was, left her. No, he wouldn’t understand all that, so she put it into words he would understand.

  “I was left a piece of property. I came out to inspect it before deciding whether to hang on to it, with a view to turning it into a commercial enterprise, or sell.”

  “And?”

  “I have decided to sell.”

  “It didn’t live up to expectations, commercially?”

  “On the contrary. It exceeded them.”

  “I don’t see –?”

  “Somebody else had a prior claim,” she said.

  He looked frankly puzzled. “But I thought you said the property was yours?”

  “It is, but –”

  “Anita hasn’t a tidy business mind,” cut in Edward. “She means an emotional claim.”

  “Really!” Up went the sandy eyebrows. “Do you? Let me tell you my golden rule for success. Never mix sentiment with business.”

  “A man after my own heart,” applauded Edward. But not after mine, thought Anita. Pilar did have a prior claim, emotional, sentimental, call it what you like. She’d lived in that house for more than thirty years and nothing, neither rising property prices, not your incredulity, Mr Claude Perryman, will make me turf her out. And something else, now I know why Monica was leaving you, and if I’d been in her shoes I would have contemplated doing exactly the same.

  Everybody seemed to be looking at her and for a moment she thought she had blurted her thoughts out aloud. Until she realized it was her fierce frown that was attracting attention.

  “I was wondering –” Massive gulp. She would have to say something to account for her ferocious look. Oh, inspiration! Where are you?

  “Is this –” Her fork poked at the meat on her plate, her eyes took on a look of pleading – “octopus?”

  Edward paled and stopped chewing. Cathy blinked and hastily set down her own knife and fork. Claude threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “My dear, delightful child. What a refreshing person you are!”

  “Well, is it?”

  Yes, is it? asked Cathy’s and Edward’s eyes, although Cathy’s mouth looked less grim and was a mere twitch away from a smile.

  “Actually – I won’t tease you – no.”

  “Oh, good! Not that it isn’t delicious, but then I’ve heard that so is octopus.”

  “So it is.”

  “It’s the thought, isn’t it?”

  “A bad thought,” said Claude, “if it stops one tasting something new. My adventurous spirit demands new tastes, new experiences.”

  Anita wriggled uncomfortably. He wasn’t looking at her in the way a newly bereaved man looks at a woman. A quick glance at Edward and Cathy told her that they saw nothing amiss. She hoped she wasn’t turning into one of those horribly vain creatures who imagines that every man she meets must fall a little in love with her
.

  She wondered when he would ask her about Monica. Perhaps he was waiting for her? No, she decided, he was waiting for a suitable moment to broach an extremely delicate subject. Delicate, or sheer distasteful?

  He was a man in enforced mourning, a man who liked only nice new experiences and would be careful to avert his gaze from the less pleasant aspects of life.

  But over coffee his expression grew so pensive that Anita wondered whether she had misjudged him.

  “Cathy,” he said, “take Edward over to the record-player and select some music. Something soothing, please.”

  “Of course, Mr Perryman.” Being an employee, Cathy did not use the too familiar Claude.

  Edward threw Anita a quick, reassuring look, and followed Cathy. It was getting to be a habit, thought Anita with a surge of affection, following Cathy.

  When she looked back at Claude, she saw that the cold, hard man of her earlier surmise had gone. In his place was a humbler individual with a mouth twisted in boyish anguish. He even blinked his sparse, sandy lashes once or twice to disperse a sudden brightness in his eye.

  “You had tea, I believe, with my late wife, in the airport restaurant while waiting for the plane.”

  “Yes, Claude.”

  “How did she look? How was her hair dressed? Did she mention me?”

  Cathy and Edward, and even the Spanish housekeeper who was busily clearing the table they had recently vacated, tried hard not to look at this broken man ... this bared soul. Anita found herself wanting to hold those twisting fingers. Hold them, comfort them, warm them.

  She said: “She looked wonderful. But then, she must always have looked wonderful. She was bright and cheerful and longing to get back. She was as excited as a little girl at the thought of coming home.”

  “To me ... to me? Did she say that?”

  He was so eager, so pathetically eager, and it was such a little thing, such a tiny lie.

  “When she spoke of you her voice was warm with affection.”

  “We were devoted to each other.”

  “I know, Claude. She was excited at the prospect of being with you again.”

  “Madre mia!” The cry of broken anguish came from the housekeeper and she ran weeping from the room.

  Cathy and Edward finally succeeded in finding a record.

  Claude’s: “Thank you, my dear,” had to compete with Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. And, like reflections in the water, Claude’s expression changed, grew less tragic, gained a bright bird-cunning.

  “Did she show her jewellery to you?”

  “Yes, her watch. And I noticed her engagement ring. That was lovely.”

  “No” – impatiently – “her other jewellery. She had a yen for expensive trinkets. I spoilt her, encouraged her little whims. She’d see a bracelet or a brooch and I’d buy it for her. I could refuse her nothing.”

  “Nothing?” she challenged.

  His eyes fell away. “I am noted hereabouts for my generosity.” His tone held faint reproach.

  “I believe you. I don’t need a testimonial.”

  “You’re very sharp, aren’t you?” He spoke softly under cover of the music. To the others he was still the tragic widower talking to the sympathetic new friend. Only Anita was aware of the change in him.

  “You know, don’t you?” he said.

  She hesitated for a bare fraction of a second.

  “Yes.”

  “Monica told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose she was only coming back to me because she knew which side her bread was buttered on.”

  Even then, facing his smarmy arrogance, Anita did not tell him that she wasn’t coming back, not in the way he meant. She couldn’t be that cruel.

  “Earlier, why did you say the things you did? I’m grateful, of course. In a small community such as this, gossip is bread, butter and jam. It wouldn’t do the image any good for people to know there was a crack in my marriage. I’m curious to know your motive, though.” “No motive. You fooled me. For a moment, I honestly thought you cared.”

  “Did you? Did you really? I shall miss her, of course. She was my wife.”

  “You’ll find consolation, elsewhere.”

  “I doubt it. Too difficult.”

  “The image?”

  “Precisely. Unless I meet a nice sympathetic girl from outside.”

  “I’m outside. Is that what you mean?”

  “You’re delightfully frank. Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “I’m going to be even franker. You don’t attract me in that way.”

  She almost added, I don’t even like you, but thought that might be a bit too blunt.

  “A pity,” he said, “because you fascinate me. I can’t court you openly. That would not be respectable. You will have to come to me.”

  “That I will never do.”

  “Never is a long time. Are you certain you didn’t see my wife’s jewellery?”

  “She wasn’t wearing any. Except her watch and ring, which I have already mentioned.”

  “She didn’t wear her good stuff. For safety reasons she carried it in a leather pouch which she hid on her person. It was her little idiosyncrasy not to trust it with her luggage.”

  “I didn’t see it,” she said.

  It wasn’t until later that she realized he had performed a sleight of hand trick on her. The important thing hadn’t been wanting her, although she did not doubt that he had been sounding her out and would have acted upon any encouragement. Neither did he care a tinker’s cuss how his wife had looked, nor how she had dressed her hair. What he was really interested in was the jewellery.

  The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that the little leather pouch hadn’t been found round Monica’s neck, or wherever she was supposed to keep it.

  Had the jewellery been in his possession, his persistence would seem pointless.

  He loved beautiful things, his house bore witness to that fact. And, like a proportion of connoisseurs and collectors, he loved nothing better than showing off his treasures. How proudly he had taken them round his house, pointing out things of particular interest! Had his wife’s pieces of jewellery been in his wall-safe, she had little doubt that they too would have been lovingly brought out so that they could exclaim over his good taste and pay tribute to his generosity. His was the type of self-appreciation that would need to be constantly fed. He wouldn’t miss the opportunity of subjecting his devotion to beautiful things to their scrutiny and appreciation.

  No, the things weren’t in Claude’s possession. So, where were they?

  She was suddenly vividly recalling Monica’s words. ‘If his ways are not your ways, tear up his letters and give him back his trinkets while they are just that, and not perks that go with the job, paid for with years of bending to his will and flattering his silly ego.’

  At the time there had been a little too much bitterness and cynicism for her taste, but after meeting Claude she could better understand what Monica had had to put up with and why she felt the way she did.

  Monica had then said, not in the way of a confidence this time, but as though she was speaking her thoughts, ‘They are mine now, no matter what the outcome. I’ve taken care of that.’

  At the time it had been too complex to fathom out, but now the meaning was crystal.

  Monica had taken her jewellery with her, probably at Claude’s insistence. She could imagine him saying: ‘These are meant to be worn. Jewels should adorn, not be left to gather dust in some dark strong-room.’ Meaning: ‘I want your sister to see how generous I am.’ Monica, in humouring him, had found it suited her purpose very well. It might not even have been planned. At the last moment, perhaps, she might have decided to salt away her hard-earned trinkets, as she had called them: a nest-egg to draw on when she could no longer count on Claude’s support. She could have put them in a safe-deposit box somewhere, under an assumed name, probably. Or she might even have left them with her sister for safe-keeping.r />
  It was a joke, if a macabre one with not a jot of humour, and with a bitter back-bite.

  She hoped Claude Perryman never got his wife’s jewellery back.

  SEVEN

  The second week loomed with the ominous reminder that the days were fast slipping away. Anita was meeting Felipe straight after breakfast. He’d phoned to arrange it a very short while ago and the sound of his voice, coupled with the prospect of seeing him again so soon, filled her with a warm happiness.

  She was too shrewd to forget totally the impracticability of a union between her and Felipe, but this once she chose to turn her back on common sense and suspend judgement. She didn’t doubt that it would eventually catch up with her, it always did, as Edward would be the first to point out. But just occasionally a moment comes along as special as a red jelly-bean in a bag full of green jelly-beans, and like a child she was going to relish her moment to the full.

  She was rather pleased with her reasoning. Because she was fond of Edward, she wanted him to be happy too, and he could so easily miss his moment, let it slip away while he was considering all the angles, eliciting the truth as he would call it.

  “Edward,” she said, wresting his attention from a warm, crisp new roll.

  “M’m?”

  “I take it you’ve never married because you’ve never met the right girl. The reason, I suppose, is that you’ve been choosey. Of course, I appreciate that a man in your position must be selective about a wife. She’d have to be presentable because you’d have to present her to so many important clients. And intelligent, because if she wasn’t she’d bore you to death. And pretty, because you’d spend years looking at her. I suppose a girl who could fulfil two out of three would be a good cop, so therefore a girl who can meet all three conditions must be at a premium, and when you meet such a girl. What I’m trying to say is, Cathy is so perfect for you in every way and –” She broke off, partly because it seemed enormous cheek, but mainly because Edward was having a difficult time in controlling the straightness of his mouth.

  “You’re laughing at me,” she accused.

  “No, I’m not,” he assured her, thinking how pretty she looked this morning. Deliriously happy, obviously, yet sweet enough to spare a thought for a crusty old bachelor.