Thirty-Two
Dorrie made her way to Sawle House, her tummy burning with sickly acid, keeping her ears as sharp as Corky’s for danger, and her nerves stinging as if attacked by a swarm of wasps. She felt she was about to dangle herself on the edge of a precipice. She was en route to see Honoria Sanders and she must be vitally careful how she broached ‘the matter’ with her.
As fate would have it Honoria was walking away from her high wooden gates, striding out in slacks and brogues, silk headscarf, white-blonde curly fringe and pouting scarlet lips. She had a Morris Eight but loved to walk.
‘Hello Dorrie,’ she waved. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day? I love all these scrummy yellow and brown leaves blown about everywhere, don’t you?’
Dorrie enjoyed crunching through dry late autumn leaves and hearing them crackling underfoot but today the sweeps of leaves alongside the bottom of the hedgerows were soggy from the recent downpour of rain and she was watching her step.
‘Hello Honoria, I’ve set out to see you actually.’ Dorrie forced her reply out cheerily – after all, she could be facing a murderess.
‘How nice. Shall we walk together? Along here – I so love being in among the trees, especially those around Merrivale.’
‘You do?’ Dorrie knew stabs of alarm.
‘Why, of course, and I know why you’ve come to see me.’
Honoria’s usually warm eyes narrowed to slits sparking with malice.
Dorrie tried to turn and run but her feet felt iced to the ground. Her heartbeat thundered as if it would explode against her ribs.
From her coat pocket Honoria whipped out a handgun and shot Dorrie cleanly between the eyes.
Dorrie awoke with a loud cry, slapping her hand up to the chillingly real piercing pain in her forehead. Wiping the perspiration off her face and neck she reached, trembling, to sip from a glass of water. A previous nightmare had featured Esther shooting her dead in a busy Faith’s Fare, after curling up her lip and screaming at her, ‘Traitor! I thought you were my friend.’
‘I am your friend, Esther,’ Dorrie had whispered through the night, while gripped with the horror of her dreamt death. ‘That’s why I’m seriously considering getting a warning to you somehow. If the world, through Camilla, was to find out you are really a man, your life would become unbearable. You’d be hounded out of everywhere you go. You would probably go to prison for tricking Sedgewick Mitchelmore into a sham marriage and inheriting his estate.’
Now, having suffered a second nightmare, Dorrie knew she must steel herself and go ahead and try to save her friend from unimaginable torment – Esther could be thrown into a male prison.
Putting aside the possibility of endangering herself (her suspicions might be wrong after all – and she hoped they were) she was sure it would be best not to approach Esther but Honoria, in a roundabout way using natural chit-chat; Dorrie now saw Honoria as the driving force between the sisters. The following mid-morning she set off for Sawle House.
Honoria’s long-serving maid-of-all-work showed her into the spacious, rather sumptuous and sensually endowed drawing room. ‘I’ll fetch Madam down from upstairs. We’ve been packing for her long winter trip.’
‘Thank you, Letty. So you’re wintering in sunnier climes? I know Mrs Sanders finds English winters wet and dismal.’ There was always a sense of pleasure within Honoria’s home and Dorrie felt soothed. Surely she had been letting her imagination run away; surely her presumptions about both sisters were absurd.
In a wrap of sultry perfume Honoria entered the drawing room. Every muscle in Dorrie’s body tensed. Honoria was wearing the exact same clothes as in her nightmare. Dorrie slapped on her friendliest smile. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, Honoria. You see, I’m feeling at a loose end . . .’
‘Darling Dorrie, you could never be an interruption,’ Honoria purred effusively, kissing Dorrie heartily on both cheeks then folding her in a warm hug. Dorrie felt crushed by her friend’s heaving bosom. Bracelets jangled on both of Honoria’s wrists. Dorrie laughed as she always did at these times but the embrace today unnerved her. ‘Letty can carry on without me. I only get in her way really and she’s sweet enough to tolerate me. She’s my absolute treasure.
‘Let’s have a large drop of rum to clear the tubes, just the ticket for these colder days. My second husband, or was it my third, was a great believer in it warding off the evils of colds and ’flu. So you’re feeling a bit low, poor darling. Has it something to do with the recent stay of your sister-in-law? I’ve heard via the jungle drums that she’s a bit of a nightmare.’
The last word, apt to the present situation, unsettled Dorrie but Honoria had offered the ideal opening. ‘You’re correct on both counts actually. I do find Camilla very trying.’ While sipping the rum, the exotic smell and taste of the strong nectar giving welcome warmth to her shaky insides, Dorrie sat on the end of one sumptuously plump sofa next to the crackling grate. Honoria lounged like some smouldering screen siren, her feet in fluffy slippers, on the sofa opposite.
Dorrie gave an account of Camilla’s views of Verity’s future, Jack and the wedding. ‘It was such a relief that she’s leaving the arrangements to us, although I have the sneaking suspicion that when we get nearer the date Camilla will come down and interfere with everything. When I mentioned as much to Verity, she scoffed and said her mother had just better not dare do any such thing. I suppose I’m just being silly but I do want Verity to have the perfect day.’
‘You’re never silly, Dorrie. You’re a brick and the most wonderful person. Thank God Verity had you and Greg to turn to when her parents threw her out. In my opinion parents should accept their children exactly as they are and support them through thick and thin.’ Dorrie felt that last was said with feeling. ‘Just make it clear to the old bat that every arrangement made is set in stone and non-negotiable.’
‘Well, I could do but I’m not sure I have the right. Verity is not my daughter.’
‘You’ve been her mother for the last few months and this Camilla has gladly left the wedding schedule to all of you here, so of course you’ve got the right.’ Smoking from a jet cigarette holder, Honoria grinned catlike, with relish. ‘Put the bitch thoroughly in her place. I would. You try to, Dorrie, go on, I dare you.’
Dorrie smiled at the other woman’s mischievous expression. ‘Verity will have the wedding she wants, I swear on that. You’ve encouraged me; I always get a lift from you, Honoria.’
‘It’s what friends and neighbours are for. Another tot of rum, darling?’
‘Just a tot, please.’ While Honoria was reaching for the rum decanter, Dorrie plunged in. ‘Actually, Camilla said that during the war she was with friends in the Dorchester and one of them knew you, mentioned something about you and a relative – um, Chester, I think it was. I can’t say I recall you or Esther mentioning a Chester. Camilla is a prying woman, if she were here she’d question you like a dog gnawing at a bone. I hope I’m not speaking out of turn – I thought perhaps you and Esther might have suffered a sad loss . . .’
Honoria passed over Dorrie’s replenished glass, looking strangely solemn and very sad. She was silent for a while. Dorrie could see she was chewing over something in her mind. Honoria exhaled so deeply Dorrie grew anxious she would pass out, and on that melancholy sigh Dorrie knew she had nothing to fear from her friend.
Honoria shook her head resignedly. ‘I knew this day would come, but at least I know I can trust you, Dorrie. I’m going to reveal something to you that I trust you to take to the grave. There was a Chester. He wasn’t a blood relative. He was Esther’s first husband, and quite frankly, he was an evil bastard. It’s to my lasting sorrow that I introduced him into Esther’s life; he was my lover and when things between us fizzled out he swept poor Esther, who had fallen for him, off her feet. Our parents adored him, he had such charm, and they called him the son they had always hoped for.
‘I didn’t know for years he was cruel and controlling to Esther, and that he was free with his fists. She put a brave face on things and he was very careful not to leave a visible mark on her. Poor Esther thought if she bore him a son he’d change and respect her but when she had finally conceived he beat her in one of his drunken rages. It brought on a late miscarriage. She was nearly seven months along, and not only did she lose the child she also lost her womb and nearly her life. It left her terribly physically and emotionally scarred. Now she can’t stand the thought of anyone seeing her disfigured body.
‘She came to her senses and came to live with me. It was a relief when Chester was killed in a motor accident some months later. It meant dear Esther didn’t have to go through the trauma and indignity of a divorce. You can understand why he has never been mentioned. Esther had quite successfully shut that part of her past out of her mind. Then she met Sedgewick Mitchelmore and made a new life for herself. As you can imagine, Dorrie, I’d do anything – anything – to stop her being hurt in any way again.’
‘Oh yes, absolutely, Honoria, because Greg and I feel the same away about our family members, and you have my word that this confidence will never pass from my lips. I’ve forgotten about it already.’ Dorrie downed the last of her rum, angry with herself. How on earth could she have thought Esther was really a man? Dorrie might be the reliable, down-to-earth one in her family but she had also been more than a little shameful . . . But there was the matter of whether Honoria had paid a thug to kill the two young blackmailers for Esther’s sake. She would think it all through on the walk home. ‘Tell me, dear, where are you off to for the winter?’