Master of the Outback Read online

  Hester responded with a look of utter amazement. “How? Why? An old tragic accident,” she snapped.

  “If you could just tell us what you know,” Bret answered, quietly enough but with a bite to it. “May we sit down?”

  Hester flapped her hands, taking the most ornate chair herself. “The verdict of accidental death was accepted. Why bring up such a painful episode now?”

  “Actually, Hester, you were the one who brought it to mind with that photograph. You were in it. You had your hand on Catherine Lytton’s shoulder.”

  “So?” Hester retorted, as if she had no need to answer anyone’s questions.

  Bret and Genevieve exchanged glances. “You loved her, Hester?” Genevieve prompted, very gently.

  Bret spread his hands “We make no judgements, Hester. Love is love, wherever we find it. All we want is for you to tell us what you can of her last day. We realise it’s very painful for you, but it might help to make the bad memories go away.”

  “We? We?” Hester’s dark eyes burned like coals. “You care for this young woman, Bret?” she asked sharply.

  “I do,” Bret said, reaching across to take Genevieve’s hand.

  “Dear God!” Hester sat in her outdated splendour, hands clasped tight, her stringy throat working.

  “Is it possible you were with Catherine at the end?” Genevieve asked. “She stepped too close to the edge and fell?”

  Hester put shaking arthritic hands over her face. “I might have been able to save her had I been there,” she said harshly. “She was alone. I was where I said I was. No one has ever doubted me.”

  “Only there are some doubts now,” Bret said. “It seems to me no one was all that sure where the others were—except my grandmother, who was with the housekeeper at the time. This is a big house, after all. Someone could have been out with Catherine?”

  Hester waved a hand aloft. “I had a friend from London staying with us at the time. A brilliant young violinist—Adeline Baker. Like me, she didn’t fulfil her promise,” she snorted.

  “Is she still alive?” Trevelyan asked.

  “She could be.” Hester looked as though she couldn’t care less. “At that time we were best friends. We made music together. We had so much in common. We went everywhere together in London. I was often invited to her family’s country home. And I was fool enough once to confide in Addie the emotions I felt for Catherine.”

  Bret started to feel hollow inside. It was coming—the telling disclosure. “And?”

  Hester fired up. “And Adeline was disgusted. I’ll never forget how she turned on me. She wanted to leave, but she couldn’t just up and go. She had to wait for transport.”

  “She was where at the time of Catherine’s accident?” Trevelyan kept his eyes trained on his great-aunt’s face.

  “Somewhere around,” Hester offered vaguely. “She had taken so violently against me. She made me feel like a really bad person. It can’t be bad to love someone, can it?” She turned her head to appeal to Genevieve. “Nothing ever happened between Catherine and me.”

  Genevieve seized her moment. “What about between Catherine and your brother, who was expected to marry Patricia?”

  Hester licked a salty tear off her upper lip. Genevieve got up quietly to find tissues.

  “I could see Geraint was as captivated as I was,” she said bleakly. “Patricia didn’t stand a chance against Catherine.”

  “So you’re saying he fell in love with Catherine too?” Bret now had confirmation of Genevieve’s claim.

  Grief came into Hester’s sunken eyes. She grasped the tissue Genevieve had handed her from a box, used it to blow her nose. “Poor Geraint. Poor me. I can’t talk about this any more, Bret. I know nothing else.”

  Genevieve knew intuitively Hester was lying.

  Bret had no intention of letting Hester go either. “Where was Adeline Baker that day? You do know.”

  Hester began fiddling with the gold tassel on her robe. “Out riding. She was an excellent horsewoman.”

  “That’s the tall young woman looking away in the photograph?” Trevelyan asked.

  Hester was starting to look rattled. “Yes, that’s Addie. She let me know exactly how she felt. She hated Catherine. She thought Catherine was leading me on. Or it seemed that way to her. It was totally untrue.” Hester couldn’t stop her voice from trembling.

  Trevelyan was getting a clearer picture. “So Catherine had gone riding; so had Adeline. It’s quite possible Adeline went after her, seeking a confrontation?”

  The more he probed, the more agitated Hester became. “Why are you doing this, Bret?”

  “I have to. Catherine, you see, was Genevieve’s maternal grandmother’s first cousin. They were very close. Catherine wrote to her.”

  Hester’s response surprised both Trevelyan and Genevieve. “I knew she wasn’t who she said she was,” she said wrathfully. “I used to catch glimpses of Catherine in her face and manner. I thought I was going ga-ga.”

  “Not you, Hester,” Trevelyan said very dryly. “I think Adeline Baker and her whereabouts on that day should have been taken much more seriously.”

  “But she barely knew Catherine.” Hester decided to offered a feeble protest. “She was a young woman of good family. No one wanted to draw Addie into it.”

  “So why all these years later would you have us believe Adeline did have something to do with it?” Trevelyan held Hester’s eyes.

  Hester shook her white head. “Addie would never have gone to such lengths.”

  “The two of you were to have returned to London together?” Genevieve asked, knowing they weren’t getting the full truth.

  Hester didn’t deign to look at her. “Not possible,” she said shortly.

  “Only it is possible,” Bret cut in. “Adeline could have gone after Catherine. She could have followed her to the escarpment.”

  “Which hardly makes her guilty of pushing Catherine off the cliff!” Hester hit back haughtily.

  Trevelyan’s mind was leaping from detail to detail, filling in the blanks. The irony was Adeline Baker might have harboured deep unresolved feelings for Hester. Hester had been a beautiful, gifted young woman.

  “You didn’t keep in touch with Adeline?” he asked.

  Hester bridled. “The day she left she told me she never wanted to have anything to do with me again. No one has to tell me twice. I should never have told her of my feelings for Catherine.”

  “It’s possible Adeline had feelings for you,” Genevieve suggested. “Love, hate—different sides of the same coin.”

  A light in Hester’s dark eyes flickered, then went out. “So Catherine won’t go peacefully?”

  “It seems not,” Trevelyan said. “Genevieve believes in some strange way Catherine is haunting her.”

  “God knows she’s haunted me all these years.” Hester dredged up a jagged sigh. “But what proof is there of what really happened?”

  “Adeline Baker may still be alive?”

  “Bret, she’d be an old woman—like me.” Hester shrugged that off.

  “And could we really ruin what’s left of her life?” Genevieve asked no one in particular, certain, without understanding why, that Adeline had done no wrong.

  “If she took Catherine’s?” Trevelyan challenged bluntly.

  Hester lifted a heavily beringed hand. “Bret, I won’t go on with this. I wouldn’t have harmed a hair of Catherine’s head. I loved her. The only person I’ve ever loved outside you, my father and my brother. I was never close to my mother. Even Derryl and Romayne seem like little strangers to me. My fault. I became a different person. Not a nice one. Losing Catherine finished me off. I’m innocent of any wrongdoing, but in my heart I’ve always felt I was to blame. Catherine has always
been watching me. I can understand Genevieve’s wanting to know. But I can offer you no more because I know no more.”

  “But you withheld from the investigation Adeline Baker’s dislike of Catherine,” Trevelyan couldn’t prevent himself from saying.

  Hester clasped her twisted, swollen fingers. “I wanted to say something. I was out of my mind with grief and worry. But I was a coward. If I’d pointed a finger at Addie, she would have spoken out against me. Turned my family against me. I had to measure the terrible reality of Catherine’s death with what Adeline could do to me in retaliation. I kept quiet. I’ve paid for it ever since.”

  It was impossible to miss the deep well of emotion that flooded Hester’s voice.

  “What you’re saying is your friend Adeline had far more to answer for than you?” Trevelyan asked. Hester was looking very old and defenceless. It upset him. His great-aunt had always been such a strange woman, but she was family.

  “It was a cover-up in a way,” Hester confessed abruptly. “We all knew Geraint was fascinated by Catherine. He couldn’t hide it. Certainly not from me or Patricia. But Patricia wouldn’t have hurt a fly. If Addie did meet up with Catherine and confront her anything could have happened. Perhaps Catherine backed up dangerously close to the lip of the cliff? She should have been warned. If it was Addie with her, she got away with it. And I let her.”

  Trevelyan rose, looking down at his great-aunt from his lean height. “I’ll check on your old friend Adeline Baker. I’ll have it done quietly.”

  “She’ll be dead.” Hester looked desperate for it to be so.

  “If she was involved, she will have been carrying an intolerable burden all these years.” Like you, he thought.

  Hester’s eyes looked like the eyes of a condemned woman. “I should have spoken up long, long ago. Don’t you see, Bretton? Catherine directed Genevieve here. Irrational, maybe, but what other explanation can there be? Coincidence? Catherine has never left.” She shot a piercing look at Genevieve. “The book can’t go ahead, of course. Out of the question. Genevieve knows too much. She can only be a reminder of Catherine. I want her to go away. My life has always been meaningless. You were only indulging me, anyway, Bret. Genevieve must go. I would be doing you a big favour.”

  Trevelyan felt a rush of anger. “There’s no question of Genevieve’s going, Hester,” he said, bringing to bear the full force of his authority.

  Hester stared up at him. “You’d betray me? You?” she cried with renewed vigour. “It was the same with Geraint. You’re crazy about her, aren’t you?”

  “Why all the drama?” He gave her a straight look. “Scarcely crazy, Hester. I love Genevieve. I want her for my wife. What we have is absolutely substantial. I recognised the woman I love the moment I laid eyes on her. You know all about the coup de foudre?”

  Hester didn’t look up. “What will happen will happen. I’ll have no part of it.”

  In the hallway hung with beautiful paintings in gilded frames, Trevelyan looked at Genevieve. “Did you believe her?”

  Genevieve met his searching gaze. “No.”

  Over dinner Derryl had his usual battery of complaints, but Trevelyan stopped him in mid-flow. “The place for you, Derryl, would be the city of your choice. You’ve never cared for our way of life.”

  “I’m like my mother there,” Derryl said, hunching his shoulders.

  “You could probably visit her.” Trevelyan chose that moment to drop his bombshell.

  “Wh-a-a-t?” Derryl looked as stunned as if his brother had given him permission to drop in on the Queen of England.

  “Life really is stranger than fiction,” Trevelyan said. “It’s only very recently, when I was going through Dad’s papers, I’ve discovered a thick wad of letters he’d shoved well away. Letters our mother had sent us. Strangely Dad kept them—but he certainly didn’t hand them over to us. We were brainwashed into believing our mother ran off with her lover. That’s what Dad wanted us to believe. Poor old George Melville was the fall guy. Dad would never have allowed it, had it been true. George wouldn’t have got off Djangala alive. There was no illicit love affair—just a long-standing friendship.”

  Derryl was hanging on his brother’s every word. “You’re serious?”

  “I’d like you to be serious too,” Trevelyan said firmly.

  “God!” Derryl breathed, as if he was scarcely able to take in this revelation. “Do you intend to contact her?”

  “Let’s say I’m working towards it.” Trevelyan turned his dark gaze to Genevieve. He had already confided in her. It was she who had convinced him he would always regret it if he didn’t contact his mother. Better yet, invite her back to Djangala.

  “Can I read her letters?” Derryl begged, looking immensely vulnerable.

  “Of course you can,” Trevelyan assured him. “Romayne will get hers as well. Dad hammered home the fact our mother had deserted him and us—her children. She had turned her back on her clear duty. The fact is we didn’t so much lose our mother as she lost us. She had to pay for not remaining under Dad’s total sway. That was what he wanted of all of us, wasn’t it? He was the boss. Undoubtedly our mother had her reasons for leaving,” he added grimly.

  Derryl sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. “I can’t wait to read them.”

  Trevelyan looked up at his brother. “You’ll find all the letters addressed to you on the desk in Dad’s study.”

  “This is like a great clarion call!” Derryl whooped.

  Genevieve and Trevelyan watched with great satisfaction as Derryl tore off in the direction of their late father’s study.

  They went for a walk in the garden. The night was blessedly cool after the heat of the day. Genevieve’s long loose hair blew in the breeze that came in from the desert. A billion desert stars glittered in the velvety black backdrop of the sky. No need to look for the Southern Cross: it hung above them, so bright it seemed to draw them upwards.

  “So what now?” Genevieve asked.

  Trevelyan had an arm loosely around her waist. Now he pulled her closer. He could feel the tension in her body. He knew they would never get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Catherine Lytton’s death. He couldn’t protect Genevieve from Hester’s revelations, much as he wanted to.

  “We can only go forward,” he said. “Let this whole sorry business drop.”

  “It’s certainly what Hester wants.” Genevieve’s mind was in a spin. “I thought she was trying to lay the blame at Adeline’s door.”

  “Who knows with Hester?” Trevelyan’s answer was grim. “The whole thing is plausible only if Adeline had strong feelings for Hester—feelings that couldn’t be brought out into the open. The young Hester would have had a lot to fear if her friend gave her sexual orientation away. Hester swears she had nothing to do with Catherine’s tragic end, but she managed to let slip that Adeline hated Catherine, leaving us to believe that could have triggered a confrontation.”

  Genevieve flinched. “Does the story never stop changing? Hester has never mentioned a thing about Adeline Baker before. She flew under the radar.”

  “Maybe Adeline had her suspicions of Hester?” Trevelyan suggested.

  “Doors open. Doors slam in your face,” Genevieve said with deep regret.

  “It’s such a long time ago. Many of the people who figured in the story are long dead. I just saw a mystery that needed to be solved.”

  He turned her to face him. “Genevieve, you must consider for your own peace of mind there was no mystery. Just a terrible accident.”

  “Hester implied otherwise. You know she did,” Genevieve said in a doleful voice.

  “Hester’s a great one for drama, but she’s right about the family falling about in shock. Those were different days, Genevieve. Love between two women would have been seen as incredibly taboo.”
/>   “It’s wrong to sit in judgement,” Genevieve said. “Hester has as good as told us the great burden of guilt she bore was not because of anything she did, but rather what she didn’t do.”

  “That’s about it,” Trevelyan said, with a finality that jolted Genevieve’s heart. “I can only tell you with certainty what I feel. All I know, all I can know, all I care about is you, Genevieve. It grieves me this whole business is preying on your mind.”

  “Of course it is!” she cried. Her heat was beating madly. “It won’t leave me, Bret. Please try to understand. I don’t control these feelings. Could Adeline Baker still be alive?”

  He tried as hard as he knew how to keep calm. “We can find out. People are living much longer these days through medical science.”

  “If she is alive, I’ll get on a plane,” Genevieve vowed.

  “And do what?” Trevelyan asked, in a way that made it sound foolish. “Go to her home? Attempt to interrogate her? That’s if you’re let in. More likely she’ll call the police. Think about it, Genevieve. There’s no satisfactory outcome to this. Adeline Baker wouldn’t admit to anything even if she did consent to see you. Why should she? You would be raking over a very painful episode in her life. One she would want to forget. She and Hester were close friends, yet they’ve had no contact in all these long years.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, Bret.” Genevieve shook her head sadly. “It just did not happen the way everyone said.”

  Trevelyan agreed, in spite of himself. But he said nothing. He just held her. Catherine Lytton’s story had taken on a life of its own.

  “And what’s to happen to me?” She lifted her face to him in distress. “I didn’t even know you, Bret, but I fell in love with you. I didn’t intend it. You didn’t intend it. It’s almost like the past reached out to bring us together.”

  “So think about that,” he urged strongly. “How would either of us know if that wasn’t Catherine’s intention all along?”