I look down. A doll. Evelyn’s missing doll, the rag doll that sat on my chest of drawers at Maitland.
I think, Of course, she left it in the car. In Samuel’s car, as we drove through the night back to Cocoa. I had forgotten. And now I’m clutching it like a talisman; I have carried it without thought from the car to the office, close to my ribs, seeking any kind of comfort I can find.
Everything you seek is here.
The words echo in my head. I stare at the doll’s brown button eyes, her pursed thread mouth. She’s a large creature, comfortable and homemade, constructed of some kind of sturdy cambric. The delicate pink dress, tied at the back of the neck, covers a lumpy abdomen that sounds crisply when I turn it over in my hands.
Not the orange blossoms, I think. The doll.
In the gap between the two sides of her dress, a seam runs all the way down her back, sewn together clumsily in large black stitches. I insert my finger beneath the thread and rip it off, and the doll’s cotton stuffing sags away, revealing the sharp white corner of a folded paper tucked inside.
I seem to have stopped breathing. I sit down, dizzy. Grasp the paper at the corner and work it free from the stuffing.
A letter, written close in small, black, familiar script, folded into a square.
I stick my trembling fingers back inside the doll. One by one, I pull them out, thirty-four of them in total. Thirty-four letters without envelopes, hidden inside the body of a rag doll.
I read swiftly, because Samuel will return any moment. Because when you’re gorging yourself, you cannot slow, you cannot stop to ponder the nature of what you’re gorging on. I try to read them in order, though I seem to be having trouble with the months and the days, and where they belong in sequence. My mind is too overstruck, I think. By the time I finish the last one, the longest one, written on the last day of February, passionate and devastating, I have gone numb, the way you might go numb if struck by an electric charge too intense to bear. If you have just been told, on perfect authority, that the earth is no longer a sphere but has turned into a cube. If you have just learned that your mistaken testimony has sent an innocent man to the gallows.
I think, Evelyn. I must get back to Evelyn. I must find Evelyn at once.
I stand and grasp the edge of a chair for balance, swaying a little, and that’s when I notice the small, delicate figure standing in the doorway. Wearing a thin cotton dress and a worn cardigan jacket. Staring at me from a face at once unknown and familiar, mouth altered and hair lengthened, like a statue of soft clay that has been reshaped by its creator.
“Virginia?” she whispers.
“Yes.”
Her voice is clipped and English, somewhat timid. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I arrived on the train this evening, and I didn’t know where else to go.”
I stand there, blinking at her. Holding the knob of a chair for support. Pulse knocking in my neck like a woodpecker. An expression of concern takes over the woman’s face, which is dainty and worn, empty of any cosmetics, a sad, dear, old-fashioned, elegant little face. One I feel I should recognize.
“I say. Are you quite all right?” She glances at my right shoulder. “Has something happened? Was that Samuel a moment ago? I’m afraid I’d fallen asleep in a chair. Such a long voyage, and then the train.”
“I—I beg your pardon. Should I know you?”
“Know me? Why, don’t you remember? Although I suppose we only met once, and not under the kindest of circumstances.” She holds out her hand. “I’m Clara. Simon’s sister. Just arrived from England.”
February 28, 1922
Dearest V,
The time has come to confess my sins, I think. You may think I should have done this sooner, and perhaps you’re right, but in admitting my own culpability I must necessarily deal in the culpability of others, and I suppose I still retain too much of my childhood sense of fair play. Only a bounder tells tales on his comrades.
But I have undertaken a rather uncertain project, you see, and above all I should hate to die without any hope of your one day knowing the truth, and perhaps excusing me in some small measure for the faults of my own hand. Your father has asked me to watch over you and Evelyn, in the event of calamity, and I will stand ready to obey him. Rather than returning his generous gift, which he sent to my bank without first seeking my approval, I have applied this sum to the mortgage I raised on Maitland three years ago, in order to fund the rejuvenation of my Florida enterprises. This fortune, therefore, redounds to you and Evelyn, who will inherit the plantation in the event of my misadventure. But the choice to rejoin me—to rejoin this marriage—remains yours. I can only hope that the events that follow will lure you in my direction, so that I may one day have the chance, if not the certainty, of winning you back, and allowing me the privilege of sharing in your future and that of our daughter.
Of course, I may not survive the trial of the next few months, in which case your choice will be a simple one.
Now to the confession. My first sin is fornication, which I suppose, since it occurred before we first met and resulted in no living issue, ought to be an affair that lies only between me and God. But as the effects of this act may illuminate what follows, and because I want no secrets left between us, I feel you should know of it. You see, in my great weakness, and to my even greater shame, I allowed myself to be seduced by Lydia in that fateful autumn of 1914, though I knew, even as I yielded, that I was violating what ought to have been a sacred trust—that of brotherhood—as well as God’s own law.
I won’t say any more about the act itself, because I don’t wish to wound you with details, except to assure you that it occurred only once, in extreme grief and confusion of mind—we had just received the War Office telegram, reporting my brother missing in action and presumed killed—and, I’m sorry to say, though of course this is no excuse, under the influence of a great deal of drink. So great, indeed, that I remember almost nothing of the moment itself, or its aftermath, and was therefore stunned when Lydia came to me a short while later to announce that she was expecting a baby.
As a physician, I naturally doubted that a pregnancy discovered so early could be any fault of mine, but I accepted my own responsibility to her—the fiancée of a brother I thought dead—and forbore to question her honor in the matter. We married at Christmas, as I told you, remaining chaste by mutual consent, and when she gave birth to Sammy six months later, I knew with certainty that a newborn of such size could not possibly belong to me; moreover, since my brother had departed for France fully ten months earlier, I had my doubts on that score, as well. Still I guarded her secret and loved the babe for his own sake—what else could I do, after all? The poor boy could not help the circumstances of his conception—and so I told you what I did about Sammy’s origins. I acknowledge that this account was not wholly true, but at the time I had no wish to betray Lydia, who had suffered so much, and moreover I was afraid, deathly afraid, that to admit any intimacy with her might mean losing you entirely.
I will add, however, that I had no idea I had been so cleverly manipulated until much later, which brings me to a second (and less worthy) deception, made for much the same reason as before: because I was afraid of losing you, who had, by then, become so necessary to my existence.
When I went to Lydia in September of 1917—my next leave after our time together in Paris, which sealed me to you forever—and asked her for a divorce, she surprised me by refusing. By the terms of the settlement, she reminded me, her father’s fortune would go to the two of us only if we remained married. If our union dissolved, the shipping company and all his other assets would revert back to him, to be divided upon his death between his two natural daughters. One of them, as I already told you, is Portia Bertram.
The other is my sister, Clara, whom he sired in Borneo.
(I tell you this in strictest confidence, for Clara herself is unaware of the connection, nor would I have realized it myself had not Lydia revealed it to me, after our marriage. I kno
w I can trust your discretion, dearest one.)
Until that moment, I had no idea that Lydia’s motives were so thoroughly venal. I pleaded with her, I even insinuated that I knew she had lied to me in the matter of Sammy’s paternity, but she held firm, throughout the winter and spring. You will remember my state of mind, during that time. I believe you thought I had doubts, that I lacked conviction. In fact, the opposite. I was frantic that I would lose you. I thought, if you learned of Lydia’s objection to the divorce, you would cut me off altogether. And I was increasingly desperate to be free of a marriage that—as I soon perceived—was not just poisonous but fraudulent. You see, Samuel arrived back in England the following summer, alive (as you know) and having just escaped from a German prison: a fact I learned not from Samuel himself, but from a mutual friend. I was subsequently astonished to discover that the War Office had known of his imprisonment since November of 1914, and that the Red Cross had duly facilitated an exchange of letters. Naturally I confronted Lydia—who had been living at Penderleath since the early weeks of the war, ostensibly to comfort and assist my parents, insinuating herself into their confidence and taking charge of all household matters—and though she denied it, I could only conclude that she must have hidden the fact of his imprisonment from us all this time. That she had intercepted the telegram that should have told us the news, intercepted his subsequent letters and answered them in our name: chosen, in fact, to allow her lover to believe his family had abandoned him rather than reveal how she had maneuvered me into marriage. After he escaped, she naturally got to him first; I can only imagine what lies she told to convince him of her innocence. Samuel, under her spell as ever, accepted her story. He never once visited Penderleath, never once saw my parents. When at last I contrived to meet him and attempt an explanation, he almost murdered me. There was nothing I could do to shake his faith in her.
I don’t know how any of this might have ended. I expect, desperate, I might have come to you and revealed everything, throwing myself on your mercy, begging you to take me anyway, to live with me as husband and wife in some other country, where no one could call it a lie. But then Samuel, out of spite, went to meet you in France, and from that meeting Lydia learned that you possessed a fortune of your own. She immediately conceived a plan: she would allow the divorce in return for ten thousand pounds.
I was desperate. I agreed. I thought I would find the money somehow, even if I had to beg your father to advance me that sum, which I was determined to repay.
And now we come to the third sin.
Lydia, it seems, had no intention of giving up her birthright to her illegitimate sisters. It was, I think, a point of pride with her, almost to obsession, that she alone should inherit her father’s wealth, or what remained of it by the end of the war. She moved back into her father’s house once the divorce petition was submitted, and there she poisoned him, little by little, in order to disguise her actions in what seemed like a natural decline. Suspicious, I went to visit, and upon a physical examination I knew at once what she had done. She wanted him to die before the decree absolute came through, so that Clara and Portia would never come into possession of her father’s business. I threatened to expose her; she threatened to withdraw the divorce petition. We argued for some time. In my fury, at one point, I said I would kill her if I had to. I am sure the servants heard me. They all thought she was a saint, you see; she was a terribly convincing actress. When I left, I tried to take her father with me, but he was too sick to move, and in any case the servants prevented me. By then it was late in the evening. I went the next day to find a lawyer, to obtain some sort of court order for his removal, but before I could begin, I received the news that Mr. Gibbons had died in the night, and I knew what had happened. I knew she had killed him.
I suppose a more noble man would have gone straight to the police. And I should have done, as it turns out. But murder trials are messy things, you know, and everything would be laid bare, Clara would be ruined; my dearest, upright Virginia might recoil in horror at what she learned and leave me. And I thought I was so frightfully clever. I thought I could bargain with her. I went to Lydia and said that, as a doctor, I could initiate an inquiry into the death, insist on an autopsy of the body, and have her prosecuted for murder. In exchange for my silence, she was to hand over to me both the Florida shipping business and the sole guardianship of little Samuel, whom I was frantic to protect, and she was to disappear from our lives forever. She agreed. I thought the whole affair was settled. You and I and Sammy would move to America, build our lives and fortunes there, and have nothing more to do with her. Then, once my parents were gone, so I thought, I would tell Clara the truth of her parentage and give her a rightful share in the business, and perhaps have earned the means to restore our ancient family home to its old splendor.
But Lydia, you see, she doesn’t like to lose, and she lost a great deal in this bargain. I should have been suspicious that she agreed so quickly. And I had neglected one important detail: at the time of her father’s death, while the decree nisi had been issued, the decree absolute had not. We were not divorced. So that when she disappeared—not in the sense that I meant, that she would simply leave us alone, go off with Samuel perhaps, but actually disappeared, in such a way that everyone thought she was dead—we were still married.
Of course, I chose to believe, as did the rest of the world, that Lydia really was dead. I told myself that she had committed suicide, had drowned herself, not out of sorrow but guilt. But I knew there was a possibility she was still alive. And I married you anyway. The precious dream in sight, almost within touch, I could not face the agony, the protracted wait, perhaps years, before I could call you my wife. When, a few weeks later, the half-ruined body of a woman washed ashore some twenty miles up the coast, resembling Lydia in all respects, claimed by no one, I saw my chance. I convinced the local magistrate—an old friend of the family—to produce a death certificate on the face of the evidence: her mental state, the clothes piled by the sea, the body I swore was that of Lydia, though I could not absolutely be sure, given the advanced state of decomposition. And before God, before witnesses, before the registrar of the Borough of Kensington, I stated, in good but not perfect faith, that I was free to marry.
My final crime: I am a bigamist.
I never saw Lydia again. But she exists: I know this because she contrived to win her ten thousand pounds after all, using my name to extort this money from your father, under some promise of leaving you in peace. I presume she told him the same story she told Samuel: that I had somehow caused my parents’ deaths, instead of having fought day and night to save them. As a result, he refused any attempt on my part to address him directly, and I dared send you nothing more than those empty envelopes, for fear that he might forbid even that slender communication.
I have recently heard rumors that she lives in London, under another name, spending extravagantly, but I have not been able to discover where. Samuel insists he knows nothing about her, and I can only speculate whether he is still her creature, or whether he still believes me guilty of her crimes. I suppose this suspense is her revenge on me. Or perhaps she clings to this last card—the legal fact of our marriage—in case she finds herself in need again. That is all we are, to a woman like that: cards to be played and discarded, according to her desire and our usefulness. Even to my dear Sammy, who lives and thrives with me here at Maitland, she has made no overture of maternal love, and I admit, I am deeply grateful for her neglect. He is far better off without her.
So there you have it: my sins laid out before you. My full confession, each fault committed out of either carnal weakness, or else the desire to protect you from evil, or else base fear—fear of losing you, who always seemed to me like a bird: impossible to cage, only slightly tamed, liable to fly off at the slightest alarm, never to return. I can only hope that you will understand, at least, why I have committed these crimes, even if you cannot forgive me. Certainly I have not forgiven myself.
&nb
sp; I have entrusted these letters to Portia Bertram, and asked her to convey them to you at such time as she believes you are ready to receive them: so that if I should fail in this enterprise I shall shortly undertake, I can hope at least this little testament will reach you, as a final remembrance of a man who will remain yours, now and in whatever life is to come,
S.F.
Postscript. I have, from what few ready assets I possess, set aside the sum of five thousand dollars in trust for little Samuel, in case I should not survive the adventure I now undertake. I only ask that you have the goodness to ensure there is no difficulty in its administration, and that, in a full generosity of spirit, you will grant him whatever further share of my estate you judge fair, and allow him to know the sister to whom I have not yet had the privilege of introducing him.
Chapter 28
Cocoa, Florida, July 25, 1922
During the course of our affair, Simon hardly ever spoke to me of his wife, and I wasn’t inclined to ask, for all the obvious reasons. For one thing, I was jealous. Though I believed him when he told me that he and Lydia shared no more than a name and a child he hadn’t really sired, she was still his wife. She might, if she wanted, decide to claim his love, and she had that right. If she said No, I’ve decided I want this to be a real marriage after all, a genuine union of man and wife, Simon might feel honor-bound to obey her, mightn’t he? So I was jealous of that right that belonged to her—only to her—and any allurements she might possess that would sweeten its employment.
For another thing, I was afraid to ask. Didn’t the whole affair seem just the slightest bit far-fetched? What man is really so noble as that? How was it possible that Simon had never slept with his own wife, not once, not on their wedding night, not just to make things official? Not in loneliness, not in despair, not in affection, not in human lust? Had he said that only to comfort me? To forestall such jealousy as I describe above?