will take me time to get over it. Get over living in this house after what happened. I never liked it much to begin with. It is so grey and solemn.’
Alkmene looked around. ‘I think it is a very grand old house.’
‘Perhaps you think there is something in the will for you?’ Helena looked her over with cold eyes. ‘That is why you are here?’
Trying to ignore her intimidating attitude, Alkmene leaned back. ‘I have no need of any inheritance. I have money of my own.’
She put a slight emphasis on the word I, implying a subtle contrast with the woman opposite to her.
Her hostess was now right in front of her, holding out the cup of tea on a saucer to her. ‘There you go.’
Then by a sudden movement she let the cup slip off the saucer and spilled the hot tea right across Alkmene’s lap.
Alkmene yelped as the hot liquid scorched her skin. She jumped to her feet and peeled the fabric of her skirt away from her legs. It still burned awfully.
‘I am so sorry,’ Helena said. ‘I will get you a cloth.’ In a flurry of cold air she quit the room.
Alkmene held the soaked garment away from her person. A haze actually came from it, so hot the water had been. She was sure Helena had dropped the tea on purpose, trying to hurt her. Had it just been a response to her subtle reference to the difference between the two of them in terms of position and wealth – born into it or having married into it – or had the woman already decided on this course of action before? From the moment the butler had announced to her who this guest was.
An unwanted guest it seemed.
Alkmene walked to the door, determined to go up to the blue room and change at once. She’d think about getting the tea stains out later.
A hysterical voice said, ‘She is despicable turning up here, like she owns the house. I am sure she thinks she will have it now. She claims to be related to your mother. Always her, always your mother.’
Then a stream of foreign words followed, punctuated by gasps for air.
Alkmene looked into the hallway. A dark-haired thickset man stood opposite to Helena, holding her by the shoulders. He shook her while she raved on, her head moving from side to side like she was in a frenzy.
Then he raised his hand and struck Helena full in the face.
She fell silent at once. Only her eyes stayed alive, on fire, burning at him with an intensity that made Alkmene cringe. She had rarely seen such raw hatred in a human’s eyes. It was more the murderous feeling of a tiger when it looks its captor in the eye, determined to get back at him someday and kill him in order to be free again.
Helena pulled herself free and ran up the stairs, almost bumping into Jake Dubois, who was coming down. The man standing below frowned at him. ‘Who are you?’
‘Lady Alkmene’s driver, sir.’
‘Sir?’ The man scoffed. ‘That is Lord Winters to you, chap. Get yourself to the kitchens and don’t dare show your face around here again.’
Lord Winters turned away from Jake to the room Alkmene was in. She retreated quickly so he found her standing close to the piano, still holding her wet skirt.
‘Ah, Lady Alkmene…’ He wanted to smile at her, but his features froze as he saw her awkward stance. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Lady Winters spilled tea over me and went to fetch a cloth.’ Alkmene smiled. ‘Lord Winters, I presume?’
‘Yes, but you can call me Albert, if I am allowed to say Alkmene.’ He shook her hand. He had such a nice normal friendly face she could not believe she had just seen him slap his wife across the cheeks. ‘I have not had the pleasure of seeing your father in years, but then he does travel so much. I hope he is well?’
‘Very well, but on a journey again, so I felt obliged to come out here and tell you how sorry I am about your father’s death. So sudden, so violent. To be killed in one’s own home, the place where one feels safe…’
A strange emotion flickered in Albert’s eyes as she said those latter words.
He let go of her hand at once and said, turning away from her, ‘Yes, well, Father did insist on keeping precious gems here, that should better have been put in a safe in a bank. I often warned him it would attract burglars, but he never listened. You must know yourself that stubborn old men are often hard to convince of anything they do not want to hear.’
‘Of course. I dare say your father paid a high price for not heeding your good advice.’
Albert stood and arranged the papers on the piano. ‘Everybody does,’ he said in a low voice, almost like he was talking to himself. ‘Everybody always does.’
Helena did not reappear with a cloth to clean off Alkmene’s stained skirt.
Alkmene had not expected her to, because the spill had been made on purpose, and the lady probably also had a fiery smudge on her face now, from her husband’s abuse. She had to be hiding in her own rooms upstairs, cooling the sore spot and applying make-up to it, eager to look better when dinner would be served.
Alkmene excused herself after a few minutes of idle chatter about her father’s travels, saying she’d like to change and rest up before dinner. ‘My back aches from sitting in a car seat for such a long stretch, you know,’ she said with a smile.
Albert made a dismissive hand gesture, either waving away her physical complaint or her excuse for wanting to go up. He rang the bell for a servant, and a maid appeared, barely twenty, looking frightened, hovering at the door.
‘Take Lady Alkmene up to her room,’ Albert said. ‘I assume my wife has ordered a room prepared for you?’
‘Yes,’ Alkmene said. She wanted to add it was the blue room, but as the response by the butler had been rather odd, she didn’t want to provoke another outburst of anger in Lord Winters. So she just rose and followed the maid out of the room, up the stairs.
She wondered how Jake was getting on in the kitchen with the staff. She assumed it would be easy enough for an attractive man like him to flirt a little with the maids and inspire confidence, although he might then meet an enemy in the stiff butler who would no doubt disapprove of such forward behaviour.
She had no idea who held the vital information, so Jake would do best to stay on good terms with everybody who might have something worthwhile to share.
Catching up with the maid on the landing, she said, ‘You must all be shocked after the murder.’
The girl cringed at the word murder. ‘It was terrible. I saw the body when they carried him away. There was a lot of blood. And his face.’
‘His face?’
‘His expression, his features. It was like he had seen a spectre.’
‘I suppose his muscles could have been contorted in pain,’ Alkmene said. ‘Or fear when he realized there was a stranger in his room waiting to club him. I heard it was done with a polo trophy?’
‘I could not say. I was not in the room. But he did have a lot of trophies there, large ones. We always had to dust them all, and make sure not a speck of dust was left on them. He liked them gleaming. He checked when the sun shone in to see if it had been done properly.’
The maid’s tone suggested that it had not been good if the master of the house found something wanting. Perhaps he had been endowed with the same nasty temper as his eldest son Albert?
‘It must be hard to run a household when there is no lady of the house to oversee to everything,’ she said casually.
The maid blinked. ‘But there is Lady Winters.’
‘I