Page 34 of The Christmas Retreat
Considering she is the wrong side of seventy and had just driven up from London, she looked and sounded a lot more lively thanIfelt.
She perched on the end of my bed and regarded me with her bright, dark blue, birdlike eyes.
‘Well, Ginny, here we are in the bosom of the family. Of course, they don’tknowwe are part of it yet. That joy is yet to come.’
‘I don’t think a very distant connection makes you part of a family!’
‘Perhaps not, but at least it will give some leverage to my enquiries about Arwen and Cosmo Caradoc.’
She settled herself more comfortably. ‘This house is much cosier than I expected. Nerys told me they’ve invested heavily in a heat pump and solar panels here and at the pottery up thelane. Shame the bathrooms don’t quite stretch to one each. I have to share mine with that Komodo woman.’
‘Which room have you got?’
‘Gwen John.’
‘Very suitable,’ I commented, and she grinned.
‘But listen, Ma, I’m just too tired to talk tonight.’
She ignored this. ‘Of course, having read the literature they sent, I am entirely resigned to a lot of seasonal nonsense, before I can really get down to my research. And did you notice Nerys mentioned that Cosmo died not long after the end of the war? Presumably soon after Arwen’s stay here, unless his death happened while she was here, of course, and that was why she was free to go to Cornwall?’
‘That would be a simple explanation to the mystery,’ I agreed sleepily. ‘In which case, you will only need to find out a little more about her visit here, won’t you?’
‘Oh, I have a feeling there is a lot more still to discover. I’m only just getting into Cosmo’s work, for a start. I saw what I could in London, but I haven’t yet researched him online, which is why I must have missed that he ceased to work after 1919.’
I had been slowly drifting off to sleep, but her next words jarred me awake again.
‘Didn’t you tell me it was Rhys Tarn’s wife, the artist Annie Ashwin, who was killed in that car accident near you just before lockdown? Quite a coincidence.’
I’d forgotten I’d told her that, but she never forgets anything; it is all squirrelled away inside her twisty little brain.
‘Yes, it was, but he doesn’t know that I was at the scene and I’d much rather it stayed that way. There’s no point in raking it all up again. Really, I just want to leave it all behind. If I’d known he would be here I’d never have come.’
‘He’s on the website, Ginny.’
‘I’ve been too busy packing up the cottage to look at it.’
‘I wouldn’t get in a tizz about it. If we don’t tell him, there isn’t any way he could know you were involved, is there?’
‘I don’t think so. Even if the police report contained my name, it was as Virginia Spain, so it probably wouldn’t have registered that it was me. We did meet very briefly once, years ago, because we have the same publishers,’ I explained, hoping I sounded casual but not sure I’d managed it.
‘Oh?’ She regarded me again with her bird-bright eyes. ‘I had an idea you might have, from the way he was looking at you earlier, before dinner. And he must have remembered you, with his little girl being such a fan of your books. It’s odd how unexpectedly things connect up.’
‘I was thinking much the same earlier. The Fates have an odd sense of humour,’ I agreed.
‘They certainly must have, to catapult such an odd collection of people together – what with the Terrible Twins, with their eyes already on that poor young man, Toby, and Kate Komodo trying to become the literary heavyweight. I think we will need a sense of humour.’
‘Toby seems very nice, and I like Nerys and Timon,’ I said. ‘Oddly, I got the feeling neither Nerys nor Cariad likes Verity much, although she seems very sweet.’
‘Dripping with it like a honeycomb,’ Evie said sardonically. ‘I rather like Noel. I think his bookshop will be well worth a visit, and he may know something about the history of the artists who have lived here.’
‘Are you getting straight down to work tomorrow?’
‘In a way. I need to know as much about the family as possible, so I’ll be joining in with the house tour in the morning,and wild horses wouldn’t stop me taking part in the Winter Solstice ceremony.’
‘In the guise of Mother Nature, I assume?’
‘As myself,’ she said, and finally got up to go. ‘Goodnight, darling. And tomorrow we must do something about your hair, because it looks as if rats chewed off the ends.’
