The Lady in Yellow Read online

  Veronica stormed up the stairs, unlocked the door to Jacques's room, and barged in. Jacques was there, jumping up and down on the bed, accompanied by the thumping tail of the white dog.

  Veronica rushed over to him and held him tight.

  “Thank God you’re here! Thank God you’re here,” she said. “ I was frightened your mother had taken you away.”

  “Mother’s dead,” he said, pulling back. “Isn’t she Mrs. Twig?”

  “Of course she is Jack. And we’ve never let her in, have we?”

  “Of course not,” said Jacques.

  “You never would, would you, Jacques? You know that would be a very bad thing to do, don’t you?” Mrs. Twig seemed to be hammering the issue.

  Jacques sauntered over to Veronica and gazed up at her with those light green eyes, so innocent and fair. Veronica refused to be disarmed.

  “But you did let her in, Jacques,” said Veronica. “I saw her get in last night. Right through the balcony windows.”

  Mrs. Twig looked alarmed and hurried to the windows. She shook the latch. The windows creaked open, letting the breeze blow in.

  “Miss Everly has an over-active imagination, doesn’t she, Mrs. Twig?” said Jacques.

  “You must be kind to Miss Everly. She worries a great deal about you,” the housekeeper said.

  “Oh!” Jacques gave Veronica a warm embrace, then leapt off the bed to hug the dog.

  “I may have an imagination,” Veronica said. “But I also know that your mother entered this room last night.”

  Jacques looked over at Mrs. Twig with a questioning look in his eyes. Mrs. Twig merely returned his gaze and said nothing.

  The clock gonged eleven.

  Veronica remembered the time. “Mrs. Twig, will you see to Jack for an hour or so? I have an appointment with Mr. de Grimston.”

  “Of course,” sad Mrs. Twig, casting her eyes down. “Come Jack. Let’s find your other half and have some breakfast. Come along.”

  They rushed out leaving Veronica alone. She went to the French windows and checked the latch. Broken. She went out onto the balcony and looked down at the spot where Mr. Cobb had fallen; at the blood-spattered grass. She clutched her stomach, and turned away.

  Chapter 7

  *

  Veronica knocked on the door of the master suite. Rafe opened it quite suddenly, as if he’d been waiting behind the door for her arrival. He looked so handsome dressed in a white shirt, a dark patterned waistcoat and black trousers. A red jewel in his cravat shone like a drop of blood. Veronica felt suddenly frumpy in her simple day dress of off-white gabardine.

  “Come in, Miss Everly,” he said opening the door wide.

  The fragrance of fresh lilies escaped from the room.

  “Call me Veronica,” she said rather tentatively. She’d never imagined being on first name terms with an employer before. It seemed improper somehow, even if expected.

  As if he too were uncomfortable with the situation, Rafe just nodded and smiled. He led her to the sofa near the fire. A bottle of golden brandy and two glasses gleamed on a red enameled tray that had been placed on the low table in front of her.

  “Do you drink brandy?” Rafe poised the decanter over one of the glasses.

  “I don’t drink. But, perhaps a tiny bit. I’ll try,” she said.

  He grinned, poured two glasses, handed one to Veronica.

  “Cheers!” Rafe touched his glass to hers.

  “Cheers,” Veronica said.

  The brandy was sweet and burning. Like the way she felt in Rafe’s presence, she thought. She pulled back on the sofa with her glass. Rafe sat beside her, a bit too close. His body gave off waves of heat and scent.

  “Well, Veronica, I must apologize for last night. I’m sure you were very distressed by our madness around here.”

  “I’m not used to such goings-on, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “There’s no way I can mind. Even I had a surprise in store. When I was in France----have you ever been to the Auvergne?”

  “No. I’ve never been outside of Britain.”

  “It’s a land of volcanoes. Some of them are extinct, nothing more than green craters filled with lakes. Sometimes there are islands in the lakes and some brave souls have built castles on them. Right in the mouths of the volcanoes….”

  “Proves great courage, I suppose,” said Veronica. “If not great faith.”

  “Yes, faith. You’d expect some Faery Queen to live there. Alas, my late wife’s chateau is not so dramatically situated. It’s in a wooded glen. A haunted place. In the midst of a circular garden surrounded by yews. You did see the page I had marked for you in the book?”

  “Yes. I also read your translation. The lady in the yellow dress. Who was she?”

  “It started with her. In the twelfth century. The eldest daughter was a great beauty and, to put it politely, a libertine. One of the many men she entertained was under a curse. Every night, when the moon was full, he turned into a wolf, and in that guise, one night, he carried her off.”

  “That’s that picture….”

  “Yes.”

  “So….”

  “After a night being lost in the forest, she was picked up by a coachman driving towards the chateau.”

  “Alive, then.”

  “Quiet alive. But changed. From then on, Veronica,” Rafe leaned towards Veronica and looked deeply into her eyes. “She was a werewolf.” Rafe let his words stay in the air for a moment. “I’m not prone to nightmares, Veronica, but I had them in that house. Especially on the night of the full moon.”

  “What kind of nightmares?” Veronica asked. She remembered the twins talking about the lady’s hand….Was it her hand?

  “I dreamed that I was the same. There was a bell ringing, very slowly and off pitch. And then the howling began. I dreamed I was a soul tormented, roving the forests at night, killing any poor creature who crossed my path.”

  “Only dreams….”

  “So I’d hoped. The lady in the yellow dress----it was she that led me along a path into my dreams, first as a seductive girl, then as a ravening beast.”

  Veronica backed away. “You’re frightening me, Sir!”

  “I mean to frighten you. That’s why I am going to teach you how to shoot. So fear won’t get the better of you. So when you pull that trigger, you’ll have a will of iron.”

  “Is she connected to that white wolf I saw last night? Coming out of the woods?”

  Rafe stood up and looked at the fire. He stood there for a long time with the light of the flames dancing over his face.

  “There was entire pack of white wolves in the garden,” Veronica said. “I think it was they that dragged Mr. Cobb away.”

  “A pack of white wolves. Their numbers have grown,” Rafe said. He turned back to Veronica and fell into the chair facing her. “Veronica----I brought my wife back here from France over ten years ago. The only wild animals we’d ever seen were hedgehogs, hares, foxes, deer. The usual English fauna. Never any wolves. We used her money to restore this place----it was on the edge of ruin. It was she who built that folly at the top of the garden. That bell tower. Planted it with flowers from the gardens of her chateau. Soon after we’d settled in, there was a report of a lad being attacked and killed by a wild animal out on the moors. The villagers were reluctant to say it was a wolf. Perhaps a rabid dog, they said. They killed every stray mutt they could find. But the next month, it happened again. Another attack.”

  Veronica listened to the fire crackling in the grate, noticed the lowering light. Her brandy glass was inexplicably empty.

  “Would you like more?” Rafe said. “Allow me.”

  He sat beside her again. Veronica let him refill her glass. “That’s quite a story,” she said. “What did Lady de Grimston have to do with it?”

  “Nothing that I knew of. By the time the twins were toddlers, I had developed a business that required long stays overseas. India mostly. Sometimes I’d be gone for many, many months. Onc
e I began making a decent profit, I was set up, and lost my shirt. I came home only to find out that my eldest daughter was dead. Murdered.”

  “Murdered! Who would do such a thing? And why?” said Veronica. She was feeling slightly tipsy. What had she read about Sylvie?

  “A farmer shot her. Declared he’d shot the ravening wolf they were always looking for and could never find. A wolf that appeared only once a month, when the moon was full.”

  Rafe held Veronica’s eyes, giving time for his words to sink in.

  “As you can imagine, the mistake----well, farmers are superstitious folk,” he said.

  “So they stayed clear of your family,” said Veronica. “Right clear away.”

  Rafe nodded. Then he rose and went back to stare at the flames, leaning on the mantelpiece below his picture, and hers. Sovay was so lovely and blonde and fashionable.... Veronica frowned, had another sip of brandy.

  Rafe went on. “Sovay was distraught to the point of madness. She clung to the twins. Suffocated them with her constant attention and safety rules. Jealous of every maid in the house. Accusing them of all sorts of ridiculous things. I supposed it was my fault for being away so much, leaving her to imagine all sorts of scenarios. And then…that.”

  Despite the tragedy, Veronica smiled to herself. The firelight created a glow around Rafe’s dark gold head like a the nimbus of a saint, but she was painfully aware that he was not a saintly man, but indeed was somewhat wicked inside.

  “I suppose she thought, if you really loved her, that you wouldn’t have been able to stay away for so long,” Veronica said.

  Rafe rolled his eyes and sighed. “I’m not sure I did really love her. She was beautiful, charming, aristocratic. She had lots of money. I needed money.”

  “Isn’t a lady with those qualities worthy of love?” Veronica blurted out. Rafe glanced sharply at her.

  “I thought I loved her. I was young. I didn’t really know what love was. How deep it could go. With the right person.”

  The way Rafe looked at her, Veronica couldn’t help but feel self-conscious. She couldn’t let herself even think….

  “She’d been in the garden with the children looking up at the full moon between those two tall cypress trees that rise like horns above the woods. ‘They look like the crown of Isis,’ she’d always said.”

  “They do,” Veronica said. Rafe’s eyes were the shade of blue tiles from ancient Greek mosaics. His skin and hair were burnished, like some Greek god.

  “I went out onto the lawn to join them in their fun. When they began dancing in a ring in the moonlight, I came back inside for a drink. I was looking at the newspaper when I heard that blasted bell tolling. There was howling in the yard, high and wild. Naturally, I was extremely vigilant. I grabbed my pistol and hurried downstairs to find a large, slavering white wolf circling the twins.”

  “My God!” Veronica cried.

  “I fired. Oh, Veronica. I pray you can forgive me.”

  “For what?”

  “I thought the beast was down, but I was wrong. It was infuriated by its wound and flew at me, tearing through my shirt sleeve and grazing my arm with its teeth. With an oozing, bloody arm, I fired straight into its heart. It fell to earth. I kept my gun pointed at it until it lay completely still. I shouted to the twins to get inside, but they were already gone. The next thing I knew….was that it was not a wolf that I’d shot. It was my wife.”

  The golden glow shattered. Veronica’s head was suddenly clear again.

  “It can’t be,” she said. “You were drunk and terrified for the twins.”

  “That’s what I’ve told myself for three long years. But after what happened last night, I can no longer deny anything. To avoid a police investigation, I held a private funeral for my wife and buried her in that tomb in the woods. Then I fled to France.”

  Veronica stood up. “I’ve got to go now.”

  Rafe looked at her with eyes like vast blue seas. “Of course.”

  When she got to the door, Veronica paused. Rafe was close behind her, almost embracing her as she turned towards him.

  “Why did you tell me all of this?” she asked. “You know things will never be the same now. I mean, I can’t just be your employee any more when you confide in me, such, such things.”

  “I know,” he said. “I had to tell you. I am compelled to tell you, of all people, the truth.”

  ****

  Veronica wanted nothing more than to go to her room and be alone for a while. She couldn’t face teaching at the moment, but she had to check the classroom to see if the children were there. She also wanted to take another peek into Miss Blaylock’s journal.

  Jacqueline was sitting at her desk.

  “Oh, Jacqueline! Where’s your other half?” she asked, flustered at seeing the child alone.

  “We’ve had a fight. I never want to see him again,” said Jacqueline.

  “Don’t be silly. It will blow over by tomorrow.”

  “No it won’t. It never will.”

  “But your lessons. You must both be here for lessons.”

  “We shall switch days.”

  “That can’t last long. Of course you’ll forgive each other. Why don’t we forget about class today? You go and make up with Jacques and we’ll begin again tomorrow.”

  Jacqueline gave Veronica a hard stare. “We shall never make up, Miss Everly. Never again. Never.”

  Veronica stroked Jacqueline’s hair, then knelt down and looked into the child’s face. Close to tears, Jacqueline pushed Veronica away, got up, and stomped out of the room.

  CHAPTER 8

  *

  An ivory box lay on Veronica’s bed. Inside was a small pistol with an ivory handle and three silver bullets nestled in a lining of scarlet silk. Veronica picked it up. What wolf was she expected to shoot? Were there three? One bullet for each?

  Veronica took the gun to the mirror, held it up and aimed at her reflection. There was a wildness in her looks holding the gun. Her own wickedness appearing in the glass.

  “Thou shalt not kill,” said to herself. Yet her finger longed to pull the trigger, to feel the impact of the explosion, to watch the glass shatter. She opened the bullet chamber, relieved that it was empty.

  The Bestiary lay on the chair next to the fire, along with its stack of translations. She put the gun away, sank down upon the footrest, and opened the book upon its river of red silk to the page inscribed: Lupus. There was the lady in yellow and the wolf carrying her off, not killing her, but transforming her, damning Beauty to possession by the Beast forever.

  Veronica turned the page. There was a lot of Latin writing bordered by a fanciful row of racing hares. No strange beast stalked the page, but rather a vision of fire and slant yellow eyes staring through the flames. Veronica rifled through the translation until she found the corresponding page.

  There is only one way to save the soul of the Wolf Man. He must be shot with a silver bullet and the body thrown into the fire. If one attempts to slay the Wolf Man by any other means, he will not die, for his soul will not be at rest and will burn ever hotter for revenge. He will return from the grave to harass the living as a ghost and a Soul Stealer.

  A Soul Stealer is damned and therefore seeks to take the souls of others. For those Christened in God’s Grace, this never works. Those who are not baptized are vulnerable to attack by the Soul Stealer. Thereby is his appetite, in Christendom, insatiable, for it is so difficult to fulfill. The Soul Stealer leaves the bodies of its victims intact, but the soul he devours. Yet are the victims like empty shells that in time fade away, or become Soul Stealers themselves.

  Thus is the insidious contamination of the Devil’s work.

  Veronica’s heart pulsed weakly. She stood up, went out onto the balcony, and looked down at the tomb. It was increasingly visible through the autumn trees. There lay Sovay de Grimston, sealed in a silver coffin but still roaming free.

  The clock chimed nine. It was time for class. Veronica tore herself away fro
m her thoughts and hurried to the classroom. She was anxious to see the twins, their two identical faces and their pale green eyes looking up to her again with trust and love.

  Again, only one of them was there, wearing a dress the color of the sky at night. A mourning dress. Jacqueline had her head down as if she were asleep. Veronica entered quietly and leaned over the child. A large picture book was opened on the desk, hidden under her arms and head.

  “Good morning, Jacqueline,” said Veronica.

  Veronica wondered how such an attractive, innocent child could transform into a four-legged beast as she had done the day before. She must have been mistaken somehow….

  “Jacqueline, where is your brother?”

  Jacqueline lifted her head. Her face was wet with tears.

  “He’s still fighting with me. He’ll never stop. He’ll have to come by himself for lessons tomorrow, while I hide far away from him,” she said.

  Veronica looked down at the book. There was the picture of a poor, stricken lion in fancy dress, with a young girl bending over him.

  “What are you reading?” Veronica asked.

  “Only Beauty and the Beast,” said Jacqueline. “It’s one of our favorites.”

  “Why don’t you come to my room? We’ll read it together near the nice, warm fire. I’m not sure you’re in the right frame of mind for lessons.”

  The child went along to Veronica’s room.

  “Don’t you think Jacques would like to join us?” Veronica asked.

  “No!” Jacqueline shouted. Then she said softly. “I want to spend some time alone with you, Miss Everly. I’m always with him.”

  “Very well then. Let’s sit together in the big wing chair.”

  Snug in the wing chair, Veronica read Jacqueline the story of Beauty and the Beast.

  “And so the Beast was really a Prince, suffering under enchantment until he found true love with a pure and beautiful virgin. The end.”

  Veronica closed the book. Jacqueline was staring at the flames in the fireplace as if she were lost in a dream.

  “Why do you like this story?” Veronica asked.