Anne Perry's Silent Nights_ Two Victorian Christmas Mysteries - Anne Perry [57]
She decided to explore. There did not seem to be any part of the house that was specifically private; no doors were locked. She wandered from the dining room to the library, where there were several hundred books. She looked at titles and picked randomly off the shelves. It did not take her long to realize that at least half of them had been Hugo Ross’s. His name was written on the flyleaves. They were on subjects Emily suspected Susannah might never have read without his influence: archaeology, exploration, animals of the sea, tides and currents, several histories of Ireland. There were also volumes on philosophy, and many of the great novels not only of England but also of Russia and France.
She began to regret that she would never meet the man who had collected these, and so clearly enjoyed them.
She looked on the mantelshelf, and the small semicircular table against the wall. There were cut-crystal candlesticks that might have been Susannah’s, and a meerschaum pipe that could only have been Hugo’s. It was left as if he had just put it down, not gone years ago. There were other things, including a silver-framed photograph of a family group outside a low cottage, the Connemara hills behind them.
Emily went next into Hugo’s study. There were haunting seascapes on the walls and there was still pipe tobacco in the humidor, an incomplete list of colors on a slip of paper, as if a reminder for buying paints. Had Susannah deliberately left these things because she wanted to pretend that he would come back? Perhaps she had loved him enough that it was not death she was afraid of, but something quite different, something against which there was also no protection.
If Jack had died, would Emily have done the same—left memories of him in the house, as if his life were so woven into hers that it could not be torn out? She did not want to answer that. If it were, how could she bear losing him? If it were not, then what fullness of love had she missed?
She went back to the kitchen, made breakfast of boiled eggs and fingers of toast, and took Susannah’s upstairs for her. It was a fine day and the wind seemed to be easing. She decided to take her letters to the post office now. “I won’t be more than an hour,” she promised. “Can I bring you anything?”
Susannah thanked her but declined, and Emily set out along the road by the shore, which led a mile and a half or so to the village shop. The sky was almost clear and there was a strange, invigorating smell that she had not experienced before, a mixture of salt and aromatic plants of some kind. It was both bitter and pleasing. To her left the land seemed desolate all the way to the hills on the skyline, and yet there were always wind patterns in the grass and layers of color beneath the surface.
To her right the sea had a deep swell, the smooth backs of the waves heavy and hard, sending whitespumed tongues up the sand. There were headlands to either side, but directly out from the shore for as far as she could see there was only the restless water.
Gulls wheeled in the air above her, their cries blending with the sighing of the wind in the grass and the constant sound of the waves. She walked a little faster, and found herself smiling for no apparent reason. If this was what the local people thought of as a storm, it was nothing!
She reached the low, straggling houses of the village, mostly stone-built and looking as if they had grown out of the land itself. She crossed the wiry turf to the roadway and continued along it until she came to the small shop. Inside there were two other people waiting to be served and a small, plump woman behind the counter weighing out sugar and putting it into a blue bag. Behind her the shelves were stacked with all kinds of goods—groceries, hardware, and occasional household linens.
They all stopped talking and turned to look at Emily.
“Good morning,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Emily Radley, niece of Mrs. Ross.