Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
SATURDAY
My intention to spend the entire weekend with the children ended abruptly when I discover Jenny is taking them to the circus.
My acute fear of clowns means that I can’t walk past a flyer for a circus with a clown face on it, let alone go inside the big top.
I take Jenny to one side and make sure she doesn’t purchase anything with a clown face on it and bring it back to the house.
With Jack ready to head out the door to play golf, I kiss him goodbye and watch him and then the children drive away.
I walk into the kitchen and find Amy and the other housemaid I rarely see, Lucy, unpacking the dishwasher and stacking the shelves.
They both look at me as if I’m a Little Green Man just landed from space.
“I need a pair of disposable gloves and a plastic storage container of some kind. Maybe twelve by twelve?”
“The storeroom is through here.” Amy leads me to the back of the kitchen. She slides open a door to reveal a wide room with shelves all around
Inside is like an Aladdin’s cave, with everything imaginable packed on the shelves.
It’s brightly lit and I follow her to an area housing boxes of disposable gloves.
We move on to another shelf where there is a variety of plastic storage containers.
I select a box of gloves and two containers.
Back outside in the kitchen, I turn to Amy.
“Come with me. I’m going to collect a few things from Laura’s dressing room and will need your assistance. ”
As we climb the stairs, I notice Amy’s reluctance and turn my head to look at her. “Did you work here when Laura became unwell?”
“Yeah, I was here.” Amy flashes me a dark look. “I started working here when I was seventeen. She became very difficult just before the accident.”
I can almost feel her hesitation to enter Laura’s dressing room.
She hangs back, looking all around as if her old mistress is going to jump out of one of the closets.
“I know it’s spooky in here but I want you to put on a pair of gloves and help me collect any of the makeup and other things that Laura used.
Don’t bother with the unopened bottles of lotions or face cream; place them inside the plastic containers.
Don’t open them or smell them. Some of these were purchased overseas and I believe they might be contaminated.
I’m going to have them examined by a laboratory to find out if there was anything in them that might have caused her erratic behavior. ”
“It smells like her in here even after all these years. She just about bathed in perfume. I could smell her coming.” Amy sighs as she collects the cosmetics on the dressing table. “I doubt you will find anything.” She carefully loads the creams and lotions into the box.
I take the jars of face cream and place them in my container. “What makes you say that?”
“She had postnatal depression after Noah was born. I believe that was the cause of her decline. She really didn’t want to have another baby.
She told me one time that she had no maternal feelings whatsoever.
So, it was just as well Jenny was here, especially after Laura tried to kill Noah.
” She must have caught my expression of shock.
“We all know about it, it’s not a secret.
Mr. Hunter and Laura could be heard arguing all over the house.
Jenny was in tears and took the children down to the kitchen and we all cared for them.
Ava and Noah were screaming. It was dreadful. ”
I take Laura’s perfume and then go to her bedside table and open the drawers to search for anything else she might have been using.
I turn on the lamp and spot a paperback novel, with writing all over the cover.
I flick through the pages. There must be over three hundred of them and the bold writing covers them all.
It is the same three sentences, repeated over and over again: Don’t drink the water.
Don’t drink the water. Don’t drink the water.
Is this a warning or was she so disturbed she needed to remind herself?
Trembling, I stare at the writing. It becomes more and more illegible as I turn the pages and the last few lines are squiggles.
Three hundred pages of the same words goes way past paranoia and steps into the realm of insanity.
I’m suddenly afraid of what I’ve stumbled into.
My hands shake and the book slips from my hands.
I watch it fall as if in slow motion and it lands on the floor in a puff of dust. Did Laura work out who was drugging her by a process of elimination?
The need to run as far away from the room as possible grips me but, if she was right, I need proof.
I turn three-sixty degrees and slowly scan the room, searching for bottled water, and find nothing.
I go back into the dressing room, and the smell of Laura’s perfume accosts my nostrils again, suffocating me.
I pull out a garbage bin from the dressing table and under the tissues are two half-full bottles of water.
I collect them and add them to my box. Beside me, Amy is sealing her container and I turn to her. “I’m done here. Let’s go.”
Sweat trickles down my spine as we head down the stairs and I can feel Laura’s eyes boring into my back.
I send Amy back to the kitchen and go to Jack’s office.
I seal the boxes with tape and then, using a Sharpie, write my name and address on both containers and the tests I require.
I’m trembling and breathing heavily and try to calm myself.
Laura believed someone in this house was drugging her and she left a warning.
Who can I tell about the book? Who can I trust? No one.
I run through names in my head. Three people—Jack, Tom and Ruby—were in the house when Laura started to decline, all were in the photographs I found taken on the day Caroline fell from the mountain trail and all three were on the yacht.
If I discover Laura was being drugged, it could only be one of them—or could it?
None of the staff liked her, did they? In fact, they were all scared of her.
That gave all the staff a motive to drug her.
If she’d died or been sent away to a psych ward, their lives would have changed for the better.
This would mean Laura’s death was an accident after all.
I run the reasons why the other three might want Laura dead and my mind goes to Jack.
He had a motive and so did Tom but if Ruby had a motive, I’m not seeing it.
Was there something between Jack and her at that time, which he refuses to admit?
I doubt it or Laura would have mentioned it in her diary.
In any case, I know Ruby was involved with Tom at the time—that’s how he lost his job.
I need to look closer at the staff. From what I hear, life has been better for everyone involved since Laura disappeared, and now I’ve arrived to upset the apple cart. Am I next in the line of fire?
My things went missing, I heard noises, saw a face in the mirror and in a window.
Perhaps they’re trying to get rid of me too?
But who is doing it? Tom doesn’t live here anymore but he is involved with the firm.
If he murdered Laura, who knows what hold the others have over him?
Maybe I’m not looking outside the box. What if I’m correct and it’s the entire staff?
Each doing their bit, like moving the flowers and my phone, and then shutting me inside rooms in the hope I’ll go crazy like Laura?
I look over my shoulder at the open doorway and run to close and lock it.
I run a hand down my face. I can’t think straight.
The idea of becoming like Laura frightens me.
I stare at the boxes. I can’t tell anyone about finding the book—not yet.
First, I need to know if they drove her to madness or drugged her.
I know if I mention it, Jack would ask Ruby to help me and, until I’m sure, I must do everything myself.
I grab my phone and ask it for the address of a drug-testing laboratory and it gives me the details.
I go to the website and download a form to submit samples for testing.
Using a large post bag from Jack’s office supplies, everything is ready to be mailed on Monday.
I lean back in Jack’s chair and take a deep breath. “And now we wait.”