Read Online My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier - Free Book Online

went on standing there, looking down upon the fountains, and the pools beneath them with the water lilies.
    “I think,” said the man slowly, “that the contessa will not come back again. Too sad for her. Too many memories. Signor Rainaldi told us that the villa is to be let, possibly sold.”
    His words jerked me back into reality. The spell of the hushed garden had held me for a brief moment only, the scent of roses and the glow of the setting sun, but it was over now.
    “Who is Signor Rainaldi?” I asked.
    The man turned back with me towards the villa. “The signor Rainaldi he arrange all things for the contessa,” he answered, “matters of business, matters of money, many things. He knows the contessa a long time.” He frowned, and waved his hand at his wife who with the child in her arms was walking on the terrace. The sight offended him, it was not right for them to be there. She disappeared within the villa, and began fastening the shutters.
    “I want to see him, Signor Rainaldi,” I said.
    “I give you his address,” he answered. “He speak English very well.”
    We went back into the villa, and as I passed through the rooms to the hall the shutters were closed, one by one, behind me. I felt in my pockets for some money. I might have been anyone, a casual traveler upon the continent, visiting a villa from curiosity with a view to purchase. Not myself. Not looking for the first and last time on the place where Ambrose had lived and died.
    “Thank you for all you did for Mr. Ashley,” I said, putting the coins into the fellow’s hand.
    Once again the tears came in his eyes. “I am so sorry, signore,” he said, “so very sorry.”
    The last shutters were closed. The woman and the child stood beside us in the hall, and the archway to the empty rooms beyond and to the stairway grew dark again, like the entrance to a vault.
    “What happened to his clothes,” I asked, “his belongings, his books, his papers?”
    The man looked troubled. He turned to his wife, and they spoke to one another for a moment. Questions and answers passed between them. Her face went blank, she shrugged her shoulders.
    “Signore,” said the man, “my wife gave some help to the contessa when she went away. But she says the contessa took everything. All the signor Ashley’s clothes were put in a big trunk, all his books, everything was packed. Nothing left behind.”
    I looked into both their eyes. They did not falter. I knew they were speaking the truth. “And you have no idea,” I asked, “where Mrs. Ashley went?”
    The man shook his head. “She has left Florence, that is all we know,” he said. “The day after the funeral, the contessa went away.”
    He opened the heavy front door and I stepped outside.
    “Where is he buried?” I asked, impersonal, a stranger.
    “In Florence, signore, in the new Protestant cemetery. Many English buried there. Signor Ashley, he is not alone.”
    It was as if he wished to reassure me that Ambrose would have company, and that in the dark world beyond the grave his own countrymen would bring him consolation.
    For the first time I could not bear to meet the fellow’s eyes. They were like a dog’s eyes, honest and devoted.
    I turned away, and as I did so I heard the woman exclaim suddenly to her husband, and before he had time to shut the door she had darted back into the villa once again, and opened a great oak chest that was standing against the wall. She came back carrying something in her hand which she gave to her husband, and he in turn to me. His puckered face relaxed, broadening to relief.
    “The contessa,” he said, “one thing she has forgotten. Take it with you, signore, it is for you alone.”
    It was Ambrose’s hat, wide-brimmed and bent. The hat that he used to wear at home against the sun. It would never fit any other man, it was too big. I could feel their anxious eyes upon me, waiting for me to say something, as I turned the hat over and over in my hands.

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