Read Online Take No Farewell - Retail by Robert Goddard - Free Book Online Page B

Her jealousy had been aroused, he said, by malicious suggestions that her husband had been unfaithful to her. She had then set out to poison him in a ruthless and calculating manner, only to see her husband’s young and totally innocent niece consume the poison in his place. She had made no attempt to intervene and had allowed Miss Caswell to proceed to an agonizing death. She had then continued to hoard arsenic against the day when she might make another attempt on her husband’s life.
    After a brief retirement, the magistrates announced that they were minded to commit Mrs Caswell for trial at the next assizes. Mr Windrush, her solicitor, indicated that she wished to reserve her defence.
    Unruly scenes followed outside the court when Mrs Caswell was taken to a police van in order to be driven to Gloucester Prison. There was much shouting and jostling by the crowd. Objects were thrown and an egg struck Mrs Caswell on the arm. Three people were arrested. Mrs Caswell’s foreign origins and the wide respect in which her husband’s family are held in Hereford, compounded by the distressing circumstances of the case, are thought to explain the animosity felt towards her.
    ‘Are you going in to the office today, Geoffrey?’
    It was Saturday morning in Suffolk Terrace, dull and grey with a fine drizzle falling beyond the windows. Angela, whose silence on the subject of Consuela’s hearing was still unbroken, eyed me in a way that was peculiarly hers: satirical, superior, playful as it might seem to others and had once to me. ‘No,’ I replied, turning the page of the newspaper.
    ‘I told Maudie Davenport I’d go with her to Harrods. The autumn fashions are in, you know.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘And Maudie’s a great one for beating the crush. So I must dash.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘What will you be up to?’ Already she was halfway across the room, oblivious to whatever answer I might give.
    ‘This and that.’
    ‘Well, don’t overdo it, will you?’
    ‘I’ll be sure not to.’ My gaze, and with it my thoughts, reverted to the newspaper in my hands. I turned back to the page I had just been studying.
Mrs Consuela Caswell was yesterday committed for trial on charges of murder and attempted murder
. It had been inevitable, of course. So much evidence, so damning and incontrovertible – no other outcome had been possible. Yet the reality was worse than the expectation. A hostile crowd baying for ‘the foreign bitch’s neck’. An acrid splatter of rotten egg on her sleeve, worn like a badge of shame. Then the sullen company of two stern-faced wardresses on the jolting van-ride back to prison. The squalor and the horror of it all washed over my imagination. And there, at the centre, fixed by my memory, was the contrast that made it so hard to bear.
    ‘
Querido Geoffrey
.’ It was the phrase Consuela used that March night thirteen years ago, when she surrendered herself to me for the first time, her private, whispered endearment, the one fragment of Portuguese she permitted herself to employ. ‘
Querido Geoffrey
.’
    I had banked up the fire and it flung in answer a golden swathe of light across the room, falling on the hills and valleys of the rumpled sheets, the mounds of the pillows, the columns of the bed-posts. And on Consuela. She was mine completely, to have and to hold, for one night only, for the immensity of time and the eternity of intent that it seemed to represent.
    ‘You’re beautiful, Consuela. I can’t believe how beautiful.’
    ‘For you, Geoffrey. Only for you. All for you.’
    Her dark eyes, nervous and questing. Her still darker hair, falling and sliding through my fingers. Her lips, moving against my cheek as she murmured what I wanted to hear. Her hands, clutching and caressing. And her flesh, burning to my touch, golden to my sight. Our limbs entwined. Our bodies joined. Too much passion. Too much ecstasy. Too much trust for time to preserve.
    ‘I love you, Consuela.’
    ‘And I love you.