Celia did not want to carry the burden of Duchess’s secrets either, but she had no choice. Duchess was determined to relieve herself of them. She puffed on her pipe and the smoke filled the room with a sweet, persistent smell. ‘Digby won a farm in a game of cards. He was so good at reading people that he rarely lost. He’d come and tell me all about it. About the foolish men who lost everything they had at the gambling tables. Not Digby. He wasn’t foolish like them. He was clever and he knew it. He knew he was going to make money. He wanted to go back to London a rich man. Men would do anything to make their fortunes here. Your father was no different.’ She chuckled and for the first time Celia saw how her face glowed like a beautiful black dahlia when she smiled. ‘And he did go back to London a rich man. A very rich man.’ Now she narrowed her eyes and her smile turned fiendish. ‘But he was ruthless, Miss Deverill. Your father didn’t make his fortune Moses’ way. No, he broke a few Commandments on the path to prosperity. After all, if he had been a virtuous man he would not have loved me.’ Celia watched in fascination as this woman enlivened in the brilliance of her memories. She laid them out before her as if they were treasures, stowed away for decades and now displayed all bright and glittering for the only person interested in looking at them. And all the while her eyes shone with zeal as the words came tumbling out.
‘But Digby didn’t care what other people thought and he came to see me all the same. He told me about his winnings and he spent some of it on me.’ Her eyes were misting now as she remembered the good times. ‘He’d rush in all excited, like a boy with a present for his mama, and I’d scold him for spending money on me when he should have been saving what he had for the mines he was going to build. He didn’t trust his own kind. White men – they might steal his diamonds, his money, but he trusted me. I knew he was going to strike it rich. I could see it in his ambition. If anyone was going to make it rich it was Digby Deverill – and there were thousands of men like him, with ambition and desire, all digging in the same place, but somehow I knew Digby would make it. He had the luck of the Devil. So, having won the farm north of Kimberley he and two others went to look for diamonds there and they found them.’
‘Mr Botha told me about this,’ said Celia, with rising interest. ‘Tiberius and Aurelius Dupree.’
Duchess shook her head and the beads that hung from her ears swung from side to side. ‘Those boys were no match for Digby,’ she said proudly. ‘Their biggest mistake was in trusting him. But he looked like an angel with those big blue eyes and that halo of golden hair. He looked as innocent as a lamb. When he no longer needed them he got rid of them the old-fashioned way.’
‘What do you mean?’ Celia asked. The smoke suddenly seemed to turn to ice and envelop her in its chilly grip. ‘Tiberius was killed by a lion.’
Duchess watched Celia with a steady gaze. Her voice had a stillness about it now; even the smoke seemed to stagnate. ‘He didn’t die by a lion. He died by a bullet.’
‘Aurelius’s bullet,’ said Celia firmly. Her heart was thumping so violently now against her ribs that she had to put a hand there in an attempt to quieten it.
Duchess shook her head but this time the bead earrings did not move. ‘Captain Kleist’s bullet.’
Celia stared at her, eyes wide with terror. ‘Captain Kleist, the white hunter?’
‘He was a ruffian who fought in the Prussian army. He thought nothing of killing a man. He arranged the trip and he made sure that Tiberius’s death looked like it was an accident.’
‘But Aurelius was accused of his brother’s murder and spent four decades in prison.’
‘He didn’t do it,’ said Duchess matter-of-factly. ‘Digby framed him.’
Celia began to cough. The smoke was now choking her. She stood up and staggered to the door. Outside, the sun was setting and the air had turned grainy with dusk and dust and a cool breeze swept through the township bringing the relief of autumn. She leant against the doorframe and gasped. Mr Botha had fallen asleep in the car. His head was thrown back against the seat and his mouth was wide open. She could hear his snores from ten feet away.
So, her father was everything Aurelius Dupree had said he was. He had cheated the brothers, had one murdered and framed the other. She wanted to vomit with the shock of it. She wanted to expel what she had heard. How she wished she had never come.
‘So why did you love him?’ she demanded, striding back into the room.
Duchess was still sitting on her chair. She was delving into a bright beaded bag for tobacco for her pipe. ‘Because he was the Devil,’ she said simply. ‘No one is more attractive than the Devil.’ She grinned broadly and flicked her eyes up at Celia. ‘And he treated me like a duchess.’
Celia sat down again. She ran her knuckles across her lips in thought. ‘You said he betrayed you too,’ she said.
‘One day your father stopped coming to see me. He just disappeared from my world and I never heard from him again. Because of your father I was cast out of my community and disowned by my family. But I am a Christian woman now, Miss Deverill, and I have found it in my heart to forgive. I forgive them all.’
With a trembling hand Celia fumbled with the catch on her handbag. ‘I don’t have much but what I have left I want to give to you.’
Duchess put up a hand to stop her. ‘I don’t want your money. I never asked for anything from Digby and I won’t accept anything from you. I have told you my story.’
‘But I want to give you something. For keeping Papa’s secret.’
‘I kept it because I love him.’
‘But he can’t thank you himself.’
Duchess narrowed her eyes and grinned. ‘No, but I want to thank you for coming, child. I want to give you something. It was the year 1899 and my brother was a Piccanin working for an Afrikaner gold prospector who took him down to a farm in the Orange Free State. They said there was gold there. Lots of gold. But it was so deep they didn’t have the means to mine it. So I told Digby. You see, there was a farm for sale next door that belonged to a man named van der Merwe, and no one had thought to buy that. Digby was no fool and he knew that the land might be useless then but in years to come, he said, “Who knows what man might have created to dig deeper into the earth.” So he bought the land for nothing and it’s been sitting there, untouched, for years. Now I know that the mines around Johannesburg are going real deep now. Deeper than they ever did. Why don’t you think about digging there instead of digging into your father’s past, and if you find gold, then you can give me some.’
Chapter 30
Celia left Duchess smoking on her pipe. She woke Mr Botha with a shake. He gave one final snort and sat up. ‘Just dozed off for a second,’ he said, taking the wheel.
‘Thank you for bringing me, Mr Botha. My visit was very enlightening.’
‘Now back to the hotel?’ he asked.
‘Yes please,’ she said, closing the passenger door and leaning back against the leather. She needed time to digest what Duchess had told her. She needed to figure out what to do. She also wondered how much of the truth Mr Botha knew and was concealing from her. As the car motored over the lengthening shadows the children walked out into the cloud of red dust they left behind and watched the glimmer of metal disappear round the corner. ‘Tell me, Mr Botha, what do you know about van der Merwe farm?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Celia gave him a hard stare. ‘You worked for my father and yet you claim to know nothing about land my father bought?’
Mr Botha shrugged his big shoulders. ‘Your father’s mines have all been sold to the Anglo American Corporation, to Ernest Oppenheimer. There’s nothing left but some old legal papers in the safe.’
‘Then I’d like to see them, please,’ Celia told him.
‘There is nothing worth seeing, Mrs Mayberry.’
Celia gave him her most charming smile. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Botha, I’d like to have a look all the same. Just in case.’
‘Very well
,’ Mr Botha replied with a weary sigh. ‘I will take you. But I remember nothing about van der Merwe’s farm. To be frank with you, Mrs Mayberry, Duchess is old and her memory is a little vague.’
‘Well, while we’re being frank, do you know of a man named Captain Kleist?’ she asked.
‘Der Kapitän,’ he said. ‘He is an old drunk and a blaggard and I don’t believe he ever fought in the Franco-Prussian War. Why? Do you want to meet him too?’
Celia did not like his tone. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I would.’
Mr Botha shook his head disapprovingly. ‘He’s a fraud and a phoney, Mrs Mayberry. If he remembers anything it will be through the filter of alcohol or simply invented. He’s nearly ninety and losing his mind.’
‘Where might I find him?’
‘Propping up the bar in the Rand Club,’ he replied with a derisory snort. ‘But women are not permitted.’
‘Then I have to see him where I am permitted, Mr Botha.’
He sighed. ‘All right, I will see what I can do, Mrs Mayberry.’
Mr Botha’s office was on the second floor of an elegant white building which could have been in the middle of London, yet here it was in the middle of Johannesburg. He showed her into the foyer and closed the heavy wooden door on the noisy street where trams, motor cars, men on bicycles and women on foot went about their business with the usual urgency of city dwellers. It was quiet inside the building and the woman at the front desk in a pair of glasses and blue tailored jacket smiled at Mr Botha. He said something to her in Afrikaans and then headed off up the stairs. He showed Celia into his office and offered her a glass of water, but Celia was anxious to find the paperwork for Mr van der Merwe’s farm. Mr Botha filled a glass for himself and then asked her to follow him to the safe, which was in a small cupboard in a room further down the corridor. He took a while to unlock it and Celia felt he was being slow on purpose. But it opened at last and Mr Botha leaned in and grabbed a cardboard box with his big hand. ‘These are your father’s papers,’ he told her, putting it down on the desk. ‘You are welcome to go through them.’
The box was large and held many documents. Celia pulled out the chair and sat down. ‘I’ll have that glass of water now,’ she said to Mr Botha, lifting out a beige file and opening it. Mr Botha left her for a few minutes as he went to find a glass and fill a jug. When he returned the desk was strewn with paper and Celia had a smug and satisfied look on her face. ‘You’re very organized,’ she said and her voice showed her surprise. She hadn’t thought Mr Botha would have labelled and arranged the files so clearly. ‘I have found the deeds to Mr van der Merwe’s farm,’ she said, holding up a faded pale blue file. ‘Now, I would like you to arrange for me to meet Captain Kleist.’
Once back at the hotel Celia sat in the lounge with a large glass of whiskey. After having feared being on her own she was relieved to have time to think without the overbearing presence of Mr Botha. She sat on the sofa and rattled the ice about in her glass. The golden liquid burned her throat but landed warmly in her stomach, swiftly taking the edge off her disquiet. Celia could not imagine her beloved father having a heart cold enough to murder, but Duchess had left little doubt. In spite of all that, the woman still claimed to love him. In spite of everything she had learned, Celia still loved him too, although she was learning about a very different father to the one she had known. She ordered another Scotch on the rocks.
Celia slept well that night. The hotel was reassuringly comfortable. The luxury was familiar and she didn’t feel afraid. However, there was a new deadness in the depths of her being, a dull feeling of non-emotion, which came from resignation. Resignation to the truth, to the terrible truth, that her father had built his fortune on the blood and incarceration of those Dupree brothers. No amount of money could give Aurelius back those wasted years, or Tiberius. The thought was so overwhelming that her mind simply shut down. She closed her eyes and sank into blissful oblivion.
In the morning she went down to breakfast in the dining room. There was a message for her at reception. Captain Kleist was coming to meet her at the hotel at eleven. She was surprised and a little unnerved. She thought he would be reluctant to meet her. She imagined he wouldn’t want to talk about so murky a past. This gave her heart a little boost and ignited a spark of hope. Surely, if he had killed on her father’s behalf, he wouldn’t be so keen to come and see her.
She waited in the lounge in an elegant floral dress, narrow-brimmed hat and cloth gloves, sipping a cup of tea. As the hands of the clock slowly approached eleven o’clock Celia began to feel uneasy. Her stomach churned with nerves and she could feel herself sweating. The hand moved beyond the twelve and seemed to gather speed as it descended towards the six. Celia watched the door. Every time anyone appeared she expected Captain Kleist, only to be disappointed. Her nerves grew still, the churning faded away and the sweat dried. She remained on the sofa for an hour until she had to resign herself to the fact that the Captain wasn’t coming.
When she telephoned Mr Botha he didn’t sound at all surprised. ‘He’s old and infirm,’ he explained. ‘I suggest you give up, Mrs Mayberry. He has no wish to see you.’
At this point many would have given up, as Mr Botha suggested. But Celia was discovering a steely determination inside herself that she had never had cause to find before. She had travelled thousands of miles to discover whether or not Aurelius Dupree was telling the truth. She wasn’t going to return to Ireland without knowing for certain. Captain Kleist was the only one who really knew what had happened that day in the veldt and she was adamant that she was going to talk to him, one way or the other. She remained on the sofa in the lounge for a further two hours, trying to think of a way of tricking him into meeting her. And then, just when her stomach was beginning to tell her that it was lunchtime, she came up with a plan – a plan which did not include Mr Botha.
She asked the concierge for the telephone number of the Rand Club and then asked if she could use the telephone on the desk to make a quick local call. The concierge was only too happy to oblige such a pretty young woman as Mrs Mayberry and wandered a short distance away to give her some privacy. She dialled the number and waited. Her heart was beating so loudly she thought she’d have trouble hearing the ring tone over it. There was a brief crackle down the line, then she heard it clearly. It rang a few times before a man’s voice answered.
‘The Rand Club, how may I help?’
‘Hello, good afternoon, my name is Mrs Temple,’ she said in a calm, officious voice. ‘I’m telephoning from the Governor General’s office in Cape Town. May I speak with Captain Kleist?’
‘I’m afraid he hasn’t come in today,’ replied the man.
This was as Celia had expected. ‘Ah, then perhaps you can help me,’ she said. ‘His Majesty’s Government has a very special package to send to Captain Kleist. I think it might be a medal. Would you be able to kindly give me his address so I may send it to him? It’s a matter of some urgency.’ The man on the other end of the telephone did not hesitate in giving her the Captain’s address. She thanked him and put down the receiver with a rush of triumph. Flushed with her success she thanked the concierge.
Celia took a taxi to Captain Kleist’s home, which was a small, modest bungalow in a quiet suburb of Johannesburg. Armed with a bottle of gin she strode up the little path to the front door. Taking a deep breath, she rang the bell. There was a long moment of silence before she heard the rattle of a chain and then the door opened a crack. A hard-faced old man with the narrow eyes of a shrew stared at her through the gap. When he saw her, in her elegant hat and dress, his face registered his surprise. ‘Captain Kleist?’ she said. He nodded and frowned, looking her up and down with suspicion. ‘I’m from the Governor General’s office. I have a package for you.’
‘What sort of package?’ he asked and his German accent was pronounced.
She looked past him to see the walls cluttered with hunting trophies mounted in rows. ‘I hear you’re a crack shot,’ she said. ‘
May I come in?’ Then without waiting for his reply, she pushed past him.
Kleist swung round, his face red with indignation, and Celia saw that he was holding a gun. ‘You know, once I would have shot someone for doing that,’ he said.
‘But you wouldn’t shoot Digby Deverill’s daughter, now would you?’ He stared at her in shock, lost for words. ‘Shall we have a drink?’
‘A drink? I’m out of drink.’
‘Lucky then I brought a bottle with me.’ She held out the gin.
He took it and looked at the label. Satisfied, he walked into the small sitting room. ‘How do you like yours, Fräulein?’ he asked.
‘With ice and water,’ she replied.
He handed her a glass of gin with a shaky hand and she followed him into the room, which was decorated with animal skins and animal heads. The air was stale with the smell of old cigarette smoke, which clung to the upholstery. She sat down and tried not to look at all the dead eyes on the wall staring at her miserably.
Kleist was unshaven and perspiring with stains on his tie and on one lapel of his crumpled linen jacket. He did not look like he was going to remember much. He handed her a glass of gin, ran his rheumy blue eyes over her features and grinned crookedly. ‘You are the image of your father,’ he said, his German accent cutting sharply into his consonants. ‘You remind me of him when he was a young man. You have the same eyes.’
Daughters of Castle Deverill Page 39