Sheer Folly

by Carola Dunn

  The gravel path was well-lit by wrought-iron gas lampposts of an old-fashioned appearance though no doubt the workings had been refurbished to modern standards. The light was bright enough to be helpful without being garish. On either side of the path, the ghosts of trees, bushes, and hedges loomed ahead, to vanish behind as they passed.

  “One might almost suppose oneself in Hyde Park,” said Sir Desmond derisively.

  “It may not be according to Repton or Capability Brown,” Daisy retorted, “but the lights seem to me extremely sensible if one has an attraction in the gardens that is worth seeing at night and one doesn’t want one’s guests to break their necks.”

  “I hope it actually is worth seeing at night.”

  “You should have waited to hear from the rest of us before going to see it.”

  He glanced back at those of the party following them—in front were Julia, young Carlin, and Pritchard. Daisy thought Sir Desmond frowned, but they were halfway between lamps and the light wasn’t bright enough to be sure. All he said was, “I’d rather see for myself.”

  She, too, looked back, turning slightly and using the movement as an excuse to let go his arm. She didn’t need his assistance on the smooth path, and she was not altogether comfortable with him. Lucy was a little way behind them. Like Daisy, she had changed into walking shoes. She was with Owen Howell and was being polite, as far as Daisy could tell.

  At the rear came Lady Ottaline and Lord Rydal. She was clinging to his arm, tottering along on her high heels, which were most unsuitable for a night-time excursion in the garden, or any time, come to that. Daisy heard a giggle that certainly didn’t come from Lucy. Odd, she thought, considering the looks they had exchanged on meeting earlier. And why hadn’t Rhino stuck to Julia’s side as usual?

  Looking away from the lights, Daisy saw a glint of hoarfrost on the grass. The air was crisp. Above, the floor of heaven was “thick inlaid with patines of bright gold,” as Lorenzo put it with the aid of the Bard, millions of stars seldom seen in England’s cloudy climate and never in the smoky skies of the metropolis. Ahead, against the backdrop of the Milky Way and its attendant swarms, swirls, and clusters, loomed a black hill, smoothly rounded, with a spinney at the summit looking ridiculously like a poodle’s topknot.

  The path started to ascend, with short flights of steps every now and then.

  “Aren’t you glad now to have the lamplight?” Daisy asked teasingly.

  “One might certainly come quite a cropper without,” Sir Desmond admitted. “Especially on the way down.”

  They crossed a wooden bridge over a gurgling brook. Daisy leant for a moment against the stout wooden rail, looking down at the ripples.

  “I doubt that it’s very deep,” said Sir Desmond, “but there, I concede, you have another good reason for the lights. I wouldn’t want to take a dip in this weather. I’ll have to give you best, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “Give it to Mr. Pritchard,” Daisy suggested.

  “Yes, I can see Pritchard is above all a practical man.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far. Rebuilding a ruined grotto is hardly a practical act. If you ask me, it shows he has a distinctly romantic streak.”

  “A romantic plumber! Dreadful thought.”

  “It does rather boggle the mind,” Daisy agreed, laughing. “But there’s really no reason even the most practical person shouldn’t have his romantic moments.”

  EIGHT

  Beyond the bridge the path followed the stream’s meanders, rising higher and higher above the water. Ahead of Daisy and Sir Desmond, Pritchard, Julia, and Carlin passed a lamppost and disappeared round a limestone bluff.

  “Oh!” Julia’s exclamation rang out above a low, sonorous hum almost like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. “How marvellous!”

  “I say, sir, splendid!”

  “Do let’s go in.”

  “If you don’t mind, Miss Beaufort, let’s wait for the others,” Pritchard suggested.

  “I can’t think why you haven’t showed it off to Mother and me before. We’ve been here nearly a week.”

  “I was saving it till Mrs. Fletcher and Lady Gerald arrived.”

  Daisy hurried forward to see the cause of all the enthusiasm. Her foot landed on something large, hard, and unstable, and her ankle gave way. Luckily Sir Desmond had kept pace with her. Her desperate clutch found his arm. “Ouch!”

  “Steady! What happened?”

  “I twisted my ankle. I think I’ve just ricked it. Yes, it’s better already. Thank you for catching me. I stepped on something. . . .” She glanced back at the path. “Yes, look, a big stone. It must have fallen from the cliff.”

  “I’d better chuck it in the stream before someone else trips and lands in the water.” He suited action to the words and fastidiously dusted his gloved hands together. “There, one hazard the less. Gas lamps or no gas lamps, you’d better slow down, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  They proceeded round the bend at a more decorous pace, joining the first arrivals on a sort of paved landing.

  “Oh!” Daisy echoed Julia in the only possible reaction to the spectacle before her.

  A waterfall plunged twenty feet or so into a dark pool. The cascade itself was anything but dark, because the ingenious plumber had somehow placed lamps in niches behind it. The sheet of falling water glowed, flinging out droplets that flashed and glinted as they caught the light.

  “Isn’t it wonderful, Daisy?”

  “It is. How very clever, Mr. Pritchard. I wish Lucy could take a photo of it.”

  “Of what?” Lucy came round the bluff, with Owen Howell. “Mr. Howell refuses to tell me—” She fell silent, contemplating the luminous cascade. “That’s quite a sight, Mr. Pritchard,” she said with a sigh.

  “I could go back to the house and fetch your camera, Lady Gerald,” Howell offered.

  “Believe me, if I thought I could do it, I’d fetch the camera myself. But I’m afraid a photograph simply wouldn’t do it justice.”

  “Why not?”

  Lucy started to explain about long exposure times and moving subjects. Meanwhile Daisy, who had heard it all before, looked up at the source of the waterfall. Issuing from a dimly lit cavern, the stream was split in two by a plinth on which posed a marble female in Greek draperies, rather like the statue in the fountain at home. Instead of water streaming from her urn, however, she poured forth a marble river. She had small wings on her head and the lower part of her gown was decorated with a relief of bulrushes. Daisy racked her brain.

  “Tethys!” she said triumphantly, and scribbled a few descriptive words in the notebook she had, of course, brought with her. Her version of Pitman’s shorthand was at the best of times rather hit and miss. She hoped she’d remember what she’d written.

  “You know your Greek mythology,” said Pritchard. “Most people ask me why not Poseidon.”

  “Tethys?” Sir Desmond mused aloud. “Wasn’t she a goddess of the sea? So why not Poseidon?”

  “She was the mother of rivers, sir,” Carlin said eagerly. “A minor figure. I’m not surprised you don’t remember her.”

  “Hmph.” His superior was not pleased to be reminded of the gulf of years separating him from his education. “You’ve studied the classics, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “We read the myths at school, in English. I expect you concentrated on the gods, but I, at least, was always more interested in the goddesses.”

  Julia giggled. “Wasn’t Tethys the one who had an incredible number of children? As well as the rivers, I mean.”

  “Circe among them,” Carlin chortled, “if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Miss Harrison passed rather rapidly over Circe, d’you remember, Julia? I expect we missed a lot, reading the expurgated translations.”

  “I wonder where my wife’s got to?” Sir Desmond said abruptly. “I hope she didn’t turn her ankle, like Mrs. Fletcher. In those ridiculous shoes of hers, she’d certainly sprain if not break it. Perhaps I’d better go back and see. Don’t wait for us.” He
turned on his heel and was gone.

  “Dear me,” said Pritchard, “did you wrench your ankle, Mrs. Fletcher? I’m so sorry. The gardeners rake the path regularly, but I’m afraid bits and pieces keep rolling down the slopes.”

  “No harm done. I can’t even feel it any longer. Do say we can go up to the grotto now.”

  “Perhaps I ought to make sure Lady Ottaline is all right. . . .”

  “Sir Desmond and Lord Rydal can take care of Lady Ottaline between them,” Lucy said impatiently, “if in fact she’s come to any harm.”

  “Which I haven’t.” The lady in question came into view, swathed in furs, leaning heavily on her husband’s arm. “You didn’t tell me it was such a long way,” she said reproachfully to Pritchard.

  “It’s not really very far, Lady Ottaline. I’m afraid I didn’t notice your footwear.”

  “You didn’t?” Pouting, she held out one slender—not to say bony—ankle and green glacé shoe with a diamanté clasp and very high, narrow heels. She turned it this way and that. “They’re intended to be noticed.”

  “Charming,” said Sir Desmond dryly, “but not intended for a walk through a garden at night.”

  Rhino had arrived close behind them, the smoke from his inevitable cigarette curling up into the still air. He made straight for Julia’s side. He murmured in her ear while Lady Ottaline was complaining, then said to Pritchard, “Well, are we going into your dashed grotto or not?”

  “There are steps. I don’t know if Lady Ottaline will be able to—”

  “I’m freezing, standing here. I’m going up.” Lucy started the climb.

  The steps, cut into the limestone cliff surrounding the mouth of the grotto, ascended steeply for about ten feet. Daisy was glad to see a stout-looking iron railing. She set off after Lucy, whose fashionably tubular frock didn’t appear to impede her much, one of the advantages of a knee-length hemline.

  Each step was worn, the centre lower than the sides. Daisy deduced that the flight had been cut by the original creators of the grotto and trodden since by generation after generation.

  Lucy, plodding upwards ahead of her, glanced back. “Darling, this had jolly well be worth the effort.”

  “You must admit it looks intriguing from below.”

  “I wouldn’t be up here else. I hope Pritchard’s going to lend me a gardener to carry my stuff tomorrow.”

  “Has he given you any reason to suppose he might not?”

  “No,” Lucy admitted grudgingly. “He seems quite a decent little man.”

  Dismayed, Daisy looked behind her to make sure the “decent little man” was not close at her heels. He was not, but his nephew was a few steps below her. The roar of the waterfall had covered the sound of his footsteps, and she hoped it had also covered the sound of Lucy’s condescending words. Unlike Lady Ottaline’s husky contralto, Lucy possessed a penetrating soprano.

  Owen Howell showed no sign of having heard, or perhaps he didn’t care a hoot about Lucy’s opinion of his uncle. Looking up at Daisy, he said something she couldn’t make out.

  “Sorry?”

  He raised his voice. “My uncle would like you to wait till he gets there to explore.”

  “Of course.” Why? Because he wanted to see their initial reactions at firsthand? Because parts were dangerous—falling ceilings, perhaps? Daisy wondered, glancing up a trifle nervously as she followed Lucy from the steps onto the floor of the grotto. Surely not! Pritchard would never permit such inefficiency, and if the hazard was a recent occurrence, Howell was there to keep them away from it. Or was the request to wait related to their host’s mysterious and somewhat sinister eagerness to show them the grotto at night?

  “Hold on,” she called to Lucy, who was heading for the rear of the cave. “Mr. Pritchard doesn’t want us wandering about before he comes up.”

  “Why not? I can’t see that he’d be much help if one of us fell into the Styx.”

  “Lucy!”

  “I just want to . . . Oh, all right! I probably can’t tell in the dark, anyway.”

  Though murky, it wasn’t really dark in the grotto. Just above head-height on the walls gas lamps burnt, the mantles shielded by translucent shells that diffused the light. Among the thousands of shells encrusting the rugged walls, here and there mother-of-pearl gleamed and crystals glittered. The floor was polished limestone, five or six yards in breadth, ending at a low stone parapet beyond which the stream flowed swift and smooth, satiny black, to its drop into the pool beneath.

  One couldn’t walk into the stream unaware, Daisy thought, but it wouldn’t be difficult to fall over the low wall.

  “At least it’s warmer in here,” said Lucy with a shiver.

  “That’s partly the gas lights,” Howell told her, “and partly the insulating effect of the tons of rock around us.”

  “Don’t remind me!” With another shiver, Lucy looked up.

  The upper part of the walls sloped inwards and gradually converged on either side. Their meeting point was beyond the reach of the lights.

  “Are there stalactites?” Daisy asked. “And stalagmites? I can never remember which is which, but this is the right kind of rock for them, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, the same stuff that furs pipes and kettles. There are some knobs and protuberances up there that may grow into stalactites in a few centuries. My uncle considered bringing some in from elsewhere or having some manufactured, but he decided against it.”

  “Are the shells real?” Lucy sounded suspicious.

  “Oh yes. Most of them were already here when Uncle Brin bought Appsworth, though many had fallen off the walls. He brought in more to fill the gaps. In fact, some are where nature put them. Limestone and chalk are made up of ancient shells, you know. There are fossils, too.”

  “I’d like to see those.” Julia joined them.

  “I’ll be happy to show you tomorrow, Miss Beaufort, if I get home in time. I’m afraid the light’s not good enough now to see them properly.”

  “It’s not good enough to see anything much,” grumbled Rhino, lighting a cigarette as he appeared on the heels of his beloved. “What a waste of time!”

  Daisy had to suppress an urge to shove him backwards down the steps. Someone else was probably behind him.

  “Rhino, darling,” came Lady Ottaline’s plaintive voice, “do get a move on. I can’t balance on this step forever.”

  “I’m right here, my dear,” said Sir Desmond soothingly. “You can’t possibly fall.”

  Rhino lumbered forwards. The Wandersleys entered the grotto, then Carlin, and bringing up the rear, Mr. Pritchard.

  “Well, here we all are,” said their host, with a sigh of relief at having safely shepherded his unruly flock to their destination. “It’s as close to the way it used to look as I could make it, but the old pictures and descriptions aren’t too clear.”

  “Don’t tell me the Appsworths had gas lighting put in,” Rhino said aggressively.

  “No, it would have cost much too much if I wasn’t in the business. Don’t worry, you can’t see them in daylight.”

  “No good for photography,” Lucy grumbled.

  “It’s wonderful, but a bit spooky, isn’t it?” said Julia.

  “Don’t!” Lady Ottaline’s shudder combined the delicate with the theatrical.

  “Grottoes were originally intended to be eerie.” Daisy had done her preliminary homework. “That is, originally originally they were caves where hermits lived, the religious kind. But in English parks and gardens, they were supposed to be both picturesque and grotesque, and in general frightfully Gothic and romantic. The owners—”

  “It’s haunted!” shrieked Lady Ottaline, pointing towards the rear of the cave.

  Everyone swung round. A cowled figure lurked in the dim depths. On silent feet, it glided to one side, started to withdraw, then suddenly vanished.

  NINE

  “By Jove, an intruder!” exclaimed Carlin. “Tally-ho! Don’t worry, I’ll nab him! Hey, you, stop!” He spran
g after the monkish shape.

  “Yoicks, tally-ho!” Rhino, too, rumbled into motion. Like his namesake, he was slow to get going but once under way would be very hard to stop.

  But Daisy, as she turned, had seen Pritchard and Howell exchanging a conspiratorial glance of glee. Remembering Pritchard’s mysterious eagerness to show her the grotto by night, she caught Carlin’s arm as he passed her.

  “Hold on! Something tells me our host is quite well acquainted with this particular ghost.”

  “What?” asked the bemused young man. “Let go, he’ll get away!”

  Uncle and nephew had managed to grab Rhino before he got up steam.

  Pritchard chuckled. “We are,” he confessed.

  “Mr. Armitage,” said Julia.

  “Exactly, Miss Beaufort. I should have realised Mrs. Fletcher was too knowledgeable to be fooled.”

  “I was just about to say, the owners of grottoes in the eighteenth century often had an aged and infirm retainer in residence playing the hermit to give visitors a thrill.”

  “He certainly gave me a thrill,” Lucy admitted dryly. “Not that I believe in ghosts, but—”

  “I do.” Lady Ottaline played the fragile damsel to the hilt. “Are you sure that wasn’t . . . ?”

  “Quite sure,” Howell assured her. “Come back to his lair and see.” He offered his arm, but she chose Rhino’s.

  Julia had already set off in pursuit of Armitage. Rhino followed her, Lady Ottaline attached to him at the elbow. The others went after them.

  “I wonder if a photo of the hermit in daylight would look silly?” Lucy said to Daisy. She started muttering to herself about exposure and focus and filters.

  Sir Desmond was on Daisy’s other side. “Quite a surprise,” he murmured. “I’d never have credited Pritchard with sufficient imagination.” He sounded slightly amused, but Daisy got the impression that underneath, well hidden by his shell of imperturbability, was a different sentiment. Anger? Surely he couldn’t be seriously annoyed by the apparition’s having given his wife a shock.

  Lady Ottaline was much easier to read than Sir Desmond. She had been startled but not, Daisy was sure, genuinely frightened. Was her husband unable to see through her penchant for melodrama? He hadn’t rushed to her side to comfort her. Something else must have provoked him, or Daisy had mistaken his emotions.