‘How did they know that it was a footpad?’
‘There may have been a servant with him – I cannot say. I can only tell you the tale as it was told to me.’
‘If it was a footpad, I don’t see how it could have anything to do with the Treasure.’
‘You do not believe in things being lucky or unlucky? You modern young people attach no importance to things of that sort?’
‘I don’t know – I shouldn’t like to have anything that had been stolen.’
Miss Olivia began to fold up her work.
‘I do not care to hear reflections upon our ancestor,’ she said coldly. ‘I believe I informed you that he left Italy for political reasons. I imagine that he had every right to take with him his share of the patrimony which would have been his had he remained. I think I will now say good night.’
Derek left the piano to open the door for her. When she had gone out he shut it again and came back to the fire with a mischievous expression on his face.
‘Feeling snubbed, darling?’
‘You were listening?’
‘Oh, passionately! She prides herself on her articulation, and you may have noticed that I was playing in a whisper. I’m just wondering why you were treated to those old wives’ tales.’
‘So am I.’
He laughed.
‘Well, I got the impression that she was a bit disappointed, but I don’t know why. She may have wanted to scare you off the horrid unlucky stuff, or she may have wanted to get you all worked up and interested in it.’
‘Why should she want to scare me off?’
‘She might want to protect you, or she might want to stop you laying sacrilegious hands on the Treasure.’
‘Then why should she want to get me interested?’
‘More bits and pieces from Anna! She is quite firm about the Treasure being unlucky, but she says of course if someone who wasn’t a Benevent handled it, the curse mightn’t act, or it wouldn’t matter so much if it did! Old Mr. Benevent went a bit childish before he died. He must have been about a hundred. Anna said he talked quite a lot about the Treasure. He told her the thing to do was to get someone who didn’t matter to do the job for you. He said he wouldn’t handle it himself and no Benevent ought to, but it could be done by a stranger.’
Candida had a horrid cold feeling.
‘What did he mean?’
‘I don’t know. She got rather carried away talking, and when I began to ask questions she was scared and dried up. I had to promise I wouldn’t let anyone know that she had talked.’
‘Derek – you’ve just told me!’
He waved that away.
‘Darling, what she meant was the Aunts! She wouldn’t give a damn whether you knew or not as long as you didn’t tell them. Anyhow it’s all rubbish, only – Look here, Candida, you keep out of it! Don’t get interested in it, don’t get scared about it! If she offers to show it to you, say you’d rather not!’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. I’ve just got a very strong feeling that it’s better left alone. Part of the feeling is that perhaps Alan Thompson didn’t leave it alone, and that it would have been better for him if he had. Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t go within a mile of the stuff for a million – and I can’t put it stronger than that!’
Candida said,
‘Where is it?’
She got one of his most charming smiles.
‘Darling, I don’t know, and I don’t want to.’
Chapter Fourteen
When Candida reached her room she was surprised to find Nellie there. It was no more than half past ten, but that was late for her to be turning down the bed and putting in a hot water-bottle, and when she looked round it was plain to see that she had been crying. Candida shut the door and came towards her.
‘Why, Nellie, is anything the matter?’
Tears started again from between the reddened lips. The girl said angrily,
‘No, there isn’t, nor yet there isn’t going to be! I’m clearing out!’
‘Clearing out?’
Nellie stamped her foot.
‘Yes, I am, and nobody’s going to persuade me different! The money is good, and I won’t say it isn’t, but what’s the good of that if you’ve been scared out of your life or had something happen to you that you’re never going to forget?’
Candida said in a half-hearted voice,
‘Nellie, what do you mean?’
‘I mean I’m catching the 9.25 back to London in the morning, and I don’t care what Aunt Anna says, or whether she ever speaks to me again or not!’
Candida came a step nearer.
‘Has anything happened?’
‘I’m not talking about it!’
‘But, Nellie – ’
‘What you don’t say nobody can’t bring up against you, and that’s flat! I’m not talking and I’m not staying! But I’ll go as far as this – what’s sauce for one of us is just as well sauce for the other!’
Candida said slowly, ‘What – do – you – mean?’
Nellie tapped with her foot.
‘Can’t you take a hint?’ Her voice had remained angry. ‘Here, let me by!’
Candida went back against the door and stood there.
‘Not just yet,’ she said. ‘There isn’t any hurry, and I think you have said too much not to say a little more.’
The girl was shaking.
‘Let me by!’
‘In a minute. Look here, Nellie, don’t be silly. Come and sit down and tell me what has upset you. You say you are getting out, and you’ve as good as told me that I’d better get out too. You can’t say things like that and leave them floating in the air.’
Nellie tossed her head.
‘Well then, I can, and what’s more I’m going to! Least said, soonest mended!’
Candida was silent for a minute. Then she said,
‘Someone has upset you. Who was it? Was it Derek?’
Nellie laughed.
‘Go on! You don’t suppose I couldn’t look after myself with his kind! Anyhow he’s all right is Mr. Derek. I mean he might want to lark about a bit, but – he’s all right. ’Smatter of fact he’s got a girl in Retley – been going with her steady for quite a long time. Only don’t you give him away – there wouldn’t half be a row if it came out. He’s told me all about her. Showed me her photo, too. Not pretty, you know, but ever so nice. And you could tell he was fond of her, the way he looked. A girl can always tell.’
The atmosphere had changed. They were two girls talking about a love affair. Candida laughed and said,
‘Oh, I won’t give him away.’ And then, ‘So it wasn’t Derek who upset you. Was it Anna?’
Nellie said in a scornful voice,
‘She fusses, and I won’t say I haven’t cheeked her, but that’s all in the family. Up in the air one minute and all right again the next – that’s Aunt Anna. Always been like that, she has. I wouldn’t take any notice of Aunt Anna.’
‘Is it Joseph then – your uncle?’
Nellie blazed.
‘He’s no uncle of mine, thank God! What Aunt Anna wanted to marry him for, I can’t think! Twenty years younger than her, and all he thinks about is money! Disgusting I call it! And how Aunt Anna could!’
Candida had a fleeting thought that thumbed its nose and suggested with a giggle that Anna’s savings must be considerable and her family would naturally prefer them to come their way. It was the kind of guttersnipe thought which you repress and dismiss. But Nellie appeared to have caught a glimpse of it, for she said on a defiant note,
‘And you needn’t think we’d have minded if it had been what you could call suitable, and not someone that was young enough to be her son and just to please the Miss Benevents. We all know she’s fond of them – do anything for Miss Cara she would. But you’re not called on to marry a chap that’s after your money just because it suits the people you work for!’
Candida laughed.
/> ‘I suppose not, but I expect it’s been done before now. Well, you don’t like Joseph. Is that why you are going?’
‘It’s reason enough!’
‘But is it the reason?’
Nellie looked her straight in the face and said, ‘No!’
‘Then – ’
Nellie flushed.
‘Why can’t you leave it alone? I don’t like it here, and I’m clearing out! And if you’ve got any sense you’ll clear out too! Let me go!’
Candida shook her head.
All at once Nellie Brown’s resistance broke. She had a temper and it got away with her. She had always hated the place, and now it scared her. It was going to do her quite a lot of good to get some of these feelings off her chest. Her eyes sparkled as she said,
‘All right then, here it is – and don’t blame me if you don’t like it!’ She laughed angrily. ‘How would you like to wake up in the night and hear someone in your room?’
‘Nellie!’
‘Oh, it wasn’t Joseph or Mr. Derek – I’d have known what to do about that! It was something that went crying in the dark, and by the time I’d got a light on it was gone. So I started locking my door, but last night it came again. There was a cold hand that touched my face – it wasn’t half horrible. I wasn’t properly awake for a minute, and by the time I was, there was the crying thing half across the room. My curtains were back, but all I could see was something white, and it walked right into the wall and wasn’t there any more. Well, I put on the light, and the door was locked all right the way I’d left it. It was past two o’clock, and I kept my light on till the morning, and every minute of the time I was making up my mind I wouldn’t stay another day. Only when I was up and dressed and the sun was shining it seemed stupid to go away without my money. There’ll be a month owing me tomorrow, and I thought I’d get it first.’ She stopped abruptly and said with a complete change of voice and manner, ‘Well, I must go.’
Candida said,
‘Don’t you – mind?’
Nellie laughed with an effect of bravado. ‘Mind? What about?’ Then, as Candida only looked at her, she went into a rush of words, ‘If you’re thinking about my sleeping in that room again, I’m not doing it, and that’s flat! I told Aunt Anna I wouldn’t, and I won’t! I’m going in with her, and she’ll be wondering what’s keeping me!’
‘But – Joseph – ’
Nellie tossed her head.
‘She’s got her own room and always has had! And there’s a bolt on the door, what’s more! I’ll be all right in with Aunt Anna!’
Chapter Fifteen
Candida went to bed, but it was some time before she put out her light. When she thought of putting it out there was an echo of what Nellie had said about the cold hand that had touched her face and the thing that went crying in the dark. It was frightfully stupid of course, but she had a horrid feeling that if she told her hand to go out and turn off the bedside light there would be some pretty dogged opposition. She went barefoot to the bookshelves which filled the whole of the recess between the fireplace and the window. If she were to read for a little, the pictures in her mind would change and she would be able to sleep.
She took down a book of verse and turned the pages. A couple of lines started to her eye:
‘Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.’
That brought up a picture of cold moonlight and a frosted world. She remembered:
‘The owl for all his feathers was a-cold.’
Not just what she wanted at the moment. She turned the leaves, and saw four lines at the bottom of a page:
‘I saw their starved lips in the gloom,
With horrid warning gaped wide;
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill-side.’
She clapped the book to and put it back upon the shelf. If all that Tennyson and Keats had got to offer were things about cold owls and horrid warnings, to say nothing of starved lips in the gloom, then they were definitely off.
She found a book of short stories and chanced upon one about a coral island. With a hot water-bottle at her feet and the glow of a reading-lamp at her left shoulder, it was possible to be transported to the tropics and to warm the imagination at a description of blue water, rainbow fish, and exotic blooms. After two or three stories all set amongst surroundings where the temperature never fell below eighty degrees she actually found the bottle too much and pushed it away. A little later on she was so nearly asleep that the book slipped from her hand. The sound that it made as it slid to the floor roused her just enough to make her reach out and turn off the light. She passed at once into one of those indeterminate dreams of which no real impression remains.
A long time afterwards she came back to the place where the dreams that come are remembered. She was in the midst of one, and there was no comfort in it. A wide moor and a blowing wind and the hour before the dawn. There were voices in the wind, but what they said went by. Only if she didn’t know what they were saying, how did she know that it was something that she must not, must not hear? In her dream she began to run so as to get away from the wind, but she tripped and fell, and the wind went over her and was gone.
It hadn’t been dark in the dream – just grey, and the clouds racing. But now when she opened her eyes it was very dark indeed. She was awake and in bed in her own room, and the room was full of darkness. She lay on her back, with the head of the bed against the wall, the door to the right, the windows to the left, and in the opposite wall the bulging chimney-breast and the recess which held the books. She knew where all these things were, but as far as seeing them they might just as well not have been there, except that the shape of the windows showed against the denser blackness of the wall. Outside and away from the hill the darkness would not be absolute. There would be at the very least the remembrance and the promise of light. But it couldn’t get into the house. It couldn’t get into the room, because the darkness filled it to the very brim.
Candida lay there in the dark and was afraid. Moments went by, each one more dragging than the last, and as they dragged, the fear weighed on her and held her down. She had only to put out her hand to the switch of the reading-lamp and turn it on and a golden light would fill the place. Darkness had no power against light. She had only to put out her hand. But she couldn’t move it from where it was clenched upon the other, hard up against the slow beating of her heart.
And then all of a sudden there was a sound and there was light.
The sound was the faintest in the world. Something moved. She could get no nearer to it than that. The sound came first, and afterwards the light – a thin white streak like a silver wire stretched upon the darkness of the recess.
Rows of black books in the shelves which she could not see and a line of light dividing them. Between one heart-beat and the next it came, and was gone. She heard the sound again, and this time she knew it for what it was – the bookshelves masked a door and someone was opening it. And quite suddenly the terror that froze her gave way to the instinct to shield her eyes from the searching light, to cover herself with the semblance of sleep. She turned with one quick movement and lay upon her side with her face turned into the pillow and the bedclothes caught up high about her head.
She was just in time, because the light was in the room. It was the light of a torch. She could see it between her lashes – just the glint of it where the bedclothes fell away and the pillow was pressed down. She could tell that it was a torch by the way it slid and swung. Someone had come through the wall in the recess. Someone was crossing the floor. Someone went out of the door and closed it softly.
Candida was not frightened any more, she was angry. There was someone who was playing tricks – on her, on Nellie. Nellie’s room was in the old part of the house too. Secret passages were useful in the seventeenth century. People were persecuted for their religion. There were wars and rumours of wars, conspiracies and plots. A turn of the wheel and you
were up, and another turn and you were down. It would be useful to have somewhere to hide yourself or – your treasure. She wondered whether the Benevent Treasure was guarded by one of those secret doors. And she wondered who it was who had come soft-foot through the wall tonight. Nellie’s visitor could have been no one more frightening than poor Miss Cara, wandering in the dark of a dream, looking perhaps for the boy of whom she had been so dearly fond. But she didn’t think it was Miss Cara tonight, or if it was, then she wasn’t walking in her sleep. Mary Coppinger had walked in her sleep at school, but she didn’t need a torch to light her way. Candida had followed her once, and she had gone downstairs in the dark and into one of the classrooms, walking confidently and without hesitation where she herself had had to grope her way. By the time she caught Mary up there was just enough light from the row of windows to make out that she was sitting at her desk. She had the lid open, and she took out a book, and shut down the lid, and went back by the way that she had come. She didn’t remember anything about it in the morning. The book was under her pillow. It was a French grammar, and it turned out that she was worrying about an exam she was taking. Poor Aunt Cara was worried about something much worse than an exam.
But whatever had come through this room with a torch wasn’t walking in its sleep. It was when she was confronted with the word her in her own mind and found she couldn’t be sure it was the right one that she snatched at the non-committal it. Because she couldn’t be sure, she really couldn’t be sure, that it was a woman who had come out of the wall and gone away by the door. It could have been a man. Whichever it was had gone soft-foot and silent.
It could have been Joseph. When had she ever heard him come or go? He walked like a cat – an admirable thing in a butler, but not if he used it to prowl in secret passages and come drifting through one’s bedroom at dead of night. It was all in her mind in a flash, and in another she was out of bed and the door open under her hand. There was no light in the passage and no movement, but at the right-hand corner there was, not a glow, but some thinning of the darkness which made the corner visible.
The Benevent Treasure Page 11