by Kay Kenyon
She circled around the cabin, staying under cover of the trees, looking for a window that might allow her a glimpse inside. She cocked the gun and moved forward.
Nearing a window, she stopped, listening intently. The utter silence seemed unnatural. The day’s wind had vanished. No crickets sang.
A chink in the window coverings beckoned her. She looked in, her heart pounding against her ribs.
In the corner, a rumpled bed. Beside the window, a large table scattered with books and papers. An upholstered chair. There was no one in her line of sight, but she couldn’t see the whole room. She would have to go in.
Crossing around to the only door of the cabin, she put her hand on the latch.
There was nothing to do but charge in. She pushed through the door, sweeping the gun from side to side to find her target. No one was there. Except: Martin lay on the floor to her left. Gagged and tied up.
He moved. He was alive.
She crept over to him, pulling him to a seated position. As she removed his gag, she put a finger to her lips. To untie him, she would have to put the gun down. She placed it at her side. Why had she left the door open? A mistake.
The rope binding his wrists was strongly knotted. Pulling at it, she found it loosening and yanked the knot free.
He looked unhurt but wild-eyed with fear. Nevertheless, he had to help her. She placed the gun in his hand. Whispering, she said, “If he comes in, shoot him. Just aim and pull the trigger. You understand?”
He nodded.
As he pointed the gun at the door, she worked the rope on his ankles. “Is he armed?”
His voice cracked as he whispered, “A knife. He has a knife. He killed Jane Babington. I saw it in London at that church, because I do get views of things. And the man in the picture helped him.”
“In the picture?” At last, the ropes fell free. She took the gun back from him.
His words came out in a rush. “The one that’s a baron. You have to believe me, it’s him.”
“I believe you. I’m here to stop him.” He stared at her. “I’m working with the police. Do everything I tell you, do you understand, Martin?”
He nodded, looking at her in some astonishment. He had almost died, and the fact that she was working with the police had the power to dumbfound him.
“Can you walk?”
He could. Taking him by the arm, she helped him to his feet. “We’re going through that door and then we’ll make a dash to the right. Stay close to me. If shooting starts, run to the trees and keep going.”
She pulled him into the doorway. In the next moment they rushed outside, Kim holding Martin’s elbow. She ran with him toward the line of trees. A flash of light. Idelle must be signaling. With a fierce grip on Martin, she crashed with him into the stand of trees. Idelle was still sitting on the ground.
Crouching, Kim darted looks into the dark. Where was Verhoeven? Moonlight laced through the trees, but still, the woods could hide a gang, or an army. Verhoeven could be nearby, hiding in the shadows.
And they, of course, were shedding a most terrible light.
“Who is she?” Martin asked when he saw they were not alone.
“Her name is Idelle Coslett. She is the baron’s aunt, but she has helped to save your life.”
“You’re a police officer?” Martin whispered at her.
“Never mind about that now. We have to get you out of here.”
“Because the murderer is going to escape. I heard the baron say there’d be a boat to pick him up.”
A boat? The Germans were getting their man out. “What do you know? Tell me quickly.”
“The man said it was coming at nine ten tonight. And the baron didn’t want him to kill me, but the man with the knife said it was too late, and he was going to anyway.”
Kim put a hand on his arm and turned to Idelle, taking the flashlight from her. She shone it briefly on her watch. It was 7:56.
Dries had seen them approach. The dark one, the light one. Two women at the tree line, watching the cabin. Godverdomme. They had taken his boy.
He had been waiting for hours outside the cabin, waiting to see if Powell would return to try and stop the last kill. He had been about to go back in the cabin and load up the cloth when the women got there.
The reporter. It was she, he knew it, for he never forgot a light.
She had a gun. He would have cornered her in the cabin, if only she had not been armed. And now she had the boy. Alas, for his plans, his elegant last gesture to England!
The three of them lingered on the edge of the woods. Anger built in him with tiny licks of flame. If he trod carefully, he might get within striking distance of them. But the moon was rising over the tops of the trees, shedding enough pallid light to form shadows. Godverdomme, he was done, then. He would not have to face a displeased Heinrich Himmler. Perhaps best. But how sweet it would have been to do two of them at once.
Dries slowly began threading his way through the woods toward the beach. He wondered how the woman had known he would be here. It must have been Powell, his erstwhile patrician helper who had so badly fallen apart, lost his nerve.
One way or the other, the man was intent upon driving him from England.
Such was gratitude.
SULCLIFFE CASTLE
7:56 PM. “Powell, open the door.” Her voice had grown hoarse from pleading. Her feeble raps on the door had continued for a long while.
Go away, he thought. Leave me in peace.
“I beg you. Call off the ship.”
That was the one thing he had done right. To get rid of the monster.
She twisted the doorknob, but he had bolted the door. “The woman has nothing! No proof. Please, Powell. We can go on.”
Through the windows, the sky had fallen into a purple dusk. He saw himself reflected there, a strange being, one living in glass. Perhaps this was the man his mother had wanted him to be. She had believed so strongly in him. This was a different Powell, the one in the glass. It was the son she should have had.
You are welcome to him, Mother. But it’s not me.
Kim would alert the police and they would come. He didn’t hate her as she thought. In fact, it even felt right that she was the one to bring it all to an end.
Mother jiggled the door, shaking it on its hinges. “Powell.”
There would be no peace with her out there. He opened the door.
She stood before him, a disheveled woman, strands of hair fallen in her face, her eyes rheumy with tears. “Why are you so cruel?” she whispered.
“I was never kind.” He turned from her and descended the stairs. He could hear her following, the click click of the cane, her feet shuffling.
“Call your contacts back. Tell them not to come. Verhoeven doesn’t need to leave, don’t you see, Powell? You aren’t ready yet. Call them.”
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “I don’t want the job, Mother. Leading Ancient Light. Give it to Helena or another of your happy followers.” He headed for the terrace, to watch the police arrive. Just to see them coming, to know it was over, as it had been over for him the moment Verhoeven had told him the lie. His gift beginning to blossom. The nightmare of the murders. All for nothing.
She followed him down the gallery hall like a Greek harpy. “But it must be you, Powell, you were destined to lead.”
“Actually, that was a lie. Verhoeven lied about it.”
“He didn’t!”
Rian was just coming out of the sitting room with a feather duster. Seeing the two of them arguing, she hurried down the hallway and disappeared.
His mother lunged forward, grabbing his arms to force him to look at her. “I don’t believe you!”
She would not stop talking. She had been talking to him for thirty years and had never listened to him. Yanking away, he rushed down the hallway, covering his ears as she pounded after him, calling his name.
Awbrey came around from the dining hall and stopped at the sight of their argument. Powell
turned away from him, rushing up the stairs of the turret. The door to his mother’s suite was open, and he plunged in. If they would all just leave him alone! He threw himself into the chair by the fireplace. Peace and quiet was all he wanted.
But here she was at the door. She trembled from the exertion of having walked so far and up the stairs. She crossed to him, leaning heavily on a wingback chair to catch her breath.
“Donald hasn’t returned,” she said. “He should be back by now. Something has happened.”
He looked up at her. “The police are coming.”
She lowered herself into the chair, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, all that was left was resignation. “You told Kim. Didn’t you.”
“She’s bringing the police.”
Her face sagged into perspiration-slicked exhaustion. She whispered, “Then go, Powell. Save yourself. Get on the boat. I beg you.”
“I can’t.”
She looked at him in dismay.
“The boat can’t come in to shore. It means a swim to get out beyond the surf.”
Her forehead fell into very deep creases, as she put it together. “You . . . can’t . . . swim.”
“You remember how you never wanted me to go to the beach? You were always afraid of me drowning.” He shrugged. “I never learned to swim.”
As this sank in, she stared at her knuckles where she gripped her cane. At last she looked at him with the most unreserved contempt. “My God, you can’t do anything, can you?”
“There’s one thing I can do.” He stood up and strode to the French doors of the balcony, bursting them open.
8:14 PM. Fin pulled the car to a stop in front of the main castle entrance. Julian and Fin had dropped Elsa off a quarter mile back, where a few stragglers were heading down a path toward the encampment.
On the train ride, somewhere between London and Pengeylan, Julian decided to change the game plan. Kim would receive her briefing from him. For three and a half hours he had mulled over the circumstances tying the dowager to the murders, and found himself increasingly convinced of the woman’s complicity. The ley lines, as E said, just conjecture, but spiritual power derived from such sites—which might not be known Neolithic sites, which might be assigned import by deluded cultists—could not be dismissed. All his instincts told him that Kim was in the most immediate danger. And if she was, they might only have a few minutes alone to assess what they must do. The lead on this had to be his, not Fin’s.
He knew what that meant, his cover with her blown. E wouldn’t like it. He’d deal with that in due course.
He and Fin got out. A feeble electric light glowed over the iron-clad door. Fin disappeared into the darkness to keep watch. Julian looked up the great wall of the castle. He could see no windows, but one story up was the crenellated edge of a battlement.
It was the worst situation for them to be in, not knowing what they would face inside. The out-of-order phone line suggested trouble. And Kim might or might not be inside. She might have been exposed and detained, or she might still be keeping her cover. Nor could they know whether Verhoeven was inside.
He knocked on the door.
What would Kim think when she saw him? And when, in private, he revealed his true role? It was a moment he had thought about many times since his daughter had come back to England.
For three years he had looked at his reflection in Kim’s eyes and seen a weak, gullible patrician, leaning to fascist philosophy and keeping his own counsel. Oh, very much keeping his own counsel. This was the web of lies that he had learned to consider normal. Normal procedure, comes with the territory. These were the clichés of the service that had made him not just one who appeared to be empty, but who was empty indeed.
He banged on the door again.
At last it opened. Standing before him was a very old man.
“I’m Julian Tavistock. I’ve come for my daughter, Kim.”
The old man looked at him suspiciously. “For who?”
“Kim Tavistock. She’s staying here for the weekend, but there is a family emergency.” He was prepared to say it was her uncle Owen. A farm accident. By this she would know that he knew her connection to Owen Cherwell. She would know he had always known.
“Well, Miss Tavistock, she left. She’s not here.”
“Left? When did—”
A scream came from upstairs, distant and muffled.
Julian pushed past the old man and raced up the stairs. He was on a broad veranda with battlements. Stabs of light fell on the flagstones from a row of narrow gothic windows. An ornate double door led inside. He threw it open, and entered a long hallway.
Another scream. It was a woman’s.
He ran toward the sound, down a corridor, past darkened rooms. A staircase led up, winding in circular fashion. He took them two at a time, arriving at a landing. A door lay open. Moving through, he found a lavish room with four-poster bed, a portrait of Hitler, and windows thrown open to a balcony.
An old woman knelt on the floor, facing the French doors. She barely registered his presence, seemingly unaware that he was holding a gun. Surely this was Dorothea Coslett.
“Where is Kim Tavistock?” he demanded.
“Gone,” the old woman said. She looked at the balcony. “Gone.”
His chest constricted in a sudden vise. He went out onto the deck. He looked over the side. There was nothing but the thudding of the heavy sea on the stone or rock below.
Slowly, each step painful, he walked back inside. Standing before Lady Ellesmere, he managed to say, “Who is gone?”
“My son.” Then again, “Gone.”
38
THE SULCLIFFE ESTATE, WALES
8:25 PM. Kim had fallen twice, once so hard her handbag had come loose from her shoulder and slid down an embankment. She found it again, but the gun could have fallen out and been lost. She lodged it in the belt of her trousers.
Moving more carefully, she continued in the direction of the cliffs. Each time she got to the crest of a hill, she thought she would be in view of the sea. But every hill was followed by a ravine, and so down again, and then up. The jagged landscape had grown more barren, with tufts of grass in protected pockets. The surf came to her ears in soft, rhythmic crashes.
She hoped that Idelle and Martin had made it back to the fairgrounds. He would support the old woman and she would know the way. Unfortunately, Idelle was also the one who could have led her to the cove.
Kim had visited one of the coves along this headland. She remembered the one that Powell had taken her to, accessed by a narrow path nicked into the cliffside. Would the cove have a beach tonight?
She knew that rock outcroppings split up the beaches in this area. Would she find the right one? Her hope was that from the edge of the final cliff she could see the running lights of the ship waiting for Verhoeven. In the moonlight it might be possible to see the rescue ship. She thought they would have to use a rowboat to come to shore.
She came to a ledge and crouched for a moment. A light up ahead. A man stood on a nearby cliff, holding a lantern.
He walked slowly along the line of the cliff. Verhoeven, she guessed. She skidded down an incline until she was out of the man’s preternatural sight, but kept him in view. The light went out. Perhaps there was a trail to the beach, and he had gone down it. Scrambling across the last of the shelf, she lay on her stomach overlooking the sea. Moonlight did not touch the water, black and crashing.
As she peered down the cliffside, she saw a light, the lantern, slowly descending a path.
Out to sea, nothing. No sign of a ship. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Sweat slicked her hands as she peered down the cliff face. Was there a beach?
If Verhoeven escaped, he would continue his slaughter of Talents. That must not happen. What a great pity it was that no one else more competent was here to stop him. She would do it then, she would. It was such an easy thing to say. The wind off the sea cooled her face and hands and her heart.
In the thin moonlight, she searched for the start of the trail. If only she had the flashlight, but Idelle and Martin had needed it more. And it would only have made her more obvious to Verhoeven. She found the start of the path, barely visible. The moon gained strength as it rose, but the night was still lavishly black. Looking down, she saw the lantern preceding her, throwing a sickly light on Verhoeven’s face and raised hand.
A beach, below, a wide one. The sound of the waves was close, but the cove was much bigger than she had remembered it. She waited for her moment to descend. He would be watching out to sea, but he couldn’t fail to see her coming down the cliff. Nor was she a good enough shot to take him out at a distance, and at night.
She let him finish his descent. Facing the sea, he held up his lantern and waved it to and fro.
SULCLIFFE CASTLE
8:31 PM. Julian stood in the hall with its windows overlooking the terrace.
The caretaker, Awbrey, had said that Kim had left Sulcliffe to catch the train two hours before. A man named Donald had given her a lift to the village, and though he should have returned by now, he had not. Julian could believe it or not believe it, but he didn’t have the manpower to search the castle.
Standing before him, Awbrey asked in a quaking voice, “Is it true? Lord Ellesmere is dead?”
“Lady Ellesmere has said so. I’m sorry.” Awbrey looked entirely lost. All the staff were frightened and bewildered by what had apparently been a terrible argument between mother and son—and now shock. Julian went on. “Someone has disabled the telephone, Awbrey. You must fix it if you can, and call the police.”
Awbrey ducked a bow and left to accomplish his task. Within a few steps, he turned around. “Miss Coslett, she’s not to be found anywhere.”
“Idelle Coslett?” Julian asked. Awbrey nodded. Powell Coslett’s aunt. “Thank you, Awbrey.” The man nodded miserably and hobbled off. The staff had taken Julian at his word that he was with the authorities, and were eager to follow directions.