As Dom José slipped asleep Sabrina was sitting on the floor trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered strength and courage. She had revived from the faint that had cut off her hysterical screams about ten minutes ago. When her eyes had first opened, she was completely confused. It seemed so odd to find herself lying on the floor of a room she had never seen before. She was all bruised, too, and her palms were sore, as if she had fallen. Raising her hands to look at them, she felt something fall from one and lifted herself to examine it. It was the pair of scissors.
As soon as she saw it, memory returned. Screams rose in Sabrina’s throat again, but she choked them back and then had to struggle to keep from vomiting. She dared not turn her head or raise her eyes for fear she would see again the horror she had uncovered when she drew back the bed-curtains to get at the sheets. Whimpering, Sabrina covered her face with her hands. She wanted to crawl to the farthest corner of the room and hide, but she did not dare move for fear the movement would take her closer to that bed with its burden of death.
The horror had been all the more intense for being so unexpected. In the instant that she had pulled back the bed-curtain, she had gasped in embarrassment at seeing a couple seemingly locked in lovemaking. Then the gory grotesqueries that had been the backs of their heads struck her eyes together with the blood-soaked pillows, and the mindless shrieks of hysteria burst from her until fear piled on fear had been too much and she had found safety in unconsciousness.
Only now had she realized that it was William and Donna Francisca in the bed, that Dom José had brought her here to—to what? She knew he thought her guilty for doing nothing when she knew of the affair. Had he wished only to punish her by terrifying her and exposing her to the result of her indifference? But he had killed Charlot and—and Katy. Sabrina sobbed more bitterly in heartbroken desolation. She was guilty, but Katy had died for it.
When the spasm of grief had passed, her mind returned to Dom José’s purpose. A long time had passed, and there still had been no attempt to open the door. Could he have meant to lock her in here all along? Leave her to die of hunger and thirst in the presence of her dead husband and his lover? Long shudders shook Sabrina, but she bit her lips and fought them. She must escape and report what had happened.
The thought of escape brought her mind right back to the bed and its contents. She had found a pair of scissors and had gone to the bed to get sheets to tear up so she could climb down from the balcony, and she had seen… No! Sabrina pressed her hand against her mouth. She would not think of it, but that meant no sheets. She would have to find something else.
Sabrina shuddered again, but she picked up the scissors, turned her back to the bed, and got to her feet looking determinedly in the opposite direction. With her face turned away, she went crabwise around the room to the windows and began to yank as hard as she could on the heavy draperies. The cloth was new and strong; the interiors had been refurbished when Francisca married enough money. Sabrina had considerable trouble tearing the drapes down and cutting each panel roughly in half, but that gave her confidence that the cloth would not tear when she climbed down.
It occurred to Sabrina as she knotted the strips together automatically using the knots Philip and Perce had taught her on the yacht, that if the purpose had been to keep her in the room, there would be a guard outside. She opened the window very softly and stepped out, half expecting a shout of warning. There was no sound besides the sigh of the breeze and the singing of the night insects. She examined as much as she could see of the lawn, but there was no movement, no shadow that was not readily accountable as a tree, bush, or ornament.
Sabrina trembled and sobbed once. It was too easy. It must be a trick. Somewhere below her that lunatic must be waiting for her, waiting to seize her again and drag her back to the room. He must be playing some horrible game with her—or was he mad enough to have been distracted and forgotten all about her? Sabrina did not believe that, but it made no difference. She could not stay in that room with what lay in the bed.
During the time she had been busy preparing for escape, the horror had only been a dark shadow on her mind. If she remained there, however, the horror would take on color, a dreadful kind of life. No. She could fight recapture. She went back into the room, cut another strip of drape, and tied a heavy candlestick around her waist. Then, after a few deep and tremulous breaths, Sabrina went back out on the balcony, lugging her heavy rope. She tied it to the bars quickly, threw it over, again expecting to hear a cry of alarm. Nothing. Before she could think any more and frighten herself further, she stepped over the rail to climb down.
Chapter Eighteen
Perce and Sergei kept a good pace, stopping only briefly to change horses and eat. When it was time to find a place to sleep for the second night, Perce could not bear the thought. If they rode straight through at the best pace the horses could give, changing when the animals began to flag, they could make the distance in several hours more. They would arrive about ten or eleven o’clock, rather late for a visit, but Perce thought it would not be unreasonable or really untruthful to say that it would be best to sail with the cutter, if possible, so he had wished to arrive that night.
“We’ll ride straight through,” he said to Sergei as they approached the posting house. “We should be there in a few hours.”
The Russian turned his head and looked at his master with a frown. Then he nodded curtly. “The moon will rise soon and be bright enough, but we have no guns. What will we do if we are stopped?”
“We won’t stop,” Perce replied. “If you see anyone on the road, lay on with your whip and ride like hell. Chances are they’ll be so surprised they won’t fire, or will miss if they do.”
Sergei laughed. “Back in the wars again, eh? I thought I was through galloping into the mouths of guns.”
“With any luck there won’t be any,” Perce remarked indifferently.
In this estimate he was quite correct. They were not set upon by highwaymen or bandits, and the road was clear and reasonably visible in the moonlight. However, Perce found he had been somewhat oversanguine in his estimate of the time it would take to cover the distance. They were slowed by the dark until the moon rose, and in many places the grades were steeper than he had expected. It would have been cruel to try to make the horses gallop up them, and it would have been dangerous to go faster than a trot on the way down. They would be far longer delayed if an animal should stumble and be injured than by the slower pace.
Thus, it was well after midnight before they saw the entrance to the dower house, even though they had been fortunate in finding without difficulty the turnoff to Lousa and then the even narrower track that went up the mountain. Everything was very quiet, and Perce felt a complete fool. He was thinking of turning back to Lousa rather than disturbing the household. There had been a man pounding on an Inn door across the square as they rode through the town. If they went back immediately, the place would probably still be stirring, and the innkeeper would be pleased to have two extra customers to pay for his broken rest.
Then Sergei said, “Someone’s awake,” and pointed.
Surely enough, there was a light-streak between the curtains on the upper floor. It was probably Elvan, who wouldn’t be best pleased with his visitors, Perce thought, smiling nastily. Anyway, if Elvan were awake, Charlot would be awake too, and would answer the door. Perce and Sergei dismounted, Sergei to hold the horses and Perce to climb the steps and knock on the door.
For nearly an hour Dom José slept the deep, dreamless sleep of exhaustion. However, too much violent emotion had exploded within him for even exhaustion to dull his mind for long. Soon the dreams came, and they were such that Dom José screamed and bolted upright, his hand automatically yanking the bellpull that would summon his servant. As he came awake he released the bell for a moment, but his plan came back fully into his mind and he began to pull the bell again hysterically, allowing his fear and hate to show openly.
The
frantic summons brought Pablo running in his nightshirt, hopping now on one leg and then on the other as he tried to draw up his breeches. As he came up the back stairs he heard his master shouting his name and screaming something about shots. Just as he reached the top he saw Dom José running out of the room barefoot and in his nightshirt.
“Wake the other men,” Dom José cried. “Look to the doors, the windows. I heard shots.”
“Not outside, senhor,” Pablo gasped. “I heard nothing.”
“Oh, my God,” Dom José shrieked, “could that woman have…”
He rushed along the corridor to Donna Francisca’s room and tried to open the door. He was not sure whether he was more relieved or disappointed when he found it still locked. That meant Lady Elvan was still inside. However, he was not much worried about her ability to deny the crime of which he would accuse her. From her screams, she had been completely hysterical. Perhaps she had lost her mind entirely or had died of fright. That would be convenient. As the thoughts passed through his mind, Dom José pounded on the door and screamed his wife’s name with a superb rendering of a man nearly out of his mind with anxiety.
Pablo meanwhile had raced down the back stairs into the menservants’ quarters, shouting for the men to rise, to look through the house for thieves and for some to come upstairs and help open the door to Donna Francisca’s apartment. The butler, dazed and stupid with sleep, mumbled that he would look for the keys. When Pablo again ran up the stairs, his master was no longer at the door, but light streamed from the room in which he had been sleeping, and he followed there. Dom José was searching wildly through his clothing, crying, “My guns, my guns, where are they? We must break the lock. Where are my guns?”
“Senhor,” Pablo protested, “the butler will bring the extra keys. Do not—”
“My God! Oh, God!” Dom José shouted as soon as he was sure he had an audience. “I left them at the dower house. I left them on the table there. Oh, my God!”
“Be calm, senhor,” Pablo begged. “I will fetch them tomorrow. There is no need for guns. The butler—”
“You stupid fool!” Dom José screamed. ‘The woman—Elvan’s wife—was enraged, hysterical, perhaps mad! If she seized the guns… No!”
“But senhor, why should the lady take your guns?”
“Imbecile! It was because I had to tell her… No! Why am I wasting time speaking to you?”
He rushed out of the room again, to find a knot of menservants around the door of Francisca’s room. Without abating his frantic manner, he ordered them to open the door. The butler stepped forward with the keys in his hand, but he was terrified. He had served Francisca’s family all his life. To him Dorn José was no one, yet he had to obey him because his money paid for all. Yet Donna Francisca had ordered him not to disturb her. The keys trembled so in his hand that he could scarcely find the keyhole, and Dom José screamed at him, and screamed Francisca’s name.
The same procedure recurred at the bedchamber door and by now Dom José was wondering why Lady Elvan had not reacted in any way to all the noise. Perhaps she had killed herself. How delightful that would be. But the bedroom door did not open at once. When pushed, it was brought up short against the dressing table Sabrina had dragged in front of it. Dom José was stunned. It had never occurred to him that Lady Elvan would have the strength.
It must have taken a long time to move that, Dom José thought while he continued alternately urging the men to push away the obstruction and calling his wife to answer him. How was he going to explain it? Insanity, he decided. He must stick to that. The insane were known to have superhuman strength. A quiver of fear passed over him as he remembered what he himself had done, so far beyond his ordinary strength and agility. Perhaps he had been mad for a short time but he was sane now.
Finally the dressing table yielded, the mirror collapsing forward with a crash. A shout of horror went up from the men who had broken through, for the bed-curtains were open as Sabrina had left them and the intertwined bodies with their mangled heads on the bloody pillows were plainly visible. The scream that was wrenched from Dom José when he pushed aside his servants and saw his handiwork was quite genuine. He had carried out his execution in the dark and had no idea of the ghastly effect of his bullets.
It was really as if this were all new to him, as if he had never seen those tangled bodies before, as if he had never even suspected that Francisca was betraying him. He wept and exclaimed in a frenzy of grief and shame, expressing all that had been shocked into murderous rage when the proof of her infidelity had first burst upon him. But through it all he remembered that the servants must not go near the bodies, lest they realize that the blood was clotted and turning brown, that the bodies were already cold and might be turning stiff, that Francisca and her lover had been dead for hours.
Weeping and wailing, Dom José staggered to the bed and drew the curtains closed. The regador of the parish would have to be told, he sobbed, and then he drew himself up and ordered the room searched. The open window with its trailing rope of tied draperies was soon discovered, as were the broken window and unlocked door on the lower floor. By this time Dom José had regained control of himself. He ordered the doors closed and one servant to stand guard so that nothing would be touched. He then had a horse saddled for himself so that he could ride to Lousa and report what had happened, and he bade the rest of the servants search the house and grounds for Lady Elvan. If they did not find her, two men should go to the dower house and guard it, not to enter but watch to see that she did not escape.
Half an hour before Dom José woke from his nightmare, Sabrina let her feet slip off the balcony, clutching at her rope of drapes and sobbing softly with fear. The generalized terror of being recaptured and of the dreadful spectacle lying in the room she was leaving soon crystallized into a fear of falling. The novels she had read had never indicated how terribly difficult it was to let oneself down on a rope.
Within thirty seconds Sabrina’s arms felt as if they would be pulled from her shoulder sockets, and her hands simply would not close tightly enough to hold her. Fear lent her a momentary spurt of strength, and her flailing feet caught on a knot, which gave her a few seconds support. This was of no particular benefit, as she was too frightened to move. An instant later, both hands and feet slipped. Too terrified even to scream, Sabrina slid down another three feet to where a second knot briefly halted her progress.
This time she had sense enough to rest and then deliberately loosen her grip so that she would slide down to the next knot. Unfortunately, her strength failed so that she could not tighten her grasp enough again. She slid right past that knot, and past the next, to land with jarring thump on the ground. There she remained, shaking with mingled sobs and laughter because it had not been very far down after all, and no one was on guard, no one had cried out or grabbed her. Could Dom José be so insane that he had forgotten all about her? That hope was a little stronger than the first time the idea crossed her mind, but she still could not believe it. It was far more likely, her fears insisted, that he had allowed her escape to increase her torment in some way that she could not even conceive.
Sabrina did have one real hope—that in his complex plan Dom José had outmaneuvered himself and that if she were careful enough, she could somehow elude him. If she could get down to Lousa and report what had happened, she would be safe. But Lousa was several miles away. Frightened and very tired, Sabrina simply could not face walking those miles down the dark road through the silent woods, and the road was the place most likely for him to look for her. She glanced around the lawn. It was as still and silent is when she had examined it from the balcony. Sabrina rose to her feet. She would not find safety by crouching under the window from which she had escaped. She fought the instinctive reluctance to expose herself and moved softly around to the back of the house.
Midway, she stopped in a deep patch of shadow, paralyzed by the thought that the path back to the house was an even more likely place f
or Dom José to wait for her, but she had to get back to the house. She needed money and a horse and a better weapon with which to defend herself than the candlestick she had untied from her waist and now carried in her hand. Eventually she forced herself forward, telling herself that Dom José would surely think she would be too afraid to retrace her coming to the house. Also, there would be less chance for anyone to creep up behind her on the path, because twigs would crackle and branches would swish.
Having found courage to cross the open lawn and enter the dark opening, Sabrina wanted to run. However, like Dom José, she found the downward trip harder than the climb. With the light of the moon dimmed to a bare, occasional glimmer and fear turning every shadow into a leaping enemy, she advanced one slow, blind step at a time pausing to stand frozen and breathless to listen for pursuit every few minutes.
Even with the care she took, Sabrina fell several times. She was near fainting with fear and exhaustion when she reached the back lawn of the dower house. Farther down the hill to the right stood the stable. Sabrina glanced toward it, but to reach it she would have to go out past the house and down the road. Then she would have to wake the grooms. Softly, Sabrina began to weep. She could not. She simply could not, not without a little rest. She was so tired and hurt and afraid—and Katy was dead.
The return of that memory drove Sabrina out of the mouth of the path and up to the back door in a rush. The house was all dark, the candles burnt out. Sabrina stopped just outside the door. Of all places to set a trap, this was the best; but now desperation, rage, and grief drove her, and she raised the candlestick to strike, pushed the door open, and jumped to the side. No shot was fired; there was no sound at all beside her own harsh breathing.
The Kent Heiress Page 33