The Black Benedicts

by Anita Charles

  “I suppose that’s because Darcy has put her to bed early. Darcy’s a bit of a martinet.” The vague look crept back into his eyes, and they roved round the room. “I see you’ve just had tea,” he remarked “I expect you had a tiring journey?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t really too bad,” Mallory assured him, and added: “And, anyway, it was worth it to arrive at such a wonderful spot as this.”

  “You think so?” For an instant, like Mrs. Carpenter, he appeared pleased, and then he wandered away to the door. “Well, I hope you won’t find it too quiet here. It is very quiet—or some people might find it so. But I never do...”

  The door closed behind him, and Mallory found herself looking for explanation at Mrs. Carpenter. The housekeeper’s expression was quite surprising—her eyebrows were uplifted in obvious astonishment.

  “Well!...” she said. And then a blank look descended over her face and she pressed the bell again, hard. “I can’t think what’s keeping Rose...”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rose came in a few moments later, full of excuses and apologies for keeping them waiting, and Mrs. Carpenter reproved her with some severity. But Rose was a country girl with soft, dark, brilliant eyes, which suggested her roots were on the other side of the border, and she looked shyly at Mallory, and smiled at her very pleasantly, and conducted her willingly from the room.

  On the way up the stairs, slippery with centuries of high polishing, Mallory paused to gaze at the portraits climbing the wall beside her. Dark men and women most of them, with here and there a lighter hue having the strange effect of a star shining unexpectedly forth from a welter of dominating blackness. The costumes in the portraits represented a cavalcade of changing fashions throughout several centuries, and one and all were distinguished by a certain elegance of appearance, and a touch of unmistakable highbredness in the cast of well-marked features. Mallory thought she recognized a Gainsborough amongst them, and a Lely, but her knowledge of the various Masters was not so great that she could establish without doubt the identity of any one of them when applied to their work.

  The well of the stairs was lighted by a great swinging lantern descending by unseen bronze chains from the distant roof, but the warren of thickly-carpeted corridors along which she followed Rose—who frequently disappeared ahead of her—were much more fitfully illuminated. And the solemn ticking of more than one grandfather clock out of the dimness was a little uncanny, especially as footfalls made not the slightest sound.

  When Rose flung open the door of a room on her right Mallory peered round it with the greatest curiosity. Then she drew a little breath of pure pleasure, for the comfort which reigned downstairs in the housekeeper’s sitting-room was equally well repeated up here, and her bedroom was just as delightful. Mallory took in the pleasant combination of mushroom-coloured carpet and dainty floral hangings, in which clear green and pale primrose predominated, and was a trifle awed by the enormous half tester bed with huge feather pillows and hemstitched sheets. There was a beautiful little Venetian mirror above the white mantelpiece, and magazines on a low table placed beside a deep armchair near the fire.

  Rose insisted on unpacking her cases, although Mallory assured her she could do so quite well herself. Rose looked at her with those transparent golden-brown eyes of hers, and said softly that it was her job, and that Mrs. Carpenter had given her her instructions. She also inquired what time Mallory would like her dinner brought up, and whether she liked early tea in the morning.

  Mallory looked at her humorously.

  “Are you going to try and ruin me?” she asked. “It’s I who get up and get the breakfast at home, and my early tea is usually consumed in the kitchen!”

  “Then it will be nice for you to have a change,” Rose said decidedly. “I will bring tea to you at half-past seven, if that is not too early?”

  “But you mustn’t do that when you have visitors,” Mallory told her. “While the house is more or less empty I suppose it doesn’t matter, but when you have other people to attend to you must forget about me.”

  Rose’s attractive face seemed to grow shrewish all at once.

  “There are those whom it is always a pleasure to wait on,” she remarked, a trifle obscurely, and added: “And there are those,” with emphasis, “whom it is not!”

  And Mallory received the impression that amongst the visitors who sometimes came to the house were certain individuals who were not entirely approved of by Rose at least.

  She went early to bed that night, for she was deadly tired, and she was a little curious to test the comfort of that enormous half tester bed. She felt a little lost when she climbed into it, and despite her weariness sleep did not come easily. With the light out and the electric fire turned off the room was very dark, but between gaps in the curtains moonlight found its way in after a while and silvered the edges of the furniture. Mallory tried to picture the scene outside, with that white light shining down on the terraced gardens and the slumbering Welsh hills. Almost she was tempted to desert her bed and creep across the room to look upon it from the window, but the exquisite comfort of the mattress claimed her after a time, and she began to drowse.

  Somewhere far off in the house someone was playing a piano, or it could have been the wireless. But it did not sound like the wireless. Sleepily Mallory decided that it was someone improvising, and the improvisation was a kind of fantasia on the theme ‘Greensleeves’. It went on and on, rising and falling softly like a sweet spring torrent bubbling its way over moss. Then it changed to a snatch of Brahms, to the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, and then back again to ‘Greensleeves’. It was fascinating, and far from having a soporific effect it gradually restored Mallory to complete wakefulness.

  She lay staring in the darkness and wondering who it was who was obviously finding pleasure and consolation in the mere touch of a piano at this late hour of the night. Oddly enough the word ‘consolation’ did actually pass through her mind, for she was a fair player herself, and she knew the magic and queer soothing effect to be obtained from sitting in front of the ivory keys and allowing one’s hands to wander over them. It was one of her favourite forms of relaxation after a day spent in attending to the wants of her mother’s little tribe of mixed spaniels and Pekinese, and supervising the cooking arrangements for the family as well. It was a kind of release, an outlet, when otherwise there would have been no outlet.

  But after a time she forgot the music and began to think of other things. Why had she not been allowed to meet her pupil, Serena, when she arrived, and in what part of the house was the child quartered? Why was it that Mrs. Carpenter had not introduced Adrian Benedict to her downstairs in her sitting-room, and why had she looked at him as if for some reason he aroused her pity? Why did he appear so vague...?

  When would Raife Benedict condescend to interview her, and what was it that kept him so exceedingly busy apparently in a house where there were quite a lot of servants and every evidence of a great deal of wealth! Was he some sort of business man in addition to being the owner of Morven Grange...? How often did he entertain, and why did Rose look down her nose at the mere suggestion of waiting on his guests...?

  Were all the Benedicts dark? Adrian Benedict looked like an Italian, and the men and women in the portraits were all dark-skinned and swarthy—or had been...!

  There came a queer scratching sound at her door, and she sat up suddenly, startled. The piano had ceased and the house was very quiet, but the noise at the door was much louder—and somehow stealthier!—than that which any mouse could occasion. Certainly not a mouse of normal proportions...!

  She switched on her bedside light rather hurriedly, and was about to demand in a hoarse whisper who was there when the door started to open very slowly, inch by inch. Mallory felt her heart start to thump rather wildly, her eyes became glued in horrified fascination to the door, but now she could find no voice to call out any sort of question.

  The door opened about a foot, and then a sibilant whisper reach
ed her:

  “Are you—awake ...?”

  A queer whimpering noise followed the inquiry, and it sounded like the protest of a dog being requested to keep silent. A head appeared round the door, a head with dark, tangled elf-locks, and it was followed by a slight form in a rose-pink satin quilted dressing-gown, hugging in her arms a small but worried-looking dachshund, who was plainly objecting to the order for silence, enforced by a slim hand encircling its muzzle.

  Mallory drew a long breath and relaxed against her pillows. Her midnight visitor hastily closed the door and scampered across to her, taking a flying leap on to the bed and depositing the dachshund on the eiderdown.

  “You don’t object to Belinda, do you?” she inquired, in her penetrating whisper. “She won’t do anything or tear it, and I’ve been simply dying to see you! Darcy was a pig and put me to bed directly after tea so that I shouldn’t see you tonight, but I don’t care tuppence about Darcy, and I made up my mind that I would see you.”

  “Well?” Mallory inquired in return, unable to resist a smile at the spectacle of the tousle-headed child with the magnificent eyes gazing at her rather imploringly from the foot of her own bed Her dressing-gown and her pink feather-trimmed slippers—actually small mules from which her delicate heels protruded—looked as if they were intended for the small daughter of a film star, and certainly this new charge of hers was a quite extraordinary beauty. “Now that you’ve seen me what do you think of me?”

  “I like you,” came the reply at once. “I knew I would because Mrs. Allardyce saw you in the tea-leaves about two days ago and she said you were going to be perfectly all right, and not a bit like Miss Peppercorn, who sucked bulls-eyes and wore little hard round felt hats. You don’t wear felt halts, do you?”

  “Not hard round ones,” Mallory replied, adopting the conspiratorial attitude and speaking in a whisper. “And who,” she asked, “is—or, rather, are—Mrs. Allardyce and Miss Peppercorn?”

  Slim eyebrows upraised themselves in surprise. “Why, Mrs. Allardyce is the cook of course and Miss Peppercorn used to be my governess—oh, a long time ago. Mrs. Allardyce is psychic,” impressively.

  “Is she indeed?” Mallory murmured.

  “She gets warnings, you know, and that sort of thing.”

  “And you’re going to get a nice chill if you don’t put something round you,” Mallory declared rather anxiously, leaning forward to adjust the eiderdown so that it covered the lower half of her unexpected visitor. “Of course, if I’d known you were going to pay me this visit I’d have been better prepared to receive you. And as it is I think I’d better put on the fire,” preparing to get out of bed.

  “Oh, no, don’t do that,” Serena begged, catching at her arm to detain her. “I’m quite warm, really, and very comfortable where I am. Unless, of course, you’d rather I came in with you...? And Linda as well if you haven’t any fearfully strong objections? She doesn’t smell at all, only a kind of dachshundish smell which all dachshunds have, and I keep her very well brushed, and spray her sometimes with perfume. Uncle Raife brought me a huge bottle of wonderful French scent from Paris the last time he went there, and I’ve used it practically all on Belinda.”

  Mallory felt there was no objection she could possibly raise after such a testimonial as this in connection with Belinda’s personal hygiene—although she did think it was rather an odd present for an uncle to bring a small niece—within a matter of seconds after that they were all three nicely tucked in at the correct end of Mallory’s bed, and Belinda’s nose was hanging mournfully over the top of the lavender-scented sheet, while her still somewhat worried golden eyes looked upwards a little doubtfully at Mallory.

  “And what do you think Darcy would say if she could see you now?” Mallory inquired, wondering whether she ought to insist on Serena returning to her own bed immediately.

  “Darcy would be furious.”

  “Well, then, I think you’d better go.”

  But Serena ignored the suggestion.

  “Uncle Raife wouldn’t mind. Uncle Raife lets me do most of the things I want to do.”

  “H’m!” commented Mallory. “That isn’t particularly good for you, you know.”

  “Isn’t it?” Serena glanced at her with interest. “That’s a pretty nightie you’re wearing,” she remarked. “I love nice clothes, don’t you? Uncle Raife says that if you’ve got good looks you should be dressed accordingly. Uncle Raife looks like a pirate, but I always think pirates are terribly fascinating, especially when they don’t actually behave like pirates.”

  “Well, I suppose that is an advantage,” Mallory admitted, endeavouring to sound as serious as possible.

  Serena glanced at her again as if she suspected a twinkle in her eyes.

  “There’s a portrait in the library which is a portrait of one of our ancestors, and he was a pirate in the days of Queen Elizabeth the First. He went about singeing the King of Spain’s beard and seizing his ships, and he also seized a beautiful Spanish bride, but Queen Elizabeth wasn’t at all pleased when he brought her home, and he very nearly lost his head—had it cut off, you know! But she forgave him, because she liked him very much, and he brought her lots of treasure, and”—she tried hard to stifle a yawn—“he’s very like Uncle Raife, only he hasn’t got a beautiful Spanish bride—Uncle Raife, I mean...”

  “You’re a monkey,” Mallory told her, smiling a little. “And you’re a very sleepy monkey,” she added.

  Serena grimaced a little.

  “That’s like Darcy,” she said. “She thinks children should be seen and not heard, but I’m not a child—I’m nearly ten!”

  “And what about your father?” Mallory inquired “What does he think?”

  “You mean Adrian?” with a faint air of surprise.

  “Yes; he’s your father, isn’t he? Doesn’t he express any opinions where you are concerned?”

  Serena shook her head.

  “Not many—not any,” she corrected herself. “He plays the piano, and he doesn’t seem to bother about anything else, or anyone. He”—she yawned suddenly and uncontrollably—“oh, I’m so tired...! Do you think I could go to sleep in your bed?” and she started to snuggle down.

  But Mallory decided that this was the point at which she asserted herself. She roused the reluctant youngster with a certain amount of difficulty and persuaded her to return to her own room, complete with the much more willing Belinda. Serena, however, only agreed to go if she was accompanied along the corridor by Mallory, expressing a newly-discovered fear of the dark and the by now complete silence of the house. And as her bedroom was some little distance away, in another wing of the house, and it did seem a little hard to expect the child to go alone, Mallory acted as her escort until she was safely in her own room. Then she tucked her up, saw Belinda into her basket, and returned to the side of the small bed to say good-night.

  “Good-night, Serena. Sleep well,” she said. “I hope you won’t be terribly tired in the morning.”

  “I won’t,” Serena promised. Then she smiled at her sleepily. “You’re much nicer than Miss Peppercorn!”

  On the way back to her room Mallory found that she had to traverse the long, moonlit gallery alone, and it struck her as exceedingly eerie at that hour. She fled rather hastily past the head of the stairs, and then as she was about to plunge into her own corridor she noticed that the hall light was still on, and that a man was standing immediately beneath the great swinging lantern, in the middle of a glowing Persian rug. He was in evening dress, and he appeared to be quietly smoking a cigarette and contemplating the remains of the fire on the wide hearth, above which his family’s coat-of-arms was carved into the chimney breast.

  As if instinctively Mallory paused and looked down at him, noting how tall he was, and what an excellent pair of well-held shoulders he possessed. His head was very dark and sleek and well-brushed, and shone like ebony in the rays of the swinging lantern. Mallory could also observe that his face was thoughtful, that he was not in t
he least like his brother, that his chin and jaw were noticeable and ruthless, that his nose was straight but his nostrils probably flared a little...

  And then he looked up. She gasped, for his eyes were looking directly at her, and they were so dark—so dark, and deep, and—and yet there were tiny lights in them, golden lights, like lambent flames, and there was something mocking and— menacing...?

  She drew back swiftly and the light clicked out, so suddenly that she realized he must have put out a hand and touched a switch which was right beside his elbow. But although she saw him no more she could hear his footsteps moving towards the stairs and she became fairly galvanized into action. She raced along the corridor to her room, and when she reached it she found that she was actually turning the key in the lock and that her fingers were trembling.

  Why?

  She wasn’t at all sure. But what on earth had he thought of her, wandering about the gallery at that hour?

  CHAPTER THREE

  A few mornings later Mallory and Serena took their first walk together in the great park. It was one of those deceptively mild February mornings when spring seems just around the corner, and winter as good as departed. Serena discovered aconites in sheltered places, and Belinda displayed a violent enthusiasm for every rabbit hole she came upon, and it was Mallory’s job to extricate her, often with considerable difficulty, when her broad shoulders threatened to become stuck well below the surface of the ground.

  Serena, who was as blithe as the morning, ran gaily ahead of Mallory, and the latter thought grimly of the determined tussle she had had with Darcy, the Belgian nursemaid, when the question of taking her out arose. For Darcy had obstinate ideas about her charge, and amongst them was one that attributed a highly susceptible fragility to the lively ten-year-old, and looked upon sunless winter mornings as menacing to her, and exercise— unless undertaken in her own company—a thing not to be over-indulged in.

  Darcy was dour, and dark, and bad-tempered, and plainly the type to be jealous of a new governess. While it was true that Serena, if she wished, could twist her round her finger, her discipline was sometimes harsh, and her ideas of a routine for the child were strongly at variance with that which Mallory considered the only possible routine, when Serena did not attend school. Darcy was no believer in fresh air, and she had a weakness for the kitchen and cups of tea with the cook—enlivened by fortune-telling by means of the tea-cups. And if Miss Serena liked that sort of thing, too, then she was the very last person to discourage her.