The Jade Dragon

by Nancy Buckingham

  Probing warily, I said to Vicencia, “I didn’t see Affonso or Carlota when Stafford carried me upstairs just now. Are they home this afternoon?”

  “No, they aren’t. I happened to notice them setting off in the landau soon after luncheon.”

  My heart lurched. “Where have they gone?”

  “I’m afraid it didn’t please Carlota to tell me,” said Vicencia dryly. “Why do you ask, Elinor?”

  “Oh, no special reason—

  How could I say, because I think they tried to kill me, because Carlota would dearly like to have me out of the way? My uncle was a weak man, and I didn’t doubt that if Carlota were determined enough, she could make him do even this. But was Carlota really so ruthless?

  Vicencia said slowly, “They are probably visiting friends. Or possibly they just went out for a drive.”

  “In the heat of the afternoon? That doesn’t sound very much like Carlota.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  The doctor arrived. I already knew Senhor Gonzales by sight from his visits to my grandmother, but I had not spoken with him before. He was a short, rather portly man with a bald head, gray sidewhiskers, and bright twinkling eyes. He examined me carefully, asked several questions, then assured me that my injuries were only superficial.

  “You have had a bad shock, Menina Elinor, but happily little else. A miraculous escape. I advise you to remain in bed for the remainder of the day. Tomorrow, however, you may get up. The best thing is a return to normal as rapidly as possible. It will help you to forget the tragic affair.” He turned to Vicencia. “I prescribe a light supper, and I will give you a draft to ensure a good night’s rest for the young lady.”

  Vicencia showed him out and remained with me. She seemed to understand that I was in no mood to talk, and she did not chatter in her usual way. I found it a comfort to have her there. It helped to keep my dark thoughts at bay. An hour or so later Stafford came to see me. He stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at me anxiously.

  “How are you feeling, Elinor? I hear Senhor Gonzales confirms that there is nothing radically wrong, thank heaven.”

  “I’m all right in myself, Stafford, but I am extremely worried. I’m still convinced that someone deliberately caused the accident.”

  He glanced at Vicencia, and said somberly, “Believe me, Elinor, no good can come of following that line of thought. Try and put it right out of your mind.”

  “I’ve been telling her the same thing,” Vicencia said. “The idea is too incredible.”

  I sighed wearily and asked Stafford, “How did Maria take the news about Pedro? Was she dreadfully upset?”

  “I’m afraid she was, poor girl. I took her home and spoke to her parents. I’ve promised to go there again tomorrow.”

  “I shall call on them myself as soon as I can,” I said.

  “Yes, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. Elinor, if you feel up to it, Guy Lambert would like to have a word with you. He has to return to Lisbon this evening, because he has an appointment in the morning. He is waiting just outside.”

  ‘Then ask him to come in, please.”

  The architect was some few years older than Stafford, a tall man with a long thin face and quiet, pale gray eyes that looked at me with concern. “I do hope you are feeling a little better, Miss Rosslyn. What a very distressing way in which to make your acquaintance.”

  I nodded. “I’m afraid I scarcely said a word to you, Mr. Lambert.”

  “Not surprisingly. But I am greatly relieved to hear there is no serious damage done to you, though it is shocking about that poor coachman. Miss Rosslyn, I felt I could not leave without saying good-bye and wishing you well. I trust we shall meet again in happier circumstances.”

  “I hope so too, Mr. Lambert.”

  “It still seems past belief,” he went on with a shake of his head. “I saw the carriage go by with everything under perfect control, and then, a few seconds later, I heard that fearful crash—”

  I looked at him, puzzled. “You say you saw us go by, Mr. Lambert. How was that possible? You cannot see the road from the house.”

  “But I had gone to look at the water reservoir, to see if it was still in good order,” he explained. “Stafford suggested I should get that job done before you came, while he stayed and awaited your arrival at the house. I hastened back the very moment I heard the crash, but, of course, Stafford was there before me. You were just beginning to revive—”

  He continued speaking, but I heard nothing of what he said, for my thoughts were spinning. So the two men had not been together because, just before I was due to arrive, Stafford had sent the architect away. Deliberately?

  I was vaguely aware of Stafford saying something, and then Vicencia. But their voices were drowned by the screaming inside my head. Who, I had been asking myself earlier, was sufficiently my enemy to scheme and plan for my death? Could this be the hideous answer to my question?

  Vicencia was bending over me. I tried to focus upon her face, to listen to what she was saying. “Elinor, you are very pale. Are you feeling faint? Shall I send the gentlemen away?”

  “Yes, send them away,” I cried. “I ... I mean, you had better all leave me now. I need to sleep.”

  I needed to think. I needed to banish this horrifying suspicion that Stafford could be the one responsible for the attempt on my life.

  Vicencia said doubtfully, “I don’t think you should be left alone just now.”

  “I would prefer it, Vicencia, really I would. And the bell is within reach if I need anything.”

  “Well, if you’re really sure?”

  “Yes, quite sure. Good-bye, Mr. Lambert, and thank you for your kindness.” I couldn’t bear to look in Stafford’s direction, and prayed that he wouldn’t speak to me. Mercifully, he just murmured something about coming to me again soon and went out.

  I lay back in bed and stared up at the coffered ceiling, while my mind assembled and assessed the facts. My aim, my crying need, was to make the facts prove that my suspicions were totally without foundation.

  I had to begin with the letter from Stafford, that beautiful letter that had pitched me into a whirl of delight. But, I told myself sternly now, it was a letter I had never expected to receive. A letter completely from out of the blue. I glanced at the bedside console where Vicencia had placed my purse when she’d undressed me. It had somehow survived the accident, being looped over my wrist by the cords. I reached for it now and drew out Stafford’s letter. Although I knew it almost by heart, I started to read it again—slowly, carefully, contemplating every word. There was a tight knot of pain around my heart, and I had to keep blinking back the tears that squeezed into my eyes.

  His suggestion that we should meet at Miramar had seemed so romantically perfect at the time. But it struck me now that a much simpler plan would have been for Stafford to call for me at Castanheiros on his way through Cintra with Guy Lambert. And why had he specified Pedro as the coachman to drive me—Pedro, the man with whom I’d seen him talking in the pagoda, stealthily, as though they were a pair of conspirators? Pedro, the man who had unexplained money to spend on a costly silver pendant for his sister.

  So was it part of the plan to have Pedro dead, too? Was it a cunning, complicated plot to remove the two of us in one fell swoop? Why had Pedro to be removed? Was it that he knew something that made him dangerous to Stafford? Was it connected with him driving Luzia to Cascais that day, the day Stafford’s wife had gone mysteriously to her death? And the money that Pedro had spent so freely, was it paid him by Stafford to ensure his silence?

  I tried to recall Pedro’s words to me. Perhaps, senhora, I was not the last person from Castanheiros to see Senhora Dona Luzia alive. What had he meant by that strange remark? I had asked him twice, and received no answer. He had sat there in the driver’s seat, stubbornly tight-lipped, during those final seconds before disaster overtook us.

  A firecracker flung under the horses’ hooves, at a point where the driveway swung around i
n a tight bend, where the land dropped away precipitously! The mind that planned such a scheme, coolly and calculatingly, without any pity, must be the mind of a fiend.

  But if Stafford had a strong motive for wanting to kill Pedro, what possible reason had he for wanting to kill me? An answer came remorselessly, exploding into my mind. That day when I had seen Stafford talking to Pedro, I had believed myself unobserved. But I remembered how Stafford had swiftly caught up with me and had questioned me about my knowledge of Portuguese. He had tried to trap me, seeing if I would answer an apparently casual remark in that language. Although I had pretended not to understand, perhaps Stafford had been unconvinced. Perhaps he thought I really had caught the meaning of what he had been discussing with Pedro.

  A matter of blackmail? I had heard the one word Cascais. But if I had understood more than just that one word, I would probably now know precisely how Luzia had come to die. Could Stafford suspect that I did know?

  Or was his need to kill me of longer standing than that? Did it date back to our very first meeting, in the drawing room at Harley Street, when I had defiantly announced my intention of coming to Portugal? I recalled Stafford’s attempts to dissuade me. He had even resorted to insults, suggesting I was greedy for the money I expected to inherit. But despite his utmost efforts, my determination was unshaken—and his anger had been very clear.

  What exactly was Stafford Darville’s role at Castanheiros? Why did he keep returning there, even though his tie with the family was now so

  tenuous, apart from a purely business one? I thought of a remark my grandmother had made on the evening she joined us all in the gold drawing room after dinner. She had declared that Stafford did very well from the buying and shipping of Milaveira wines—far too well, perhaps. Was he lining his pocket at the family’s expense? And I remembered, too, Vicencia’s comments the day she, Julio, and I had driven through the vineyards on our way to the coast. Affonso, she had told me, appeared content to leave the management of the estate entirely in the hands of the steward. The steward, the person with whom Stafford would conduct all his financial dealings. That is the reason Stafford is so dreadfully concerned about things, Vicencia had continued, though why the poor dear man feels it necessary to worry himself about our problems I cannot understand.

  Something else was teasing my mind. For a moment I couldn’t bring it back, then it came with a rush. Yesterday, in the anteroom to the sola de jantar, I had just received Stafford’s letter and given the news to the others that he intended to restore Miramar. And where, my uncle had asked sourly, does Darville expect to find the money to put a place of that size in order? It will cost a fortune.

  Did I, in some way that wasn’t yet clear to me, stand between Stafford and a fortune? As a joint heir of my grandfather, did my presence somehow prevent him gaining access to Milaveira money, by taking over the estates from an indifferent Affonso?

  What possible motive could I have for misleading you? Stafford had demanded at our first meeting. What motive indeed?

  Outside my window the sun still shone, but the room seemed filled with shadows. I lay trembling under the covers, in the grip of a fear such as I had never known before. When the door suddenly opened without a warning knock, I gave a violent start.

  It was my grandmother, a shawl around her shoulders, the white cat cradled in her arms. Closing the door carefully, she came across to me with her usual delicate tread. She stood gazing down at me in silence until I felt obliged to say something. “Good afternoon, Grandmama. I suppose you have heard about the accident?”

  “I have. And of poor Pedro’s death.” Her black eyes pierced me. “Why, pray, were you racing down the driveway of Miramar like that? What was the hurry?”

  “We weren’t hurrying, Grandmama. Something frightened the horses, and they bolted.”

  “Indeed. The horses in the Milaveira stables have been properly trained. They do not bolt.”

  “They had very good reason to panic,” I said. “A firework was thrown to explode right under their hooves.”

  Dona Amalia continued stroking the cat’s soft fur without pause. Her age-lined face showed no sign of shock or even of surprise. “You are imagining things, Elinor. I suppose it is not to be wondered at. You have no doubt been badly shaken.”

  “Not so much that I don’t clearly remember what happened. It is no use trying to dismiss unpleasant facts by pretending they don’t exist, Grandmama.”

  Her eyes narrowed with swift anger. “You dare to accuse me of dismissing unpleasant facts. Me? When I have to face the knowledge that I am dying. When I know that everything that has given meaning to my life is coming to an end. When I have to accept the fact that the stepson who should be my support now is a vain, incompetent fool. When I have lived for years with the bitter truth that my only child, the daughter who owed me everything, deserted me without thought or care. When her daughter returns to Castanheiros only when it suits her to come.”

  “No, that is not true.” I protested vehemently, but my grandmother did not even hear me.

  “What have you achieved, Elinor, by insisting on coming to Portugal? You would have done better to have stayed in England. This afternoon you were close to death. Perhaps it was meant as a warning.”

  “What ... what do you mean?” I faltered in dismay.

  But already my grandmother had turned away from me and was moving back to the door. Seen from behind, her shoulders hunched as she carried the white cat, she looked very old and frail.

  When I was alone again, the room seemed to echo with her final words. A warning. I could only presume that she meant some dark unknown forces unleashed by the disappearance of the Jade Dragon, that mystic talisman of the Milaveira family through the centuries. But it was a flesh-and-blood man whom I feared.

  Vicencia came by and by, followed by a maidservant with the light meal the doctor had ordered—a chicken broth with mint, and a fish mousse. She seated herself beside me and watched as I swallowed each reluctant mouthful, but finally I pushed the tray aside. “I’m sorry, Vicencia, I’ve had as much as I can manage.”

  “Are you sure? Then I’ll ring for it to be taken away.” She hesitated. “Stafford asked me to say that he would like to come and see you, but I told him I didn’t think you were up to it.”

  “Oh no,” I said, flustered. “I don’t want him to come.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure you’re wise. You must not overtax yourself. Shall I prepare the sleeping-draft now, Elinor? Then you can settle down for the night.”

  ‘Thank you.”

  When she left me, I soon began to feel drowsy. But, in fact, I never entirely lost consciousness. My mind was too feverishly active, twisting and turning in a desperate effort to find some escape from the inescapable.

  From the very first, I had not trusted Stafford Darville—and it was painfully clear now that my initial reaction to him had been justified. And yet, in spite of my instinctive mistrust, he had kindled in me feelings such as I had never felt for any man before, intense feelings of love that could not be dismissed at will. And now I was left with an empty, aching yearning in my heart. Stafford had ruthlessly misused my love for him, turning it to his own despicable advantage.

  Later, hours later, I found that I was lying restlessly awake, staring into the shadowed darkness of my room. I suddenly knew that I could lie there no longer. I arose and went barefoot to the window, slipping between the long silk curtains.

  The moon rode high in the sky, almost at full circle. The balmy night air, drenched with the perfume of a hundred blossom-laden trees, was a cooling touch upon my fevered skin. I stood and gazed out at the silvered fairyland of the gardens, hearing the fountains whispering in the nocturnal silence. From far off came the soft hoot of an owl. I became aware of a movement on the terrace below me—a man was strolling there. From his height, from the way he walked, I knew that it was Stafford.

  Why should he still be up at this late hour, I wondered. Was he, too, unable to sleep for th
e torment in his mind—because, although he had successfully silenced Pedro, I still remained alive?

  Stafford paused by one of the marble urns and lifted his head. It seemed as if he was looking directly at my window, but I knew that he could not see me where I stood in the shadows. Then behind me, I heard a sound. The door handle was being slowly turned. Someone was entering my room with the greatest stealth. The parting in the curtains was wide enough for me to look through, and against the glimmer from the wall sconces outside in the corridor, I saw the outline of a figure in a white nightgown.

  My grandmother, walking in her sleep again. She stood in the doorway, hesitating. I could make out the shape of a candelabra held aloft in one hand, but this time the candles were unlit. Slowly, step by step, she crossed the room to my bedside and stood there very still, so that I was only just able to discern her white phantom shape. Suddenly, there was a flurried movement, and I heard a heavy dull thud as though the candelabra had been thrashed down onto the bed—and then again. There came a smothered gasp, and her ghostly figure straightened up and quickly fled from the room, leaving the door still slightly open. I heard the soft padding of her footfalls along the corridor.

  I was shaking all over from head to toe, and I felt in my mouth the bitter taste of fear. It was all I could do to prevent myself from calling out to Stafford down there on the terrace. But Stafford was the last person whom I could ask for help.

  The seconds throbbed by as I stood there at the window breathing deeply, trying to calm the frantic pounding of my heart. At length, I tiptoed across to the door and closed it firmly. Then I fumbled to the bedside console, found matches, and lit the lamp. On the pillows where my head might have been lying, were two jagged rents in the fine white linen, rents made by the heavy silver-gilt candelabra that normally stood on a lacquered cabinet in my grandmother’s sitting room—a weighty piece of metalwork that would have crushed my skull as though it were only eggshell-thin.