Thieves Break In

by Cristina Sumners

  Chapter 13

  SATURDAY LUNCHTIME

  Three Days After Rob Hillman’s Death

  The house was unhappy. Crumper could feel it in his bones.

  He had lived at Datchworth all his life; he had been born in the old servants’ quarters on the top floor of the south wing. That part of the Castle had been boarded up for years, but all the rest of the house was Crumper’s domain. He patrolled its corridors from the busiest to the almost abandoned; he inspected every room from attics to wine cellars. He and the house had spent a lot of time together, and it spoke to him. Today it spoke as if in restless whispers, complaining of violation. Not since Cromwell had it yielded to an occupying force, but now, once again, Datchworth Castle had been invaded.

  It would have been easy to blame the police. Certainly they were everywhere; one met them in the halls, one came across them in rooms that should have been empty. They interrupted the servants at their work, taking people off to be interviewed again and again. They were harassing the Family. But Crumper knew it wasn’t really the police who were the alien presence.

  It was Rob Hillman. Alive, Rob had been sunny, cheerful, friendly. Murdered, he had become an uneasiness in the air, a chill in the marrow of the bones. Crumper, never one to be fanciful, had begun to understand why some people could believe in ghosts. Especially in the ghosts of those who had been wrongfully done to death.

  It was Rob Hillman behind Miss Meg’s red and puffy eyes. It was Rob Hillman who jangled Mr. Derek’s nerves so that he chattered like a fool—which he wasn’t—and started at small noises. And it was Rob Hillman who haunted the heretofore indomitable Sir Gregory. Everyone said, of course, that the shock of the news had made the Baronet ill—too ill to greet his guests from America, and so he was keeping to his room. But Crumper had looked into the old man’s eyes and seen not illness but something very like terror.

  Hickson had seen it, too; of that Crumper was certain. But the valet would not speak of it, any more than Crumper himself would.

  Needless to say, not one of the four people who sat down to lunch in the Family Dining Room that day discerned the slightest trace of any of these disquieting thoughts on Crumper’s impassive countenance.

  Three of the four were so troubled by their own emotions, in any case, that their chief concern was simply to get through the social task before them with courtesy and self-restraint intact. Tom Holder, unburdened by even a nodding acquaintance with the deceased, was the only person who had his antennae out.

  He was appreciating the room, a pleasant space made wonderful by a double set of French doors opening onto the terrace. Beyond the terrace was a garden so vast and elegant that Tom knew instinctively that he must not refer to it as the backyard.

  Derek was apologizing profusely (too profusely, Tom thought) for the absence of Sir Gregory.

  “He really is most completely under the weather, I’m afraid. This business—” Derek seemed to think he had uttered a solecism, and made haste to correct himself. “Oh, I say, Miss Koerney, do forgive me. I mean, of course, the sad death of your cousin.”

  “No apology is necessary; I have referred to it as ‘this business’ myself. And call me Kathryn.”

  Derek beamed. “How kind of you, Kathryn! I was saying, this—ah—sad affair has shaken my uncle rather dreadfully. He was enormously fond of Rob, you know. As were we all.”

  Meg, whose demeanor was well arranged to converse with guests despite her tired, red eyes, said, “I wonder if Rob reminded Uncle Gregory of Jerry. I always thought they looked a bit like each other. And then Rob died so suddenly. Like the Accident, you know.”

  Both Kathryn and Tom sensed the capital “A” in “Accident,” sensed immediately that the word had a specific meaning in the family vocabulary. They looked inquiringly at Meg.

  She answered the question they were too polite to ask. “I had an uncle Jerry, or at least, I would have had him if he hadn’t died before I was born. He was killed in a car crash when he was eighteen; that was in 1972. He was Uncle Greg’s and Aunt Sophy’s only child, and they adored him. Which is probably why they took me in when I came along seven years later. They were pretty old to be taking care of a baby, but I needed a home and they gave me one. Here.”

  It was clear to both Kathryn and Tom that Meg was rehearsing a well-worn story, probably because it offered a bit of pre-packaged conversation, effortless to produce. She looked far too weary for effort. Both of them wondered what she had been crying about while scrupulously pretending not to notice the evidence of shed tears.

  “That was nice of them,” Tom remarked, wanting to know why Meg had needed a home and again being too polite to ask.

  “Oh, the loveliest people ever!” Meg agreed emphatically. “I wish you’d known my Aunt Sophy; she was a treasure, wasn’t she, Derek?”

  “Oh, yes, best mother a niece and nephew ever had.” Derek and Meg exchanged small, melancholy smiles.

  Kathryn’s curiosity got the better of her courtesy, and she ventured a direct question. “What happened to her?”

  Derek replied, “She died of breast cancer in 1994.”

  Kathryn winced sympathetically.

  Tom, also with sympathy in his expression, asked how old she had been.

  Meg told him, “Sixty-eight. A lot of people, stupid people, said that was a good old age, as though that made it all right. But we weren’t ready to lose her, were we?” She was appealing to Derek, as before, for confirmation. He gave it to her with a silent nod, and a suddenly outstretched hand. They clasped fingers for a moment.

  “I hope this is not an overly familiar remark,” Kathryn said, “but I must say it’s lovely to see cousins who are close.” She did not add that it was also painful, given her own current circumstances.

  “Ah, actually,” Derek corrected politely, “we’re not cousins.”

  Meg jumped in. “He’s my uncle.”

  Tom told her, “You’ve got a fair number of uncles.”

  “That’s only three,” Kathryn objected mildly. She started counting on her fingers. “The late Jerry, the present Derek, and obviously Sir Gregory. Unless there are more?”

  “Two. Or one, depending on how you add it up,” Meg responded. “The whole set of them goes like this: Uncle Gregory is my great-grandmother’s brother. Derek is my grandmother’s brother. And my mother had two half brothers, twins, which means that they are both half uncles, and two halves make one. Total of three whole uncles living. And the one that died before I was born wasn’t really my uncle anyway, I just call him that. He was actually my first cousin twice removed.” An impish smile appeared incongruously under her swollen eyes. “I trust that’s perfectly clear?” she asked.

  Derek, long accustomed to Meg’s uncle monologue, only smiled, but Kathryn and Tom both laughed out loud.

  Tom recognized, as he laughed, that the conversation badly needed this lighter note. But it was clear from what had gone before that any further questions about Derek’s and Meg’s relatives might lead as easily to tragedy as to comedy. He decided to be bold.

  “ ’Scuse me for changing the subject,” he said at just the right moment in the dying laughter, “but now that I’m in England, there’s something I’ve always wanted to know.”

  “Dear fellow,” Derek replied, “we will enlighten you to the best of our ability. What is it?”

  Tom asked innocently, “Would somebody please explain cricket to me?”

  The maneuver succeeded brilliantly. Everyone cried, “Ah!” and launched into an explanation, three talking at once. Derek and Meg stopped, yielding to Kathryn. She, having correctly divined Tom’s purpose, announced sententiously that cricket was a perfectly straightforward game: “You simply start with baseball and then scrupulously remove all the fun from it.”

  This slur on Britain’s national pastime drew, as Kathryn had known it would, outraged protests from Meg and Derek.

  “One doesn’t start with baseball—”

  “Just because it’s leisur
ely—”

  “One starts with cricket—”

  “Doesn’t mean it’s boring—”

  “Which is the original of which baseball—”

  “Even the quiet bits are full of subtle—”

  “Is merely a derivation—”

  “Marvels of skill if one only has—”

  “And a totally unnecessary derivation, at that—”

  “The knowledge to appreciate them.”

  “Because the original is better!”

  Tom and Kathryn were grinning. Uncle and niece looked at each other, then back at their visitors.

  Meg eyed Kathryn narrowly. “That was deliberate provocation, wasn’t it?”

  The rest of lunch passed in a good-humored effort to teach Tom, as he himself put it, “everything I always wanted to know about cricket but didn’t know who to ask.”

  They were served, flawlessly, by Crumper, who pretended to be deaf except when he was directly addressed. At one point Derek suddenly looked up and made eye contact with him.

  “Crumper, is my uncle asleep?”

  Crumper permitted the corners of his mouth to turn upward a sixteenth of an inch, to indicate that he perfectly understood the question behind the question. “Not yet, Mr. Banner. Hickson is serving Sir Gregory his luncheon today. Sir Gregory insisted I serve here.”

  “Ah,” said Meg. “Looking after the guests?”

  “Precisely, Miss Daventry.”

  Derek turned to Kathryn, throwing a quick glance at Tom in passing. “As I was telling you earlier, my uncle’s feeling awfully rotten about not being well enough to welcome you properly. I expect he’s telling Crumper to take pains. Eh, Crumper?” He looked back at the butler.

  “That is correct, Mr. Banner.”

  The pains Crumper was taking became clear after lunch. As they rose from the table, the butler reappeared and begged the honor of showing Miss Koerney and Mr. Holder back to their rooms. Mr. Holder thanked him and Miss Koerney told him he was very kind.

  Crumper led his charges back to their wing of the Castle, politely answering Kathryn’s questions about the age and style of the various areas they passed through. Tom was impressed by the man’s minute knowledge of both the building and the family who had owned it all these centuries. Kathryn, however, took Crumper’s easy command of the family history in stride; she would have considered it more remarkable in a household like Datchworth if the butler had not known the hair color and personal habits of every Thorpe and every Bebberidge who had ever drawn breath. Kathryn was far more impressed by the impeccable syntax in which this wealth of knowledge was being revealed.

  “Crumper,” she said as the butler concluded his explanation of the three different window styles in the hallway they were crossing (“an ongoing clash of wills amongst the then Baronet, Sir Griswold Bebberidge-Thorpe, his mother, and his wife”), “it’s a well-known fact that Americans have no manners, so I’m going to ask you a personal question. Where did you go to school?”

  The perfect servant showed no offense, replying smoothly, “Sir Gregory was kind enough to have me educated at Winchester. Now if I may, I would like to show you something.”

  They had passed the enormous green porcelain vase, which told Kathryn and Tom that they had arrived at “their” corridor, but Crumper had stopped before a door twenty yards short of their rooms. He held it open for them, and obediently they filed in.

  They’d entered a charming compartment, full of sunlight and chintz; it would have been about fifteen feet square if it had been square, and it had windows along two walls that were more or less opposite each other, which made for a more open feel than is commonly found in old castles. It was furnished as a sitting room.

  Crumper gave them time to exclaim over the double view (“How marvelous!” “Hey, this is nice!”) then told them, “It is a well-known fact”—his eyes flickered to Kathryn’s and away again, with nary a trace of a smile— “that transatlantic travel is exhausting. It is another fact that sharing meals with persons one has only recently met requires more, ah, effort than does eating with persons more familiar. I thought that perhaps after you have rested, you might like to take tea privately in here.”

  Tom liked this proposal so much, he was afraid to say so; Kathryn thanked the butler warmly but protested that surely this would create extra work for him?

  Crumper assured her that that was not the case; their tea would be brought by Mary, the head housemaid.

  “Also,” he added, and Tom could have sworn he saw a fugitive twinkle in the man’s eye, “every time I see Sir Gregory, as I do quite frequently, he inquires what I am doing to further his guests’ comfort.”

  Tom grinned, “O.K., Crumper, I guess the least we can do is let you further our comfort.”

  “Please inform Sir Gregory,” Kathryn managed to say with a straight face, “that our comfort has been so furthered that we hardly know how to cope.”

  So it was that Tom and Kathryn, having each enjoyed a deep, delicious sleep before being awakened by Mary’s gentle rapping at their respective doors, met happily in the double-viewed parlor a little before five.

  “It’s late for tea,” Kathryn said, “but I needed every minute of that nap. How about you?”

  “God, yes. People warned me about jet lag, but a lot of times I work all night and it doesn’t faze me, so I thought I’d be immune. Hey!” he exclaimed, catching sight of the tea table. “This is like the first time I came to your house.”

  On the table was a silver tea service that took Kathryn’s breath away. “You flatter my silver. Mine’s Victorian. This is Georgian, I’m pretty sure, and twelve times finer. Did I ever tell you that Warby trotted out that ostentatious nonsense without my prior knowledge or consent? I was mortified.” “Warby” was Kathryn’s housekeeper, Mrs. Warburton.

  “Yeah, when I got to know you better I knew it had to be her idea. You hate to look pretentious. You even hate to look rich. That’s one of the things,” he said, sitting down and reaching for a scone while scrupulously not looking at her, “I like about you.”

  “Tom Holder, you are the most gratifying friend. Shall I be Mother? Sorry, I’m showing off my British. It means, ‘Shall I pour the tea?’ ”

  Tom graciously invited her to do so, and she did, while he sat back and hoped he wasn’t audibly purring. He felt just a little sophisticated, like he was going to do all right here in this rich man’s house. Rich man’s castle! Here he was, the pampered guest of a man with a title; he had no responsibilities except to be a friend to the most attractive woman in the world; at this moment, she was pouring Earl Grey out of a piece of silver that belonged in a museum, and offering the tea to him in a flowered cup so delicate that you could see the sunlight through the rim. What did I ever do, he wondered, to deserve all this?

  Despite the lavish surroundings, there was complete ease between them, as if they were older friends than they were; Tom knew it was because murder drives people together where it doesn’t drive them apart, and this was the second murder he and Kathryn had shared. Of course, this time was different; this one was Kathryn’s by right, and he was in it only because she’d invited him. The first time, it had been the other way around. He liked it better this way, because he didn’t have to feel guilty about making up excuses to spend time in her company. Still, maybe he should be doing something to earn his keep.

  “Kathryn,” he asked, “is there anything you need me to do? I got the idea I was supposed to help somehow, that’s why I’m here, but so far I’m just taking up space.”

  “Oh, Tom, you’ve no idea! You are helping. I need— she hesitated. “I need a friend.”

  “So why didn’t you ask Celia Smith?”

  “Because you’re a pro, you’re at home with homicide. God!” She grinned at him. “That sounds like a title for a bad TV series, doesn’t it?”

  Tom smiled, but replied seriously, “You’re doing it again. Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Pretend to b
e cheerful. You conned me into thinking you were O.K. all the way here in the car. Made me think that was just shock at the airport, just a good night’s sleep was all you needed. Had me fooled up to when you had to talk about Rob to that English cop. Well, now the cat’s out of the bag. So you can stop pretending.”

  Kathryn sighed. “I keep forgetting about you. You see through people as if they were glass. All right. You want it straight? I asked you and not Celia because I didn’t need sympathy. I needed steel. I need to have someone here I can count on to be strong. I feel—I feel safe with you here.”

  Tom’s eyes opened wide. “You think this guy’s gonna come after you? For God’s sake, Kathryn, if you think it’s not safe here, let’s get the hell out! I’m flattered that you think I make a good bodyguard, but if you—”

  She stopped him with an open palm. “Tom, I am not in the least afraid that this bastard is going to harm me. I want you here when they find out who he is so you can stop me from killing him. Because—” suddenly she was almost sobbing with rage—“because I want to take a baseball bat and beat him to a bloody pulp.”

  Tom had enough sense to keep his mouth shut and let her decide what to say next. Her eyes were shut and her fingers were mashed half an inch into the upholstered arms of her chair. He watched as after a few moments her hands began slowly to unclench and the color crept back into her fingernails.

  She continued more calmly, but still with closed eyes and a tight face, “Celia couldn’t control me. But with you here, I will behave myself.”

  “Now that,” said Tom conversationally, “is the biggest compliment I’ve probably ever gotten in my life.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled wearily at him. “Tom, you do understand, don’t you, that when I try to make light of it, it’s not just because I’m trying to pull the wool over your eyes, it’s because I’m trying to escape it? Momentarily, at least. Because otherwise it crushes me. And I can’t breathe.”

  He nodded. “Sure. Just as long as you know you don’t have to put on an act for me. So what do you want to do now? Curse the bastard? Smash something? Or escape?”