Thieves Break In

by Cristina Sumners

  Not far away, in Crumpet’s tidy little flat, Derek was getting dressed when the phone rang. Crumpet picked it up and said, “Hullo, Mum.” Mrs. Crumper always rang her daughter on Saturday afternoons after tea.

  “Hullo, Julie. How’re you getting on?” Mrs. Crumper, understandably, never called her daughter by her nickname.

  They chatted in a familial, unexcited way; there was not much news to exchange, as Crumpet had been at Datchworth only a couple of days previously. Derek, when he was ready to leave, stole softly over to the bed and silently kissed Crumpet’s still naked shoulder before tiptoeing discreetly to the door. Crumpet fluttered her fingers at him in a farewell wave, but did not break the placid rhythm of the conversation with her mother.

  But mothers are hard to deceive. When Martha Crumper hung up the phone ten minutes later, she shook her head and said to her husband, “She wasn’t alone.”

  “She’s never alone,” Crumper replied, trying to keep the judgment and the disappointment out of his voice. “Let’s just hope it was somebody other than a certain Mr. Banner.”

  “There you go again, Crump. I don’t see why you object to our Julie making friends with the Family. Times have changed!”

  “Changing times have nothing to do with it. I object for the same reason any father would. The man in question is using my daughter for—well, for diversion. Unless—” Crumper sighed. “Unless she’s using him for diversion. I suppose it could be that way.”

  “You don’t think anything could ever come of it, then?”

  “My God, Martha! Derek Banner, marry a woman he calls Crumpet? Besides, my dear, do you really think Julie would enjoy being the mistress of Datchworth Castle?”

  It was apparent from Martha’s arrested expression that this view of the matter had never occurred to her. She pondered it awhile and said finally, “Well, Crump, perhaps you’re right.”

  “My dear!” Crumper exclaimed, as though shocked at her uncertainty. “I am always right!”

  “What you always are, Jim Crumper, is mighty full of yourself!” she replied. But she had to turn away to hide a smile.

  Chapter 18

  SPRING 1972

  Twenty-five Years Before Rob Hillman’s Death

  They didn’t want to take him. He was only eight years old, the proverbial pesky little brother. They were the Dynamic Duo, their sights confidently set on Oxford the coming autumn. They were Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan, complete and content in each other’s company. What use did they have for a skinny little freckle-faced brat like him? But he had insisted, he had begged, he had nagged, cajoled, and whined. He had, in fact, been a right royal pain in the arse. And even pain-in-thearsery hadn’t swung it for him; they would still have left him behind, if he hadn’t in the end resorted to blackmail.

  Sometimes, afterward, he blamed Jerry. After all, Jerry had been the oldest, and should have known better. Should have acted with some modicum of judgment, instead of egging Freddy on. In fact, Kit sometimes suspected that the whole thing had been Jerry’s idea in the first place. Would Freddy, left to his own devices, have had the vision, the audacity, the—not to put too fine a point on it—the balls to have even thought of taking the Duesenberg without permission? Almost certainly not. But Jerry! It was just the sort of thing he’d come up with. Of course, Kit hadn’t seen that at the time, being only eight, but looking back on it in later years, remembering the Gruesome Twosome, he had gradually become certain that it had been Gerald Bebberidge-Thorpe who had instigated that tragic escapade.

  But most of the time Kit, in company with the vast majority of the rest of the neighborhood, had blamed Freddy. After all, the buck stopped (to use Kit’s favorite American phrase) with the person behind the wheel, and that person had unquestionably been his cousin Fred. The fact that Freddy was new behind the wheel—in fact, they’d been celebrating his getting his driving license— mitigated the blame a bit, but by no means wiped it out entirely. “If you’re old enough to drive,” Freddy’s dad had told him repeatedly, “you’re old enough to drive responsibly.” They had neither of them appreciated the aphorisms that their fathers had droned at them. Both Kit’s father and his Uncle Michael, brothers in character as well as in blood, had been famous in the family for those little pearls of common sense, recited too often and far too sententiously to appeal to growing lads. But the sayings had lodged in Kit’s mind like burrs, and he had the horrid fear that in years to come he would be boring his own children with them. (If he had any children. If he ever found a woman as unmoved by the wheels as by the title, and vice versa.)

  Old enough to drive. Old enough to drive responsibly. Freddy, apparently, had been neither. Just old enough to figure out that the time to filch the keys to the Duesy was when Jackson went into the servants’ hall for his lunch. When it came to the cars he drove and cared for, Jackson’s proprietary zeal and his entirely predictable reaction, should any of those precious vehicles be commandeered by unauthorized teenagers, made their fathers look like puddings by comparison. Provided they brought the Speedster back unscathed, the worst consequence of their dads finding out about the joyride would be a tedious enumeration of all the evils that might have befallen them, liberally decorated with statements like “Privilege comes with responsibility; you cannot take one without accepting the other.” Jackson, on the other hand, would reduce them to jelly with a torrent of high-decibel rage that would be nonetheless terrifying for being couched in such colloquial rural obscenities as to be incomprehensible.

  So the keys had been stealthily lifted from hook number three as the chauffeur in happy ignorance tucked into his celery soup.

  “You, Christopher!” the older boys had hissed at him. “Christopher” because they were furious with him; Kit had threatened to grass on them if they didn’t take him along. “You sit in the rumble,” they commanded witheringly. Thus they exiled him from the grown-up fellowship of the front seat. It was the worst revenge they could wreak upon him. And, of course, it had saved his life.

  At first Kit had sulked. Might as well have been left behind after all, stuck way back there where he couldn’t even hear over the rattle of the engine what they were saying to each other in front. But after puttering cautiously down to the bend that took them around the first hill and out of sight of the house, Freddy had put his foot to the floor, and they jolted excitingly over the early spring ruts in the drive at a speed Kit’s Uncle Michael had never taken the Duesenberg. Or at least not with Kit in the car.

  Before too long the bone-juddering ride produced a bounce that lifted Kit clear off the seat, and he let out a whoop of glee. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t hear the bright chatter of the eighteen-year-olds up front; Jerry and Fred looked like they were laughing more than talking anyway. Kit was laughing, too, as the car burst out of the main gate, slithered through a giant puddle, and took off down the road toward the village.

  They never got there. Kit was sure of that much, although he could not later have said with any certainty how many minutes, how many miles, they bounced and jounced and laughed before it ended.

  Sometimes—less often, these days—Kit tried to recall what he had seen. But the messages delivered by his eyes were a wild confusion, imperfectly grasped at the time, and more imperfectly remembered. He was reasonably sure that at one point he had seen the sky between his feet. He did not recollect seeing any blood.

  But his ears had recorded the event with an awful clarity that even now found its way into his dreams. He had experienced no physical pain, yet the noise was a vicious assault. First, loud over the motor, Jerry shouting, brakes squealing. Then a violent metallic explosion: metal colliding with metal, screeching across metal, crumpling against metal. Things crashed and banged and crunched. Glass shattered.

  There was the sky again, but Kit could no longer see his feet. Something round and hard and enormous had attached itself to the small of his back. He remembered clearly that it didn’t actually hurt. The only thing that distressed him was the
screaming, the terrible, terrified screaming that went on and unrelentingly on after all the other noises had given way to stillness, the soul-searing screams that made him wish more strongly than he had ever wished for anything else, that someone would go to the person who was screaming and somehow render them a comfort huge enough to make them be quiet. It seemed like ages before he realized that the person screaming was himself.

  Chapter 19

  MONDAY LUNCHTIME

  Five Days After Rob Hillman’s Death

  Kit had heard the MG drive up, and he was in the hallway waiting—nervously—when Harry came through the door.

  “I say, Kit, she’s waiting in the car. Says she wants to have a word with you before she comes in.”

  “Damn. That doesn’t auger well.”

  “I’m afraid I let the cat out of the bag. You should have warned me she didn’t know.”

  “Which cat?”

  “The title. The house.”

  “Ah. Did you tell her about the chair?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Kit! She doesn’t know about the chair, either? Wait. Come to think of it, she knows now. I said enough for her to figure it out. I can’t believe you didn’t tell her anything. What’s got into you?”

  “Hope,” said the seventh Marquis of Wallwood. But he didn’t sound very hopeful. Harry rolled his eyes heavenward but made no reply other than to hold the door open and gesture for Kit to go out.

  Kathryn turned her head to look at Kit as he approached. She could have used more time to gather her scattered thoughts and get hold of her rampaging emotions. A week, she thought, might have sufficed.

  Here he came. He was wearing blue again. The sun caught his red-gold hair. His freckled face looked anxious. Apprehensive. She had been looking forward to exploding at him, to hitting him with her rage as if it were a club. She couldn’t do it. It wasn’t the sight of the wheelchair that dissipated her anger; she had deduced the presence of the chair before it appeared. What stirred her sudden compassion was the look on his face. How could anyone injure a person so nakedly vulnerable? And he was still the most overwhelmingly attractive man she had ever seen.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I should have told you.”

  “I can see,” Kathryn replied in a carefully even tone, “that the temptation not to tell me would have been . . . irresistible. And backed by very sound reasons.”

  “You are being more understanding than I deserve.”

  She gave him a long, long look. Unlike Sir Gregory, he propelled his wheelchair with his arms rather than let a motor do the work for him; he appeared to do so effortlessly. She thought his arms must be very strong.

  Sitting in the small, open car, she was almost exactly on a level with him. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” she said. “If I were in your position, I’m reasonably sure I would jump at the chance to get acquainted with someone without their knowing. It would be very difficult for anyone to try to filter all that”—she waved a hand past him—“out of their response to you.”

  “Not so much difficult as impossible. I doubt if anyone’s ever succeeded.”

  “And then one day, there I was, there you were, strangers on a train.”

  “You do understand. But you’re still angry. Aren’t you?”

  “I am trying hard not to shake with fury.” She knew instantly that it had been a mistake to say this; it was too honest, and her voice did indeed begin to shake.

  Kit was horrified. “Is it that bad?” he managed to ask.

  Kathryn began to cry, although she made Herculean efforts not to, although she knew in some dispassionate corner at the back of her mind that she wouldn’t be falling apart like this if she had not already been devastated by the death of her cousin. She burst out, “This is stupid! Stupid! I shouldn’t care this much! But I liked you, I liked you more than I’d ever . . .” She faltered and covered her face with her hands.

  Kit heard the past tense: “liked.” As if there could be no hope, now that she knew. He would not believe it. He refused to accept it. With a quick movement he brought his wheelchair alongside the car and laid an unsteady hand on her shoulder. “Kathryn, please. Please don’t write me off. It’s not as bad as you think. I get around very well. I go to London, I drive my own car, I, well, I’m not sure how to put this politely, but I can function. I, um, look forward to being a father. It’s just my legs that are useless.”

  She lifted her face and stared at him. They were both flushed, she from crying, he from embarrassment. His face was so red, she could hardly see his freckles.

  “You’re talking about the wheelchair,” she said in astonishment.

  This is turn astonished him. “Why, what else—?”

  At that point Kathryn did explode. “Who the hell gives a flying”—here she used a word that surfaced in her vocabulary very rarely—“about the bloody wheelchair?”

  His jaw dropped, and he had to regain control of it in order to say, “Most of the women of my acquaintance. Are you telling me you don’t?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Kathryn cried in disgust. “ All the women you know can’t be idiots! The measure of a man is his mind, not his legs. Surely it doesn’t take a genius to see that?”

  Kit exhaled a long breath. “No,” he said. “Not a genius. But a very unusual woman. If you don’t object to the chair, why are you talking about this relationship as if it were dead before it ever got started?”

  “You honestly don’t know? You must be aware that to anyone with a sensible set of values, the house—and the rest of it, the estate, the title, the position—is a much more serious encumbrance than a wheelchair.”

  Will you marry me? Kit had to clamp his mouth shut to keep the words from popping out. What he did permit himself to say, softly, was “Thank you, God.”

  Kathryn could not pretend that she didn’t understand. She smiled—a bit wearily—at the compliment, but shook her head stubbornly. “Don’t go thanking God yet. You have no idea of the strength of my objection to your real encumbrance.”

  “What’s the worst part of it? The title? The money?”

  She waved a dismissive hand at him. “Money’s not a problem. I have money myself. Though not, it is becomming increasingly obvious to me, nearly as much as you have. But my money is—how shall I say this?—loose. I could give it all away tomorrow if I felt like it. You couldn’t do that with yours.”

  “That’s right. I need it to maintain the house. And the estate.”

  “Which means I’m free. And you’re not.”

  Kit studied her a moment. “How free are you, really?” he challenged.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You say you could give it all away tomorrow if you felt like it. Why don’t you?”

  “Because I enjoy it.”

  “What about, ‘Sell all you have, give it to the poor, take up your cross and follow me’?”

  Kathryn winced slightly. After a moment she began thoughtfully to rub her nose.

  Kit ventured a little smile. “Have I hit a nerve?” Kathryn sighed. “Oh, boy, have you. I get along most of the time by ignoring that verse.”

  “And you a priest! I’m shocked!”

  It was back; she felt it again, just as she had on the train: the vitality, the humor, the energy that hummed through him like an electric current, that danced in his eyes and tickled the edge of his mouth and charged the air between them.

  She looked at him, at the red hair, the blue eyes, the freckles, the mouth that quivered as it pretended not to smile. She began to think—she began to fear—that she had met her match.

  Lunch at Morgan Mallowan was a little late that day, since it took the guest of honor a while to rearrange her face and her hair to the point where both were ready to present to strangers.

  At Datchworth, however, lunch was served precisely on schedule, and the food was excellent as always. Aside from those two points, it was a disaster.

  Crumper had come to that conclusion early in the meal, as he m
oved around the table invisibly providing all that was needed. Miss Meg, to judge by her appearance only, was feeling marginally better; her eyes were less red and puffy, and she was getting a bit of her color back. She seemed dull, however, and disinclined to talk. Mr. Banner, on the other hand, was talking too much, trying to hide his nervousness and only succeeding in making it more obvious. Mr. Banner had a severe case of fidgety hands; his fingers toyed with the flatware, rubbed at nonexistent spots on the glasses, and moved from his napkin to his tie to his hair and back again. And when Miss Meg dropped her salad fork on the edge of her plate, he jumped.

  Worst of the three, however, was the American guest, who had the look of a man who had just attended the multiple funeral of everyone he loved. Mr. Holder had good manners, and he was trying hard; he made responses of a general and innocuous nature to Mr. Banner’s edgy chatter; he asked a few polite questions of Miss Meg perhaps in an attempt to draw her out; but his heart was not in it. Crumper knew why.

  Finally the meal was over. Those who had lunched rose from the table, thanked those who had served, exchanged temporary farewells, and began to go their separate ways. Crumper had come to a decision. There was nothing he could do for the Family. So he waited a well-judged moment, then set off in stately pursuit of the melancholy guest.

  Tom had gotten as far as the entrance hall; there he had come to a halt and stood, no more dynamic than a figure in wax, staring out the open front door onto the gravel of Sir Gregory’s drive. The gravel was white and winked in the sun.

  “Ah, yes,” said Crumper quietly, pretending to read thoughts he knew that Holder was not having. “It is a lovely day, isn’t it? Much too nice to stay indoors.”

  Tom had started at the butler’s unexpected voice, but he recovered enough to utter some vague agreement.

  Crumper rolled on. “When I’m free after lunch, as I am today, I sometimes like to go for a spin, particularly in this sort of weather. I thought today I might pop over to Morgan Mallowan in the old Rolls-Royce and see if Miss Koerney would like a ride back to Datchworth. If you don’t think it too presumptuous of me to ask, would you like to join me?”