“You know quite well.”
“What?”
“Richard, you’re being stupid. It’s naughty of you!”
“To tell you the truth, then—I don’t see anything at the window—I never do.”
She stamped her foot at this and stooped to a bed of the daffodils, yellow against the gray stone of the castle. He gazed down, tender-eyed, at her slight figure and the silvery hair. His headache was gone as suddenly as it had come and he felt immense relief.
“Am I being stupid, my love? Perhaps! But who knows anything these days? I’d sooner believe you than anyone else.”
She reached for his hand at that, and they walked to the great yews, clipped in the shape of elephants. There they paused in mutual gloom for the yews had been planted two hundred years ago and clipped a hundred years later by a Sedgeley who had seen service in India.
“He’ll chop down the elephants, that American,” she said.
“Nonsense. Americans aren’t savages nowadays.”
“You talk sometimes as though they were.”
“That’s because I don’t relish having them in my castle or cutting down my yews.”
They walked on to the rose garden. Impatient bees were fretting over the buds not yet ready to bloom.
She was brooding over the roses. “He won’t know about roses, I daresay. I’ve never heard of American roses.”
“Nor I. I daresay they can’t grow roses in their beastly climate.”
“Will he chew gum?”
“Spare me these clichés, my dear. He’s probably a decent sort, in which case he’ll not chew gum. At least he knows paintings.”
“Where’ll he have his meals? I shan’t be able to talk if he’s at table with us.”
“Wells can take him a tray.”
As though at the mention of his name. Wells appeared. “A man has arrived, Sir Richard, in a motorcar,” he announced in a sepulchral voice.
Sir Richard looked at him with irritation. “But the castle is closed today. It’s only Tuesday.”
“I told him so, sir,” Wells said.
“Very well—then tell him again. It doesn’t pay to have fewer than ten people on a tour through the castle. Tell him so.”
“He’s the persistent sort, sir,” Wells said doubtfully.
Sir Richard rubbed his nose. “Then tell him to come on Thursday with the rest of the public.”
“It’s an American motorcar, sir.”
Lady Mary entered the conversation with an air of solving the problem. “Ask his chauffeur who he is.”
“He’s driving himself, my lady.”
“Ah, well then,” she said decisively. “He’s a tourist or he’s selling something. If the former, tell him he can’t see the castle today and we make no exceptions. If the latter, tell him to apply at the service door and then meet him there and send him away.”
“Yes, my lady.” Wells bowed slightly and left them.
They watched him sadly. “One of these days,” Sir Richard began—
She cut him off. “Don’t say it, Richard. I can’t think what we’ll do without Wells. He’s like the castle. I’ve thought of things, of coarse, finding a husband for Kate, for example—someone who could help Wells, you know, until—and perhaps be a sort of chef man while—”
She was surprised at Sir Richard’s look of horror.
“Impossible!”
“What do you mean, Richard?”
“A husband for Kate—someone like—Wells?”
“I don’t see why not—”
“Kate married to a butler sort of—cook?”
“Really, Richard, she’s only a maid—a very wonderful one and so on, but—why do you look at me like that?”
“I don’t think of her as a maid—”
“Richard, you’re being very odd—”
“I’m not being odd, my dear. It’s just that I can’t bear to think of life’s being different than it’s always been for us. We’re not getting younger and it’ll be difficult, at best—”
He turned away abruptly. She went to his side and laid her cheek against his sleeve.
“Ah, Richard, don’t grieve! Do you know what I’m thinking of? The first day you kissed me—remember? In spring—a day like this—and the daffodils blooming, too. And your mother came out—”
Sir Richard put his arm about her shoulders. “By Jove, I’d forgotten! She said, ‘You did that rather nicely, my son.’ ”
“I could have wept, I was so shy!”
“And I said—”
She interrupted. “Richard, there must be something we can do to save the castle! Life’s gone on here for a thousand years—how can it stop with us? What have we done?”
“What haven’t we done?” he said sadly. “It’s nothing we can help. It’s the end of an age, my love, and we end with it, that’s all. Someone has to, I suppose—someone had to even when Rome fell. Our castle is built on Roman ruins, you know. There’s no alternative now, I’m afraid—”
“Are you sure Webster has done all he can?”
“He showed me the letters he’d had—two possibilities, that’s all. Government would buy the castle for a prison, that’s bad enough but the other is worse—the atomic people want to pull it down and build a plant here. They need a bit of a desert, and our five thousand acres of forest and farm would do nicely.”
She shuddered and sat down on a low rock wall. “Oh no—”
He felt for his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the pipe, lit it and drew hard. “Well, my dear, all that’s left is to keep on with the farm, and that we can’t, it seems, without selling the castle. The tenants complain about leaking roofs and no modern improvements and I don’t know where to look for the money for that sort of thing. No, the museum’s best. We’ll turn it over to the American and retire to the gatehouse. It will be comfortable enough, I daresay. And the money he gives us will pay for the farm improvements and perhaps we can make do in our time, God willing. At least the castle won’t be a prison for criminals—or be demolished.”
She pushed back her short white hair.
“I wish you wouldn’t mention God. … If we’d had a son—”
“We haven’t,” he said shortly.
“But if we had, could he—”
“My dear, why do you speak of him when he was never born or even conceived, for that matter? We settled that long ago.”
“You still think it was my fault!”
He knocked the ash out of his pipe. “Damn this thing—it won’t draw.”
She continued, her voice slightly belligerent. “You know, Richard, it was never settled that I was the one at fault. It was very unkind of you not to be willing to go and have yourself examined.”
He turned on her. “Now why do you bring that up again? It’s absurd—at our age. And I—there was no reason to think that I—besides, I suggested that we adopt a child.”
She moved away from him. “You know very well that adopted children can’t inherit. It has to be your issue.”
“Male issue,” he retorted. “It could have been an adopted daughter. Fact is”—he was working at his pipe again, cleaning it with a bit of stick he plucked from a shrub—“fact is, I’ve thought once or twice of adopting Kate.”
“Kate? Ah, that’s why you say she’s not like a maid!”
“It’s too late now, I suppose.”
“Much too late,” she said with decision.
They heard at this moment the halting clatter of the old car. Kate was coming back. The car turned into the gate at the end of the driveway and stopped.
“The damned thing has stalled,” Sir Richard said anxiously. He waited, watching while Kate stepped down from the high old vehicle. Four men followed her, all in dark suits and carrying briefcases.
“Good God,” Sir Richard muttered.
“Richard,” Lady Mary said under her breath. “I feel faint—”
“Nonsense! Keep a stiff upper lip, my dear. The American has brought his minions. But I wish
Webster were here.”
He went forward, his tall lean frame erect. “Good morning, which one of you is Mr. John Blayne?”
“None of them, Sir Richard,” Kate said. The wind was blowing her curly hair about her face and she looked vexed. “He’s coming by motorcar.”
The men came forward one by one and Sir Richard felt his hand wrenched four times. Lady Mary stood behind him, her hands safely clasped. The youngest one spoke brightly, a trim fellow with sandy hair in a crew cut.
“Mr. Blayne left London right after breakfast, sir. He’s driving himself.”
“He’ll probably lose his way, which he does at the drop of a hat,” a second young man said briskly.
Sir Richard looked from one to the other. They were all alike, all clean and dapper with hair in crew cuts, all alarmingly healthy and efficient-looking.
“Mr. Blayne,” said the third quietly, “is always stopping to look at cathedrals and such. Probably he’ll get here tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Shall we get started?” the fourth asked Sir Richard.
“Started?” Sir Richard repeated.
“Yes, on the castle. That’s why we’re here. Mr. Blayne doesn’t like us to waste any time.”
They were interrupted by Wells, jogging in a trot from behind the yews and gasping for breath. “He’s lost, sir!” he cried in a thin shriek.
“Control yourself, Wells,” Sir Richard said sternly. “Stop running. Breathe deeply twice and then speak like a rational creature.”
“Really, Wells,” Lady Mary supplemented. “You’ll have an apoplexy and then what’ll we do? So inconsiderate of you!”
“Grandfather, how can you?” Kate said reproachfully. She went to him and reaching him, she brushed back a stray wisp of his white hair. “Stop now—there’s a dear! Do what Sir Richard says. Breathe—that’s right—once again … Now—tell us who’s lost?”
“His car’s—still here—he’s gone,” Wells gasped.
“Whose car?”
“The American.”
The young men exchanged looks. “Is the car a dark green?” one of them inquired.
“It is,” Wells said.
The young man turned to his comrades. “It’s him.”
“Think of him getting here like that, ahead of the train! And over these winding roads.”
“He drives like crazy, if he doesn’t see a cathedral.”
Sir Richard held up his hand for silence. Instinctively they obeyed. “Do you mean to say,” he inquired slowly, “do you mean to say that the—the fellow who arrived here ahead of the lot of you is Mr. John P. Blayne?”
“Who else?” one of the young men replied.
“But he’s lost,” Lady Mary put in.
“Nonsense,” Sir Richard said with decision. “We must find him. We’ll all scatter. At the end of half an hour we’ll meet in the great hall and compare notes if we haven’t found him.”
“But what does he look like?” Kate demanded.
“Like nobody I have ever seen before,” Wells groaned.
“Oh, come now,” a young man objected. “He’s a typical American—tall, brown hair, blue eyes—”
“Brown eyes,” a second young man said.
“Well, eyes, anyway—wearing a gray suit—wasn’t it gray, fellows? No? Well, anyway a suit. Probably a red tie.”
“And I told him to stay at the service door,” Wells moaned. “ ‘Can’t I get out and look about a bit?’ he asks. ‘No!’ I tell him. ‘You stay where you are, if you please, young chap, until I get my orders!’ When I went back, he’d gone, clean as a whistle. I shouted for him and heard nothing but the bird in the big oak tree that mocks me when I call the kitchen cat.”
Kate turned to Sir Richard with an air of pretty authority. “Sir Richard, dear, you and Lady Mary must go and sit down in the hall and wait for us. Grandfather, you make them a cup of tea and drink one yourself in the pantry. The rest of us—” her dark eyes swept over the four young men—“the rest of us will find him. And mind you don’t trample the flower beds, you young chaps, and don’t break the yew branches to look through. The great hall’s inside the great door here when you return, and stay there, if you please. Don’t go wandering about inside the castle until I come back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” a young man said.
“Yes, ma’am—yes, ma’am—just as you say, ma’am.”
They filed away making great pretense of obedience and Wells turned unsteadily and disappeared into the great door.
Lady Mary went to Kate and touched her cheek with a light kiss. “Thank you, my dear!”
“Ah, what would we do without you?” Sir Richard muttered. His head was pounding again in beats of pain.
“Come with me, my dears,” Kate said in her richly comforting voice.
She stepped between them, and with an arm of each she led them toward the hall, talking all the while.
“I’m very cross, you know—this American, how dare he make such a disturbance? I asked the other chaps why he hadn’t come on the train with them properly as he said he would and they just shrugged their shoulders.”
She shrugged her shoulders elaborately to illustrate, glancing up to Sir Richard on her right then to Lady Mary on her left. They were not smiling as she meant them to, so she went on with determined cheerfulness.
“The stories they told me about him! He drives a motor like a devil, won’t have a chauffeur, they said—but he’ll stop for hours in some old cathedral and they don’t know where he is.” Kate tossed her head. “And to think that I got up an hour earlier than I needed to this morning to have the castle looking nice! All that cleaning and dusting, though why I want to make a good impression on him when it’s to sell the castle—” Suddenly she had lost her tone of gay defiance. “Oh dear, oh dear, I do love this old place!” she said wistfully.
They were in the great hall now. She walked them straight through it into their own sitting room beyond and there she settled them in their chairs. Once she could get behind their backs she wiped her eyes hastily with her handkerchief and tidied the books on the table as she talked.
“I can’t bear for strangers to see the castle except when it’s at its best—it’s what he is, that American, only a stranger—and I wish he’d stayed at home. Ah well, I shan’t hurry myself for him anymore, wherever he’s wandering.”
“Stop worrying yourself, Kate,” Lady Mary said mildly, “and tell Wells to bring us some tea. I feel quite faint.”
“He’ll bring it, my lady, and if you’ll excuse me, I will go about the grounds and see that the men aren’t tearing everything to bits.”
She left them, stopping in the hall to look at herself in the mirror, for after all she’d been through she had no doubt that she wanted tidying herself. The image in the mirror was on the whole satisfactory however, her cheeks pink from being angry and her hair curling with the damp morning air. Feeling better after what she saw, she went out into the grounds again, down the gravel walk toward the yews.
He’d be there, perhaps, for they were famous, those great yews carved and trimmed in the shape of marching elephants. She looked down the long vista, the gigantic shrubs towering above her head, but no one was there. … He’d be in the rose garden, maybe, and thither she went but he was not there nor in the spinney beyond the kitchen gardens and the henhouses. She decided to go to the lake and see if he might be wandering in the forest beyond, calculating on the value of the trees and adding up his profits for cutting them down. That indeed she felt she could not bear, for the oaks were huge and worth a fortune, only not enough, Sir Richard had often said, to save the situation.
Suddenly she saw him. He was walking toward the lake, not from the wood, but down the slope of the lawn. Yes, it could be none but the American, a tall, lean man in a dark gray suit, but much younger than she had thought he would be. His step was easy and carefree as though he already owned the land upon which he walked. Sure of him self, was he? Kate asked herself as she followed him silently,
staying near enough to a tree here and there so that she could slip behind it if he turned. She’d follow and see what he did and where he went when he thought nobody was watching him.
To her surprise, he went nowhere. He stood at the lake’s edge for minutes and then sat himself down on the grass comfortably as though he meant to spend the day. He was staring at something in the lake but what? Suddenly he threw back his head and gave a shout of laughter. She was mystified. Why was he laughing all by himself? Drunk, maybe, perhaps not quite right in the head? She tiptoed over the grass until she stood almost behind him. He was actually talking to himself!
“That’s it, fella! Be careful now—you’ll choke—a spider is a mean thing to swallow!”
No—yes! He was talking to a frog! There on a lily pad a huge green bullfrog sat in the sun, its red thread of a tongue flicking in and out.
“Whatever are you doing?” she asked severely.
He gave a start and leaped to his feet.
“Trespassing, that’s what,” she went on, looking him over from head to foot. He was even taller than she thought and she tilted her head at an absurd angle to meet his eyes—blue eyes, they were, but on the gray side; he had a good mouth, it was firm and yet—pleasant was the word.
He was the American, of course, and she could have wished he weren’t so handsome. He had a nice smile, too—shy and friendly at the same time and good white teeth showing through it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Though I am here on business of a sort, so perhaps you’ll forgive me,”
She tried to look prim. “It’s not for me to forgive or not. The castle belongs to Sir Richard and Lady Mary.”
“I hope the frog goes with the castle. He has such a proprietary air.”
He was making jokes, was he? Well, she would have back at him by pretending she didn’t know who he was, though there was no mistaking him with that dark gray suit and red tie.
“If you’ve come to sell something,” she said unsmiling, “then take yourself off. We never buy anything here at the castle. Just keep straight up the path and you’ll come to the gate and beyond that the highway direct to London.” She walked away and stopped. She’d been a bit too harsh, perhaps? “You may have the frog if you like,” she called to him over her shoulder. “I hate frogs,” she added.
Death in the Castle Page 2